“There’s no doubt, no debate, that the world is changing,” Mel Robbins, host of the award-winning Mel Robbins Podcast, said midway through her keynote speech at Talent Connect a few weeks ago. “Work is changing. The question is: Will you change?”
With change happening so fast, she told the audience, talent professionals may be afraid or hesitant to embrace it. “In moments of great change, intellectually we see all the possibilities in [AI] removing the tasks that drive you absolutely bananas and that slow things down, and we’re like ‘yes!’” she said. “But what happens inside us inside a moment of change is, we go ‘no!’”
To navigate this change, Mel suggested that the audience try a simple tool that has changed her life. “What you’re going to learn today,” she said, “is that the secret in a moment like this, where you have to unlock your power and you have to learn something new and work in a different way, is simply five seconds.”
Or as it’s better known among Mel Robbins’s fans, The 5 Second Rule.
Mel created the rule when her life was a “train wreck”
Before she explained what the rule is or how to use it, Mel shared how she created it, during the worst time of her life.
She was 41 years old; she had three kids under the age of 10; and her marriage was on shaky ground. Her husband, Chris, had gone into the restaurant business and they had cashed out their entire life savings, took out a home equity loan, and racked up credit cards to fund the venture.
“Wait, you guys know where this is going?” she asked the audience. “Did I mention this was 2007, 2008?”
She joked that never in a million years did she plan on making a vision board that included “bankruptcy, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism.” She needed to look for a job. She needed to quit screaming at her husband. She needed to stop drinking so much. But more than anything, she needed to get out of bed each morning.
One evening, she was sitting in her living room, giving herself a pep talk. “And so, I’m sitting there, and I’m like ‘OK, that’s it, Mel. Tomorrow it’s a new you, woman,’” she said. “‘Tomorrow, you’re waking up; you’re looking for a job; you’re going to be nice to Chris; you’re not going to drink so much. And tomorrow, my god, woman, when that alarm rings, you can’t hit the snooze button four times and lay there like a human pot roast, marinating in fear and staring at the ceiling.’”
When the alarm clock went off the next day, she realized she needed to launch herself out of bed like a rocket. If she stopped to think about it, fear and anxiety might take hold. “I just started counting 5-4-3-2-1, and all of a sudden, I’m out of bed,” she said. She did that the next morning and the morning after that.
When she felt angry at her husband, she stopped herself and counted backward from five. When she didn’t want to pick up the phone — she hated networking — she made herself count 5-4-3-2-1 and then called someone to ask about jobs. “I started taking actions five seconds at a time,” she said, “and it changed my life.”
Slowly, but surely, her marriage got back on track. Her career flourished. She was invited to give a TED Talk (which, she joked, was a “21-minute panic attack playing out”). And all this happened because she figured out a simple way to move past her fears and doubts.
The 5 Second Rule, explained
The 5 Second Rule, Mel explained, “is a mindset trick.” She said it’s not for making big decisions — like whether to marry someone or whether to sign a big contract — but to get past fear and into courage to do everyday tasks.
“It’s that moment between knowing what to do,” she told the audience, “and actually doing what you need to do.” In other words, you don’t give yourself time to stop and think. “As you hesitate, all the self-doubt, all the excuses, the anxiety, and the overwhelm comes in,” she explained, “and it sabotages your ability to do what you need to do.”
The science behind the 5 Second Rule, she explained, is that “when you count backward, you literally move your brain manually” out of its habitual patterns. She compared it to a “cheat code” that interrupts behavior patterns that usually run on autopilot. Counting backward requires focus, Mel said, and engages your prefrontal cortex, which people need to adapt to change.
“This is a self-coaching tool to unlock your own potential,” she said, “to find courage, to speak up, to move forward, to learn new things.”
How the 5 Second Rule has helped people — and can help you too
“The truth is I never intended to tell anybody about this little five-second thing,” Mel said, “because, first of all, it sounds stupid.”
But after her TED Talk went viral [it has been viewed more than 33 million times], people reached out to tell her how they used the 5 Second Rule. Some used it to double their business. Some used it to stay more present with their kids. Others used it to get sober and stay sober. Some even used it to stop themselves from attempting suicide.
But for the Talent Connect audience, she asked them to do something even simpler. She asked the crowd to break out of their pattern of approaching people they knew when they entered a room and instead count 5-4-3-2-1, gather their courage, and introduce themselves to someone new.
She shared a photograph of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics, which took place in Brussels in 1927. Of the 29 attendees, 17 had won or would win Nobel Prizes. The conference, which Marie Curie and Albert Einstein attended, was a groundbreaking moment that led to significant advancements and clarifications in quantum theory.
“But imagine how many fewer breakthroughs there would have been if Marie and Albert just hung out together,” Mel told the audience. Instead, the group tapped into their collective knowledge. They took chances.
Which is what Mel wants talent professionals to do too. “This is an invitation to get off the sidelines of your life and jump into the game,” she said. She urged people to have courage.
“Do not let fear and hesitation and self-doubt and overthinking stop you from jumping into this game that is unfolding right before your eyes,” Mel said. “The secret to doing it all is just five seconds.”
