How to Get Un-Stuck In Life with Mel Robbins
Mel Robbins was a certified life coach before hitting rock bottom and having to rescue her own ass. She has helped millions of successful people get un-stuck and now she's sitting down with the two of us to share the exact moment when the 5 Second Rule came to be and how it has changed her life for the better. She literally blew our minds in all kinds of ways. Check out the interview below and keep scrolling for some major takeaways from this episode!
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KEY TAKEAWAYS:
You do not have to do the same job for the rest of your life, so don’t think for a second that you can’t make a change. Unless you have a job that requires specific skills that are required by law (like a doctor, chemist or engineer, which require specific training), all the skills that matter are soft skills, which you can gain in all different types of jobs.
Most people are stuck in something and don’t know how to get passed a situation with either their partner, a friend, a family member or a job. And the reason why you're stuck is because you're out of sync with who you really are. Everybody develops patterns (of thinking and behaving) when they’re little and adopts those patterns as their own because that’s the way their brain is designed. This takes place at a young age and then you go through life and you become an adult and you’re in a lag because you’re still stuck in those patterns. The woman that you are right now is out of sync with the patterns that you’re still playing over and over again from your childhood. Your patterns haven’t evolved as you’ve grown, and you haven’t recognized that they’re patterns and you haven’t understood the fundamental rule about being a human being.
You can choose what you think about. You can choose how you react to things. And the way that your brain and body is designed is to automate behaviour. So if from a young age you’ve thought you were fat or unworthy or unloveable or not good enough, your brain is trained and designed to spot patterns and it acts like a filter and locks in on to those negative thoughts.
You are one decision away from a different life. All change happens in a five second window.
You may feel stuck, but you’re not. You have patterns that are broken but you’re not broken. So if you understand the patterns that are broken, you can use the five second rule to break any pattern and replace it.
The moment when your intuition or your guilt whispers to you (or screams at you) to speak up or do something or not do something - that is your wisdom, that’s the call to change, that is the power inside of you. It’s right there, talking to you all day long. It’s like an alarm that goes off inside of you, but we don’t often listen to it. And that’s why you don’t feel good enough, because you’re not listening to yourself because you don’t know how because nobody has ever taught you.
When the alarm goes off, instead of doing what your wisdom and intuition is telling you, you think about whether or not you’re going to listen. And within five seconds, the automatic part of your brain takes over and you’re going to spin into patterns of the past - I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, I don’t want to… As you start to think about it and this five second window opens up in your mind, what comes in is anxiety, depression, self-doubt. And within five seconds, you’re no longer thinking about the change, you’ve already gone down the road of fear. So if you can close the gap in that five-second moment from when your intuition tells you to do something and your fear telling you not to, you will win every time.
The best change you can make is to change your behaviour and the five-second rule is how you do it. You can talk all you want about what you’re going to do, but if you don’t know how to make yourself do it - when you’re scared, when you’re full of doubt, when you think you’re not worthy, when you’re anxious, or when you don’t feel like it - you’re not going to.
You can get really stuck if you’re doing too much thinking and not enough doing.
Stop denying your ambition and stop putting your ambition on your partner. Women are trained to be nice, we are not trained to be ambitious, to make a lot of money and to build things. We’re trained to build people up and take care of them. And there is something wrong with you, you’re a bitch, you’re aggressive, you’re bossy if you’re ambitious. That’s bullshit.
Search for what happiness means to you and deconstruct the pressures that society puts on you.
If you’re not growing, you feel stuck. That is a signal from your body that you’re no longer learning and growing.
If your thoughts aren’t helping you, they’re harming you. You don’t have to think them. So when a negative thought comes into your mind, just start counting backwards: 5-4-3-2-1. That way you’re telling your mind you're not going to think this. If you chronically think negative things, go through your day and write down all the negative things that you say to yourself and come up with alternatives so that you can have a positive “anchor” thought ready to go. Once you count down from five and bring up that anchor thought, you will have interrupted your thoughts, settled your body and you’ll be back in control.
As moms, we have to stop rescuing our kids because it makes the anxiety worse. Instead, tell them you understand, help them come up with an anchor thought, practise switching their mind, help them recognize that their anxiousness is excitement, and promise that you’ll figure it out and get through it together.
MORE ABOUT MEL:
Melanie Robbins is an American television host, author, and motivational speaker. She is known for covering the George Zimmerman trial for CNN; her TEDx talk, How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over; and her book, The 5 Second Rule.
Y’all need to go buy this book immediately: The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage.
Also check out this Audible: Work It Out: The New Rules for Women to Get Ahead at Work
And this one: Take Control of Your Life: How to Silence Fear and Win the Mental Game
Or go subscribe to Mel’s YouTube channel because it’s all there and it’s all FREE.