How often have you had an urge or some internal signal nudging you to do something – and then you ignored it and it went away? Have you ever wondered where you might be or what situation you might be in if you had acted on every single one of those impulses?
It can go something like this:
“I could go and speak to him/her about possible opportunities moving forwards”
If you don’t act on this impulse within the 5 seconds you will likely hear your internal voice say…
“Nah – they won’t be interested in anything I have to say it will probably be a waste of time.”
So you do nothing. Or to put it another way, you do no “thing”. But what if that “thing” would have really helped you, maybe have made a small but significant difference?
I admit I have ignored these nudges many times and then justified doing no – thing. On one occasion, I was listening to Chris Evans on Radio 2 when he was doing his ‘Drive Time Show’, they were chatting about cravings as it was Lent and people were phoning in saying they were craving the things they had given up for 40 days. I idly thought “I could help them with that” but let the thought pass without action. Not 5 minutes later a good friend called me all excited “have you heard Chris Evans – he’s talking about craving’s you taught me how to collapse mine – you need to call the show and tell them about tapping (TFT)”.
She was most insistent, and made me promise to call! In fact, I text the show saying I knew a great way to collapse cravings. The next morning the producer called me to say he had read the text and Chris would like to talk to me on air and could he call me live during the show to chat about it. I said yes but would you not rather I came in? and he said no. An hour later he called me back and said “Chris has had a look at your website and we want you to come into the studio and teach some of us on air how to do it”. SO that night I spent a very happy 2 hours in and out of the studio tapping Sally Traffic and several others for their cravings – all of them felt a huge reduction in their desire and it was a triumph!
That was great – but the next day I got a call from Hay House publishers who had heard the show and who I had been trying to contact without success to present a new book idea, asking to meet me. A week later I had a book deal. None of that would have happened – including writing ‘The Placebo Diet’, had I not sent that text. I didn’t respond to my own impulse, I listened to my internal voice when it said “nah – why would they respond to you, they are probably not interested” but I was not brave enough to ignore Nicole who I knew would hound me if I hadn’t made contact!
Makes you think doesn’t it. How many impulses or signals to get what you want, have you not responded to, and ignored or buried or justified not doing? Next time you get an impulse, make sure you respond WITHIN 5 seconds. Mel Robbins explains this beautifully and I love her book “The 5 Second Rule”.
This fits so beautifully with so many of the Placebo Diet principles as it works with our neurological ability to change how we think and feel. Once you do something once, it becomes so much easier, because we already have a neurological map or pathway for it. When you walk through an overgrown meadow for the first time you have to trample the grass, this makes it easier the second time you walk through the meadow, and when you have walked it twenty or thirty times the grass is completely flat and it’s the easiest of routes.
The compound effect of repeating a positive thought or action is huge, but so is the compound effect of repeating a negative thought or action. Both will strengthen your brain, but one will strengthen it to make it easy to get what you want, and the other will strengthen it to block you getting what you want.
Remember my favourite saying? You are free to choose – but you are not free from the consequence of that choice. So now we can add to that – make the right choice WITHIN 5 SECONDS and you will notice that more and more opportunities come your way. Not just more opportunities to be healthy, but ones that help you in your relationships, personal or professional, perhaps in your job or career. When you start responding to your unconscious signals to do something – and do it, magic happens.
Watch my video about the value of repetition. With the 5 second rule, visualisation and repetition you really have the most simple and powerful tools to get what you desire in life: