Alright, let’s talk about this Mel Reid stuff. I bumped into her ideas, probably scrolling online late one night, you know how it is. The whole “5 Second Rule” thing. Sounded a bit like something you’d see on a cheesy morning show, honestly. 5-4-3-2-1, GO! Seemed way too simple.
But here’s the deal, I was stuck. Like, really stuck. Getting out of bed was a negotiation every single morning. Hitting snooze like my life depended on it. And starting tasks? Forget about it. My brain would just spin and spin, thinking about doing the thing instead of, you know, actually doing it. It was getting bad.
So, one morning, the alarm screeches. My first thought is, naturally, ‘just five more minutes’. Then I remembered that 5-second thing. Felt ridiculous. Lying there in the dark. But I thought, what the heck. So I literally counted down in my head, felt like a total idiot: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. And then I just, like, lurched upright. Threw the blankets off before my brain could talk me out of it. Didn’t jump for joy or anything. Mostly felt confused and cold. But I was up. That was… weirdly effective.
Trying it Out More
Okay, so it worked for getting vertical. What else? I started trying it for small, annoying things I’d put off.
- Making that phone call I dreaded. 5-4-3-2-1, dial.
- Answering that email that felt too hard. 5-4-3-2-1, start typing. Anything, just start.
- Putting the dishes in the dishwasher instead of letting them ‘soak’. 5-4-3-2-1, just do it.
Did it work every time? Hell no. Plenty of times I’d hit ‘1’ and just… sit there. Or I’d count down and then immediately get distracted by something shiny. Felt like a failure, like the gimmick wasn’t working on me. It’s not some magic wand.
Where I Landed With It
It took a while. Weeks, maybe months, of trying it off and on. What I figured out is, it’s not really about the counting. It’s about interrupting that loop in your head. That hesitation where doubt and excuses creep in. The counting is just a dumb trick to make you move before that happens.
It doesn’t make the hard things easy. It doesn’t give you motivation out of thin air. You still gotta push through whatever it is. But it helped me get started more often. Less time spent arguing with myself. It sort of cuts through the mental clutter for just long enough to get your body moving.
I still use it sometimes. Not for everything. But when I feel that familiar ‘ugh, I don’t wanna’ feeling about something small, I sometimes pull out the countdown. Still feels a bit silly. But if silly gets me moving when I’d otherwise be stuck on the couch, then fine. It’s just another little tool, right? Didn’t revolutionize my life or anything dramatic like you read about. But it nudged things. Sometimes a nudge is all you need to get unstuck from the mud. Better than just sitting there, anyway.
