6 SECRETS Successful People Use To CONTROL THEIR BRAIN | Mel Robbins & Lewis Howes

A lot of us are sitting around waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel courageous, waiting to feel confident, waiting for the right time, and that's not ever coming.

I always thought that confidence was a thing that you feel, and I have come to prefer that confidence is something that you do.

If you want to have command of your life, you must have control over your thoughts. In this video, Mel Robbins breaks down the Secrets on how to have control over your mind.

The thing that's so difficult for most of us is how when you're alone and you turn off this show, do you push through the excuses, the habits, the fears, and the actual physical constraints that you have in your life right now so that you can make the pivot. And so I often say that I am not a what speaker or a why speaker. I'm a how. And that there's already incredible information about what you can do and why you should do it. And I find that the place that I get stuck is, okay, well that's great. And I do a lot of thinking, but how do I get out of here and make it happen?

Our thoughts are our biggest killers of our dreams.

Totally.

They're the biggest killers or our biggest cheerleaders. and if we don't know how to really, I guess, I don't know, not manipulate them, but to really hone in on them, then we can have a messed up life. And I've gone through many years of self-destruction growing up just because I didn't know how to manage the thoughts. I didn't know how to, I was never educated on it really on how to, how to not control it, but I don't know. What is it? What is it?

What is it? Yeah. Not control it.

But what is the word I'm looking for?

Well, see, I talk about it this way. So I, I like to simplify things because it makes it easier for me. I'm almost 50 for crying out loud. And there's only so much that you can remember when you get to be, you know, when he's 33, that's a whole different ball game. But I think about your brain as being in two modes. Two modes to your brain that you need to know about. There's autopilot. We've all experienced that. You know, you drive to work and get there and you're like, who drove the car? Oh my God. Like, I don't even remember driving the car here. Well, you did, Louis. You drove the car. But the thing is, is that you were in the mode of your brain that's called autopilot. Well, what is autopilot? Autopilot is the interior part of your brain. You'll hear neuroscientists and psychologists talk the basal ganglia. Very important thing to understand is that there's a part of your brain that its entire job is basically to execute your habits. Habits, big fancy word, means something very simple. Behaviors that you repeat without even thinking about it. When you pull your pants on in the morning, I guarantee you, you either put your left or your right leg in first. And you have to stop and think about which one it is, don't you? But not when you're putting your pants on.

Right, exactly.

Because that behavior is what researchers call a habit loop. It gets enclosed, it gets encoded as a closed loop system right here. Now, the problem for most of us is that half of the day we're on autopilot and that's not me making a guess. That's what researchers that study habits and study psychology say. That half of your day you're basically kind of checked out and you're on autopilot. And when you're checked out and you're on autopilot, any behavior pattern that you repeat can take over. And guess what are behavior patterns that we repeat? Thinking patterns. So self-doubt, worry, procrastination, overthinking, analysis paralysis, fear, those are all thinking patterns that are habits. One of the most important things that I want people to understand is that you're actually not a worrier. You have a habit big difference. You're not a procrastinator. You have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference. And when you understand that any behavior pattern, whether it is a thinking pattern like you doubt yourself all the time, or you get trapped upstairs noodling everything and you can never get started, or whether it's a behavior pattern like you drink too much, or you snap at your kids, or you micromanage your team. Every one of those behavior patterns and thinking patterns can actually be interrupted and replaced using science. Now let's talk about the second part of the brain. Drive. That's this puppy right here. This is what you want. This is your prefrontal cortex. Drive is the mode where you're in charge of your thoughts. Okay? It's where you are fully awake, you are present, and you are driving your thoughts and actions. When you're doing that, your prefrontal cortex is active. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that you need in order to learn new behavior, in order to do something difficult, in order to do something uncertain, in order to do strategic thinking. So I'm gonna give you an example. So I'm a righty. If I were to try to write with my left hand, you know, like, Louis is gonna torture me and tie my hand behind my back and make me like do this, I could do it. It would look like I was riding with my foot. And if Lewis came up to me and said, hey Mel, you want some bulletproof coffee? I'd be like, Lewis, I'm trying to concentrate. I can't do this. My prefrontal cortex would be El Fuego because it is firing on all cylinders to communicate to my hand new behavior. So the thing that's cool about that is that you can use a simple trick the moment you feel yourself hesitate, the moment you've got one of those moments where you know that you need to, this is that moment that Lewis talks to you about where you got to step outside of your comfort zone and you've got to lean into your passion and you've got to really take some risks and you got to feel the fear and you got to do it anyway. That's the moment where you just woke up and now you got a decision to make. Are you going to drift back into the habits or are you going to awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward and focus and do something new? And so the work that I've been doing and speaking about is all about the five second rule, which is a trick that I invented by mistake that helps you manually switch, no joke, your brain. It turns off and interrupts the part of the brain that is where all your habits and your behavior patterns are encoded and it awakens your prefrontal cortex, which in five seconds flat allows your brain to help you change. And so anyway, I was rambling on and on because you went on this thing about how your patterns can be destructive and nobody teaches us and that's absolutely right. And what I want everybody to get out of this conversation between us is that you cannot control how you feel. You cannot control what triggers you and the fact that you may rise up with anger, you may rise up with self-doubt, you may have anxiety, fill your body, but you can always control what you think and how you behave. And we spend way too much time trying to focus on manipulating how we feel about things and not enough time practicing the skills of controlling your behavior and your thoughts.

Because if you can control your behavior and your thoughts, then the way you feel would be different.

100%. And a lot of us are sitting around waiting to feel ready. waiting to feel courageous, waiting to feel confident, waiting for the right time. And that's not ever coming, ever, ever. You're not going to change your life up here. You only change it through action. And so to me, you know, I did this interview with your friend Tom and we talked about how motivation is garbage and this somebody memed it and went crazy. And so the point that I was trying to make is this, is that Yeah, motivation is great if you feel motivated, but it's garbage and it's a losing bet to wait to feel ready. Because your body's not designed that way and neither is your brain. And so I want everybody to understand that first of all, you can't control the things that trigger you and the fact that you're gonna feel afraid and you're gonna feel doubt and you're gonna feel uncertain, but you can always interrupt that feeling and take control in the moment and actually shift what you're thinking and shift how you behave. Yeah.

And, you know, the bigger the dream, the more fear you're gonna have. You know, even if you feel like you've conquered the fear of something, in order to grow, you've got to take on some new challenge. And there's gonna be uncertainty, there's gonna be some stress, or there's gonna be some worry, or there's gonna be some ego checking, and there's gonna be some identity crisis.

Yeah.

So there's always gonna be this fear that could arise. Always. Always. I mean, did you, do you feel.

Like once you've mastered this, that you have no more fear? Me? Yeah. No, the fear still comes, but I have 100% control of what think and do. So one of the things that is important for me to put on the table is that a lot of times, you know, people look at your where you are now. And so they'll see me on television or they'll see that TED Talk or maybe you'll be in an audience of 20,000 people in the American Airlines Center and I'm on stage and you're like, wow, that chick must have just been more than confident. I hate her. The fact is, That's not at all how I was. When I was 19, I started having crazy panic attacks and they got so bad that I took medication and medication was a godsend for me. I took Zoloft for two decades. When I had our first daughter who is now 17 years old, the postpartum depression was so bad that they put me on Ativan, which turns you into a zombie, and I could not be left alone with her. so when it comes to self-doubt and to how we can torture ourselves with our thoughts, boy, have I lived that nightmare. And as I started to use the five second rule, which we're going to get into, and everything about my life changed, because when people first learn the rule, what you're going to learn, what you're going to start doing is you're going to start using the rule to push yourself to do things that are annoying. You're going to push yourself to get up on time. You're going to push yourself to work on your business plan. You're going to push yourself to make calls that are scary. You're going to push yourself to get to the gym. You're going to push yourself to to speak up more at work. You're gonna push yourself to put the booze down. Behavioral, behavioral, behavioral. And then you're gonna start to actually use it to change the thinking patterns that are self sabotaging. So I, four years ago, wondered as I started to see myself go from facing bankruptcy to building a figure bigger.

I.

What happened for me, is I started to say, okay, this is a really cool little trick to bring out the most powerful side of you, but can I use this to actually cure myself of anxiety? And the answer is yes, you can. And four years ago, I went off Zoloft and I started using the five-second rule, which I'm gonna explain in one second, to interrupt the patterns of worry and self-doubt, which, by the way, anxiety is nothing more than the habit of worrying. spiraling out of control and body feelings triggering now the habit of obsessive worrying that turns into anxiety and then kind of escalates to panic. I started using the five second rule to interrupt my thoughts every time I would feel that kind of worry kick in. And because the prefrontal cortex is awakened when you use it, your mind is now ready to take on a totally different thought. It's a very different strategy than just trying to switch the channel on what you're thinking. Yeah, because you're actually inserting the step that nobody talks about, which is switching the gears in your mind so that your your mind can actually take and believe the thinking. So the five second rule.

Wait, first off, when did you discover the five second rule?

Okay, so 2009.

This is when you first tried it or discovered it or... Oh, it's a.

Total horror show mistake. Okay. Yes.

Okay.

So 2009, I was unemployed and feeling like... You were unemployed?

How?

Well, okay.

Too much charisma, too much passion.

Yeah, because everything's working right now. That's why I'm not like this when things are not working. Ask my husband of 22 years. Um, well, the, what had happened is, I, I had had all these career changes and I got into the media business again by mistake. I had a coaching business and, 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 CNBC, and 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 gotta understand, I'm from North Muskegon, Michigan. I mean, the media business, Fox, LA, the closest thing I had ever seen to a celebrity, Louis, was the Muskegon Lumberjacks, the farm team. Right? Right. From our, for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Yeah, my dad. Play team or whatever. Yeah, my dad was the hometown doc for the hockey team there.

Right, right, right.

So I thought-- the mayor was a celebrity. Wow. My life's about to change. I'm about to be a celebrity. Wow, we're gonna solve all-- this is amazing, you know? So I was originally going to be hosting 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, they've changed the format. It's now called Someone's Gotta Go, and I'm gonna be firing people on national television from Real Jobs.

Wow.

Uh-huh. That sounds fun. Horrible. 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 think they're gonna get new IKEA furniture and a paint job and this is gonna 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 gonna have you vote somebody out. So it's Survivor in an office place. Oh my goodness. So, that sucks. When I learn all this, I have a panic attack, even though I'm on Zoloft. And I call the guy that got me the gig and say, you,'ve got to get me out of this. Like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And he said, well, I'm sorry, but they've already cast the entire show and you're out there for five weeks and you don't have a choice. They're gonna 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, we taped two episodes and legal tabled it. 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. Really thought that it also kind of negotiated a deal that was a sort of a back end deal thinking I'm a, you know, entrepreneur always thinking about gotta have a piece of the action. Yeah, that was a dumb move. And I was in a contract for a year while they figured out what to do.

So you could do another show. Yeah.

So, you know, I just felt like I had made 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 jumps 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 gonna 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 gonna 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?

'Cause I'm not quite sure how he's gonna get the money. Did someone die?

You got an insurance policy? Yes. And he said, no. And I then said the most famous lines of our 22-year marriage, Louis. 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 the stream. You're not going to this. Wow. Well, 'cause change is scary. So we fought and he won and the first one was a real home run.

He opened a pizza store.

Oh, he did, yeah. 40 seats right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He and his best friend, and they won the best of Boston. It was incredible. What do you do when everything... You make money though. They did on the first one. So what do you do when everything's working? Woo, let's go all chips in. Let's put in the home equity line. Let's put in the kids' college savings. Let's get friends and family. And because you're so excited, you think it's gonna 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 its collections calls.H So you unplug all the phones Well, you can un plug the phone. mean that's how you deal with that, but I I I I remember there 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 think the check card's gonna 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 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. 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 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 also didn't know. I didn't think I could. And this goes back to the feelings. 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 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 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 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 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 then I would wake up and I didn't feel any of those things. 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 with 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 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 how you change your life is one five-second decision at a time, one push at a time. And 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 has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking, guess what happens? You build the skill of confidence and courage. And so what happened for me is I was stuck, Louis. 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 also was drinking too much. I mean, I probably had a couple Manhattans in me. That's my drink. I'm from the Midwest, just like you. All right, little Manhattan there, a little bourbon. And there was a rocket ship launching.

On a commercial.

Yeah. And I had this instinct, this innovation, this disruptive idea, right? Oh my god, Mel, that's the answer. Tomorrow morning you're gonna launch your ass out of bed like a rocket ship. You're gonna move so fast you can't even think about your problems. Dumb, right? totally dumb. So he's like, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

I cannot believe I have this chick on my pocket.

I understand.

I understand it. You got to get moving first. Yes. That's the thing. You just gotta wake up at 6 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. Yeah, actually, people.

People use the five second 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. 54321. 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, the whole thing. But I did something I had never done before. I went five, four, three, two, one, just like NASA. I actually counted. And then I stood up and I was like, what the hell just happened?

Uh-huh.

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 one of those things. So 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, 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 five-second window between the instincts, the shoulds, the urges, the inner wisdom, the things that can change your life if you listen to it. You've got a five-second window from the moment you feel that instinct to move. And if you don't, your brain is actually designed to kill it. Five seconds is all you have. The second you hesitate, it's action 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, counting is an action. Counting backwards requires focus. It's also not a habit for you yet. So when you feel yourself hesitate, 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, he 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. The moment. The moment, yeah. Like all of a sudden you're like, I don't feel like it. I don't know, maybe I'll do it later. And your mind is doing it 'cause 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 cortex for those things. You need to interrupt it, 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 five seconds. Are you going to go on autopilot and get trapped in your mind? Or are you going to 5-4-3-2-1 and awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward? So 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 out of bed on time. I knew I should stop myself before I snapped at Chris, right? Self-monitor. 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, 5-4-3-2-1, and I would make myself do it. Slowly five seconds at a time, my entire life 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. 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 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. And, you know, I never intended to tell anybody about the five second rule. First of all, because it's stupid. Right. I mean, come on, count backwards. That's the dumbest thing.

That's stupid to me, though. Anything that works works for me.

That's true. You know what I mean? I'll take any stupid thing. That's true. And so I, but I also was like, how do you start talking about something like that, right? Yeah. So, 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 TEDx talks are 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, what scientist? The hell have I gotten myself into? That's not my thing. 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, Louis? I didn't know why it worked.

So you didn't have the science or the research?

Zero. Zero. And then something crazy happened. They put that talk online a year later and people started to write. We've heard from more than a hundred thousand 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, We know of 11 people that have stopped themselves from killing themselves.

Wow.

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 veteran and he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and he boarded a ferry 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 five second 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. 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 5-4-3-2-1 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 I'm super excited to share this rule with people because I now know not only that it's working, not for me, it's working for people around the world. And in the book, it took me three 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 groups from companies around the world, sales teams, that put 5-4-3-2-1 up on the wall. I'm sure they hate me. Let's go. Yes, because 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 think about all those nos.

You'Ve been getting, you're not gonna wanna do it again.

Yes.

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, Five, four, three, two, one. Awaken the prefrontal cortex. Get back in the game.

I'm still in the mindset that I was in in 2008 when Chris and I went bankrupt.

Which is, I need to get as far away from.

Scarcity.

Yeah, yeah, man, really.

Yes, that's the big insight we had during this pandemic.

Yeah.

Shut up.

Shut up.

We're gonna talk about it. I like, I. I'm just saying shut.

Up, because that's crazy to hear you say that.

If you get into a situation, where you nearly lose everything. And look, I know you've been on your sister's couch, you've been down and out, you've had to reinvent yourself. We could be the reinvention twins, the two of us.

We could be.

Yes, and the thing is though, is that if you get in that moment where you can't pay for groceries, where you think your car is going to get repossessed, where you can't pay for your kids' town soccer league, like that is low. when as a parent you can't provide what you want to provide for your kids. You don't ever want to be in that situation again. And so when I started to claw my way out of that, Louis, and I started making money and Chris started getting his restaurant business back on the rails, we were still $800,000 in debt. It was three years worth of trying to make the ends meet. And I, when I gave that, that TEDx talk in 2011, I had been, that was three years after I discovered the five second rule. I had a full-time job with benefits and we were still massively in debt. There were still liens on the house. And after that TEDx talk, which is what launched the speaking business, as people started to book me and I started making money, I was like a squirrel with a frickin nut man. A dollar came in, I'm like, put it away, put it away, put it away, put it away, put it away. And every time a speech came, you know what everybody said as I started to explode on the speaking circuit is, oh, speakers get hot, you're gonna be the hot speaker in, you know, 2017, and then take everything you can get.

And I said, they're on to the next speaker. Yeah, yeah.

And so I figured I was just a fad. And so I said yes to everything. And, I have become addicted to being busy. And it is driven when I'm present from making an impact. But if I'm honest, it is mostly driven from that mentality from 2008, the fear that this could all disappear.

Wow.

We are, you know, we both went through our own, I guess, identity shift in and dream death or ego death in 2008 with me from football and you with your career and everything to give people context because I'm just going to roll with this from what you just shared. Mel Robbins has been a friend of mine for years. You've come and spoke at the Summit of Greatness. You've been on the show a few times before and you've exploded in the last four years really with everything you've been talking about from speaking to the five-second rule. to the Mel Robbins Show, which was a big hit. But then, you know, in the middle pandemic, that dream just ended. And we're talking about, you know, a big Revelation for you, which is scarcity. And this is something we teach all the time to be in abundance and don't have a scarce mindset. But you're saying that you feel like you've been in scarcity still for the last three years.

Yeah, like, I In some way, obviously.

Abundance of like, I can do everything, but in some way you felt.

Yeah, there have been modes where I've said yes to things, Louis, because I've been afraid that all of my good fortune would disappear. And if I had to take a look at the biggest, one of the biggest lessons from the pandemic that COVID-19 created. I call it the great pause where all of us were forced to take a gigantic pause from our everyday life. And I need to qualify what I'm about to say by also saying that we have not lost a family member. We have not had the, you know, we don't have anybody. My dad is retired, so we don't have an essential worker at a hospital or a grocery store. So I am speaking about the impact of COVID-19 without having lost a loved one. And so the great pause that basically had my talk show end abruptly, we got five minutes notice, we're told to evacuate CBS Broadcast Center, and all of a sudden it was over. 139 people, no goodbyes.

Oh, my goodness.

175 shows, no thank yous. It was we finished taping. I walked into the control room. My executive producer, Mindy Borman, turned to me and said they found COVID in the building. She started tearing up. Everybody, this has been remarkable. It's a wrap. We are the last show in the building. CBS let us finish taping. They're sealing off the building. I literally ran in the middle of a show. Yes. My, my, This was March 11th. And we had already stopped down audiences. And so I ran upstairs to the apartment in CBS, which was like our green room. I grabbed everything that was possibly not nailed down. Don't tell Sony I took a bunch of the blazers. And I'm still a farm girl from the Midwest at heart.

Grab 'em, go.

Who's gonna know that they're missing? And so I, And that was it. I mean, it was so awful because it felt like the biggest dream of my life, which was to host a daytime syndicated talk show and give advice to people five days a week on television who had no access to therapy, you know, didn't have the time for personal development, make it entertaining, accessible. My whole dream, boom, in five minutes flat, done, no completion disruption. That was it. And then two days later, Houghton Mifflin, which was my publisher for my next book, started laying people off and they called me and said, We need to cancel the book contract.

No, it did not.

Yeah, they did. And then, well, in their defense, Louis, I was a year late in delivering the book.

Okay, yeah. So if you would have done it on time, yeah, it'd have been out.

Yeah, okay. Yes.

You had a talk show to do.

Dyslexia strikes again.

Exactly.

So I, and then it started to be like, this speech is canceled and this speech is canceled and this speech is canceled. And basically, once Microsoft announced that there were no events happening until June 2021, the speaking business, at least the corporate speaking business, is basically on hold for in-person events for over a year. And in a matter of a week, I saw my entire like runway shut down. And what's so interesting is you and I have both, you know, in 2008, like so many of your listeners, the first recension just rocked my life to rock bottom. And when rock bottom hits, you don't have to hit with a thud. Oftentimes when you hit bottom, you bounce. And that's where I think the power is. that when the world feels upside down, you always have the power to make it right. When one chapter ends, you always have the power to write a new one. When you feel like nobody loves you, you have the power to learn how to love yourself. And if there's one thing that COVID-19 has done, regardless of whatever devastation it has caused in your life, is it has forced us all to experience the great pause. And I read that in a Medium article and I love that idea of a pause because I think in 2020 our lives have gotten so fast and so digital and when you are forced to pause and get present and to slow down, you are reminded of what's actually important and what's important is your health. What's important is your family and your friends. What's important is whether or not you are taking care of yourself and thinking positive thoughts versus negative thoughts. The world gave us a gigantic experiment where we got to practice and get to continue to practice the most important skill on the planet, which is emotional resilience, the ability to face hard and actually be okay. The ability to face the uncertain and redirect your attention on things that you know that are certain. And so I am so grateful that we had this time because when I think about my family, so we've got a 21-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 15-year-old, we will never get these 10 weeks back again. It was a gift. As much as our two daughters who are in college were complete when they got home, it was a gift. And the other thing is for that generation, by the way, for them to learn the generation where everybody gets a trophy, that the things that you love can be taken away like that. That there are things in life that are way more important than your prom. Or rush.

Or graduation.

Or graduation, not to say that you don't deserve to mourn those things, but the perspective check that you got from COVID-19 and, you know, it really hit home because one of our daughters has a very close friend in college whose dad died, who's my age.

And.

No prior conditions, nothing. And I think when change hits and it's personal, that's when the perspective shift comes. And so between COVID-19 and the fight for social justice that we're seeing with the Black Lives Matter movement and all of the protesting going on, it's been a really remarkable moment of time. If you pause for a minute and you reflect on the opportunity of this moment.

What is the opportunity?

The opportunity is to unlock the power that's inside you to create a better future for yourself, for your family, for your body, for your mind, for your spirit, for this country, for this world, for your community.

Yeah. I always talk about since I experienced many breakdowns, whether it be a physical breakdown or relationship breakdown or family breakdowns, I feel like in order for us to really see clearly, we need to break down in a big way. It's hard to make big changes when things are good or when they're So, so. It's even when it's like, ah, it's not good, it's really, it's hard to make changes. It needs to be devastatingly challenging for a lot of us. Some of us maybe can make changes all the time, but for most people, there needs to be some devastation or near devastation, either personally or close to you to say, oh, let me reevaluate. Let me pause like you talked about and start creating a better future for myself. why do you think that is in human beings that, you know, if things are going bad, we won't change. If they're going good, we won't change. But it's almost like we need a massive breakdown near-death experience, divorce, COVID for us to see clearly to start changing.

Well, there's a really simple answer patterns. So the thing about all human beings is that we are pattern learning machines. And if you feel stuck or broken, I guarantee you while you feel that way, you're not, you have a pattern of behavior or a pattern of thinking that is broken. And we need to be disrupted because we love our patterns. And even people that I know, like.

I've heard you speak, even when we're in pain, we love the pain.

Pain's familiar for a lot of people.

Yeah.

So a lot of people, like, you may be listening to Lewis and I talking, and you grew up in super chaotic household. Maybe your parents argued all the time. Maybe your dad or mom were in and out. Maybe there was a lot of fighting. Maybe there was actual abuse. I don't know what was going on, but it was chaotic as hell. And so as an adult, you have vowed yourself you are not going to repeat that pattern. But what ends up happening is because as a little kid, you observed, witnessed, absorbed the pattern of chaos in your nervous system. Unless you go about the intentional work of breaking the pattern of chaos, you will create it in your own life because it's what's familiar. You won't understand. Why do I keep dating these a**holes? Why do I go to these bosses that treat me like crap? Because you don't know what it feels like to be in a relationship with either a boss or a romantic partner or a roommate that is consistent because for the first 18 years of your life, you lived in a state called when's the next shoe gonna drop?

Right.

And so wherever it is in your life that something is broken, there is a pattern that you don't see yet that is making you continue to stay in a broken situation. And so one of the things that you just asked, which is why is a perspective change or losing a job or something like that that's so disruptive because those sorts of things, COVID-19 breaks every pattern.

Yes.

Black Lives Matter breaks your routine. Yes, Black Lives Matter breaks patterns of thinking that you weren't even aware that you had about privilege or being anti-racist or what your Black colleagues and friends and relatives deal with on a day-to-day basis. And so having a breakdown is one of the biggest things on the planet because what you get is you get a break from your own bullshit. and you can look objectively at where you are and for the first time, look ahead and say, well, what do I want to go create? And nine times out of 10, if you're discouraged right now, if you've got financial devastation, if you're facing something that is making this moment in time as hard for you as life was for Lewis and I in 2008 during the last recession, I beg you, Ask yourself honestly if what you had is actually what you wanted. The thing that you just lost, that job that you bitched about all the time.

That relationship that was bad to you.

Yes, or the friends you can't hang out with because it's convenient and you can't, you're in quarantine. Actually ask yourself if this is what you wanted or were you just used to it? Being used to something Louis, I think is the biggest reason why people don't change. I asked my mother, I love my mother, I love my parents. They've been married 51 years, which is a feat because they were, my mom was a teen mom.

But I asked her once if she'd.

Go to a personal development seminar with me.

What'd you say?

Are you kidding me? Why would I want to change at my age? I might discover I hate my life.

Wow.

I was like, okay, I'm just gonna leave that right there.

Right.

I mean, I think being used to what you have, I mean, I even our son is, so I'm here in Vermont at my mother-in-law's place and our son is gonna go to high school in Vermont. And so we're gonna kind of split our time back and forth between my mother-in-law's place and our place in Boston, 'cause God knows what business is gonna be like. And, you know, why would you need an office after COVID-19? Another amazing thing to realize realize. Even that change, I notice my own agitation, my own anxiety coming up. Will I make friends? Will I like a slower lifestyle? What happens if Chris likes it up here and I hate it up here? My own mind, because it's not something I'm used to yet, is making up stories to cling to the old way of life. This is a moment in time, everyone, please, this is the greatest gift. The greatest gift is this moment of pause where you get in touch with what you actually want. And if you don't have the skills.

For crying out loud, look around and.

Take an online course because if you need skills to prepare yourself for the thing that you want, get them right now.

324-321, awaken the prefrontal cortex, get back in the game.

How has this rule helped you the most in what area of your life with your marriage, your business, and being more productive in not having to, you know, take drugs when you're worried so much. What's, or on stage, what's the area where you're like, wow, this has really had the biggest impact. And I'm sure all of it, but.

Well, the most important thing in my life is my marriage. So my relationship with Chris is like the thing that brings me the the greatest joy. I mean, I'll just start crying thinking about it. And how many years have been married? 20 years. We've been together for 22 years. Three kids. 17, 16, 11. It has given me mastery over myself. Like I get so choked up just thinking about this. Like I used to feel out of control. And this rule allows me to be the best version of me and to interrupt like all the garbage that can trigger you to behave in a way that's inconsistent with your values and your dreams. And so that has been the single greatest gift.

That's great.

That and also, you know, I think the other thing that's super cool is that it is a tool that certainly prompts you to act, but it is also a tool that helps you tune in. to your inner wisdom. Like you're not only going to start waking up, you'll be so in tune with those signals that come from your instincts, not emotional, not instinct, like instinctual, that you get a direct line to your inner voice. You get a direct line. You know, all these people, one of the things that's always struck me, so if you list all the people that you admire, Right, yeah, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, like everybody's got kind of the same, yeah, well, whatever. Louis, for sure. If you list all those people, Jay-Z, Beyonce, like everybody, everybody that you admire is doing the exact same thing. They actually listen to their inner wisdom. They have figured out how to tune out the critic up here and trust the instincts. and, you know, I have this saying about confidence that I've only recently kind of stumbled into as I've been digging into more research around the science of confidence and the skill of confidence. Because a lot of people think that confidence is a personality trait. It's not. It's actually a skill that you build through action. And a lot of people think confidence is a state of belief. It can be, but that's not where it begins. And so I say that confidence is the willingness to try. That's all that it is. Knowing that you may succeed or survive, but you'll still try. And to me, all those people that we admire most, that's what they're doing. They have the ability to tune into those instincts that are true for them. Because the fact is there's only one you. that's it. And you matter because there's only one you and there's only ever gonna be one you. And your instincts and your experiences and your inner wisdom is a gift to the world. And every time that you tune it out because of the habit of hesitating or the habit of self-doubt or the habit of worrying or the habit of overthinking, you are robbing the world of that gift that you have. to give to everybody. And you can use this simple, stupid, silly tool to train yourself to not only hear it, but also to develop the skill of courage to act on it.

Powerful. And is there any area of your life where you feel like you lack courage still?

You know, I'll admit it's kind of easy. I think we all kind of go through those moments where you feel like you're behind. And I think social media is both an incredible tool and it can also be one of those triggers that makes you feel like, look at how many followers this guy has. And like, I'm like, so tiny compared to this guy right here. Like it's easy to use technology and social media not for inspiration, but actually as a way to bash yourself that you're not not doing what other people are doing. Yes, and so I think that I use the rule a lot for patience. I noticed that my insecurity rises up because right now, look, I did a ridiculous number of speeches last year. I travel way too much. I don't want my life to look like that. It's a champagne problem, I get it. But I also have three kids in a marriage that I love and I really feel depleted when I'm not with them. I'm practicing patience as I make an intentional pivot in the kind of business that I'm running so that I have more of a life that I want as well. So that's one area. You know, I don't feel insecure as much as, you know, you know the term deliberate practice, right? And you know the five hour rule.

Where practice is that from the talent code?

Well, the deliberate practice is actually a psychological principle.

I think it was in a book called the talent code, but yeah.

Oh yeah, okay. Well, it's a psychological principle that, you know, and you know the 10,000 hours. Of course, I mean deliberate practice is the course. Yes, so deliberate practice is this idea that, yeah, you could do 10,000 hours at anything and become an expert at it, but the way to do it faster is to deliberate, to do deliberate practice, which means you're practicing with the intention of improving and there's a feedback loop. Yeah, so 2,000 hours as opposed to 10,000. Correct, like for example, if you wanna become an expert at guitar, learn scales. Don't just sit there for 10,000 hours and play the same song. If you learn scales, you get the finger dexterity and the muscle memory and.

The neural pathway development.

Yes, I saw your guitar over there. I saw your guitar. You know, I always wanted to play guitar, but instead I forced my three children to learn.

That's good.

You just enjoy it and just watch them.

My brother's, you know, the number one jazz violinist in the world.

What? Yeah.

And so I grew up watching the.

Most incredible, like, now, is he built like you, too?

He used to be even, like, more Jack. They used to call him the Incredible.

Hulk of violin because he was just like, wow.

Snap the thing in half. He would, like, slam, like, Jimi Hendrix style. Yeah. But now he's leaned up a bunch actually and so he's incredible. So I used to just be all awestruck by his gifts and it was unbelievable his skill. And so I learned guitar. I taught myself when I was 18 just because I was like I have to know something, you know, in terms of music. That's pretty cool. I can barely, you know, I'm like a hack, but you know, at least.

I could do something. So yeah. So I'm kind of in this mode of improving myself and I'll give you one more thing that I'm working on. So I kind of think about my life and my work in three buckets. So we got this bucket here, we got this bucket, and we got this bucket. And so when you think about your business or you think about your passion or you think about work, I think about, okay, what do I need to do in terms of how much time and what actions do I need to take in order to develop the skills so that I can perform the work? So there's the deliberate practice that goes into practicing your skill and your mastery. Skill mastery. Yep. And your competency.

Yep.

Mastery. So that when it comes time to actually deliver the work, whether that's selling or standing on a stage or writing a book or talking to people or selling real estate or whatever it is that may be your passion, deliver. This is the one I neglected last year. This bucket is what are you doing to personally develop yourself so that you are the most capable, fulfilled and satisfied human being? so that when you show up to do your competency and your skills and the delivery, that you as the human being are able to do that. And so I've been spending a lot more time consuming content, reading books, watching your incredible show and learning from other people. And I think that one of the traps that we entrepreneurs get into is we, I was feeling last year anyway, like I was on a treadmill and when I wasn't looking, somebody was coming by. and turning up the speed. And I was only in this alley.

And increasing the hills that I could climb.

Yes, and if you're my age, you need like a diaper when somebody does that, you're on a treadmill and a leash to keep you attached to it. Exactly. So I've been focusing a lot on this, and it's been interesting because you and I were talking earlier too about you going to India and some of the stuff that you learned in terms of the different states to be in, and I use one where I pay attention to where I'm feeling depleted versus where I'm energized. And here's the thing, you can be doing things that are really hard that energize you. You can be doing things that are really scary that energize you. The same is true with things that deplete you. There are things in your life that are really easy for you. There are people that you hang out with, by the way, that you've been hanging out with for years, but they deplete you. and so I've been starting to become more deliberate about how I distance myself from things that deplete me and how I spend more time and energy either doing or pushing myself to do those things that actually energize me. And this gets back to your message around passion, right? And that you.