A Personal Pep Talk
5 minute read
Mel Robbins came to me in my darkest hour. I was not so much emotionally bereft; it really was dark. I hadn’t slept properly in ten days and as I lay there awake at 3am for the tenth consecutive night, mentally compartmentalising my life and wondering how to juggle the daily demands while remaining sane, musing over whether the paint swatches on my wall were going to be a permanent display, if my first book (yet to be penned) would be critically discovered after I was dead, whether I gave the tiler the new dimensions for the kitchen and if I had made that dental appointment for my son (the usual middle-of-the-night anxieties), I wondered whether relieving the overwhelm could be as simple as a 5-second life hack tool or a morning high-five habit selfie.
Life always feels somewhat frenetic, but in the last few months it’s been at a juggernaut pace and I’m racing to keep up, all the while feeling as though I’ve been walking through mud.
I had come across Robbins about a year ago while researching an article; she was different from the usual self-help heavyweights and their emotionally-whipped crowds. She embodied her can-do philosophy with a self-deprecating humour and zeitgeist that immediately engaged me. Robbins is a motivational guru and bestselling author of The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage as well as the extremely popular TEDx talk How to stop screwing yourself over. If you’re one of the 1.6 million people who follow her on Instagram you’ll know she’s basically a badass, like that bossy friend who’s got her shit together but also gets really drunk and confesses to sleeping with their boss (or something equally messy).
Her currency is authenticity: she is herself no matter what she’s doing. She gives it straight (with the occasional swear word), but manages to temper it with a humility and understanding of people, their nuances and life’s curveballs, which carried a lot of us through lockdown. She’s relatable and wise with much of her advice born from well-worn experience. Before she was a world-renowned entrepreneur she was circling the drain, unemployed, about to file for bankruptcy, stymied by shame after a failed business venture and a marriage that was on the rocks. She recalls a morning she was lying in bed, depressed, thinking about the slow-moving car crash of her life when she hit the snooze button. “Who would want to get up when your life is like that,” she confesses. A few days later after watching a NASA launch, she resolved to catapult herself out of bed within five seconds of waking up, tapping into the idea of acting impulsively before our brains sabotage our efforts and we stay in our comfort zone. She began applying it to every part of her life, and over time, radically turned everything around. I was intrigued and equally sceptical: anything that sounds that simple is usually too good to be true, right?
Counting backwards from five seemed remedial and a little silly, as did high-fiving myself in the mirror – another simple Robbins hack that has transformed the lives of millions.
At some point we were sold the lie that we need to feel ‘ready’ in order to change. Our brains are wired to avoid the things that are uncomfortable or dangerous, but in order to change we have to face the challenging and uncomfortable, which means we never really feel ‘ready’. We’re motivated to do the easy things which is where Robbins’ theory comes in: we can take control of the micro moments in our lives in subtle, achievable ways our brains understand. It sounds simple, it is simple, and yet there I was on day one on my fifth count backwards. When I did finally jump out of bed and walk to the bathroom to high-five myself and saw my reflection in the mirror, I laughed out loud before uttering a word that sounded a lot like ‘frolics’. Have you ever really looked at yourself in a mirror? It’s just, well, embarrassing. But I’m an open-minded person, willing to try new things, determined to stay the course so I pressed my hand to the mirror. I smiled because I immediately felt silly and awkward. According to Robbins the reason we smile is because our brains don’t know the difference between high-fiving ourselves, and someone else high fiving us. It recognises it as a sign of celebration: the signal telling us someone believes in us, they see us, and that’s powerful.
It also overrides a damaging habit we all have when we look in a mirror which is to only see our faults: the saggy chin, the luggage under our eyes, the frizzy hair. The high-five habit shifts that energy. Like everything Robbins advocates, it has been tried and tested by her. The high-five habit evolved from a moment when she felt completely overwhelmed, standing in front of the mirror in her underwear. It was 2020, all her gigs had been cancelled along with her book contract; she was in ‘freefall’.
We all get stuck; it’s about finding that momentum that will help you feel empowered for the bigger things, with each tool serving to interrupt a regular thought pattern.
It is not the answer to all your problems, but instead a confidence building tool to help you tackle the everyday and hopefully change the course of your day for the better. I wasn’t suffering from inertia, my life wasn’t devoid of purpose nor was I standing still, and yet I felt like I was running to stand still to a soundtrack of anxiety and nameless malaise. In my exhaustion everything else felt frayed at the edges: my looks, my resolve, my creativity. I needed someone, something, to shake me by my shoulders and rattle the cage, or at least give me a gentle nudge in the right direction. On the second morning, I managed to leap out of bed on the first countdown. When I got to the bathroom mirror I pressed my hand to the glass. I still felt silly, but this time I lingered longer and managed a ‘you got this’.
On day three I was feeling good about my countdown and to-do list. When I got to the mirror the smile had gone and instead I saw a woman doing her best and needing a side-line cheer. As the week continued I noticed the disparaging inner voice had dissipated. Instead I was cheering for myself, not in a Tony-Robbins ‘beat-your-chest’ hit-parade kind of way, but a quiet celebration of all the hoops I was managing to jump and the things I was doing right. I was slipping out of bed without hesitation, I was meeting myself in the mirror. I had my back.
Orla Neligan, March 2022
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