TED Talks

Discovering Mel Robbins: a summary of her message and her 5 Second Rule

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I recently discovered Mel Robbins on Instagram. She puts out great Instagram content such as:

I thought at first that she was Tony Robbins’s wife. But she’s not. Imagine those guys as a motivational power couple!

I’ve watched her great TEDx talk:

and her interview on Lewis Howes’s podcast:

Here is my summary of her message.

  • There is a gap between what you know you should do and actually doing that.
  • Motivation is not enough. Most of the time you won’t feel motivated to do what you don’t want to do.
  • The way around this is to make use of your basal ganglia which manages habit and unconscious action. eg for an example of unconscious action, think about when you put on your trousers in the morning. You just do it and if you thought now about which leg you put in first, you would have no idea!
  • To activate the basal ganglia, don’t let your prefrontal cortex and natural desire for comfort to hijack you. Instead use the 5 second rule.
  • Whenever you are going to procrastinate, you just count backwards from 5 and by 1 you’ve started doing what you’re wanted to do but were too lazy/scared to do. Eg if you want to start getting out of bed, you can’t just say ‘I’m going to start getting out of bed early’, because in all likelihood, if that’s not your habit, then you’re not going to do that. If instead you count down from 5 to 1 as you’re deciding to get out of bed as soon as you first wake up, then you’re more likely to get up.
  • Nobody is coming to save you. Don’t wait for that raise, starting that podcast, starting that business etc. Nobody is going to magically come and do this for you. You need to do this yourself. Help yourself.

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Should we self-censor what we consume?

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When I was at uni, I took an Aesthetics class. The Philosophy of Art. I don’t remember much from that course except for a couple of essays on Plato and Tolstoy.

Plato was keen that when educating the young men of his Republic that their art be censored and that the youth should only consume art that promoted nobility. So poetry shouldn’t be about loucheness and hedonism, rather they should be about promoting bravery in battle and moral uprightness.

I was reminded of this recently after binge watching a series of Mindhunter on Netflix, a show about the FBI’s profiling of serial killers in the 1970s. This is show that goes deep into the minds and motivations of deeply disturbed people, and it’s very entertaining and very compelling. We watched this off the back of Unabomber, another Netflix show, this time about the hunt for another serial killer, Ted Kaczynski. Again very entertaining and compelling.

The question I had was: “is this type of show good for me? Is it making me a better human?”

You might say “lighten up mate, it’s just a show”.

But is it just a show? Say that you watch 2 of these series. That’s nearly 20 hours of dark subject matter. Are we really saying that this has no effect on your brain, on your neural pathways? By exposing yourself to the fetishes of psychopaths, is your own mind becoming corrupted or infected? What are you consuming to offset this? What positive, elevating content are you consuming to counteract this negativity?

Let’s look at what Plato might recommend for our viewing consumption.

Say you watch one hour of TV a day after work. Instead of Netflix, imagine that for one month you watched TED Talks. A TED Talk is around 15 mins, so that’s 4 TED Talks a day. That’s 120 TED Talks a month. How much more elevated do you think you’d be on this diet as opposed to on just consuming Netflix?

We can do the same with our other channels of consumption. Take Instagram. If you wanted to lose weight, replace the photos of burgers and huge pizzas with buddha bowls and salads. Make your feed one that is congruent with your overall goals.

Maybe Plato was right. Censor what you consume for the better.

What you can learn from Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk – Your body language shapes who you are

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This TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on how deeply your body language affects you is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time.

Summary

Professor Cuddy demonstrates just how closely linked the physical is with the psychological.

We heard of psychosomatic, where your mind can influence your body, eg when anxiety affects your bodily health.

Cuddy explains how our body language affects our mental states, i.e. the reverse is also true.

For example, if you’re hunched over, with your shoulders rolled forward, looking down at the ground, it’s likely that you’re in a nervous state of mind.

Now exaggerate the opposite posture. Sit back, lean backwards, open up your chest, breathe deeply and you’re likely now feeling more relaxed, less anxious and more at ease.

We can exaggerate this further.

There’s a universal pose for victory and feeling victorious. Studies show that even those unable to see make this pose.

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Try this pose for 30 seconds. Really lean back and feel the victory.

How do you feel now? Pretty good I bet!

The causation flows both ways. Feeling powerful makes you more likely to exhibit powerful poses.

But interestingly, posing powerfully can make you feel more powerful!

What can we learn from Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on Body Language?

Immediate applications

If you’re an anxious person or lacking in confidence, this has the potential to change your life.

You know now that your body can genuinely influence how you feel.

This gives you a framework and a toolkit to almost instantly change your mental state.

So before an interview, go to the bathroom and power pose. Do a few minutes of the victory pose.

In the interview itself, recognise that at the bare minimum, how you sit has consequences.

If you’re hunched over and making yourself feel small, that’s how you’re going to feel and this will translate to the interviewer.

Similarly, without going overboard, sit in a powerful way. Legs apart, head up, shoulders and back square.

If you get nervous on dates, do the same. Stop yourself fidgeting, looking at your hands, and guard against a slumping posture.

In general, try being mindful of your posture and how you hold your body.

I have quite bad posture.

When I’m sitting at my desk, I tend to hunch forward. I don’t hold my head up. I lean on my left elbow.

Whilst cooking today, I realised that my posture was poor. I corrected it immediately but it’s amazing how quickly I regressed to poor posture.

Catch yourself during the day.

How are you sitting or standing now? Could your posture be better? Improve it now!

Reinforces just how linked mind and body are

There are plenty of recent books that deepen our understanding of how the body and mind work together (or against each other).

For example, see Coates’ The Hour Between Dog and Wolf for how physical hormonal states such as testosterone and cortisol affect our mental states.

Cuddy’s findings on body language might just be the tip of the iceberg.

In the same way that power poses encourage powerful feelings, imagine what the associated body language is for feeling relaxed, or for feeling creative, or feeling joyful?

Learn more

Check out the TED page for this talk.

Here’s Amy Cuddy’s HBS profile.

What I learnt from Simon Sinek’s TED Talk – ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’

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This video by Simon Sinek will change how you see the world.

In this TED talk, Sinek says most of the time we fail to start with the Why.

Instead, he argues in general that, we start with the What, then the How, then the Why.

To resonate with people, however, we need to start with the Why. This is the part that appeals to the ‘feeling’ part of the brain. Not the rational, logical part, but the emotional part.

Sinek applies this to marketing, such as when explaining Apple appeals to consumers more than Dell. Both sell great computers (the What). Both sell the How. But only Apple truly sells the Why.

golden-circle

Sinek argues that Apple found their raison d’etre and started from there. They sold the counterculture, the rebellion, the attack on the status quo and that’s what consumers bought into. They bought why Apple existed before they were convinced about Apple’s products.

They bought the Why before anything else.

What’s the reason for this?

Sinek argues that the Why and the How relate to different parts of the brain than the What does.

The What resides in the neo-cortex whilst the How and the Why live in the limbic part of the brain.

The Limbic brain is where we feel things and is the emotional centre of our brains.

Apple then, in Sinek’s example, appeals to this deeper emotional core of our brains and perhaps this is why Apple have such loyal fans.

It’s beyond reasons such as product features, specifications etc.

People love Apple because of Why they do what they do.

What can we learn from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why?

There are lots of potential applications across a wide variety of areas.

Marketing

It has immediate applications in marketing.

Sinek’s example of why Apple resonates more than Dell with consumers is compelling.

If you’re marketing your company, product or service, what is your Why?

Why do you or your product exist?

If the answer to make people’s lives better, then that will be apparent in your product.

If it’s purely for profits at the expense of the customer, then this will shine through too.

A great example in the UK is a company called Green Energy.

Green Energy supplies energy in a sustainable way.

They want to change the world. That’s Why they do what they do.

It’s a compelling why and this shines through.

I was persuaded to use them because I wanted to be more green and it didn’t really cost me more than using other suppliers.

I also liked that they were different to other