The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
“Do not allow your fire to go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.” —Ayn Rand
Instead, do work that is heroic—that staggers your marketplace by the quality of its originality as well as from the helpfulness it provides. While you do so, my recommendation is that you also create a private life strong in ethics, rich with marvelous beauty and unyielding when it comes to the protection of your inner peace.
“Do not live as if you have ten thousand years left. Your fate hangs over you. While you are still living, while you still exist on this Earth, strive to become a genuinely great person.” —Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor
Theodore Roosevelt: “It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
In a culture of cyber-zombies, addicted to distraction and afflicted with interruption, the wisest way to guarantee that you consistently produce mastery-level results in the most important areas of your professional and personal life is to install a world-class morning routine. Winning starts at your beginning. And your first hours are when heroes are made. Wage a war against weakness and launch a campaign against fearfulness. You truly can get up early. And doing so is a necessity in your awesome pursuit toward legendary. Take excellent care of the front end of your day, and the rest of your day will pretty much take care of itself. Own your morning. Elevate your life.
Rising at 5 AM truly is The Mother of All Routines. Joining The 5 AM Club is the one behavior that raises every other human behavior. This regimen is the ultimate needle mover to turn you into an undefeatable model of possibility. The way you begin your day really does determine the extent of focus, energy, excitement and excellence you bring to it. Each early morning is a page in the story that becomes your legacy. Each new dawn is a fresh chance to unleash your brilliance, unprison your potency and play in the big leagues of iconic results. You have such power within you and it reveals itself most with the first rays of daybreak. Please do not allow past pains and present frustrations to diminish your glory, stifle your invincibility and choke the unlimited possibilitarian that lurks within the supreme part of you. In a world that seeks to keep you down, build yourself up. In an epoch that wishes you would stay in the dark, step into your light. At a time that mesmerizes you to forget your gifts, reclaim your genius. Our world requires this of each of us. To be champions of our crafts, warriors for our growth and guardians of unconditional love—for all of humankind. Display respect and compassion for all other people who occupy this tiny planet, regardless of their creed, color or caste. Lift them up in a civilization where many get energy tearing others down. Help others sense the marvels that sleep within them. Show us the virtues we all wish more would practice. Everything I’m saying will speak to the unspoiled part of you, that side of yourself that was ferociously alive before you were taught to fear, hoard, contract and distrust. It’s your job as a hero of your life, as a creative achiever set to change the culture and as a citizen of Earth to find this dimension within you. And, once done, to spend the rest of your days reconnected with it. Accept this opportunity to human mastery and I promise you that a synchronicity of success as well as an orchestrated magic well beyond the boundaries of logic will infuse the remainder of your days. And the larger angels of your grandest potential will begin to visit you regularly. Actually, an orderly series of seemingly impossible miracles will descend onto your most genuine of dreams, causing the best of them to come true. And you will evolve into one of those rare and great spirits who upgrade the whole world by the simple act of walking amongst us.
Nearly every morning, I envision my ideal performance for the day ahead. I also reach deep into my emotions so I feel what it will feel like when I achieve the wins I’ve planned to accomplish. I lock myself into an extremely confident state where any form of failure isn’t within the realm of possibility. Then I go out and do my finest to live out that perfect day.”
“This is just one of the SOPs I run daily to stay on peak. Good science is confirming that this practice helps me upregulate my genome by turning on genes that were previously asleep. Your DNA isn’t your destiny, you know.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” —Steve Jobs
RULE #1 An addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production. Empire-makers and history-creators take one hour for themselves before dawn, in the serenity that lies beyond the clutches of complexity, to prepare themselves for a world-class day. RULE #2 Excuses breed no genius. Just because you haven’t installed the early-rising habit before doesn’t mean you can’t do it now. Release your rationalizations and remember that small daily improvements, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results. RULE #3 All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. Everything you now find easy you first found difficult. With consistent practice, getting up with the sun will become your new normal. And automatic. RULE #4 To have the results The Top 5% of producers have, you must start doing what 95% of people are unwilling to do. As you start to live like this, the majority will call you crazy. Remember that being labeled a freak is the price of greatness. RULE #5 When you feel like surrendering, continue. Triumph loves the relentless.
The industrialist then lifted the vessel, unscrewed the cap and pulled out the fabric, which had the framework below stitched onto it:
The beginning of transformation is the increase of perception. As you see more you can materialize more. And once you know better you can achieve bigger. The great women and men of the world—the ones responsible for the magical symphonies, the beautiful movements, the advancements of science and the progress of technology—started by reengineering their thinking and reinventing their awareness. In so doing, they entered a secret universe that the majority could not perceive. And this, in turn, allowed them to make the daily choices few choose to make. Which, automatically, delivered the daily results few get to experience.
“They apply a mentality of granularity instead of a mindset of superficiality. They have encoded depth as a lifetime value and exist under a profound insistence on greatness in all that they do. Exceptionalists fully understand that their creative output—no matter if they are bricklayers or bakers, chief executive officers or dairy farmers, astronauts or cashiers—represents their reputation. The best, in any endeavor, appreciate the fact that your good name is branded onto every piece of work that you release. And they get that you can’t put a price tag on people saying superb things about you.”
History-Maker Focus #1: Capitalization IQ The mogul explained the concept of capitalization developed by eminent psychologist James Flynn. The valuable insight he conceived is that what makes a legendary performer so good isn’t the amount of natural talent they are born into but the extent of that potential they actualize—and capitalize.
“Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and giftedness every day of the week. And A-Players don’t get lucky. They make lucky.
History-Maker Focus #2: Freedom from Distraction
‘An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production.’
So many potentially outstanding people are suffering from ‘broken focus syndrome’ because they’ve filled their professional and personal lives with so many gadgets, interruptions and cybernoise. If you’re in the sport of winning, please model all of the great masters of history and strip away all the layers of complexity from your days. Simplify. Streamline everything. Become a purist. Less really is more. Concentrate on just a few work projects so you make them amazing versus diluting your attention on too many.
“The closer you get to your genius, the more you’ll face the sabotage of your fears,”
‘The Ancient Brain.’ This is made up of the limbic system—a set of brain structures that sit on both sides of the thalamus, right under the cerebrum. The amygdala that I mentioned a few moments ago is part of this. This basic and lower-functioning brain served to keep us safe thousands of years ago in a primitive world of relentless threats like starvation, temperature extremes, warring tribes and saber-toothed tigers. It functions to do one main thing: maintain a steady state while warning us against dangers so we survive and propagate our species.
“This brain’s default is to hunt for danger,” the billionaire continued happily. “So back when life was much more brutal, we could respond swiftly and stay alive. That mechanism served our ancestors exceedingly well. But in today’s world, most of us don’t face death daily. The reality is that the ordinary person lives a higher quality life than most members of royalty did even just a few hundred years ago. Please think about this blessing.”
“And yet, because of this built-in negativity bias within our ancient brains, we’re constantly scanning for breaches against our security. We’re in hypervigilance mode, mostly anxious and uptight, even when everything’s going great. Fascinating, right?”
The solution is exactly what I’m suggesting: work on one high-value activity at a time instead of relentlessly multitasking—and do so in a quiet environment.
AM is the time of least distraction, highest human glory and greatest peace. So leverage The Victory Hour well.
“The Flow State is the peak mindset that all exceptionalists like top violinists, iconic athletes, elite chefs, brilliant scientists, empire-building entrepreneurs and legendary leaders inhabit when they produce their finest product,” the industrialist added enthusiastically.
“When you give yourself the gift of some morning peace away from your busyness, the hardwired capacity of every human brain to access the realm of pure genius becomes activated.
History-Maker Focus #3: Personal Mastery Practice
the quality of your morning practice determines the caliber of your daily performance. Battles are won in the early light of intense training—when no one’s watching. Victories occur before warriors walk onto the field. Triumph belongs to the one who prepares the most. It’s obvious that if you want to be the best in the world at business or art or chess or as a designer or as a mechanic or as a manager, you need to put in enormous amounts of practice time to advance your expertise. Specifically, a performer must invest at least two hours and forty-four minutes of daily improvement on their chosen skill for ten years, as preeminent psychologist Anders Ericsson of Florida State University has taught us through his groundbreaking research. This is the minimum viable amount of practice required for the first signs of genius to appear within any domain.
“During your Victory Hour, from 5 to 6 AM each morning, concentrate on upgrading what The Spellbinder calls The 4 Interior Empires.
History-Maker Focus #4: Day Stacking