From “The 5AM Club” to “The 5 Second Rule”

Finding my own self-help “rule” through Robin Sharma and Mel Robbins.

I’m trying something new. I’m going to attempt to include an audio version of my posts as often as possible as a companion to my written posts at the request of readers who prefer to listen. Duly noted and happy to serve. xx

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I’m going to admit something: I’m a self-help junky. I’d like to believe it’s because of my own determination to not push ancient cycles of dysfunction on my children. In reality, I know it has something to do with my mother’s struggle with depression her entire life. She had every self-help book ever written in the 70’s, through the 80’s and into the early 90’s. Growing up my eyes perpetually scanned title after title, always stopping at “Sybil” which was sandwiched between Melanie Beattie’s “Codependent No More” and Dr. Wayne Dyer’s “Your Erroneous Zones”. The attraction to Sybil may have been because of its ominous, red lettered-binding or my mother’s refusal to let me read it. But it’s because of her willingness and hope to one day become the best version of the woman she envisioned herself to be is why I have never stopped wanting the same for myself. Which brings me to what I have literarily consumed the last couple of months between moving to a new country and conjuring the chutzpah to continue to pursue a career as an artist and writer.

If your Instagram feed is anything like mine, it is riddled with toxic positivity and people selling me workshops and workbooks and how-to’s by faux-guru’s which I either scroll past or lock-into depending on the day and my level of self-esteem. So it should have come as no surprise that I kept seeing Robin Sharma’s The 5AM Club, literally, everywhere. It was popping up on Reels, on Stories, on effing Substack for god’s sake. It wasn’t until my favorite podcast person, Mel Robbins, commented on it while I was listening to her on one of my “self-help walks” in the park that I committed to Kindle-ing this shout from the Universe to find out what all the fuss was about.

According to the book’s logline, you can, “own your morning” and “elevate your life.” Would waking up at 5 a.m. be the answer to everything I lacked in my life and give me, once and for all, the power to create EVERYTHING I WANT from infinite possibility???

As if one self-help book wasn’t enough, I was ALSO listening to Mel Robbin’s, The 5 Second Rule on my walk at the same time as eyeball reading Sharma’s book. Here’s my take on both and what prompted me to create my OWN rule.

On The 5AM Club:

Sharma’s premise, and writing, is sophomoric at best. I wasn’t sure I could continue after the first chapter as there was nothing grounding me to the storyline or facilitating sympathy for the main characters, unsympathetically named, “The Entrepreneur” and “The Artist.” Plainly said, the book sucked. But the addict in me had to, not only finish it, but practice it as I was reading it. Let me save you ten hours of nauseating clichés written by other people by sharing the only real takeaway from the book; the moment everyone suffers through all the bad writing for: The 20-20-20 method. Here’s the gist: The first 20 minutes of your day begins with vigorous exercise, the second 20 minutes is spent journaling/meditating/or planning goals and the third 20 minutes of the day is learning something new ie a new language, reading something on an interesting topic, etc.There. That’s basically it. I just broke down the entire book for you in one easy step.

The early-rise practice is not a new idea. I’ve heard Kevin Hart talk about that being the key to his own success and everyone’s heard ye olde English proverb, “The early bird catcheth the worm.” But what about those who worketh the night shift? Sharma emphasizes that 5 am is the “magical moment” before the rest of the world wakes up. But, I believe finding a healthy sleep routine and getting a full 8 hours of the stuff is far superior to the actual hour one wakes up. Being a perimenopausal woman who sometimes averages 3 hours of sleep a night due to hot flashes and inflammatory muscle cramping, I found myself cursing Mr. Sharma for his lack of compassion for 50% of the population: women. Not to mention that he says it is imperative to get a full body massage EVERY WEEK. Umm…that could easily set a person back a couple of mortgage payments bro, even if you’re getting your rub-down at the local chi-gong place in the strip mall. Elitist much?

The things that worked for me and, in my humble opinion, were key takeaways were: The first hour of your day being devoted to YOU. Getting the blood flowing which releases endorphins, etc., and getting centered and expanding your mind are obvious bonuses that definitely serve you for the rest of your day. But, the time you actually awaken should be what suits you best and not falling prey to the “magic” around 5 a.m. which is the title track to Sharma’s playlist.

On The 5 Second Rule:

I have to begin with this by saying, I love Mel Robbins. I do. I discovered her through my cousin, a certified dermatologist and hair transplant specialist, who recommended that I listen to Mel’s podcast on menopause with special guest, Dr. Mary Clare Haver. This initiation changed my life after uncovering the untold truths about why women have been, and continue to, suffer under the now-debunked idea that HRT is bad for us. This led me to devour all of Mel’s podcasts and listen to the book/theory that put her on the map: The 5 Second Rule.

Now, I could listen to Mel everyday, all day, on any topic given. She is down-to-earth, she strives to understand the things she isn’t afraid to say she doesn’t understand and delivers content that is not only helpful to the masses, but shockingly, behind her crass voice and pushy tone, she’s wildly entertaining.

In summary, Mel was having MAJOR problems in her life where she and her husband were facing bankruptcy and her own career was in the tank. She drank too much, she was avoiding debt collectors and when the alarm clock rang each morning, she would hit snooze on repeat. One night before bed, she saw a space shuttle on television about to take off and the countdown began, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1…blast off”. She woke up the next morning and said that to herself to physically blast her out of bed and get to it. Then she applied this technique to all of the things she was supposed to do in a day but didn’t want to: “5,4,3,2,1…workout! 5,4,3,2,1…pay your bills! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…face every fear you ever had in your life, big and small, because 5,4,3,2,1-ing works for everything!”

The first morning I woke up after gleaning this nugget of knowledge, I found myself spitefully staying in bed. It was like I was daring the theory…wait, NO!, daring Mel herself to make me. I actually started doing less just to prove her wrong!??!! What the eff kind of sicko am I ?? The only person I was hurting by staying in bed, not working out and not taking a shower was myself. Mel Robbins doesn’t even know who the hell I am so it wasn’t affecting her in the least and now that she has a new book out called The ‘Let Them’ Theory (which I’m TOTALLY going to be listening to next on my “self-help” walks btw,) I can tell you with 100% confidence what she would say about my new non-action-taking-lifestyle: “Let her.”

Reflections On Both:

Now, to be fair, Mel backs up why her theory works with a LOT of verified psychological, neuro-scientific research data regarding our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems and pathological, generational trauma leading to our decision-making habits. Sharma doesn’t. He’s a billionaire..’nuff said. And who doesn’t want to be a billionaire right? What works for him will surely work for the rest of us which is why I, among millions of other people bought and read his book. Don’t ask me what a billionaire needs/wants to write a book for in the first place (coughs, “ego?”, coughs again), but I would have been fine reading a punch list of what the dude does minus the bogus storytelling. And then there’s Mel Robbins, with one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the world right now which would have never happened if she hadn’t hit rock-bottom, come up with The 5 Second Rule, did some epic public-speaking, and continues to support that podcast goldmine with more books and theories based on her tried-and-true, trusted advice.

Between the two, I left out a bunch of things that were suggested like eating Keto, intermittent fasting, 1000 push-ups, sleeping with your phone in another room, not looking at your phone first thing in the morning, more phone rejection, meditation, visualization, journaling,  whoa, whoa, whoa! That’s a lot ammi right?  But hey, give me a roadmap and I will follow the f*ck out of it…until…I hit a detour (ie stressful situation) and end up in a ditch (ie having wine and cookies for dinner). This is what happens to me every time I read a new self-help book: I try to do all the suggestions at once and after about a week or two, I have crashed and burned. Instead of gliding into a brand new life filled with rainbows and butterflies and money falling from trees, I am back to square one…and onto the next self-help book. Like I said…addict.

The one thing that I’ve implemented since we’ve packed up and moved to France are my morning self-help walks. And then it dawned on me that my self-help walks were doing the three main things the books were suggesting anyway: I was getting up early (albeit, not at 5 a.m.), and for an hour or more I was moving my body, I was reflecting/meditating, and learning something new...all at the same time! It was ONE thing I chose to change about my daily routine that stuck and the bi-products were the things that were ironically being suggested to do which created my own, completely unexpected epiphany: The Rule of One.

On The Rule of One:

I am not a billionaire, nor am I a certified life-coach with a booming career in public speaking…yet. But I would consider myself a self-appointed expert in self-help having read my own library’s-worth of books on the matter. And if you are anything like me, and I’m sure you are given you are a living, breathing human with either daddy or mommy issues, (thanks Freud), you too get easily overwhelmed by counting and doing all the things at once that everyone is blathering about that is supposed to make you your optimally functioning self. So why not just work on ONE F*CKING THING AT A TIME?! If it proves itself to be working for ONE week, stretch it to ONE month, and if it is still sticking by the end of ONE year, then you’ve deeply changed something in yourself for the better that has become a habit. Done. Life changed.

Example: You want look and feel healthier. Instead of dieting and exercising and counting macros and measuring your thighs, maybe just make the decision to…quit sugar for ONE week. See how it feels. I suggest keeping a journal to write down what kinds of things are changing for you on a day to day basis. But maybe THAT is even too much…see…there it is…two things at once: Journaling AND quitting sugar for a week. So maybe back it up, maybe just commit to journaling for ONE week. THEN take away the sugar for ONE week after that. Ya see what I’m getting at here? One…thing…at…a…time.

Over the course of a year, depending on the kind of personality you are, Type A or B or whatever labels they have for “Types” now, you will find that you actually DID change your life by making ONE simple change. Consistency is the key to any lasting results so when you take away the barriers that stop your flow, the river of change widens and those infinite possibilities become realities.

Y’all…I think I’m onto something. Can we say…TedX Talk? SXSW? World Domination Talks? Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday? Kripalu Center? Do you think Tony Robbins is ready to slide to the side for a woman named Lisa who’s about to disrupt his sixty million dollar annual income? Is The Rule of One about to clog YOUR Instagram feed with a purpose and a plan for YOUR life and also, upsell you on a Rule of One Journal + calendar? Where, if you make the conscious choice to stop doom scrolling over who might win or lose the election on Tuesday and click that link “right now”, the offer may also include a meditation candle and some personalized rudraksha beads with shipping and handling included in the price? Why not?! In the words of Hillel, the 1st century Jewish scholar and quite possibly one of the first self-help gurus, “If not now, then when? If not you, then who?” Fyi, he said that in response to an OG guru, Jesus Christ coming onto the scene. Now, If JC had an Instagram, I’m sure he’d be giving Taylor Swift a run for her money. Hmmm…I wonder if Taylor would “collab” with me on The Rule of One??

In Laughter,

Lisa

p.s. There would only be just one bead to the rudraksha beads because, that’s all you will need. Get it?
p.p.s. You might think I’m kidding about going BIG with the The Rule of One but I’m not. Or am I?

Recommended Reads/Listens:

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho (I just re-read this and it is ALWAYS relevant! Talk about a great story teller.)

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think (Great read by the young and wise, Brianna Wiest)

One of my favorite self-help authors and former therapist, Terri Cole, has two books out! Boundary Boss and her latest, Too Much: A Guide To Breaking The Cycle of High Functioning Co-Dependency. She’s the bomb.

Anything by Mel Robbins
Anything by Deepak Chopra
Anything by Eckhart Tolle
|Anything by Ram Dass
Anything by Alan Watts

Currently listening to The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

My next eyeball read will be Anne Lamott’s, Traveling Mercies. Thank you to my fellow Substacker, Sari Bottom, for the recommendation via her Oldster Substack.

Disclaimer:
This podcast/post is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I am not a licensed therapist, and this content is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.