Tackle The Things You Don’t Want To Do – Episode 199

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[00:03] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we have the president of Partners for Prosperity and bestselling financial author, Kim Butler, and my co-host with me today. And today we’re going to be talking about a book that she found called Notebook for the 5 Second Rule, Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. And this was written by Mel Robbins, that’s R-O-B-B-I-N-S, and it is available on Kindle

[01:01] or Amazon or wherever you need to find it. And Kim, why don’t we just start with talking about how you found it and what this has meant to you? Absolutely. Well, it came from a TED Talk, so if you are not a book reader, you can grab the TED Talk that Mel Robbins, and it’s a gal, by the way, a female, a gal. And so, that’s okay, good for the listeners to know as well. Anyway, fun little TED Talk, and she tells her story about how she came up with the 5 Second Rule, and it’s nothing earth-shattering at all, just a way to help one’s mind tackle especially something that you don’t want to do. And for her, it was as simple as getting out of bed. She was in a relationship that was struggling, a business that was struggling, a career

[01:49] that was struggling, and she had children, and mornings were becoming a disaster because she was running late all the time, and she decided to just do a little mind trick, if you will, and count backwards, so five, four, three, two, one, launch. And that was her method of tackling things that needed to get done that she didn’t want to do, and she’s gotten numerous, I’m talking hundreds of thousands of comments from people, from her TED Talk and her book and some other things that she’s put out there about how helpful that has been in their lives. And so it’s just something that I wanted to share with the listeners. I read a lot. And when I find a good book that I think everybody would benefit from in some way,

[02:37] again, book, TED Talk, what have you, you can find even short videos on YouTube if you prefer. I like to share them because I believe it’s so important that all of us have good, positive things to read and listen to and focus on. It helps us combat some of the negative news that seems so prevalent in today’s world, and it’s just something that I like to share. So you’ve got my notes in front of you there. Tell me some of the cool passages that I thought would be beneficial. Like I said, I’m fully admitting I’ve read the Cliff Notes on this. I’ve not read the whole thing, but the beginning of it just sends chills down my spine because it says, because when you act with courage, your brain is not involved.

[03:28] Your heart speaks first and you listen. Isn’t it interesting how often our brain negates our heart and our heart has a connection to, in my opinion, not only to a higher spirit, but also to each other. So how many times have we overruled our heart with our knowledge? That’s incredible to me. Yes, absolutely. And how often our brain is finding reasons that we should not do something when our heart is coming up with this awesome idea to go do something. And whether you want to attribute that to Mel or to Kathy Colby, who has the Colby profile, KOLBE.com. We talk about that all the time. How she talks about how important it is to follow your instinct, to trust your guts, et cetera. That’s something that we all need to be reminded of.

[04:30] So even if you feel like, oh, yeah, I know that sometimes just being reminded or reading other stories of people that have followed their heart. Five, four, three, two, one just started in on it, picked up the phone call, made the meeting happen, sent the email, whatever it is. There are so many times that good is coming from that. And it’s wonderful to see it. I’m really glad that you pointed that out. That was a central message in her work, for sure. Yes, another another quote in here is change requires courage and confidence. Change requires you to do things that feel hard and scary. You know, it’s funny, all these C words. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach has a book called The Four Cs, and it’s available at strategiccoach.com.

[05:21] Anybody can buy it. I don’t think it’s on Amazon, but it might be. And he talks about how you’ve got to have commitment first and then the courage comes with and then the capability and then the confidence. And a lot of times people want to have the confidence first. But you don’t get that until you’ve made the commitment, which then generated the courage and then you got the capabilities to get the confidence. So that Four Cs message, no matter what age you are, is valuable. And so if it’s Mel’s book or Dan Sullivan Four Cs or anything that will help you just understand how to trust your instincts, follow your guts and take action, then that’s a beneficial thing. That’s the exact thing I was going to next was her quote on trust your gut.

[06:11] New research from the University of Arizona in partnership with Cornell and Duke has shown that there’s a powerful connection between your brain and your instinct to act. When you set a goal, your brain opens up a task list. Yeah, very. Whenever you are near things that can help you achieve those goals, your brain fires up your instincts to signal to get that goal completed. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah, very, very cool. You know, it’s funny. Kathy Colby’s group had a big discussion and did a whole bunch of research when they were titling a book, Trust Your Gut or Trust Your Guts. So it’s they I think they ended up deciding that either way was fine, but they liked the plural. It’s interesting that the research and Mel have chosen to go after the singular.

[07:08] Now, this one, I think I might need your help with it. She writes that later I would learn that when you count backwards, you mentally shift gears in your mind, you interrupt your default thinking and do what psychologists call assert control. Yes, because we don’t normally count backwards. It forces you to just really focus in on that counting. And so rather than, for example, one, two, three, go. It’s a conscious five, four, three, two, one launch that is the trigger point to take the action. So you’re saying that when you get to the end of the countdown, you’ve put yourself in a different mental state. Exactly. Or the count up or however you would say that. Yeah, I’m going with countdown.

[08:01] I think five, four, three, two, one is exactly that. It’s a countdown. And of course, when we look at things like the launch of the rockets in the space, they count down also. There’s an important concept in psychology put forth by Julian Rotter, R.O.T.T.E.R. in 1954. It’s called locus of control. The more that you believe you are in control of your life, your actions and your future, the happier and more successful you’ll be. Ah, very cool. So listen to the language, believe you are in control. And we could absolutely add a higher power to this. The in control doesn’t have to be necessarily just us as human beings. But having choices typically is what generates a feeling of control. And I’ll readily admit sometimes having too many choices

[09:01] generates a feeling of lack of control as well. I think it’s one of the things that we help people with their finances on so well is to narrow down the choices that are out there. If you want income, there’s a whole bunch of different ways. But here’s our favorite three. And here’s our top one as an example. So when you’ve got choices, you’ve got control. And that enables you to make decisions. And then if you’re feeling like you’re stuck on something, it’s my suggestion to go get help, whether it’s our help on your finances or somebody else’s help, sometimes even just an accountability buddy or a another person that’s interested in taking the same steps. But getting others involved not only then helps you move forward,

[09:50] but it also generates a bit of a team whereby you have the classic one plus one can equal three instead of two. And if you really pull it off well and everybody’s doing their own area of expertise, I believe that one plus one can get you 11. This next statement just, I mean, drilled home my respect for her, which I did know it was a her him when I read it. But that’s irrelevant. But it says the five second rule doesn’t make things easy. It makes them happen. Yes, that initiation of action is what we’re looking for. And if that can get you started, then you’ve got momentum and then you’ll keep going. It’s much easier when momentum is in the works. How about talking about just a little bit about the power of everyday courage?

[10:51] Sure. You know, it’s a habit. And any time we’re in the habit of something, then we do a better job of keeping up that momentum, staying in the habit. And so if you put yourself in a position every day where you need to take on a little bit of courage, then that taking on becomes a habit. And you’re so much more willing to take on bigger and bigger opportunities or maybe things that require more courage or more consistent courage. When we’re out of habit, then taking on something that would require courage, just action is a lot bigger step. So it’s why we exercise every day or at least do something physical every day. Then we’re in the act of that. We’re in the habit of that. And something that Dan Sullivan, my coach at strategic coach,

[11:45] says all the time that I’ve always loved is that we are 100 percent disciplined to our current set of habits. It’s not that we need more discipline. We just need new habits. So if you’re feeling like you’re not courageous, find something that you can do every single day that requires just a little bit of courage. And again, it can be simple steps, but that act of taking courageous steps will get you in the habit and then enable you to do more and more. She also mentions that there are three behavior changes that we receive emails about constantly. One is health, two is productivity and three is procrastination. Yes, yes. You know, it’s interesting that health, obviously a habit again. Are you in the habit of drinking water?

[12:39] Are you in the habit of working out, et cetera? The productivity, same idea. Are you in the habit of showing up and powering through your email inbox? Are you in the habit of scheduling the important things first? Are you in the habit of being focused and drilling in on whatever it is that you need to do for a certain period of time? Those things will generate productivity. Now, procrastination is a fun one because I think there’s two schools of thought out here, one that says, OK, procrastination is bad and you shouldn’t procrastinate, et cetera, et cetera. Another one is causing you to really think about what you are procrastinating on. And if you can identify one or two things as to why you’re procrastinating,

[13:30] you can probably then either decide to delegate that thing, whatever it is, or set yourself up in a position where you can actually get it done, like put it on the calendar, get some help, schedule some time to do it, whatever it takes. But that’s only available if you can identify the whys behind the procrastination. So instead of just continuing to procrastinate and thinking bad, oh, my gosh, I’m procrastinating, that’s bad, I shouldn’t be doing that. Just take a moment or two to identify, well, why am I procrastinating? You know, maybe there’s a lesson here. Maybe there’s something cool to learn. Maybe there’s something even bigger or better that we can tackle if we can identify the why behind the procrastination.

[14:16] And she gives a tool for that, which I’ll let you explain, which I don’t fully understand, but it’s 30 before 730. Yeah, 30 minutes of careful thought about your day, identifying what’s important to you. Some people would even say planning it out, being focused on the results that you want. And if you’ll do that before 730 in the morning, then your day goes so much smoother rather than just launching into your day with no thoughts at all. Super. And I think, you know, we there’s a lot of other points in here that we could really kind of addressed. But one of the things that that hits me the most is it not only talks about increasing productivity, but this is another thing that I’ve heard you talk so much about.

[15:14] And that’s define a quitting time and enjoy the rest of your life as well. Absolutely. And the concept of free days. So you’ve got an entire day that’s truly free where you can enjoy your life. And then also a stop, you know, in the evening or late afternoon, depending on what else is going on in your life. So that life can be lived now. And this helps us with a financial concept that we talk about all the time. And that is not focusing on just retirement, but focusing on some joy, some trips, some fun things to do now while you’re whatever your age you are instead of waiting for later. Well, super well, I hope that our listeners will reach out. And again, the book is the five second rule. Transform, transform your life, work and confidence

[16:09] with everyday courage by Mel Robbins. Encourage you to pick that up. We also have a free book that we would like to provide to you as our listeners as well. Yes, that’s available at Partners. Number four, Prosperity dot com slash ebook. There’s an audio version and a print version that are available for immediate download, and it’s only available at that site. Partners, number four, Prosperity dot com slash ebook. Super. And one thing that I don’t think we’ve mentioned enough is, is we enjoy recommendations of books as well. So maybe you as a listener have read something that makes a difference to you. If you’d like for us to take a look at it, we are our Kindles and audible accounts are firing all the time.

[16:58] Yeah, probably you’re more Kindle and I’m more audible. But we’re reviewing books as much as we can. And we appreciate a good read, too. So please send us your recommendations as well. We appreciate all of you. Thanks so much, Kim Butler. Again, this is the No BS Money Guy. Thanks so much to all of our listeners for listening to the Prosperity podcast. Again, this is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Special thanks to all of our listeners and to Kim Butler. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at Partners for Prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.