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CHAPTER FOUR

WHY THE RULE WORKS

Over the years I’ve received lots of questions about the five second rule. I wanted to start your introduction to using the rule by answering some of the most frequently asked questions I’ve received about this awesome tool. So one of the first questions that I get is: what exactly is the five second rule? So here’s the rule again: The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal, count backwards 54321 then go. If you don’t do that, your brain will kill your instinct to act. A lot of people wonder why is something so simple as counting backwards 54321, what is that? Why does it work? Well, the rule is a very simple, research-backed metacognition tool that creates immediate and lasting behavior change. A metacognition, by the way, it’s a really fancy term that means something very simple. There are techniques that you can use to beat your brain in order to accomplish your greater goals and the five second rule happens to be a form of metacognition. You can use it to beat your brain in order to accomplish your greater goals. Pretty cool ha?

So another question we get a lot, is how do I use the rule? Using the rule is very simple. Whenever you feel an instinct fire up to act on a goal or a commitment or the moment that you feel yourself hesitate on doing something that you know you should do; that’s when you use the rule. You’re gonna start by counting to yourself, okay? Backwards, 54321 and the accounting’s gonna help you focus on the goal or the commitment and it’s gonna distract you from your worries, your thoughts and the fears that occur in your mind. And as soon as you reach 1, then you move. That’s it. It’s really that simple. But I want to hammer it again one more time because it’s such an important tool for you to master. Any time there’s something you know that you should do, but you feel uncertain, afraid or overwhelmed; I want you to take control by counting backwards 54321. The accounting’s gonna quiet your mind. It’s gonna awaken your prefrontal cortex, then move. Counting and moving are actions. By teaching yourself to take action when normally you would stop and think, you create remarkable change.

Counting backwards does a few important things simultaneously. Number one, it distracts you from your worries. It focuses your attention on what you need to do and it prompts you to act. All of those things interrupt your habits of hesitating, over thinking and holding yourself back. If you’re wondering, like a lot of people do, if the rule works if you count forward 12345, instead of backwards, 54321; the answer is no–it doesn’t. Actually just ask Trent. Trent said: Mel, pertaining to the five second rule, I’ve also found that it doesn’t work if you count from 1 to 5. If you do that I’m tempted to say 6. Then the action is stalled. Exactly, you can keep counting plus you count up all the time so it’s not something that requires focus. What Trent found is that, I have to count down from 5 to 1 because the next word in my mind after 1 is blastoff. And that is definitely an action word. As Trent discovered is I’ve discovered as millions of people have discovered that when you count backwards 54321, there’s nowhere to go after you reach 1, so it becomes a prompt for you to move.

A lot of people write and they asked why is it called the five second rule? And I get this question a lot. And I wish I had a better answer for it. I mean, I called it the five second rule because that’s the first thing that popped into my mind, the morning I first used it and the name just stuck. Remember, I’d seen a rocket launch, the night before and I thought to myself, I’ll just launch myself out of bed like a rocket. And the next morning I counted backwards 54321, because that’s what NASA does when it launches a spaceship. Why did I start with five? I have no idea. It just kinda felt right that morning, so I started with five. You know, I’ve also come to learn since talking about this rule and using it for so long that there are a lot of other five second rules in the world. Obviously, the one that you may have grown up with, the one I grew up with, you know, when you drop food on the floor and you can pick it up and eat it if you do it in five seconds and you blow the dog hair off. There’s also the five second shot clock in basketball. There’s this game that Ellen DeGeneres plays on her show, called the five second rule. There’s also a five second test that you can use. This is one that I just learned about on a sidewalk. You can test the surface of a sidewalk on a hot summer day to see if it’s too hot for your pet to walk on. Just hold your hand down on it and if you can’t hold it there for more than five seconds, do not be walking your dog on it.

Now, look, had I known that the rule was gonna spread around the world, I would come up with a different name. But when I really stop and think about it, every single one of these five second rules, they have something in common. They require you to move within a five second window. Physical movement, it is the most important part of the rule because when you move physically, your physiology changes and that means your mind is going to follow along with it. Perhaps the names not only apropos, it’s actually perfect because it references the other five second windows in life and that just makes the rule feel so much more familiar, universal and true.

Another question that I get a lot, is regarding Nike’s Tagline “Just do it”. People write in all the time. Was it inspired by “Just do it”? Is it the same thing as “Just do it”? It’s a great question and I do see the similarities. There is a very important difference though. The difference between “Just do it” and the five second rule is simple. “Just do it” is a concept. It’s what you need to do. The five second rule is a tool. It’s how you make yourself do it. Do you ever stop to think about Nike’s tagline, “Just do it”. It’s arguably the most powerful tagline in the world. And I believe it’s because of one reason. It’s because the word, just. The word just is in there because Nike recognizes something we’ve already talked a lot about in this book, and that is that right before we act; we stop and we think. Right before you’re about to do something, you hesitate. “Just do it” acknowledges that we’re all struggling to push ourselves to be better, to do better, yet, we all hesitate and we wrestle with our feelings of self-doubt before we jump in. The word just is telling us that we’re not alone. Every single one of us has these small hesitations. It’s the moment right before you ask if you can join the pickup game that’s already underway. It’s the moment you contemplate whether or not you’re gonna do a third set of reps, or whether you’re going to start to question going out for a run in the pouring rain, right? Right before you’re standing there with your sneakers on. You’re like… should I just do it? I don’t knoe.

The tagline, it’s pretty cool. It acknowledges that you’ve got these excuses and fears and Nike is basically encouraging you to be bigger than your fears. They’re saying, come on… don’t think about it, just do it. I know you’re tired, just do. I know you’re afraid, just do it. I know you don’t feel like it, just do it. Nike’s tagline is pushing you to move past the doubt and get in the game. Nike knows that there is greatness inside of you. And it’s on the other side of your excuses. And it resonates so profoundly because every single one of us even Olympic athletes; we all need a push and that’s where the five second rule comes in. The rule is how you push yourself when there’s no coach, no competitor, no parent, no screaming fan or teammate there to push you. With the rule you 54321 and you push yourself. It’s how you just do it when you’re alone.

Another question that we get a lot, is whether or not there’s a five second window of opportunity for everyone. The quick answer, absolutely. The five second window seems to work for absolutely everybody who’s ever tried it yet. You know, there is a window of time for every one of us, regardless of where you live or how much education you have or how old you are, or what you do for a living. There’s a window between the moment you have an instinct to change and your mind killing that instinct. And while your mind goes to work against you in nano seconds, the full barrage of excuses and self doubt and procrastination; it doesn’t seem to fully kick in and stop you until about five seconds. Now, that said, by all means I want you to play around with this and make it work for you. What I’ve noticed personally is that the longer that I wait between my initial impulse to act and physically moving, the louder and louder and louder and more convincing my excuses get. And the harder it becomes to force myself to move. That’s exactly what so many of you have found when you post on social media about the five second rule.

Angela wrote exactly that, that those five second decisions quickly turn into 50 seconds and then 500 seconds when the fear is deeper. So she actually treats the five second rule as if it’s a window of time during which her brain will self-destruct at 0. If it works for you to shorten or lengthen the window, I want you to do that. Personalize the rule so that it works for you. We have a really good friend Matt, who also happens to be the godfather of our oldest daughter, Sawyer, and he wrote to my husband. He was training for one of those tough motor races. He lives in New Jersey and he sent this text during the winter when it was absolutely freezing and let me read it to you. He writes to my husband, “hey, tell your girlfriend Mel that the five second rule is working over here. I have it down to three seconds. Why contemplate life’s complexities when you can be moving ahead after just three seconds. In five seconds, I can make up at least two excuses in my mind. In three seconds, my mind has already pushed the first button on the phone to move the ball ahead. As I awoke this morning, I mistakenly checked the thermometer that took two seconds, but in that third second I started to put on my right sneaker”. That is how the system works, you guys. That’s how your brain defeats you. The longer you think about something, the lower your urge to act is going to become. We are amazing at fooling ourselves into staying exactly where we are. As soon as that impulse, to act kicks in, you’re gonna start to rationalizing it away. That’s why you’ve got to move even faster so you can break free of your excuses before you get trapped in them.

How do you break free. It’s simple: 54321 will awaken your prefrontal cortex. It’ll shut off your excuses and it will prompt you to act. A lot of people right now ask, what can I use the five second rule for? And the fact is that over the years since we’ve heard from so many people around the world that are using it; there are literally thousands of specific examples. We cover a lot of them in this book. But there are three general categories for how you can use it. The first is, you can use it to change your behavior. You can use the five second rule to push yourself to create new habits, to pull yourself away from destructive habits and to master the skills of self-monitoring and self-control so that you can be more intentional and effective in your relationships with yourself and with others. Second way that you can use rule, you can use the rule to find the courage that you need every single day in your work, in your relationships and in your life. Using the rule, you’re gonna discover the courage that you need to do things that are new, scary or uncertain. The rule will quiet your self-doubt and help you build the confidence as you push yourself to pursue your passions, share your ideas, volunteer for projects, create your art and become a better leader.

And finally, you can use the rule for mind control. So one of the things that I find to be the most amazing about the rule is how effective it is, in stopping the barrage of negative thoughts and endless worries that weigh you down. You can also break the habit of anxiety and beat any fear. When you take control of your mind, you will be able to think about things that bring you joy, instead of focusing on the negative. And that in my opinion, is the single most powerful way that you’re gonna learn how to use this rule. A lot of people asked the question, after using the rule and discovering just how powerful the countdown tric,k 54321 and then push go; is why is it that something so simple works? It’s a great question. And the reason why such a simple rule works is because it’s so simple. There are all kinds of tricky ways your brain kills your urge to act. Some of my most favorite researchers, professors and thinkers have written bestsellers and delivered epic Ted talks detailing how our own minds betray us in this seemingly endless list of tricks and cognitive biases. Everything from paradox of choice to the psychological immune system, we’ve already mentioned the spotlight affect. What all these great researches have taught me is that the moment you want to change, break a habit, do something hard or scary, your brain goes to work to stop you.

Basically your mind has one trick. It stops you and makes you think things through. And the moment you get tricked into thinking things through, you’re gonna get trapped by your thoughts. Your mind has a million ways to talk you out of acting once you start thinking. That’s the neurological reason why it’s so hard to change. You know, as I mentioned in chapter 1, change requires you to do things that are uncertain, scary, hard, difficult. Your brain by design will not let you do things that are scary, uncertain, difficult or hard. The second that your brain gets wind of the fact, that you’re hesitating to do something that’s a little scary or a little uncertain or feels a little hard; are you kidding me? It’s going to go into overdrive and do whatever it can to talk you out of it because it’s designed to stop you from that stuff. It’s part of your hardwiring and it happens really, really fast. That’s why you’ve got to act even faster to beat it.

The rule works because it’s simple and it also works because it leverages and is an example of some of the most powerful and proven principles in modern psychology: a bias towards action, starting rituals, internal locus of control, behavioral flexibility, the progress principle, the golden rule of habits, authentic pride, deliberate action, “If-Then planning”, and activation energy. You don’t need to know what any of those things mean. All you need to know is that there are volumes and volumes and volumes of research and science that support and explain exactly why counting backwards 54321 works, what it does in your mind, which is activate the prefrontal cortex and distract you from your worries, interrupting your habits and also the extraordinary benefit which is teaching you how to live with a bias towards action and giving you the power to center and live with an internal locus of control.

Another question that we get is how can one rule work on many different areas of my life? Well, see, that’s the catch. The five second rule isn’t actually working on a lot areas of your life. The five second rule is only acting on one thing, you. You stop yourself from changing the exact same way every single time. That’s why just one technique can work every single time. How is it that you stop yourself? Well, you stop and you think. You hesitate. You lock yourself in mental jail. That moment of hesitation is a killer.You see hesitation sends a stress signal to your brain. It’s like a red flag that signals your mind something must be up and then your brain goes into a protection mode. That’s how it is that we’re all wired to fail. That’s why it is that you feel like you’re your own worst enemy at times. And I want you to think about this for a minute. You don’t hesitate all the time. You don’t hesitate when you pour a cup of coffee, right? You don’t hesitate when you put your genes on. You don’t hesitate when you turn on the TV. You don’t hesitate when you call your best friend. You don’t think at all. You just have an instinct, you pick up the phone and you call your friend. You and instinct watch TV, you pick up the remote and you turn it on. But when you hesitate just before making a sales call or texting someone back; it makes your brain think that something must be wrong. The longer you think about that sales call, the less likely you’ll make it. And most of us don’t even realize how often we hesitate because we’ve done it so often that it’s become a habit.

Here’s how Tim described it after using the rule. He said, “Honestly, I think the rule is powerful simply because keeping it on the top of your thoughts allows you to process and start on activities you’d normally gloss over and ignore. I also keep saying what the hell, I’m leaning into this”. So, it is powerful because it helps you break the formally embedded thought patterns about doing things and it allows me anyway, to safely go for it. Seriously, why was I afraid of doing some of the things I’m doing now? It was never like anything I did or didn’t do, was going to end the world. He’s right, but when you get trapped in a mental jail, you convince yourself that this is going to end the world. But what you will soon learn is that this moment of hesitation, when you stop and think, it can also be used to your advantage. Every single time you catch yourself hesitating, that’s a signal. That is a signal. It’s a push moment. The five second window, the clock it is started counting. It is time to 54321 and push yourself forward. Seeing 54321 can serve as a vivid reminder of the rule and its importance. A lot of people, Art being one of them, has taken the rule even out of the tool status and cut out the numbers, 54321, put them up on his office wall and it’s changed his life and his productivity at work by seeing that, being reminded of it in a really important way.

Another question that we get from people that first start using the rule is, can the five second rule create lasting behavior change, too? The answer, absolutely. The rule is not only going to beat your brain’s operating system and help you win the battle in the moment but you know what else? Over time, as you repeat the rule what’s super cool is that you’re gonna start destroying the negative system in your brain altogether. Now, we’ve talked a little bit about habits, kind of hinting at it, but let me dig into it, just a little bit here. One of the things that most of us don’t realize is that the patterns of thinking like worrying, self-doubt, and fear; they’re just habits. Habits are nothing more than things that you repeat without even thinking about it. If everything that you do to sabotage your happiness is a habit, that can be good news. I mean it kind of stinks right now, but it’s actually pretty darn simple to fix it. Because you can follow the latest research and break the habits of, check this out: You can break the habit of waiting. You can break the habit of doubting yourself. You can break your habit of staying silent. You can break the habit of feeling insecure. You can break your habit of avoiding confrontation, of worrying and of overthinking.

You see there’s a “Golden rule” that researchers have discovered with habits. And it’s very simple. In order to change any bad habit, all you gotta do is replace the behavior pattern that you repeat. Now, I’ll explain this in detail in part 4 of the book, when we get into some specific examples for how you can use the rule, to become healthier, more productive and to beat the habit of procrastination. I’m also gonna teach you how to end the mental habits of worrying, anxiety and panic. But for now, here’s what you need to know. The five second rule and its countdown trick 54321 go; it’s gonna become your new behavior pattern for every single thing that you do, that holds you back. Instead of holding yourself back or procrastinating, or worrying, you’re gonna replace it with the new behavior, 54321 go. The countdown is what researchers of habits referred to as a starting ritual. Starting rituals are critical for breaking your bad habits because they interrupt the pattern and they trigger positive new behaviors. What I’ve been saying all along. When you count backwards, 54321, you not only awaken your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that you need active so you can change and focus, but it also interrupts your bad behavior and distracts you from the garbage excuses in your head. If you master the rule, you will re-program your mind and I’m gonna prove it to you in part 4 of the book. And I’m going to show you step by step by step, how you can re-program your mind, stop worrying, control and cure anxiety and beat any single fear that you may have.

And you know, over time, as you take more and more step forward, you’re gonna discover something amazing. You’re not only going to start discovering the ability to act with courage every single day, you’re also going to discover real confidence and pride in yourself. It’s the authentic kind that comes when you honor your goals and accomplish small wins that are important to you. Now you may think that everything is set in stone about you. You know, you maybe one of these people that say, at this point my life, no way you’re going to teach an old dog new tricks. That is a lie. You can change absolutely everything, your habits, your mindset, your personality, they are flexible. And the implications of this for your life, they are thrilling. You can change your mental settings. And you can do it one 5 second decision at a time. You can change your habits and you can do it one 5 second decision at a time. And those small decisions, guess what? They add up to major changes in who you are, what you feel and how you live. What did I tell you in the very beginning of the book? The woman that I was seven years ago, gone. Absolutely gone. I also told you that every phase of your life requires a different you. If you change your decisions, you’ll change your life. Ad what’s gonna change your decisions more than anything? A little bit of courage.