Every battle is won or lost in the mind. And these battles are comprised daily of five second windows, which determine victory or defeat. The first time I heard this concept was when I was listening to some motivational videos on YouTube. I heard a woman speaking, whom I didn't realize at the time was Mel Robbins, a motivational speaker and author of, "The Five Second Rule". (The first time she released this five-second secret of her success, the video went viral.)

On this video I was listening to she was sharing her "come to" moment. She said she was laying in bed, depressed and wondering how at the age of 41-years-old had her life come to this? She was unemployed, bankrupt, there was a lien on her house and she had just had another big fight with her husband the night before.

For the last three months she had hit the snooze button every morning. She did not want to get up to face her life.

Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever hit the snooze button for like an hour, or more, because you just didn't want to face the reality of your life? I know I have. In fact, I've been doing it a lot lately, and it's really started to irritate me. In fact, there's a number of things in my life right now that are irritating me, things that are nagging at my conscious, or more like screaming at me, "You are better than this."

So maybe the reason why this woman talking about the five-second rule really hit home, was because I could relate to her story. How many mornings had I been hitting the snooze button for the very same reasons? Every morning awoke me saying, "You're living below your potential", and who wants to hear that, right? No one.

But sometimes we have to face the truth about our lives. And the truth about the matter is that the only person who can do something about that is me. And you of course, if you want to join me on this 90 day, five-second journey I am going to be going on.

I am going to sit down, today, not tomorrow, not next week because we all know how that goes, (next week turns into five years that disappears like that) and I am going to make a list of the things that I want to change in my life and I'm going to apply the five-second rule to each of these areas and I'm going to see what my life looks like in 90 days.

So what is the five second rule? Mel said the night before her whole life changed she saw a NASA shuttle launch off. For whatever reason she looked at it and said, "That's it. I'm going to launch myself." So the next morning she decided to launch herself out of bed instead of hitting the snooze button. The next morning when her alarm went off she said out loud,

"Five...four...three...two...one..."

And for the first time in three months she didn't hit the snooze button, and she was shocked. So the next morning she did the same thing,

"Five...four...three...two...one..."

And the same thing happened. She got right out of bed. And just with that little five-second decision she started to feel better. She started having more confidence in herself because she did what she said she was going to do.

And so she figured if she could feel better just by getting up earlier, she would decide to apply this five-second rule to other things in her life and see what happened. If there was a phone call she had been avoiding, she would do her countdown and then make the phone call. At this time in her life she had also picked up a drinking habit, so whenever she would want to take a drink she would do her five-second count down and then make a decision to do something instead of drinking.

Eventually she started applying this five-second count down to everything in her life, and before she knew it her entire life had changed. She is now one of the most sought after motivational speakers, but it started with making five-second choices every day, all day long.

Five-second decisions are key to changing your life. The longer you let a thought permeate in your mind the more likely you are to act on it. There's a saying:

Watch your thoughts for they become words.

Watch your words for they become actions.

Watch your actions for they become habits.

Watch your habits for they become character.

Watch your character for it becomes your destiny.

No one thinks of ruining their life in five-second decisions, but essentially we do. I heard someone once say, "You're getting screwed by your life because you keep thinking today is inconsequential." Think about it. Each day we make a series of small, five-second decisions that eventually create our lives.

Every morning that you wake up and make a vow to exercise and eat healthy and instead of going to the gym you plop down in front of the TV or grab a bag of chips instead of eating a salad, you are creating a pattern in your brain that makes it easier to take the path of least resistance the next day.

You think about making those sales calls, but then you hesitate and think about the objections and so you put off making those calls until later. Then later becomes tomorrow and then tomorrow becomes Thursday. Then you get your paycheck and it's not want you wanted because you allowed that hesitation in your mind to create procrastination, which then becomes a lazy work ethic.

We think about calling someone to tell them we love them or mend a broken relationship, but then we think about it and tell ourselves they'll reject us or we begin to think about all the things they've done to hurt us and so we talk ourselves out of it.

We think about taking a leap of faith in a business or a dream, and then we pause. What if I fail? And so we never step out and chase our dreams, and then we die with all this unfulfilled potential and dead dreams because we fail to fully grasp the power of these five-second decisions that we make every day.

Every time we refuse to do the right thing, we increase our disposition to do the wrong thing. Most people don't ruin their life in one singular, five-second decision, however its daily decisions they make day after day that leads up to them making a five-second decision that eventually ruins their life.

Every week I work with men in prison who are serving life sentences and decades in prison from five-second decisions that altered the course of their lives. And while most of us will never end up in prison, there are many who are mental prisoners of their lives. They are trapped in obese bodies from choosing to eat the wrong foods each day. There are those trapped in depression from thinking the wrong thoughts. There are those whose life took a detour from a split decision to have a one-night rendezvous.

Every time we make a decision to do something we are making a decision not to do something else. We need to alter the way we think about our instantaneous thoughts and before we act we need to do a mental pause; a five...four...three...two...one... countdown.

Before we hit the snooze button, before we shove some cake in our face, before we get in front of the TV or on social media, before we get into a relationship, we need to start asking ourselves this five-second question. "How am I going to feel after making this decision? Is it leading me closer to or farther away from my goals?"

The more we begin to practice this and train our minds to instantaneously make split decisions to do the right thing, before we know it, it will become second nature. Bad habits will give way to good habits. They say it only takes 30 days to form or break a habit.

Like weight training, the more we do it, the stronger our minds will become. We will train them to endure mental toughness. No longer will we only do the easy stuff or the stuff we want to do. It will become second nature to say yes to the hard stuff and we will condition our minds to push through things we don't want to do. Then before we know it, our whole lives have changed.

Because the truth of the matter is this - no one is coming to save your butt! If you are waiting for a savior to come and make your life wonderful, you're going to be waiting a long time. The only way your life is going to change, is if you make the decision to change it.

So, I am inviting you to join me on this five-second, 90-day challenge. Starting today I am going to be aware of all the five-second decisions I am making that are preventing me from living the life that I know I was meant to live.

I am going to keep a journal for the next 90 days and on March 18, 2019 I will report back to you how my life has changed by applying this five-second rule. I believe my life is going to look totally different. How about you?

So I have made a five-second decision to be accountable by posting this on social media. If you want to go on this journey with me to change your life as well then post it below, mark your calendar for March 18th of next year, and then meet me back here in 90 days to tell me about your transformation!