I had a discussion the other day with another coach, Phoenix Amber, about what she called the 5×5 rule.
If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes worrying about it.
It stuck me as a very powerful mindset. But there is also room for a potentially dangerous misunderstanding. Let me explain.
My take on the 5×5 rule is that almost nothing that happens in our personal worlds today matters 5 years from now. If the business collapses, the marriage breaks down, even a life changing accident — in 5 years it will be a distant memory and we will have adapted, grown and evolved into something completely new.
So there is great wisdom in not worrying about things for more than 5 minutes, because if you’re not going to be worried about it in the future, why worry about it now?
Worry is often described as an unhelpful state of affairs, because there is no action in worrying, and worrying about something has never changed anything.
And yet, for some of us, we spend a lot of our time worrying -either about things over which we have no control — the weather, traffic, etc. etc., or even worse about things that we DO have control over.
The truth is that while this event might feel overwhelming, and the sadness, anger, fear, and doubt seem like they will last forever, they won’t.
We think we are experiencing ‘reality’, concrete and factual, but really we live in the experience of our thinking. And whatever situation we are in, it is our thinking that causes us distress, much more than the situation itself.
And the thing is, thoughts come and go as they please.
Tomorrow, or next week, or next year, you will start to feel different. In 5 years time, none of it is an issue anymore, so from this standpoint, it makes total sense.
There’s no point in worrying about anything.
But there is a flip side to this in my mind, which is that there is a subtext that says ‘feeling is bad’.
If we shouldn’t ever worry about anything for more than 5 minutes, does that mean we are not allowed to feel bad, ever? If I feel sadness, shame, anger, should I squash those feelings down and just be happy?
Absolutely not.
Our feelings are our body’s way of communicating with us, and trying to suppress them is like trying to keep a beach ball under water.
You can do it, but it takes constant effort and ultimately, the beach ball is going to find its way to the surface, and it’s going to make a big splash when it does.
What happens if we can allow the feelings to be present, and make time to actually feel them? (which will require more than 5 minutes by the way)
If we can listen to the body, feel the sadness, the rage, the fear, without judgement and without worrying that it will last forever, or worrying that it makes us weak, stupid, or a failure (spoiler alert — it doesn’t), then we allow the beach ball to sit on the surface of the water.
Here, the beach ball has much less energy. It can float there quite happily without any energy from you. Once you allow the beachball to be, you can walk away from it. In the same way, the feelings will pass in due course.
So to bring this back to the 5×5. There is danger of misinterpretation, and as I come to the end of this little piece, I realise the point I’m trying to make.
WORRYING is in the mind. FEELING is in the body.
‘Worrying’ will get you nowhere. It’s an endless loop of thoughts that accelerates exponentially into catastrophizing, worst-case-scenario-ing, and certain impending doom.
But when you sense those worrying thoughts, see if you can take a pause. Examine what those feelings actually are, and allow them to be, without judgement. And see how quickly the feelings pass.
This only takes a few minutes. Try it. The feelings, like thoughts, will run their course, and you will feel a wave of relief.