This One Brain Hack Backed By Science Will Change Your Life. Here's How | Mel Robbins

in this video I'm going to explain to you the science behind why the five-second rule works as I said earlier the five-second rule is a form of metacognition that beats every trick that your brain plays on you most of us don't even realize how often we hesitate start doubting ourselves and get stuck analyzing things to death I keep talking about how you can change your life in five seconds and that's because in five seconds flat worry can hijack your mind fear can take over and the smallest moves that you really want to make consume terrifying the opposite is also true in five seconds sweat you can take control back 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 brains 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 at 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 five-second rule is the only tool that you need to beat it so how does the five-second 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 the 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 five-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 biased 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 locus 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 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 five-second rule the five-second rule is a tool that will teach you how to take action and overtime 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 five-second decision at a time let's move on to the topic - behavioral flexibility so just a few years ago scientists thought that our brain 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 five-second 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 five-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 neural pathways in the way that new neural pathways can develop every time you use the five-second rule and 5 4 3 2 1 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 five-second 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 doings best-selling book or Gretchen Rubens book on habits or you watch a number of TED Talks all researchers believe that habits come down to one goal 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 five-second rule is so incredibly powerful when it comes to breaking old habits and adopting new ones because number one the five-second rule and counting backwards 5 4 3 2 1 is a starting ritual it will interrupt the old behavior pattern and it will trigger a new one the five-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 over eating you have a new pattern of behavior you catch yourself you gain control you have confidence 5 4 3 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 in psychology several decades ago by a rockstar professor at the University of Chicago that studied a state of flow his name was Mihai Csikszentmihalyi and he studied was one of the first really to study human behavior human performance and he coined this term activation energy 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 to create that initial spark a lot more energy to start it than to keep it going there is 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 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 me highs 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 foam 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 five-second rule freaking everything the five-second rule creates activation energy in you the five-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 five-second rule personally while the science is really interesting I'm actually more inspired by the hundreds of thousands of people that we've heard from from around the world just like you and me that are using this rule not based on science but using it in their lives and seeing remarkable results the science explains it but you're going to be absolutely amazed at what happens when you actually start to use this simple and powerful tool you're not only going to blow up the system in your head and the tricks that your brain uses to stop you right now you're going to shake up your entire life to learn more about the five-second rule behind it and how you can use it I want you to check out chapter four in my book it goes into greater detail about all of the science and in fact the entire part 2 of the book it's going to dig deep deep deep into all the concepts that we talked about and all the ways in which you stop yourself the five-second rule is available on Amazon Barnes & Noble calm and at your local bookstore oh and by the way your five second rule book also comes with 31 video mentoring sessions to deepen your mastery of the rules for lasting results now these mentoring sessions will be delivered to your email inbox for free and information on how to get these videos is on the very last page of the book and to learn more about the five-second rule and other research back strategies to help you live your best life there's a ton of free resources at Mel Robbins com if you ever have the instinct to reach out wiki's use the five-second rule and make yourself do it just tag me on social media using the hashtag five-second rule or shoot me an email at hello at Mel Robbins comm I love hearing from you now give us a few days to get back in touch with you but we will absolutely respond if you take the time to trust your instincts and reach out look it takes five seconds to change your life so the next time you feel yourself hesitates or your instincts come alive that's the moment to stop thinking five four three two one and start living you

Channel: Mel Robbins

Views: 1,483,692

Keywords:

Id: MrZAGVq25zw

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2017