The 5-Day Challenge Will Land You Somewhere New

Five days hence. That’s a pregnant pause.  In five days you can face and conquer big challenges, and change your life, big time. Don’t believe me? Think of times in your life when just five days brought about a new perspective – the first five days with a newborn… the five days after a meaningful death… the first five days of a diet… your first five days in a a new city.

The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted five days in 1962. JFK faced off with Nikita Khrushchev and managed to broker a peace that prevented nuclear war between superpowers. As the whole world watched, politics and power was irrevocably changed.

There’s a reason 5 days can have such an impact. Our brains only temporize for three days. For three days we hold on to our old idea of who we are, and resist change. On the fourth day, we begin to accept a new possibility. There’s language for “today, tomorrow, and the next day.” For the fourth day, there is no standard phrase. This is true in all human languages, bec by the fourth day, our brains shift and begin to accept the new reality. We are no longer temporarily trying out this new persona or idea, it is becoming who we are. Five days is enough time to establish a new sense of yourself, and bring your needy little ego into support of this new identity.

In five days, resistance subsides. Ego lines up in support of the new concepts, new expectations, the new sense of self.

5-Day Write Without the Fight Challenge

My interest in the five day shift is of course, the FREE 5-day challenge which begins MONDAY, MAY 10th! And I want to you to see and believe that your writing life can change in just 5 days.

Who might you become in five days? What differences might you see in your habits, attitudes, skills and… writing?

I’m sharing some emails and messages I’ve received from participants – anonymously. Aside from the 100 fervent thank-yous I receive at the end of the five days, many report their personal shift toward writing… and I’m always grateful to hear from you all. Five days later, these writers felt changed.

 

  • Do you know how much happier I am since I started your class? My therapist says it shows all over me. I’ve gotten back in touch with who I am. I’ve reconnected to my vision.

 

  • Julia, I’m still writing from the last 5-day challenge – living off it, actually. thank you so much.

 

  • I’m so grateful to you for offering this material and for answering my many questions in the facebook live sessions! What I learned about myself and about the creative thinking cycle helped me understand why I struggle with certain phases of creativity, and the tools you shared are helping me make progress in places I was stuck. This has been a big step in understanding and working with my particular creative style. Thank you so much!

 

  • One of the important insights I got from the challenge was how our brains are like engines. They need to shift from one gear to the next, and when they don’t, that’s when we get stuck. Imagine if everywhere you drove, you were always in first gear. It would take forever to reach your destination! This is why it can take forever to complete a manuscript.

Long and short, if you haven’t signed up yet, go here. If you’re coming, don’t miss the first (or second or third, fourth or fifth) days.

Details

Each day at 12 noon PACIFIC TIME, I’ll go live in our FB group, and begin teaching the material for about an hour. You’ll learn about how the creative mind works, why we get stuck in general, and how you personally might get stuck – and by Thursday and Friday, we’re learning how to prevent that, and get back on track.

During the FB Live, we interact. There’s opportunity to consider your own thinking skills, and ask questions if you would like a sounding board for your new ideas or assumptions. You’ll learn the scientific language for how the creative mind works, and theories as to why it sometimes doesn’t.

If you cannot attend the FB Lives, each day at 5:30 PT, I’ll post a shorter recap – no interaction, just a video of the material. You can still ask questions on the FB post.

Homework and prizes daily. For each of you who does the homework, and is in class when I announce the winner, you have a daily chance to win a nice asset toward understanding and managing your creativity better. I’ve been highlighting the HW prizes all this week – next week, you might be selected at random to win your very own.

Happy Mother’s Day!

It’s Mother’s Day, my friends. Many of us are mothers; most of us have mothers, living and dead to honor today. So, please enjoy your flowers, messy breakfasts in bed, a picnic with sisters and children. Safely, of course.

And be ready tomorrow to serve your own creativity and ambition. Yes you deserve adulation as a mother, but you deserve to write, and write without the fight, too. Mothers do so much for their families, they forget to do for themselves. What will you do for yourself in the next five days?

See you tomorrow! If you’re registered, you’ll get reminder emails.

“Happy Mother’s Day Mom!” by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0