update laravel 5.0 to 5.1 on a server with php below 7

(apologies in advance due to lack of communication skills, English is not my first language ) Hello everyone, I am running a laravel 5.0 app and i am planning to upgrade to 5.1 to gradually get to 5.4, i'm using an Arvixe server with SSH, CPanel and WHM access i know 5.1 needs PHP 5.6.30 to run and right now my application is running with php 7.0 but in order to do it i had to change in Cpanel the php selector to PHP 7 because by default PHP 5.4 was in place and now when i try to update my app is telling me that php version is below requirements i even try to install laravel 5.1 from 0 and i am getting the same error, is that and indication that my server has only PHP 5.4 and is so how i was able to change the PHP selector to 7??? what i can do to update my app??

via Chebli Mohamed