I love learning lessons that show themselves in my life almost immediately. One of those lessons, for me, has been the 5-Minute Rule.
The 5-Minute Rule essentially says:
“If it won’t matter in five years, don’t think about it for more than five minutes.”
Far too many people allow their day to control them instead of the other way around. If something negative happens – even something small – they let it destroy the rest of their day or even their week.
Some things do require a lot of attention. If it’s important enough to matter five years from now, then it’s something you need to address.
But the truth is, most things aren’t going to matter in five years. So why do we give them so much of our attention? Why do we let them steal so much of our happiness?
Here are a few reasons why you should not allow things that won’t matter in five years affect you for more than five minutes.
Before I do, I just wanted to let you know that I covered this topic on episode #164 of the Build Your Network Podcast – so if you’d prefer to listen than read this article, CLICK HERE to check that out now. If you’d rather read – keep scrolling!
It emphasizes the bad instead of the good.
All of us have confirmation bias. It is a psychological term that means we are going to look for evidence to support what we already believe.
If I lean a certain way politically, then I’m going to do research online that further substantiates the things that I already believe to be true. I’m typically not going to go looking for the other argument now.
Confirmation bias comes into play when it comes to how we perceive our everyday life. The more you focus on the bad that happens in your life, the more you will be looking for bad things to happen, and the more you’ll attract more bad things to happen.
It’s a waste of time.
If nothing can be done, one of the most useless things you can do is dwell on it.
When we were in New Zealand in 2017, my wife had her wallet – filled with $500 in cash – stolen.
Was it ideal? No.
Would I have wanted that to happen? No.
But the bottom line is, in five years, will that five hundred bucks matter to me? No, it won’t. After we looked for a bit and determined it was a lost cause, we moved on.
We took five minutes to be upset about losing the money, but after that, it didn’t matter.
Many people let unfortunate circumstances like that shape the way that they feel. They dwell on it for the next day, week, or even month. And the more negative stuff that happens, the more they focus on it.
It makes you unproductive.
The real harm does not come from the small, negative things happening to you. Actual destruction comes from when we allow it to slow us down — the lack of productive time that we would spend doing things that would make us more money. The lack of time we would contribute to increase our knowledge base or learn something that is going to have a significant ROI in the future.
Losing those things could mean missing out on thousands of dollars, but we’re so focused on losing five hundred bucks we don’t even notice.
Whenever something like that happens, the only thing that you’re thinking of is how upset you are. That’s the thing that floods your mind immediately. It is undeniably challenging to remain unaffected in the moment, so I’ll give you three things that help me in those situations.
The first thing is, take the full five minutes. It’s not a contest to see how little you can think about things that upset you. Take the full five minutes and be upset about it. But as soon as the five minutes are up, here are a couple of things to do immediately.
- BE GRATEFUL. The emotion that makes all other emotions go away is to sit there and be grateful. Think about all the things that are going well in your life. Think about all the blessings that you have and meditate on those things for a little while. When I was over in New Zealand and lost that money, I sat there and thought about how grateful I was to be in New Zealand. I had an opportunity that not a lot of people have had.
- LISTEN TO SOMETHING THAT ENCOURAGES YOU. I recommend having a pump-up playlist in your music app. Whether it’s Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon – whatever you use – have a playlist with uplifting, encouraging music that you can listen to during downtimes. If that’s not your thing, tune into a podcast. Listen to Build Your Network or any of the other podcasts that you have queued up in your library. Keep something downloaded like an audiobook.
- DON’T GO ON SOCIAL MEDIA IMMEDIATELY. Don’t go on Facebook immediately. Don’t go on Instagram immediately. Don’t go to social media sites where there is the potential for negativity. Don’t open your email inbox to try to stay busy. Do things that proactively take care of the feelings at hand.
Always remember the 5-Minute Rule. Attempt to incorporate it into every aspect of your life. If it’s not going to matter five years from now, don’t spend more than five minutes thinking about it. Instead, spend those five minutes wisely and use them to your full advantage.
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