Starting Rituals (Pep Talk pt. 2) in Current Events

A starting ritual is a great way to learn a new habit. It helps inspire confidence and courage. The one habit that I have been trying so hard to break is hesitation. We have about a five-second window to turn a thought into action before our brain talks us out of it. Mel Robins discovered a way to create a new habit by just simply counting backwards from five. It interrupts your habit loops and awakens your prefrontal cortex and it takes you off autopilot. It helps you assert control. The catch is that you have to actually train yourself to actually take action. I want to be the kind of person who does something instead of just thinking about it. I keep imagining what my life would look like if I just did not hesitate.

Mel does not believe in motivation because we are never going to actually feel like doing it. We’re just waiting to feel like doing whatever it is that we want to change about ourselves and our lives but that wait is never going to end. Our brains can sense that moment when we start to hesitate so it immediately feels threatened and starts making all of those usual excuses that we all know and love. We then chose to listen to it because it promises us safety and security from having to do whatever it is that we don’t feel like doing. Successful people don’t have this habit of hesitating and worrying. They just get it done. Her five-second rule can help me act before I overthink and talk myself out of it.

She discovered this when she was unemployed and not motivated enough to get out of bed in the mornings and to find a job. She was drinking too much, eating like garbage and she had isolated herself from her friends. It was putting a huge strain on her marriage and her relationship with her kids. One night while she was watching a Nasa rocket launch she had an epiphany. “That’s it! I’ll count backwards from five and launch myself out of bed like a rocketship!” It was a success. She was getting up every morning and so then she started counting backwards from five to stop herself from drinking too much. From eating garbage. From yelling at her husband. She was counting backwards from five to put her resume out there, to get herself in the gym and to reconnect with her friends. She didn’t understand why this trick was so successful so she went ahead and did a lot of research to understand it better. She did a TedTalk about it which became their most-viewed segment of all time. She delivered it with so much tenacity and charisma and then wrote a book about her five-second rule to explain how and why it works and how to use it.

I have not been applying myself enough to learn this new habit. To create this new starting ritual. I have been starting every morning off with one failure already in the bag and I need to end that bullshit immediately. I have been trying to join the 5am club for years now. I no longer want to make excuses. We can always make a choice, that is always in our control and creating excuses is still a choice. I don’t need to let everything feel like it is downhill after I fail to wake up on time. Successful people just get it done. Champions put in the work. Winners fail more than anyone. I don’t have to be afraid. Where my mind thinks it will break is far short of where it will actually break.

I am going to take a long break from drinking. I am going to create the morning routine of my dreams. I am going to just do shit that I do not feel like doing. I am going to let myself be vulnerable and let myself get knocked down and hurt. I am going to learn from all of my future failures and just become the man that I actually want to be. I am tired of living in my head. I want to live out loud. I want to stop letting life just happen to me. I want to meet it halfway. I want to learn to trust the process. I want to empower myself with this five-second rule.