5 second rule: Can small actions really change your brain?

When your alarm rings, do you get up and snooze it for ten more minutes of sleep? Do you postpone starting a new project, simply because it demands change from yourself? Hey folks! This article will tell you a simple trick to overcome this, what we call procrastination or hesitation. 

Let’s see why this happens. Our brain is designed to protect us from all sorts of danger and change requires risk. So, naturally we tend to avoid change, to protect ourselves from risk. Right? Sometimes we ought to get out of our comfort zone in order to reach our goal. While we overthink or hesitate, the amygdala the part of the brain responsible for fear gets activated. As a result, we tend to step backwards. Thus, protecting ourselves saying “maybe tomorrow.” 

Before Discussing the ‘5-Second Rule’, we need to learn about an important phenomenon called habit loop. Knowing about Habit Loop will be helpful in practicing the technique. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, explains that the habit loop plays a crucial role in reinforcing or breaking behavioral patterns, such as procrastination.

The habit loop has three components. 

1. Cue 
2. Routine 
3. Reward 

1. Cue 

It acts as a reminder that triggers to get underway to the habit. Cues can be of any forms such as 

• Location 
• Time 
• Current emotional state 
• People around you 
• Your last action. 

Example: If you had regularly had coffee at 4.30 PM, seeing the clock shows 4.30 PM could trigger the urge to have a cup of coffee. 

2. Routine 

Routine is doing a repeated tasks that are carried out in a particular order or at specific times. A behaviour once you started doing as a conscious choice will become a routine after few days. 

Example: Suppose in your office after sitting in one place for hours, from 10 AM to 6 PM, you probably got tired and decided to take a coffee break as a conscious decision but now it became a routine.

3. Reward 

Reward is the one that reinforces the routine. It may be beneficial to you. 

Example: If you’re bored, you may scroll Instagram reels for long hours because it gives a reward. i.e. a sense of relief from boredom. This frames the habit loop. 

To break this habit loop is not an easy task. For that we gonna use a technique called ‘5 Second rule’. It may be helpful to break a habit loop or to overcome hesitation. 

Mel Robbins, an American author, podcast host known for her TEDx talk about “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over” and her books “The Let Them Theory”, “The 5 Second rule” and “The High 5 Habit”. She says that when we hear alarm in the morning, we’ve only 5 seconds to decide between whether we need to wake up or to go back to sleep. She adds that our brain is good at hoodwink us to stay back in bed than go for hard work. 

How the 5 Second Rule Works

The 5 second rule works by breaking the habit loop in the routine phase. By consciously using the five second rule, we can break the habit loop or can create a new habit loop. It might be difficult to follow. So, you can start practising it on small things first and then try it with markable challenges. 

Let’s see how the 5 second rule works with an example. When you’re attending a conference or an office meeting, you want to ask a question or give feedback. But you’re struggling to raise up and speak. It’s not because you don’t like to speak. It’s your feelings of self-doubt that hinders you by making you to sit with hesitation and resist yourself. If you don’t ask the question you want, you’ll not develop the courage. Feelings come into play before thinking and it decides our act. Your feelings may not align with your values and goals. When your feelings come up, you may doubt your ability to question and learn and that doesn’t help you to grow. This is the push moment. When you face such situation, practice 5 second rule, 

• Just count 5,4,3,2,1 and 
• Initiate what you wanted to do. 

In this case, get up within 5 seconds from the moment you wanted to ask a question. So that you’re halfway through and you cannot stop the act of asking question. This works in similar way to all the events. If you’re afraid, countdown 5,4,3,2,1 and act brave. You’ve to decide to be courageous. It’s a choice you’ve to make between the act on the feeling or act on your values. Every time you face self-doubt count 5,4,3,2,1 and prove yourself that you can do it, that smash your excuses and water your inner strength. Confidence is a skill that one can build through action. 

When we count in backwards, it activates the prefrontal cortex, part of the brain responsible for making decision, learn new behaviour or take action. This works by interrupting the pattern of overthinking, fear, anxiety, procrastination and comparison. The 5 second rule act as a tool to push yourself to do things and break pattern. The more you use this rule, the faster you will break the habit of staying silent while you want to ask question and replace it with new habit; courage. This breaks the habit loop.

Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist says “Do good, Be good”, which means we should change our behaviour first and that changes the self-perception of the kind of person that we are. The 5 second rule is a tool that takes you closer to your goal and values. It’s not just thinking. He believed that our mindsets aren’t stupid. It’s not the saying “be courageous’ is enough to make a change. You have to take effort to something and that’s all make yourself courageous. 

Whenever you didn’t push yourself, to raise question – You are losing a battle with your feelings. At many times, you may find yourself not doing things that may solve your problem, it’s because of your emotions. 

The life decisions we make are not out of logic, not without hearts, not with our goal but with your feelings. Our feelings in a given moment synchronise with what’s best for us. Research findings, say that we usually tend to opt what is easy and what makes us feel good instead of what is better for us to do.  

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist, declare that it’s our feelings that make 95 percent of the decision. He also added that, humans are ‘feeling machines that think, not thinking machines that feel.’ His study on people with brain damage who couldn’t feel any emotion revealed a very fascinating finding that: they can describe the pros and cons of the choice, but couldn’t make a decision. This explains the role our feelings play in making decisions. Example; “When you question yourself, what I want to eat? You are actually asking yourself that What do I feel like eating.” 

When you stop concerning how you feel, you start moving towards the goal. 

What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly? Mel Robbins quoted this by saying, “Embrace change, trust yourself and take control of your mindset”. 

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle