Hello and welcome to the upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, deputy editor of LifeHacker, and this week is just me hosting.

Melissa is out, but she'll be back for next week. I'll be talking to Mel Robbins, the motivational

speaker, author of the five-second rule, transform your life, work, and confidence with everyday

courage, and now the host of Kickass with Mel Robbins on Audible.com.

We're going to talk about motivation and how we can kick our own asses to get from good to

great. Hello, Mel, welcome to the upgrade. Well, thank you. So good to have you here.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I want to give some background to the listener.

Sure. So I first heard about you actually from our parenting

editor, Michelle Wu, she's L.A. based, but she was in New York for an upgrade podcast episode and

mentioned the five second rule. And I thought this is really interesting sounding, got the five second

rule audiobook, delved in deep to Mel Land. First of all, for people who don't know, tell us about

the five second rule, but also give us a little of the backstory and how, where you found

yourself at the time when you came upon it. Sure. So the five second rule is very simple.

The moment that you're in a situation where you know what you should do,

but you start to hesitate or excuses start to fill your mind. So let me give you an example.

You're sitting in a meeting at work. You know you need to become more visible. You have something to say,

but you stop to think, is it going to sound stupid? Should I say anything? What if it sounds that da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da?

And the excuses talk you out of it.

So it's those moments that literally all day long, you have a chance to step out of your comfort zone

or to push yourself or to expand your life and you literally talk yourself out of it.

So in those moments, what I want you to do is I want you to start counting backwards,

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

...