Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the three-second rules to help you get over procrastination and hesitation. This is a simple rule where you just count to three and then you go. It’s simple but it might not be easy. I remember trying to jump off this cliff into a pool of water in Hawaii back in 2018, and it took me a while to jump off. But then finally someone else came up and wanted to jump as well and I didn’t want to see them jump before me so I went to the ledge and counted to three.
The free fall lasted like two seconds and it was fun. This is the same feeling when I have hesitation about asking for something I want. For example, reaching out to someone asking them to be one of their podcast or asking a girl out. As people, we don’t want to fail, but this new society that we live in is going to cause us to fail from time to time because we need to experiment with our lives.
I remember at my last job, we had to do a lot of cold calling leads and that phone could feel like 700 pounds at times. In my mind, I feel like I was bugging that person, but then I had to remember why. I’m doing this to help them out. But then I told myself that I would count to three and then I would do this activity. I know that people are not going to call me out of the blue and ask for my services because no one wakes up and says they need to get a financial plan. So I need to be the squeaky wheel that gets their attention. And I get their attention by reaching out to them, and the three-second rule is the jump start I need to get moving.
I use this rule all time. From getting out of bed, doing those last reps for my workouts, starting that first paragraph. And I believe by training my mind to follow the three-second rule, I’m rewiring my brain to take action. Like a dog who responds to the ringing bell. There was an experiment by Pavlov, who would ring a bell and then give a dog a treat. Pavlov kept this up for a while to the point where the dog would expect a treat every time a bell rang. So then after a month or so, Pavlov would ring the bell and he would notice that the dog would start salivating. The dog’s brain was rewired.
So I feel the same thing has happened to me and the three-second rule. I was overweight as a kid, and this caused me confidence issues. So talking to the opposite sex was hard for me for a very long time. Sometimes I still think I’m the overweight kid when I was younger. Now if I want to dance with a girl, I just do the three-second rule to go for the ask. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it does. I can’t control the outcome, I can only control the inputs. Then if it doesn’t work out, then I’ll just tell myself it’s not a good fit, and there are other people to ask. The same principle applies to business. Just tell yourself it’s not a good fit at this time and don’t burn the bridge because things can change down the road.
So ultimately the three-second rule is about taking action. And there is a really good quote that I reference all the time that says that the distance between your dreams and reality is called action. And whatever trick you need to help you take action, you should use it. And this is how we learn, by taking action. You can do a video for marketing, and it didn’t do very well, then the thing you should do next is to see what is the next move you should make, but only ponder for five minutes and then try something new. Don’t take a bad five minutes and apply it to the rest of your day. The best way to get over something to do something new. This applies to getting over your old partner. You don’t have to get into another relationship right away, but do something that is going to get your mind off that person and find joy in something else.
There are times when we don’t need to take action and just sit and ponder for a long time but I would say that is one day out of the month, one weekend out of the quarter, and one week out of the quarter. The rest of the time we should be taking action. We only have one life to live and it will be filled with more great memories and experiences if you go out in the world and take action.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, remember the three-second rule to help you start taking more action with your life. Just go one, two, three, go. And on go, you go. And just be okay with whatever outcome that happens. Just take it as a learning moment to get better. The outcome doesn’t define who you will be for the rest of your life. And if you don’t end well, try to figure what needs to be improved on the next round. Don’t let a bad experience hold you back, but if it does, then use the three-second rule to get you back on track and lower the stakes. Instead of going for the home run, just focus on taking practice swings. Then go for first base, then the double, then the triple, and then the home run. Just build up your skills and with enough action, things can get tremendously better. But you can’t get here if you don’t take action and the three-second rule can rewire your brain to take action. If there are more serious problems to be solved though, then please go see a professional help you out.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
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