The High Five Habit

Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live love, make money and change the world.

Tracey:

Hey, I’m glad you’re here. I want to talk today about a book that I haven’t read yet, and I’ve held off because I wanted to read the book and I haven’t read it yet. I kind of beat myself up a little bit. You can’t talk about a book you haven’t read. Yeah, I can because the concept can still be really helpful. So we’re going to talk about the book that I haven’t read, and that’s perfectly okay.

Now, I don’t know if you know Mel Robbins. She is, like, the highest paid, most in demand female speaker around these days. She’s a leader in personal development. She’s trained and practiced as a lawyer. She’s got a lot of books out. She even had a talk show. She’s the big stuff, right? So her first book, you might have heard of her first book. It was The Five Second Rule. It was this really quick way to dive into your motivation. You’re stuck doing something or not doing something. You just count 5-4-3-2-1 and do it- just boom right into it. So it’s kind of how she catapulted into the limelight with that.

Her latest book, I’ve heard her talk about it in her social media, and I’ve listened to a couple of podcast episodes that she’s been on- her latest book is called The High Five Habit. And I love this concept.

So here it is. And it’s deceptively simple. It is so simple that you are quite likely to not do it because it’s too simple. Now ask me how I know that. How do I know it? Because I’ve spent the last week not doing it. I’ve spent more time arguing with myself that it’s too easy. It’s not going to make a difference. I spent more time arguing with myself that I could have done the high five, oh, I don’t know, 100 times in the time I’ve spent arguing with myself that it’s just too easy.

What is it with this way of thinking that we think something really has got to be hard to make a difference? No, not really. It can be really simple to make a difference.

Now, it’s also easy to forget to do it. We’re creatures of habit, and it’s not part of our habit yet. So she’s got a neat way of building that in.

So what is the High Five habit? You’re going to do this first thing in the morning when you walk into your bathroom and we’re going to assume that you walk into your bathroom first thing and that your bathroom has a mirror. Okay, when you come into your bathroom and you brush your teeth in the morning, what are you going to do? You brush your teeth, put your toothbrush down and then you’re going to look at yourself in the mirror and you’re going to take a moment. And when you feel ready, you’re going to raise your hand and you’re going to high five yourself in the mirror. That is it. See, it’s so simple and it’s easy to go. It is so simple. There is no way that that’s going to make any difference in the world(you think).

Well, let’s talk about what’s going on with it. Now, first of all, when most people come into a bathroom and you go to look in the mirror, there’s a couple of different reactions that most of us have. One, you might look in the mirror and go, “Good golly, look at those bags and those dark circles under my eyes.” You just start bashing yourself and haranguing yourself for everything that’s not good with you and who looks fabulous first thing in the morning? Probably nobody.

Now another reaction is you may just never look in the mirror because you don’t want to see yourself looking back at you or you just kind of tune out. I know you’re there. You just don’t really connect with the reflection in the mirror. So there’s some different responses going on when you’re looking in the mirror.

What happens for so many of us is whether we’re looking, no matter how we’re looking at ourselves in the mirror, we’ve got this internal dialogue going on, and it’s not always really good things that we’re saying. We’re honing in on the dark circles under our eyes and beating ourselves up because we got a late start to the morning or reciting all the things that we haven’t gotten done yet and the things we’ve still got to do. And you’re going through that mental list of all the stuff. It’s the rare person who walks in, looks at themselves in the mirror and says, “Wow, you look great today. This is going to be a fabulous day. This is wonderful.”

We just don’t start with giving ourselves support, but if we can start our day by affirming ourselves and valuing ourselves, think about the path that puts your feet on to start your day instead of going down the path of, “This is disastrous. And I’m already so far behind and, oh, good golly look at you.”

Instead of that path, stopping to look at yourself in the mirror and literally give yourself a high five puts you on the path of self acceptance. Self acceptance is such a better path than self rejection. And what Mel is tapping into with this super simple high five, you’re tapping into things that are already built into your brain. The neurological, physiological, chemical pathways are already there to help you feel better about yourself because you think about it- wherever you are, if it’s not too weird, you can do it. Lift your hand up, just raise your arm. We do this to wave at somebody. We do this when we’re going to high five. We do this, too, as a sign of victory. Think about when you’re celebrating- your hands go up in the air. Yay. It’s this kind of instinctive human physiological reaction of you raise your arms and it just sets your brain down a different pathway.

So that’s one thing that’s happening. That just by giving yourself that high five, you start some good things happening in your brain. By that simple, simple reaction, you’re capitalizing on associations and pathways that already exist. So you’re not having to train your brain. You’re not having to do these affirmations. And by the way, when she says to do the high five, she says to just do the high five. Don’t feel like you’ve got to go down this road of reciting all the good things about you and all the affirmations and your mantras and positive statements and all that kind of stuff. Don’t even worry about it.

Just give yourself a high five. Look in the mirror, make eye contact with the person in the mirror, and acknowledge yourself for you.

See, that’s the other thing that I think is so beautiful and so impactful about looking in the mirror and really seeing yourself. When you think of yourself, do you really think of yourself as a person, as a human being? This is your time to really see you. And your brain is going to see what you’re doing, that you’re really seeing you and your brain is going to go, ”This is the person we need to support, brain. This is the person we high five.”

Super stuff. And it’s so simple. That’s the part I love about it. That it’s simple. You just got to get over that “It’s too simple. It won’t work.” It really will.

Another thing that she does well with this is habit stacking. I mentioned it’s so simple and so easy. It’s easy to forget to do it. Well, put a little Post It note up on your mirror. You don’t even have to write anything on it. You just stick the note up on your mirror and that can be the trigger. But do it immediately after you brush your teeth. And she talks about, get the gunk out of your mouth, get the gunk out of your brain. Here’s what you’re doing- you’re tying it to a habit that you already have.

One last thing I’ll mention. This high five isn’t a reward. It’s not based on, oh, you get to high five yourself because you did something fabulous. No, because so often we get tied up in thinking we’re worthy because we’ve done something. You’re worthy because you ARE.

You’re high fiving yourself because you’re you. You get to do this for what you’re being, who you’re being. You’re being you.

I have started today high fiving myself. First thing in the morning when I brushed my teeth, I look in the mirror, really see myself and high five myself.

Now she’s got a high five challenge that I think it’s like a five days straight challenge. I’ll link to it in the show notes. If you want to do it, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have already participated so you can join in and talk with them. But I’m doing it, and I’d love to hear from you if you decide to do this and what difference it makes. She says that she has yet to hear from somebody who has done the challenge for five days who hasn’t experienced something positive from it. It doesn’t surprise me because it’s powerful. It’s effective, and it’s simple.

Here’s my high five to you! High five yourself. Now, let’s go live, love, make some money and change the world.

https://www.high5habit.com/

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.