thank you for having me and you I think of probably anybody on the planet will get what I'm about to say in your bones because you understand the profound impact that the 5-sec RO as a starting ritual has has had on millions of people's lives helping them move from thinking to doing and even sitting here Jim with you which it's just an honor being such a fan of your work too uh to be here with you even sitting here knowing the impact that the 5-second role has had on millions of people's lives I'm going to tell you something what's that the high five habit is an even bigger deal with more profound change and I can't wait to unpack it but I'll tell you personally I use the 5-sec rule to turn my life around to go from being bankrupt to being extraordinarily successful to changing every habit I have to improving my marriage it got me into action but I'll tell you what it never did it never silenced the critic in my head that I lived with it never ended the Relentless Beatdown that I was giving myself and it never broke the habit that I had of constantly hating myself or focusing on the things that weren't working instead of celebrating myself and focusing on the things that were and the high five habit Cuts right down through all that noise and reconnects you with the you that's in there with the confidence that is your Birthright and the way that it literally reprograms your mind is breathtaking well you know I we talk a lot about morning routines and this was the the easiest thing to add to my morning routine that's given me so much in return and not not just in terms of in in a short period of time you know in terms of the Ripple it but even just immediately you know just celebrating myself um in the in the bathroom mirror and we we could talk about how that works I'm also by the way pulling back a big fan of just counting down from five you know getting myself out of bed or getting myself to put on my my running shoes and so I could see I could see the difference um and how they complement each other so well and so maybe we could walk our listeners through this and I would highly recommend everyone I mean our audience loves to read to make sure you get your copy also as well well so it's very simple and since I know that your listeners want to get right into the science and right into what to do I'm not even going to tell you the story because I did not set out to create this I created the high five habit on a morning that everybody can relate to a morning where life felt overwhelming a morning where I felt defeated a morning where I felt sort of stuck and dreading the day and I was standing there brushing my teeth gy and I catch my reflection in the mirror and I think oh you look like hell and then all of a sudden I started to criticize the way that I looked like the dark circles under my eyes the the bags under my like kind of chin and neck and one boobs hanging lower than the other and then once your thoughts go negative they kind of Take You Down so now I'm thinking about my day ahead and I'm beating myself up why' I get up so late and I've only got eight minutes to the first Zoom call and the dog hasn't even been walked and you just said something interesting it's an easy thing the high- five habit is an easy thing to add to the morning routine we all talk a lot about morning routines it wasn't until I discovered this that I realized there was a piece to my morning routine I was not even aware of a Abit that I needed to break Jim a habit that gratitude and exercise and all this stuff was not actually erasing a habit of standing before the bathroom mirror and either ignoring the human being you see in the mirror or criticizing them that is how we start our day 91% of women don't like how they look 50% of us can't even look in the mirror I know it's true for men too we stand in judgment and so what happened for me this morning morning here's the high five habit it is profoundly simple it's going to change your life the second you're done brushing your teeth and I want you to do it right after you brush your teeth because I want you to stack this habit with something you're already doing because you know because you listen to this podcast that it's the fastest way to learn a new behavior let's get the gunk out of your teeth so you don't spread dragon breath on everybody now let's get the gunk out of your head so you're not spreading negativity throughout your day as you stand in front of the I want you to leverage a little piece of research from Harvard new research shows that if you take less than a minute and you intentionally think about the day ahead and how you're going to show up as a leader it changes your productivity your focus how you show up and your ability to impact people let's throw that out the window in terms of being a leader and let's look in the mirror and let's use that for ourselves to improve our own lives I want you to take a second and I want you to realize there's actually two people in the bathroom every morning Jim there's you and there's a human being in the mirror that's been waiting for you to wake up and realize they need you they're trying hard they've got a good heart they need your support and your encouragement they need you to see them they need you to love them that is literally what I'm talking about when I talk talk about the high five habit that you wake up and recognize there is a person you go through life with that stares you back in the mirror every morning and your habit right now is to tear them down or ignore them and I want you to set an intention and I want you to look at them in the morning and this is going to feel weird because you're going to realize I've never actually asked myself this question and here's the question what is that person in the mirror what is she or he or they what do they need for me today we think about it for work for our families for everybody else you've never stopped and asked yourself looking at yourself in the mirror how do I need to show up for that person today then as you've got that intention despite the fact that it feels weird despite the fact that you're going to resist this and we can talk about why you're going to feel most likely resistance I then want you to raise your hand and I want you to high-five the reflection and what's amazing about this new habit Jim is your brain and your nervous system are already designed to do the work for you because also you mean you think about how we high-five other people you know throughout the day yep to celebrate them to to encourage them but we're not always doing that I mean it's interesting because no no amount of Love is enough to feel the yearning of that our soul requires um from ourselves right you know some when do we work daily on being in love with that person in the mirror who has been through so much but is but it's still standing yeah and think about some of the habits that we know based on Research change your life meditation meditation is profoundly important the benefits you talk about all the time meditation develops selfawareness it also helps you learn how to be nonreactive to your thoughts but it doesn't change your default thoughts gratitude also hugely important tremendous benefit yes you should have a gratitude practice however almost all of us when we practice gratitude we think about things outside of ourself that we're grateful for and so the high five habit is about bringing the power back in house it's about giving you a science back tool that will teach you through a simple action how to support how to love how to encourage how to celebrate yourself every single day and let me explain the science because this is where things get crazy the reason why this works is because of the programming that's already in your brain so you have a lifetime of giving and receiving high fives in fact Jim when somebody high fives you or you high five somebody else what is the gesture alone of a high five tell somebody else that they they are extraordinary they are amazing congratulations you know you're you're you're winning you know exactly exactly you don't ever high-five somebody and say I hate you you always high five and are like I love you we got this no problem you're you know go get them you're going to win even if somebody just blew it you high five them and it's like Shake It Off come on I still believe in you let's go and so all of that programming is right here in the interior of your brain it's in your basil ganglia it is in your subconscious it is sitting there and it is married to the action of high-fiving so what happens is when you stand there you set this intention you're with yourself you see yourself you feel the resistance you ignore the resistance you go to high five yourself your brain's like oh I know what this gesture means it activates the subconscious programming it silences the critic and the Beatdown you can't think anything but positive thoughts it's impossible neurologically because of the programming already in your brain and then over time if you do this give me just five days you do this five days in a row fight through the weirdness because it's new and the resistance because you have the opposite habit you judge yourself you reject yourself when you high five yourself it silences that it activates the programming that's already in your brain and it starts to marry it with your own reflection and that's not all I talked to our buddy Dr Aman the other day he went bananas when he heard about this he's like Mel holy cow you realize you also get a boost in your mood because when you high five other people you get a dopamine drip so you get a dopamine drip when you do this to yourself he also said you know how when you come into the bathroom and you're kind of dragging in the energy and when you highfive yourself whether it's because you laugh or because you just kind of feel good you get this little like pep in your steps so you start your day feeling slightly more energized I'm like yeah Dr aan tell me about that he said well that's your nervous system your nervous system is encoded with celebratory energy when you cross a Finish Line you raise your hands when your favorite team scores you raise your hands when you say hello to somebody you raise your hands when you hug somebody you raise your hands when you high five you raise your hands your nervous system remembers it that's where the energy comes from the coolest thing about the high five habit gy is the programming is already in you because you've been doing this your whole life for everybody else yeah and when we are hardwired for this hardwired in fact when you were born DNA in your DNA was celebration and joy little kids when you see them in front of a mirror they don't step back and go my thighs are fat man I'm a loser they don't do that they spin they high-five the mirror they kiss the mirror they love the themselves this is your Birthright it was your life experience that taught you to judge and reject yourself and I'm here to tell you this simple habit of standing before the mirror and raising your hand and high-fiving yourself like you so willingly do for everybody else you don't have to say a thing you can have resistance you can feel that it's weird you can literally reject it in your mind as you start to do it and will you will experience massive transformation as you complete the gesture because your mind is wired for this you know my husband Jim a lot of people know the story because it was his restaurant business failing that rocket us into this personal crisis and that's when I invented the 5-sec rule well his best friend and he worked at that restaurant business for seven years and at the end of the seven years they sold it for a song to a new investor and our best friend his business partner was able to shrug and go okay well that's entrepreneurship I'm very proud of what we did uh I'm proud of how hard we worked and you know did we return the profit we wanted no but I'm still proud of myself my husband couldn't do that my husband said I failed do you know for seven years he has looked in the mirror every morning Jim like so many of us do and dragged his past in there and said because this this thing in my past I am a failure I am unworthy I am unlovable when I first started this high five thing in April of 2020 to pick myself up after getting fired from my dream job as a talk show host and in the throws of the pandemic and my kids in crisis and the world in crisis and just feeling overwhelmed Chris couldn't do it and the reason why I couldn't do it is the reason why everybody's resistant to doing it it's because he was dragging all of that judgment and everything from his past into the bathroom every morning and he was saying because of that experience I don't see a human being that's worthy of Celebration so if you've experienced trauma or abuse or discrimination or you've been abandoned or you know you're a human being and you've done things you've regretted or you wish you could change and you'd forgive Jim or me for it but you stand in Judgment of yourself you will resist this because right now you see a human being who doesn't deserve celebration if you're like Gemini and you are very much achievement driven you may realize as you resist this that you don't celebrate yourself unless you've done something unless you've worked out unless you've got the money in the bank unless you're driving the Range Rover unless you fixed that thing and what I'm here to tell you is we got it all opposite Jim you see we've been withholding the the very support and celebration that we need in order to feel inspired encouraged and motivated to take the actions that change our life hey I'm Mel Robbins the creator of the 5-second rule what is the 5-second rule it's a form of metacognition that gives you immediate control over your thoughts and actions using the rule is so simple the moment you feel your instincts fire up just start counting backwards to yourself to switch the gears in your mind 5 4 32 one then give yourself a push forward 5 1 counting backwards requires focus and when you focus your prefrontal cortex awakens and by the way that's the part of the brain that helps you learn new positive behavior patterns I first mentioned the rule in its head talk since then more than 8 million people have discovered the rule through that talk and its powerful countdown trick to take control of their lives become more confident happy and even make their dreams come true I created this series of videos to help you better understand the 5-second rule the science behind it how it works and the specific ways you can use it to improve any area of your [Music] life in this video I'm going to show you the specific way that you can use the 5-sec rule to increase your productivity now first let's talk a little bit about productivity as a concept productivity is not about blasting through your to-do list and doing more it's actually about doing less productivity is the ability to make progress in the things that matter to you sounds simple right I mean just move the ball down the field on the important stuff but it's not easy why blame your feelings you see you're capable of being more productive you're just waiting to feel like doing what you need to do and guess what you're never going to crack the whip on yourself when you have a million other things that you need to do and you got people that are making demands on you one thing that you must understand is that you have the power to decide what's important and productivity actually boils down to simple 5-second decisions here's one that you need to start making immediately that will have a tremendous impact on your ability to be productive when the alarm goes off do you wake up early to work on your business or do you blow it off cuz you don't feel like it you're tired or do you stick to the plan to finish some important tasks or do you Mainline Facebook instead because ah you'd just rather relax when you change your decisions you'll change everything because productivity boils down to the ability to make small 5-second decisions that put the things that are important first and here's one 5-second decision that will make you more productive than any other get up 30 minutes earlier than you normally do and push yourself to work on the most important priorities first this isn't just me research shows that your most productive hours are the first two to three hours after you wake up and get ready this means that for Peak productivity you've got to do whatever you can do to make sure the most important work to you gets done first during that window of time so here's how you're going to use the rule the moment your alarm goes off and you want to hit the snooze button use the rule 54321 push yourself out of bed then use the rule again 54321 sit down and get working on the things that matter to you instead of checking your phone instead of letting your day get hijacked you see the moment you feel yourself wanting to give into distraction you're going to use the rule again 54321 do a search control and get back on task to the things that matter to you it doesn't really matter how busy you are we're all busy if you really care you'll find the time and that's how you're going to use the rule to find the time to work on things matter to you this is what Rachel did she wanted to change her life so she decided to make progress on what was important and she did this by starting with getting up earlier getting out of bed and 543 21 focusing on what mattered and as you can see that small 5-second decision getting up 30 minutes earlier started a chain of events that changed her entire life she lost 30 pounds she bought her first home and she reinvigorated her marriage why the reason why is because she learned how to beat the feelings and excuses that stopped her and she found the time to work on things that matter that is the definition of productivity getting the important stuff done only works when you push yourself to do it and when you push yourself 5-second decision to wake up earlier and start your day off right you will be shocked by what changes it ignites this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to productivity there are tons of strategies that I discuss that are based in research in chapter 10 of the 5c rule book and how you can use all of this research in combination with the 5c rule to not only become more productive but to end procrastinating forever to regain your focus whenever you get distracted and lots of other things that are going to help you improve your quality of work and also your life all right so I just did this ask me uh anything chat with the community at the skim app I love the skim and the questions were fantastic and I got this great one from Leanne uh Mel I just listened to your book the 5-sec rule recently and loved it I tried to put the 5-second rule into practice and I'm failing am I too afraid of what I don't even know exhaustion maybe what am I missing [Music] it's a great question and so I want to address my comments to those of you that have learned the 5-second rule you've tried the countdown 54321 and it's not working I got a level with you the 5c rule always works it's backed by science and it has helped change the lives of millions of people the problem is not the rule the problem is you actually don't want to change I'm dead serious ious I want I want you to just stop and think about that for a minute for people who try to countd down but then don't actually push themselves forward for those of you that that are struggling with self-doubt struggling to get up on time struggling to make the calls to grow your business struggling to stay motivated you know about the 5-second rule but you don't use it there's a simple reason why you're not using it you don't want to change look change is hard I get it if you're going to change anything about life you're going to have to face the unknown you're going to have to step out of your comfort zone you're going to have to try something new you're going to have to risk rejection and judgment it's scary I get it that's why most people never change so if you're like Leanne and you've got all the tools at your disposal but you still are stuck the reason why you're stuck is you don't want to change yet so stop complaining about the tools and go Inward and actually examine what are you afraid of seriously what do you get out of staying stuck what do you get from staying heavy what do you get from not making the money that you want what do you get from dating a string of losers you get safety I don't know you you get the ability to complain are you the one that's constantly dominating all your friendships because you're constantly griping about how bad your life is I don't know what you're getting out of it but you getting something the moment you decide that you're sick and tired of it the moment that you decide that you are so ready to change the 5sec rule this puppy right here the 543 2 1 it'll be there and it'll work and look when you start deciding that it's time to change you may have to use 543 21 5,000 times a day for weeks on end because you're pushing through self-doubt and you're pushing through procrastination and you're pushing through resignation and you're pushing through fear over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and then what's going to happen and I see this happening around the world I know that it works we have proof that it works if you use 543 21 and you push through everything that's stopping you right now because you this is your year this is the moment that you're going to change at some point something's going to click and the momentum's going to kick in and suddenly change isn't going to be scary change is going to be what's happening so figure out or admit the fact that you don't want to change that's why none of this is working and the moment that you're actually ready to 54321 it'll be there and it'll work one of the things I love about Mel is that she's not someone that just pulls things out of books and regurgitates things like she literally takes time to do re real research and provide like real techniques and real how-tos that are that are actually science back but the one that changed her entire career that has impacted millions of lives is called the 5c rule so we're going to get into the whole philosophy and how did she actually create the 5-second rule and all about how it can be used in your personal life as well your business what I really admire um getting towards talking about that 5-second rule is how it's you've you know there's a lot of people that give advice but you're the first that I've really that I I love that like it's all science-backed I mean this isn't just something that you whipped up and you know decided to to kind of just create from a branding perspective I mean there's obviously it's amazing how you branded yourself and how you branded the 5-second rule but it's I love how it is all science-backed a lot of the philosophy a lot of the techniqu everything we talk about has to be proven everything I love that I don't give you some [ __ ] I've read in a book or something that I've read on Instagram the only things that we share are things that are backed by science that have been researched that we have seen working in our own lives that we see working for our audience and I think that is critical because let's face it anybody can put up a inspirational quote right you know that they've read from somebody else anybody can tell you to you know be positive or do this or put in the work or hustle or whatever the hell it may be at the end of the day it's just talk yeah you have to know how yeah and I also am you know somebody who is a little bit cynical so you know I I'm sort of embarrassed that I'm in self-help on some level because it sounds stupid right you know I mean I come from I I mean I I'm older than you I'm almost 50 selfhelp had a really bad name 20 years ago and I also am ivy league yeah lawyer yeah and I um am an entrepreneur there's a lot of [ __ ] there's a lot of there's a lot of fake people out there that are renting houses and Ferrar and telling you if you use their clickfunnel strategy or whatever strategy that you'll be rich like they are and yeah you may and Chase the money if it energizes you but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors I agree and so if you're going to follow influencers and you're going to look to other people for advice remember one thing would you actually trade lives with them would you actually want to do what they're doing with their life and if the answer is yes then listen yes but then always come back and reflect on whether or not that advice feels true for you yeah and adjust it because the things that I'm saying they work for me and I know they work for millions of people but they might not work for you based on your mental health based on your financial situation based on uh what's going on with your family the timing might not be right you might not be mentally capable of doing these things without professional help so you have to be responsible for yourself and that's the most important thing about personal development yeah we're here to inspire you and give you things to think about in the hopes that you will take them back into your lives and try them and figure out what works for you do you know how often you hesitate and stop yourself all day long there's actually a neurological reason why change is so hard your brain is designed to stop you from changing let me explain you see change requires you to do things that are uncertain scary or new your brain is designed to protect you from doing things that are uncertain scary or new what's your brain's favorite way to protect you to trap you in your head by making you overthink I've studied and interviewed the leading researchers in Psychology and human behavior and what they've taught me is that the moment the moment you want to change break a habit or do something hard or scary and you hesitate your brain goes to work to stop you now there's all kinds of fancy names for this cognitive biases the Paradox of choice the psychological immune system the spotlight effect I could name hundreds of them you don't need to know the fancy names you just need to know one simple fact there is a system in your head that is stopping you every step of the way and the 5-sec rule is the only tool that you need to beat it so how does the 5-sec rule beat the system in your head there are two explanations first I'm going to give you the simple one then I'm going to explain the science at its most basic level the five second rule is a tool that helps you take action it gets you out of your head and that's the secret you've got to stop thinking and start living before the system in your head has a chance to stop you now let's talk about the science the 5-second rule leverages proven principles in modern psychology and there are literally hundreds of examples that I could point to but in this video we're just going to focus on five of them first let's talk about two concepts one called locus of control the second called a bias toward action so a locus of control is a foundational principle in Psychology you should Google it back in the day researchers figured out that there are basically two kinds of people people that believe that they're in control of their lives and folks that believe that life is just happening to them and they're a victim of whatever might happen now when you look at these two types of people people that have an internal Locust of control a belief that they're in control of their lives they're happier they're more successful more productive so the question becomes how how do you create an internal locus of control in yourself the answer is simple it's called a bias toward action so a bias toward action is a psychological principle that means you're the kind of person that has a bias toward taking action instead of a bias toward thinking how do you create a bias toward action you guessed it the 5-second rule the 5-second rule is a tool that will teach you how to take action and over time as you use it you not only learn how to take action you become the kind of person that operates with a bias toward taking action and when you take action over and over and over on your instincts on your desires on your commitments guess what you get you build an internal locus of control you become the kind of person that believes that you're in control of your life because you're proving it to yourself one 5-second decision at a time let's move on to topic too behavioral flexibility so just a few years ago scientists thought that our brains stopped growing at the age of about 25 what we now know is that your brain never stops growing we have the ability to learn new things throughout entire lifetime we call this behavioral flexibility one of the things that's exciting about the 5-sec rule and that we see from people all over the world is that when they utilize the rule over and over and over again they not only create immediate change in the moment with a 5-second decision but that over time as they repeat the new Behavior whether it's speaking up in meetings more or it is pushing yourself to exercise over and over that you actually create new habits and become an entirely different person this is what your brain is designed to do in terms of its neurop Pathways and the way that new neurop Pathways can develop every time you use the 5c rule in 54321 activate your prefrontal cortex and shift your behavior you are not only creating immediate Behavior change over the long run thanks to behavioral flexibility you're creating lasting Behavior change the third principle is do good be good now this is a principle that I first learned about from legendary psychological researcher and University of Virginia Professor Timothy Wilson basically it means that you can't think your way to being happier or better you actually got to do something now this do good be good philosophy dates all the way back to Aristotle and it's based on the belief and now the proven technique that in order to change you can't think your way to being more positive you've got to do things you got to act and then your mind will follow what is the 5c rule it's a tool that will help you stop thinking and start doing do good be good and then your mind will follow the fourth principle and that's the golden rule of habits now I could spend two or three hours just talking about habit research and whether you read Charles dug's best-selling book or Gretchen rubin's book on habits or you watch a number of TED Talks all researchers believe that habits come down to one Golden Rule and that's this you can never change the things that trigger you you can't control your urges or how you might feel but you can always choose how you behave if you want to break a habit once you have a habit it's always going to be encoded in your brain the only way that you can break it is to replace it with new Behavior there's also something in the research around habits called a starting ritual a starting ritual is a repeated behavior that you adopt in order to trigger a new habit the 5c rule is so incredibly powerful when it comes to Breaking old habits and adopting new ones because number one the 5c Rule and counting backwards 5 43 2 1 is a starting ritual it will interrupt the old Behavior pattern and it will trigger a new one the 5-second rule over time and this is really cool actually becomes the new pattern of behavior instead of stopping yourself with self-doubt or blowing things off or overeating you have a new pattern of behavior you catch yourself you gain control you have confidence 5 43 2 1 and you do the thing that you know you want to do and finally the principle called activation energy now activation energy is something that was first introduced into the field of human behavior and psychology several decades ago by a rockstar professor at the University of Chicago that studied a state of flow his name was mihi chent miii and he studied was one of the first really to study human behavior Human Performance and he coined this term activation energy I actually borrowed it from chemistry and it's a term that describes this phenomenon in order to start any kind of chemical reaction it takes a tremendous amount of energy energy to create that initial spark a lot more energy to start it than to keep it going there's a direct correlation to you and me have you ever noticed how hard it is to just get started how hard it is to get to the gym how hard it is to get out of bed how hard it is to put down uh the bottle when you go to pour a second drink and you know you shouldn't that feeling how hard it is to get started this is what Mii is talking about you need activation energy to start the chain to start to sit down to start to get out of bed to start to walk out the door that's the key to creating any kind of change this activation energy inside of you that causes the initial boom and then what do we hear over time once you start there's a chain reaction and that allows you to keep going so what's this have to do with the 5-second rule freaking everything the 5c rule creates activation energy in you the 5-second rule is how you activate change inside of you it is a tool when you start counting 5 4 3 2 1 you awaken your prefrontal cortex you begin the process of changing you push yourself in a new direction that first push that's going to be the hardest once you get moving it gets so much easier so those are just five just five psychological scientific principles that explain the power of the 5-second rule wait first off when did you discover the 5-second rule okay so 2009 this when you first tried it or discovered it or oh it's a total horror show mistake okay yes okay so 2009 um I was unemployed and feeling like you unemployed how well okay too much Charisma too much passion uh yeah cuz everything's working right now that's why I'm not like this when I things are not working ask my husband of 22 years um uh well the what had happened is um I I had had all these career changes and I got into the media business again by mistake I had a coaching business and um Inc magazine was writing an article about coaches and they featured me in it and CNBC called got it and that led to me doing some stuff with CNB and um I spent a year still coaching people and then doing some stuff for CNBC and then fox called and they were interested in having me host a television show now you got to understand I'm from North mosan Michigan MH I mean the media business Fox La the closest thing I had ever seen to a celebrity Lewis was The mosan Lumberjacks the farm team right right from our for for the Pittsburgh Penguins te my dad was the Town dock for the hockey team there right right right so I thought the mayor was a city wow my life's about to change I'm about to be a celebrity wow we're going to solve all this is amazing you know so um I was originally going to be hosting a a show for Fox where we were making over small businesses nice yeah pretty cool right we show up we like Do extreme home makeover for the office everybody's happy we all know that doesn't solve business problems but it makes for a nice television show by the time I get to La um they've changed the format it's now called someone's got to go and I'm going to be firing people on National Television from real jobs wow uh-huh that sounds fun horrible oh my God plus we haven't told the offices that this is what we're doing oh my gosh so you show up in act one and you've got everybody all like this because they're think they're going to get new ayia furniture and a paint job and this is going to be the best thing in the world for their small business now meanwhile I'm a fourth generation small business owner so that's like my people grew up at a kitchen table with farmers and you know my mom at a retail store and my other Grandparents were Bakers and so when it comes to like the heart and soul and what's so important when you launch your own business and how personal it is I mean this was like gut-wrenching so I show up the First Act you kick out the the owner of the company who then freaks out then all the employees freak out act number two we announce that somebody's getting fired and then that's that's the the bad news the good news is that I'm not picking we're going to have you vote somebody out so it's Survivor in an office Place go oh my goodness so sucks when when I learn all this I I have a panic attack even though I'm on Zoloft and I call the guy that got me the gig and say you got to get me out of this like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me and he said um well I'm sorry but they've already cast the entire show and you're out there for 5 weeks and you don't have a choice they're going to sue you and I said then fine get me some Xanax because I don't think I can get through this thing like this is awful luckily um we taped two episodes and um legal tabled it h but here was the problem I was attached to the show and I only got paid if the show was shooting and being an entrepreneur I also kind of put yes put all my energy into this shut down the coaching thing um uh really thought that that it also kind of negotiated a deal that was a sort of a backend deal thinking I'm a you know entrepreneur always thinking about got to have a piece of the action yeah of course what yeah that was a dumb move um and I was in a contract for a year while they figured out what to do M so you could have do another show yeah so you know I just felt like I had made a a huge mistake and I felt really embarrassed and I didn't know at the age of 41 what I should be doing with my life and while it's neat that I had jumped careers so many times I started to feel like somebody that actually wasn't successful at all because I didn't have a career track I had a bunch of jumps from one thing to another now looking back it makes perfect sense but standing in the middle of the mess it just felt like everything was caving in probably just like when you were sleeping on your couch feeling injured and like everything I thought that was about to happen isn't happening now Meanwhile my husband had opened up a restaurant business it had been his dream he worked in high-tech and came home one day after getting laid off and said I I'm never going to get on a plane and do a PowerPoint presentation for a company I don't care about her own and I said great what's your plan and he said I'm going to open a pizza restaurant and I looked at him and I said was there a trust fund that was part of this marriage that I was unaware of cuz I'm not quite sure how we're did someone die you got an insurance policy Check Yes and he said no and um uh I then said the most famous lines of our 22 Mar 22- year marriage Lewis I looked at him and I said listen buddy inspiration is for strangers you get your ass back to that job and you pay the mortgage and you forget this dream you're not going well cuz change is scary yeah so we fought and he won and and the first one was a real home run and he open a pizza store oh he did yeah 40 40 seats right outside Boston Massachusetts he and his best friend and they won best of Boston it was incredible what do you do when everything money though they did on the first one so what do you do when when everything's working woo let's go all chips in let's put in the home equity line let's put in the the kids college savings let's get friends and family and because you're so excited you you think it's going to work so you go big big big well the second one did not work at all and it did not work at all so badly that when it was finally closed it was close to an $800,000 loss and it meant our entire home equity line kids college savings everything went right down with it that was right when I lost the fox show so I'm unemployed the leans start hitting the house um the phone starts ringing all the time and it's collections calls so you unplug the phone me out well you just unplug the phone I mean that's how you deal with that but I I I I remember like there were I remember two things from that period of my life that were really painful and one was having to call the town and tell them that we could not afford the 175 bucks for our sixth grader to play soccer so we needed to pull her out and I remember there being times because I was so afraid to look at the checking account that I would stand at the grocery store and items would scan and I could just feel that wave of anxiety Rising thinking I don't I don't think the check card's going to go through and so I would stand there I always had an excuse and it was to look at the person and go oh that's strange it just worked at the gas station oh my gosh because I what would have been more empowering is to probably say oh well I guess I don't have the money for this let's take this this and this and just kind of like the easiest thing to do is to tell the truth but I was so filled with shame yeah so I started to develop this habit of hitting the snooze button because what would happen is the alarm would go off in the morning and the first thing I would think about is all the problems that we had and how awfully things had gone off the tracks you didn't want to deal with them no and I and I also didn't know I didn't know I didn't think I could and this goes back to the feelings like you you think that you need to feel confident or courageous in order to get started you don't you actually just have to start and that's the riddle of life that lying in bed hoping that you wake up some morning motivated to change that's not the answer you actually have to learn how to push yourself you have to learn how to how to Leverage The Power of your decisions and you've got to learn how to take action when you don't [ __ ] feel like it because every morning when I woke up I did not feel confident I felt like a loser I felt like the world's worst parent I felt like I had failed at every single turn I did not know if Chris and I could pull out of the Spiral I did not know if we were going to go bankrupt and lose the house and move from our community I did not know if our marriage would survive I knew I wanted it to and see this is the knowledge action Gap you can know what you want you can know what you should be doing but how do you make yourself do it when the feelings and the motivation isn't there when all you got is fear and so every night I would I would lie in bed and I would say to myself all right that's it Mel tomorrow it's the new you tomorrow you're going to wake up and be motivated you're going to you're going to get up you're going to exercise like everybody says you should you're going to meditate you're going to get those kids on the bus you're going to screw Fox you're going to look for a job you're going to cold call Cox media and you're gonna you're going to do auditions come on girl let's go let's go let's go you're going to take a cold shower Woo You know here we go and I meant it when I was saying it maybe it was the alcohol that was talking but but then I would wake up and I didn't feel any of those things mhm so I would hit the snooze and I would hit the snooze now why was I hitting the snooze when I knew it wasn't the right decision I'm going to tell you why and this is something that I was blown away by when I discovered it you don't make decisions with your goals you don't make decisions with your prefrontal cortex you don't make decisions with logic do you know how we make decisions I didn't invent this a neuroscientist by the name of damasio who does his research in Brazil who gave an incredible Ted Talk and wrote about this forever and ever and ever we make decisions of feelings 95% of our decisions are made by how you feel in the moment and that is the problem you need to take control of the moment and Leverage The Power of your decisions and make them up here because when I was lying in bed I wasn't saying to myself I should get up because that's going to help me start my day right I was saying do I feel like getting up no you don't no do you feel like making that cold call no you don't do do you feel like doing that third set of reps no you don't do you feel like having that hard conversation no you don't do you feel like ending this relationship whether it's in business or in your life that is sucking you dry no you don't we make decisions based on our feelings and that is robbing you of joy and opportunity and it is blinding you from the fact that all how you change your life is one 5-second decision at a time one push at a time and if you if you accept the fact that you may never feel ready and you may never feel motivated and you may never feel confident you may never feel courageous and that's okay but you can still push yourself forward what happens over time is as you start to see yourself becoming the person that takes action that you start to see yourself becoming the kind of person that speaks even though your voice is shaking you're the kind of person that that that has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking guess what happens you build the of confidence and courage and so what happened for me is I was stuck Lewis I mean I was so stuck I was on I mean we were heading straight for divorce we were heading for bankruptcy I knew I wanted to change things and so one night I see this commercial this is the stupidest story on the planet but this is what happened I see this commercial and you know again I I also was drinking too much I mean I probably had a couple Manhattans in me that's my drink from the Midwest just like you all right Little Manhattan there bourbon um and uh there was a rocket ship launching on a commercial yeah yeah and I had this Instinct this Innovation this disruptive idea right oh my God Mel that's the answer tomorrow morning you're going to launch your ass out of bed like a rocket ship you're going to move so fast you can't even think about your problems dumb right mhm totally dumb like this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard I cannot believe I have this chick on my podcast I understand I understand it you got to get moving first yes that's the thing you just got to wake up at 6:00 a.m. or whatever it is and go into the gym when you're in the gym you're going to start moving the first weight and then you'll start moving the second people people use the 5sec rule at the gym because you know how much time people waste at the gym standing around thinking about the next thing probably 70% of the time 5 4 3 2 1 so so the next morning the alarm goes off and nothing had changed in my life I woke up to the lean on the house the fighting with Chris the unemployment the lack of confidence the lack of Courage that like the whole thing but I did something I had never done before I went 5 4 3 2 1 just like NASA I actually counted and then I stood up and I was like what the hell just happened uhhuh what what that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard the next morning I used it again it worked the next morning I used it again it worked and then I started to notice something and this is this is one of those things things so we have a we have an 11-year-old son who has dyslexia and when they finally diagnosed him it was as if of course it was as if like how could we have possibly missed this are we the worst parents in the world I mean the kid can barely write he can't cut his food he doesn't re like no wonder he doesn't do team sports it was right under our nose and what I'm about to tell you is right under everybody's nose there's a 5-second window between the instincts the shs the urges the inner wisdom the things that can change your life if you listen to it got a 5-second window from the moment you feel that instinct to move and if you don't your brain is actually designed to kill it 5 seconds is all you have the second you hesitate it's act and you feel yourself hesitating that is a moment of huge power because what's happened is you've just started to pull back from something that you need to lean into and if you count backwards 5 4 3 2 1 and this is the Neuroscience behind why this stupid little trick works Works counting is a is an action counting backwards requires Focus it's also not a habit for you yet so when you feel yourself hesitate you're you're you're triggering your mind that something's up like Lewis didn't hesitate when he pulled on his pants he didn't hesitate when he's drinking his coffee didn't hesitate when he walked out the door to the gym but now he's hesitating to make that call your mind now goes into a cognitive bias called the spotlight effect it magnifies whatever it was that you hesitated doing mhm the moment the moment yeah like all of a sudden you're like I don't feel like it like I don't I don't know maybe I'll do it later and your mind is doing it because your mind's trying to protect you hesitation signals a red flag to your mind that something's up just that small hesitation it's a habit that we all have should you hesitate if you're getting a tattoo yes should you hesitate if you're gambling yes should you hesitate if you are signing a legal document yes you need your prefrontal CeX for those things you need to interrupt it make a power make a decision should you hesitate on making a phone call no should you hesitate on speaking up in a meeting no should you hesitate when you feel yourself starting to procrastinate and you know you got work that you should get done no you shouldn't hesitate at all should you hesitate in saying the thing that you really feel in your heart no you shouldn't should you hesitate and edit yourself when you're talking no you shouldn't but we've all trained ourselves to so it's actually this habit of hesitating you start catching yourself it's a huge moment of power because you have a decision to make and you got to make it in the next 5 seconds are you going to go on autopilot and get wrapped in your mind or are you going to 54321 and awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward so um I started to use this rule as I noticed that every day all day long I had these moments of inner wisdom where I would know that I needed to pick up the phone and stop isolating myself I would know that I needed to call a bunch of media companies and start auditioning for radio show hosting gigs I knew that I should get on get out of bed on time I knew I should stop myself before I snapped at Chris right self-monitor yeah I knew I should not feel let the frustration be the things that was driving me and so I started to use the rule all day long whenever I felt this I should do this 54321 and I would make myself do it and slowly 5 Seconds at a time my entire life start started to change and my husband used it in his business and he and his business partner dove in they went on to open seven more restaurants um I went on to launch and sell two businesses and get recruited by CNN and join their team I had a syndicated radio show that that um ended up winning the Gracie award which is kind of the female media you know awards for the number one talk show in the country um and you know I never intended to tell anybody about the 5-second rule first of all because it's stupid right I mean come on count backwards that's the dumbest thing stupid to me though anything that works works for me you know what I mean I'll take any stupid thing that's true and so but I also was like how do you start talking about something like that right yeah so um I was asked to give a TED talk like six years ago and Ted six years ago not the brand that it was today they weren't even putting the talks online yet really yeah the tedex talks were not online yet and so that was the first speech I'd ever given in my life if you want to see what somebody looks like having a panic attack for 21 minutes straight watch that speech I was backstage and it was like one PhD after another going out there I'm like SCI hell have I gotten myself into this is the dumbest thing um and so at the very end I wasn't even planning on talking about it I say oh by the way there's this thing I do that's it I don't even explain it and you know why I didn't explain it leou I didn't know why it worked so you didn't have the science or the research you're just like zero zero and then something crazy happened they put that talk online a year later and people started to write we've heard for more than a 100,000 people in 90 countries that have written to us that are using the rule in ways big and small to change their lives to change their marriages to change their thinking patterns to grow their businesses um we know of 11 people that have stopped themselves from killing themselves wow um in the moment there's a gentleman that we talk about in the book and you can see his social media posts in London he was a he was a veteran and he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and he boarded a fery with the intention of jumping overboard and he got to the railing and he was standing there and his inner wisdom kicked in and this is another thing I want everybody watching to understand I don't care what you're facing or how low you get your inner wisdom is always there it is and the thing is is that we often don't listen to it and so he's standing there intending to kill himself and that inner wisdom kicks in and he remembers the 5sec rule and he goes 5 4 3 2 1 and he turns and physically moves away from the railing and finds the first person working on the ferry and tells him that he's suicidal saved his life wow he saved his life because he listened to the inner wisdom and this is the other thing I love about this rule it's not something to think about it's a tool to use so the part of the problem with a lot of the advice that I've found for me personally is that a lot of advice is all about kind of doing mental battle and if I go upstairs I'm Behind Enemy Lines and I tend to get hijacked right so I love this tool because 54321 interrupts those patterns it actually prompts the part of the brain that I need in order to change and it makes changing easier because I've now got my mind working for me instead of against me and it gets me out of my head and so um I'm I'm super excited to share this rule with people because I now know not only that it's working just not not for me it's working for people around the world and you know in the book it took me 3 years to write it it's all the science behind the rule it's got more than 150 social media posts in it so you see stories from around the world of people using it to end procrastination to build confidence to deepen their relationships to launch businesses to explode the sales why does it help with sales I'll tell you why because you can't sell by thinking selling is about action we have we have um um groups from companies around the world sales teams that put 54321 up on the wall I'm sure they hate me that's cool yes because what cold calling it's a momentum thing if you stop and think the phone is not getting the dialing is not happening when you're thinking yeah if you're thinking about all this nose you've been getting yes you're not going to want to do it again it doesn't feel good yes and if you're in the middle of a negotiation or you're in the middle of a really difficult conversation and again remember what we said earlier you cannot control your feelings that rise up but you can always control how you think and what you do so if you're in the middle of a difficult conversation and you feel those feelings come up that normally trigger you to start editing yourself or to censor yourself or to Silence Yourself or to think sabotaging thoughts in like a business negotiation 54321 awaken the prefrontal cortex get back in the game so I started to use it for every moment in my life where I knew what to do but I didn't feel like it 54321 literally just decimates any excuse that you have and as I started to use it in my life to 54321 not be an [ __ ] to Chris 54321 turn and walk away from the bourbon and not have a drink 54321 pick up the phone and network 54321 walk out the door and go to the gym um everything changed cuz my decisions changed and the thing that was interesting about that period of my life is that there were a couple things that is true for all of us that got revealed to me in that moment and here's what's true for all of us number one our life is defined by our decisions number two most of us know what we should be doing right number three if you're in a situation where you should do something and the excuses roll in you only have five [ __ ] seconds before the excuses win that's it and it has to do with how your brain is designed and so I started seeing this 5sec window everywhere everywhere you walk into a networking meeting and the 5-second window is right there because you look around and you see all these people you should talk to and you feel yourself freeze 543 21 and you can start walking if you're trying to sell something the 5-second window is always there because you either have a phone you need to pick up and make a phone call or you have a person you need to talk to but instead of doing it that 5-second Windows right there and the excuses roll in and then you're not doing it yep and so I it's almost like we talk ourselves out of it right after 5 Seconds like why not to do it all these and then it's even more sophisticated than that is which which is what I discovered and what's more sophisticated about it is that you have two modes to your brain you have the prefrontal cortex which is the mode of your brain it's the front part of your brain that does all your strategic planning your decision- making your not all your decision- making that's wrong it does your intentional decision making conscious decision making um it's what you're using when you're acting with courage it's what you're using when you are learning anything new if you've ever taken a standardized test when you walk out of a standardized test what do you have you have a freaking headache because you've been using this part of your brain that's the one part the other part is the interior part of your brain which automates everything it's where self doubt is it's where habits are it's where automated decision making is it's where every negative [ __ ] [ __ ] that we do it's stuck right here so what the 5-sec rule is actually doing on a very sophisticated level is it's switching off this part and Awakening the part that gives you control and so the problem with our excuses if you want to get into the brain science is that if you start to think and you start to think I feel tired or I don't want to or I'm too stressed out or now's not the right time that becomes automatic and it gets encoded right here so part of the problem with our excuses is that when you stop and think and hesitate you trigger your brain to automatically talk you out of it that's the problem it's not the excuses it's that your brain has done it over and over and now it takes over right so I invented the world's um most powerful cheat code for the brain one night when I was drunk sitting in my living room watching television remind me to tell you the story about the reticular activity system the RS in the brain and my metaphor of doing laundry okay you're you are in my go zone for sure you have all people on the planet you are the one that is going to go this is so good all right we're going to laundry after this so um the 5-second rule so the 5-second rule is brilant desperate are you kidding it is brilliant but the the story is desperate I'm it's 2008 we're in the middle of the housing crisis my husband has followed his dream and gone into the restaurant business opening up a string of little pizza restaurants with his best friend um we were new entrepreneurs so of course when location number one was great what do you do complete idiots we we cash out our 401ks our kids college savings we get a home equity line cuz that's free money we cash out the credit card we ask friends and family to invest we go all in and then Chris and his business partner as is the case in the restaurant business the second location was a huge dog M too big too expensive wrong location tons of traffic driving by every day as you're sitting there with an empty restaurant knowing you're they these guys are so committed to returning an investment I I have to hand it to Chris and Jonathan they work day and night to pull this plane crash out of like the factoring and this and like just anything you could possibly do so we find ourselves in a situation in 2008 41 years old and we're $800,000 in debt wow dude I could not pay for there was a there was the moment The Rock Bottom moment was this morning where I went and we live in a nice neighborhood friends have invested we can't let them know this is happening boy kids three of them under the age of 10 oh my gosh whoa I um remember going to the grocery store and I went to an i an IV League school I have a law degree but here I am unemployed we've lost everybody's money we're about to lose the house and I'm doing that I don't know if you've ever played this sort of like mental bingo game with your check card where you're like okay please dear God let the let the electronic system not talk to the bank just let it yes please so I'm standing there as she's scanning the stuff knowing that the balance is red and I'm thinking please please please please please just let this go through please and um the woman looks at me and says oh you know this was declined I was ready with my excuse I I would always [ __ ] my head and go well that's weird cuz it just worked at the gas station which was a complete lie I've done and then I'd be like okay kids let's go to the car and get my other card and we would walk out of there and leave the stuff and I get in the car and drive away oh my gosh and then I of course would come home and drink to numb all of the everything so I was sitting in a chair and um I was doing that thing have you I'm sure you have have you ever like been in such a low moment where you give yourself a pep talk yes that is a pathetic moment be I have been there yeah taking me back to it yeah you know that's it tomorrow morning it's the new you no more drinking got to be nice to your husband you got to look for a job girl you got to get these kids on the bus on time and by God woman when that alarm rings you have got to get out of bed you cannot lay there like a human pot roast marinating in fear you cannot hit the snooze button four times you have got to get up and get the day started and then honest to God what happened is a rocket ship launched across a television screen it was probably the four Manhattans that gave me this idea really stupid you know and Storyteller that's it tomorrow morning when the alarm rings you got to launch yourself out of bed if you move fast enough Mel you will beat the anxiety you won't be in the bed when the anxiety hits so I the next morning and this is the power of the 5c world now I now keep in mind I didn't know any of this at the time a lot like the high five habit it was this super simplistic moment that changed everything and what changed everything for me was the very next morning it was a Tuesday in February outside of Boston Massachusetts I'm familiar with that location and the alarm rings and what I'm about to share with you if you've never heard this you'll never see life again the same you never will once you see what I'm about to show you you can't unsee this there is a 5-second moment of hesitation that defines your entire life it's the moment of hesitation that is the gap between what psychologists call a bias towards thinking and a bias towards action right the moment you have an Impulse to move to say something to do something you'll start hesitating as you think about it if you don't physically move within those 5 Seconds your basil ganglia takes over and you drift into a biased toward thinking if you can manage what you think and do in that 5-second window you know the secret to changing any habit any Behavior any thought pattern now I didn't know that then all I knew is I had thought of this dumb thing while I was drunk and now it's February in Massachusetts and it's dark and it's freezing the alarm goes off I start thinking I'm not going toing launch myself out of it this is dumbest how is this going to help I don't want to get out of it it's called cold it's dark it's I start reaching for the snooze button and then I go 5 4 3 2 1 and I stand up and I'm like that's weird oh my gosh I go on with my day the next morning same thing I immediately remember the I immediately stumb I'm not doing 5432 want I stand up again it was the third morning and look I'm like you somebody that I'm like super optimistic but really res resigned you know what I mean like kind of skeptical even though I'm really positive but yeah prove it you know like that kind of thing so I'm like okay I start arguing okay so you invented some stupid ass thing that helps you get out of bed how the [ __ ] is this going to pay off a million dollars right and then I'm like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you're about to lose everything woman what do you got to like why not try it and so this was the simple thing I said to myself any moment today I know what I should do but I don't feel like it just count backwards see what happens I'll explain the science around this thing in a minute um so I walk into the kitchen and there's my poor husband Chris I love of my life we're celebrating 25 years uh married next week congratulations poor guy standing there minding his own business looking for breakfast and you know how that thing happens where you see somebody you love and you just want to kill them you know so there's Chris and I'm like and you know here's the thing I knew he wasn't trying to bankrupt us I knew the man was working as I knew he was full of Shame and like scared and like felt so bad and here's the other thing I knew I knew I didn't want to get a divorce okay I knew I didn't want to treat him like this I was so triggered and here's why it is so much easier Ed to be angry than it is to be afraid and they're closely related aren't they but you tricked the anger button yeah so I go 5 43 2 1 and that counting backwards here's what it's doing in your mind it is interrupting habit loops and emotional responses that get stored in your basil ganglia and run on autopilot and control your [ __ ] life and when you start counting backwards 5 4 3 2 1 the moment you start counting you've made a decision to interrupt the pattern oh boy yeah and by the counting backwards when you first start doing it it engages your prefrontal cortex because it requires focus by the time you get to one you have created a moment where you have taken control and you now can consciously choose what you think or do next and so I used it every single day in secret to walk away from the bourbon to pick up the phone and call in certain Network 54321 go out the door and exercise 54321 don't snap at the kids 54321 get out of bed even though you don't feel like it 54321 tell the truth reach out to friends all the things because here's the thing we all know what we need to do we don't know how to make ourselves do it do it so the 5sec rule I never intended to tell anybody you love the story uh in three years flat I go from unemployed to cold calling my way into a radio audition and getting a job at a digital marketing agency because we had bills to pay and I end up with this little Saturday morning show that ends up doing really really well in Boston wtkk and then it gets picked up by Cox media and I end up uh winning an award called The Gracie award and CNN calls and they're like we love radio hosts we love how you talk about complicated topics like you're sitting at a kitchen table we don't want Fox News to have you you're in woman and so I became a legal and social commentator paid by CNN incredible so my life is turning around Chris and Jonathan are working day and night to get the business they end up opening more units and like so that gets turned around our marriage gets better I'm not in personal development we still have leans on our house like we're still like trying to figure it out this is 2011 and somebody calls and is like hey I'm uh your college roommate said you've changed your jobs a lot would you ever come give a talk about it at this thing called tedex I'm like I I've never given a speech before but okay I was used to be a criminal defense attorney I thought I can do this wow this was the first tedex conference so there was no real like major protocol right okay so I show up with my 20- minute speech and no prep no prep if you watch my Ted X talk I watched it you will see me having a 21 minute long panic attack on stage if you look closely I have a chest rash that comes on from anxiety okay I'm darting all over the place I forgot how to end that speech yeah that's what that's what happens when you're really nervous you forget the end yep and so I paused at the very end cuz that was not about the 5-second rule and I look out into the audience and I go oh there's this thing I do I call it the 5-sec rule the moment you have an instinct to move come on you got to move in 5 seconds or your brain will kill the instinct to move I was so disassociated in I gave up my email address on St and then I left and I went back to my life at CNN and back to working hard with Chris to claw way out of debt and prove our marriage and pay our bills and like I'm not kidding we got the leans off our house just like three years ago no and so um a year goes by so it's now 2012 somebody starts people start messaging me on Facebook about the speech and I'm like oh were you at in San Francisco they're like no I saw it online I'm like it's online I didn't even know my gosh it gets a million views within a year people start to now 2013 ask me to come talk I have no formal speech I'm not even really talking about the 5c rule all that much I'm sort of mentioning it in the speech it's starting to spread I'm now up at night with a bottle of wine answering emails from people in India and you know like Bali and the UK about I've lost 100 pounds with this count backwards thing why is this working and because I work at CNN I can email somebody like Dr aiman and say why is it working yeah can I interview you about this little brain hack wow is this not incredible that is incredible there is this other explanation other than the universe or God said this is something that needs to get out of the world and this chick is the one who's going to do it unbeliev because I'll tell you what it takes some very big balls to stand on a stage does with 20,000 people and convince an arena full of people that you can change your life by counting backwards from five I know it's so simple and believe it with every fiber of my being and so I Now understand the science but more than that I have the real life stories of literally hundreds of thousands of people and we know of 111 people who have not committed suicide because they have counted backwards we know of veterans that are retraining the their their reaction to triggers associated with PTSD obviously it does not regulate a disregulated nervous system it gives you a moment of control it works with OCD we have pediatricians using it with kids to interrupt the thoughts that cause anxiety over and over and over the things that you know what you need to do 54321 is a tool you can use in 5 seconds flat to interrupt the that's holding you back and push yourself to take the actions that change your life hey it's Mel thank you so much for being here if you enjoyed that video by God please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing thank you so much for being here we've got so much amazing stuff coming thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family I love you we create these videos for you so make sure you subscribe m