I hear the same thing from many leaders: “From the outside in, it looks like I’m doing great, but the truth is I’m a bit miserable, frustrated with myself, and feeling stuck.” Surprisingly, to address our own situations, most of us already know a directional step we could take or stop taking, but we don’t do it. Why? And how can we solve that?
Hold up one hand. Count your fingers, out loud.
Do it again, and for five seconds, see if you can focus only on how incredible your fingers are. Wiggle them. Flash them. Say out loud with a smile, “Power of Five.”
Your hand is your prop to remind you. Five is your anchor.
Just start for five seconds and get a streak going
Mel Robbins’s The 5 Second Rule and James Clear’s Atomic Habits overlap beautifully: action before motivation.
If you want to run, commit to putting on your running shoes for five seconds every day. That’s it.
Sounds silly, right? But here’s what happens: Shoes go on, you think, “Hmm, might as well walk to the mailbox.” Halfway to the mailbox, you think, “I can make it to the corner.” At the corner, you keep going. Some days it’s a short walk, other days you run sprints. But it started with your five magic seconds.
Here’s the thing. We don’t need to put motivation into you. We need to let it out. Action releases emotion. Starting takes less than five seconds. Momentum does the rest.
Apply the Power of Five anywhere:
- Better hydration: Start your day with five sips of water.
- Healthier eating: Eat five spoonfuls of oatmeal or five forkfuls of salad, first. Oats release energy slowly, keeping you steady all day (it’s why they feed them to horses). The body reacts most to what the stomach lining senses first. If you’re going to have healthy and junk, get healthy in first.
- Learning: Study five new words of a language. (My friend Severin Hacker, cofounder of Duolingo, says 12 million people have a streak over 365 days!)
- Finances: Save $5, €5, or ¥5 a day. It will shift how you think about finance.
- Writing: Write five words a day for your book.
- Patience: When someone cuts you off in traffic, count to five before “flipping.” No, wait! I mean five seconds before you sigh and say, “Maybe they’re just having a day.”
- Work: Before even reading emails, put in five minutes on your toughest project. Eat the frog first.
- Your idea: The best ideas come from you, not me. What’s yours for the Power of Five?
Why it works
We humans adapt fast. Really fast. It’s kind of our superpower. But you must pledge to use your superpowers for good! It only takes five days to start getting in shape, and five to start losing it. There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, but the latest research is that bodies and minds influence each other more than we realized. Physically doing something signals to your brain: This matters.
As Millard Fuller, cofounder of Habitat for Humanity, said: “It’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.”
The worst thing isn’t starting without a plan. The worst thing is never starting at all.
I’ll give you a little CEO secret from working with so many successful people. It looks like they planned it all out and never struggled, but the truth is very different. Everyone is a walking bundle of hopes, strengths, dreams, and insecurities. No exceptions.
The only way up the mountain is to stumble. To skin your knees. To feel a little lost. To be out of breath. If you’re not out of breath, you’re not climbing. You’re coasting.
Ready to change?
Just … start.
Bill Hoogterp is an author, entrepreneur, and one of the top executive coaches worldwide. He has advised dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs, and last year his company LifeHikes offered trainings at more than 100 global companies in 47 countries and seven languages. To learn more about Bill, visit lifehikes.com. To ask Bill a question for a future column, email bill_hoogterp@lifehikes.com.
