Beyond the Time Barrier
As a coach, trainer, and speaker, Karen Briscoe is used to sharing her success tools. Inevitably, that means she’s also used to meeting with resistance. Karen noticed in her training and coaching sessions that people grew overwhelmed with information, so much so that it paralyzed them. She heard the same excuse, over and over: “I don’t have enough time.”
She mulled this reason over. We all have the same amount of time in a day, she thought. Of course, people have different responsibilities. Still, if we really think about it, we aren’t “on” every minute of every day.
To break down the time barrier, Karen began to ask people, Well, do you have five minutes a day?” Invariably, they would say yes. From this came her 5 Minute Sucess Concept.
Chunking, Focus, and Energy
Her book Commit to Get Leads: Success in 5 Minutes a Day is a business book formatted as a daily reader. As a commercial real estate agent, her concepts are based on real estate practices. However, the principles apply to everyone across professions. The “five-minute” component is because it takes about five minutes a day to read a page.
No matter your profession, the principle remains: We can change our lives if we reframe how we think about time. Instead of thinking about time in terms of minutes, Karen says, “It’s more a matter of focus and energy. It’s your energy, not your time, that’s a fundamental currency of high performance.” She cites Parkinson’s Law, which states that limiting or restricting time can help you become more effective and efficient. Ultimately, Karen says, when we say we don’t have enough time, what we’re saying is we don’t want to.
Surviving to Thriving
Still, Karen doesn’t want her 5 Minute Success Concept to be used to merely get through the day. “I want people to think beyond [surviving] to thriving,” she says. Even in times of extreme stress, it’s okay to dream of more than living day-to-day. Karen references Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a principle that claims that human beings have fundamental needs that, if not met, prevent us from operating at a higher level of consciousness. In her book Flip Time, Karen challenges us to “flip” the pyramid so that we prioritize Maslow’s highest tier: self-actualization.
Unlearning Limiting Beliefs
Karen helps people unpack their limiting beliefs about time because she knows that our perceptions of the world shape our realities in powerful ways. In college, Karen internalized the popular thought that women could only be either career women or housewives. Karen’s someone who gets tremendous personal fulfillment from her career, but she also wanted a family. She felt trapped. She chose to work part-time so she could start a family. Like many of us, she began to measure her life in milestones: When [x] happens, then I can finally do [y]. “I feel like I was in the calling I was supposed to be on, but I didn’t pursue it wholeheartedly,” Karen says. “I pursued it with a spirit of lack rather than abundance. Instead of seeing the good in what I was doing, I was always looking at what I wasn’t doing because I was doing that.” Unlearning these beliefs was It was difficult work but Karen managed to flip the script. Now, she pursues her life—All facets of her life—With a spirit of abundance.
Books mentioned in the episode (and added to The Brave Files Bookshelf!)
- Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey
- Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning
- Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
- Gretchen Rubin, Better than Before
- Bronnie Ware, Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Learn more about Karen
Karen Briscoe is a commercial realtor, coach, trainer, speaker, podcast host, and author. She is the creator of the 5 Minute Sucess Concept and host of the 5 Minute Sucess Podcast. She is also the creator of the 80 X 80 Movement, a support group that challenges us to “achieve eighty movement milestones by age eighty.” You can follow Karen on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
