The 5am Club by Robin Sharma

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DIGEST THIS! THE ESSENTIAL IDEA:

The journey to mastery is a lengthy one, requiring focused daily practice through seasons of hardship and disappointment. Only a few make it. Become an A-Player – wake early at 5am and maximise the power of your Victory Hour before the world arises, to boost your journey towards mastery and legendary status.

TOP 10 TAKEAWAYS + 1!

GIVE YOUR ALL: Why be alive if you’re not going to be totally alive? Live like a hero, be a main character.Mastery demands all of a person.
GROWTH: Pressure is privilege. You get to grow.
MASTERS ARE MADE: Many of the greats were not the most naturally talented – it was their ability to exploit, capitalise, maximise and actualise whatever strengths they had, through their exceptional dedication, commitment and drive.
SELF-LOVE: Invest in a better self rather than a better pair of shoes. Collect miraculous experiences over material things.
HUNGER: Until your mission becomes your obsession, your gifts will never become your glory.
JOY: Your joy is your GPS. Success without a joyful journey is losing.
COURAGE: It takes courage to feel the terror of our true potential and power – it’s the reason why we embrace diversions and distractions.
GRIT: Mastery is not an event – it takes years of painstaking practice and sacrifice. Everyone dreams of being a legend until it comes time to do the work.
TRAIN HARD: Victories are won before warriors enter the battlefield.
CONSISTENCY really is the DNA of mastery. Anyone can be great for a minute – true legends are genius over a lifetime.
FOCUS: Stop managing your time and start managing your focus.

HOW TO BECOME LEGENDARY

The 5 assets of genius: 1) mental focus, 2) physical energy, 3) personal willpower 4) original talent 5) daily time.
Many of the greats were not the most naturally talented – it was their ability to exploit, capitalise, maximise and actualise whatever strengths they had, through their exceptional dedication, commitment and drive.
If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius. Everyone dreams of being a legend until it comes time to do the work that legends do.
There’s a ton of competition at ordinary, but almost none at extraordinary.
It takes courage to feel the terror of our true potential and power, that’s why we embrace diversions and distractions to make us feel better even for a minute. To keep persisting when you are frightened is how true legends are made.
To become a true master you must devote yourself to a cause with your whole strength and soul. Mastery demands all of a person.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself … all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Become more valuable to your industry as well as society – we magnetise excellent rewards by raising our value.
Invest in a better self rather than a better pair of shoes.
Anyone can be great for a minute – true legends are genius over a lifetime.
Live like a hero. Be a main character.

LIVE YOUR BRILLIANCE

Why be alive if you’re not going to be totally alive?
Don’t get stuck living the same week a few thousand times and calling it life.
World class begins where your comfort zone ends – don’t let the ordinary, fear and cynicism and apathy betray the magnificence inside of you. Don’t let complacency and an easy life seduce you.
Your focus should be on how much of your creative power you can unlock within yourself no matter the hardship along the way, rather than the ego fuel of popular applause.
Credit belongs to those who enter the arena, their faces marred by sweat and blood striving valiantly, falling short and erring but continuing again and again – there is no effort without error.
Half heartedness does not reach into mastery.

WHEN DID YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO BECOME ORDINARY?

When you were younger, you understood how to live – with awe, delight, and wonder – feeling alive chasing butterflies and running in the park. As you grew older, and became more concerned with fitting in, having more than others and being popular, you lost your natural enthusiasm and joy, allowed your hope to fade. You allowed ordinary and conformity to become acceptable. You became a numbed-out grownup, overcome by scarcity, apathy and limitation. You allowed yourself to become the master of compromise.
You learned to criticise instead of using your innate power to make things better.
It’s because you do not value yourself, you do not know your true worth – so instead you focus on comparing yourself to others, and to externals like the money you earn or what you own, instead of your character, instead of cultivating your true talent and going beyond what has already been done and believing in the impossible.
Real leaders never negotiate their standards.
When did you stop believing in your true power, stop behaving as a leader, a creative producer, a possibilitarian? When did you start acting as a victim of life, creating excuses, rationalising the betrayal of your dreams and blaming others for why you are where you are?
When did you become satisfied with minimising your impact on the world, instead of evolving into more?
Study someone playing small – they focus on lack instead of plenty, they disrespect the potency of the word by continuous focus on problems and complaints, they classify success, wealth and vast impact on others as out of their reach. Witness their own theft from their best.
If you plan on being anything less that your full potential, you will likely be unhappy all the days of your life.

WHEN DID YOU STOP COMMITTING TO EXCELLENCE?

Do the right things excellently not averagely.
Your good name is branded on every piece of work you release so do it excellently. The grade of work you offer to the world reflects the strength of respect you have for yourself.
The one who sweats most in training bleeds least in war. Victories are won before warriors walk onto the battlefield.
Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Those committed to excellence force themselves to stay with the work when they feel bored, scared, alone. They persist in translating their heroic visions into everyday reality when they are misunderstood, ridiculed, even attacked.
Those committed to excellence commit this through to the slightest of details, and demonstrate willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve greatness. The space shuttle Challenger disaster was caused by the failure of a single O-ring seal valued at 70 cents.

WHY ARE YOU SCARED OF CHALLENGING TIMES?

Challenging events happen to unlock the treasures, talents and powers within you – nothing is an accident.
You are not on the wrong path if the road gets tough and obstacles show up – all possibility requires hard work, regular reinvention and deep dedication. The greatest are those who embrace suffering in their devotion to go to the fiery edges of their highest limits.
Walking into your fear is how you reclaim your forgotten power
When you most feel like giving up is when you must find it in you to keep pressing ahead.
Pain is our asset – it burns away fakeness, fear and arrogance of the ego – it gets us to our pure essence if we have the courage to go into source of our wounds.
Obstacles are merely tests designed to show how much you want something. How willing are you to become the kind of person required to hold that level of success?
The closer you get to your genius, the more your fears will arise to sabotage you. You may need to leave the majority, to become different, you may face jealousy from competitors and additional pressure to make your next product better.
There’s no growth inside the comfort zone. Your gifts won’t increase staying inside circles of safety.
Warriors are born from doing that which is hard but important when it feels most uncomfortable.
The best way to build your willpower is to put yourself into conditions of discomfort voluntarily to strengthen you.
Positive change and growth can be uncomfortable a lot of the time. All change is hard at first, messy in the middle, gorgeous at the end.

TRUE LEADERSHIP

You are repeatedly provided opportunities to show leadership in any situation. It’s about making a difference wherever you are.
Leadership is more than a formal title or bank balance – its about committing to mastery in whatever you do, and in who you are. It’s about resisting ordinary.
True leaders have a greater sense of self and mission than acquiring titles and trinkets, applause and acclaim, or money and mansions. The substitute power derived from these external things when lost, vanishes in an instant, revealing itself as the illusion it was.
True power is an inside job – being inspirational, masterful and fearless are internal and provide true fulfilment compared to external substitutes.
Being a legend is being of deep service to the world – it isn’t about you. The hard work it takes is to benefit, uplift and inspire others, not for ego gratification.
To lead is to inspire others by the way you live.

POWER OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT

Don’t underestimate the power of your surroundings to shape your perceptions, inspiration and impact your productivity – the spaces you inhabit shape the output you produce.
Be comfortable with letting people go, even though they may have fit at one stage of your life or business. You want people who continue to learn, invest and make everything they touch better than they found it.
Victims love entertainment. Victors adore education. Victims have big TVs. Leaders own libraries. Peak producers are lifetime learners.
Life is too valuable to hang with people who don’t get you – fill your life with exceptional people – enterprising, healthy, positive, ethical, sincerely loving – over time you’ll exemplify those traits.
Even one enemy is an enemy too many – pass through life peacefully and gracefully – taking the high road in conflict.

POWER OF IMPLEMENTATION

The smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of ideas.
Ambition without implementation is the grandest of illusions. Potential unexpressed turns to pain. We start to die.
Your daily habits dictate far more about your success than your inherited genetics. Small daily improvements done consistently lead to stunning results. Elite performers understand that what you do each day matters far more that what you do once in a while.
Don’t wait for perfect conditions – great power is unleashed with a simple start.
Consistency really is the DNA of mastery. The way to annihilate the weakest impulses of your lower self that block your best is through ceaseless repetition of the new behaviour.
Mastery is not a sudden event – it is years of painstaking practice, sacrifice and suffering.
The power of a few small navigational shifts or course corrections done consistently over a long voyage means the difference between ending up in breath-taking Brazil or fantastic Japan.
When you feel you can’t continue, progress a litter longer. You will amplify your self-discipline and self-respect.
True geniuses all started out as ordinary people, but they practiced building up their strength so much and so often that showing up at world class became automated.
Massive productivity in society without an inner sense of joy, abundance or inner peace is not true success, is no different from a hamster on a running wheel.
The greatest remain loyal to their noble ideas beyond the joyous weeks of dreaming up an idea, extending into the seasons of parched deserts of implementation and isolated winters of self-doubt, enduring rejection, exhaustion, scepticism and the diversions of attractive opportunities.

POWER OF SINGLE FOCUS

The greats – away from the external show of success – have committed to astronomical focus on a single pursuit, intensity of sacrifice to one aim, extreme amounts of solid patience, and unusual levels of deep preparation.
Stop managing your time and start managing your focus. Work less time with more focus to get more done.
Strip away distractions and gadgets, become a purist, simplify. Less is more.
Don’t dilute your purpose or gift chasing every shiny diversion and attractive opportunity that comes your way– exercise fierce discipline and focus on only a few things – but at a world class level.
Create one piece of work that expresses true genius and provides value for generations to come, rather than lots of average work.
Until your mission becomes your obsession, your gifts will never become your glory.

MAXIMISE YOUR TIME

Super-producers outsource and then automate all activities except those within their realm of mastery. Delegate tasks that diminish your happiness – restructure life so you are only doing things you are great at and love to do.
Tomorrow is a bonus, not a right.
Balance living like there is no tomorrow with behaving like you’ll live forever, so when the end does come you know you lived your life to the fullest.
Guard your cognitive abilities – stop escaping online for quick pleasure hits of entertainment instead of doing things that matter. Your phone may cost you your fortune.
Do not live as if you have 10,000 years left to live. Most of us on our death beds wish we had more time but squander the time we currently have. Stop wasting time on trivial things. Don’t be timid when it comes to your ambitions.
Guard your time – it is your most precious commodity. The rich invest in time. The poor invest in money.
A person living an average lifetime spends a total of 3+ years commuting. Maximise this time – join the Traffic University and learn on the go – just one idea you discover through reading and online courses could be the source of your fortune.

POWER OF GROWTH

Pressure is privilege. You get to grow.
With every challenge, you get the gorgeous opportunity to rise to your next level as leader, to your next level as a human being.
The soreness of growth is so much better than the devasting cost of regret.
Don’t wish for an easy life – there is no growth in your power there. Wish for a life of challenge that brings out the finest in you,
When faced with a choice, always choose the one that pushes you the most, increases your growth and promotes unfoldment of your gifts.
Just like exercising a muscle through applying stress, you achieve growth through pushing your genius just beyond its usual limit and subsequent period of recovery and regeneration.
Mystics wrote that real change involves a series of little deaths.

POWER OF RENEWAL TIME

Elite performance without time for quiet vacation results in lasting depletion.
Rest and recovery isn’t a luxury for anyone committed to mastery – it’s a necessity.
Inspiration gets fed by time away, by isolation.
Your natural genius appears when you are most joyful – and this often happens when you are relaxed on vacation.
Peak performers don’t work in a linear way – their work cycle is structured, alternating between bursts of deep focus and intense performance and periods of full recovery. Elite accomplishment is like a heartbeat pulse – High Excellence Cycles followed by Deep Refuelling periods.
In every walk in nature, one receives far more than he seeks.

POWER OF GIVING

Legends are givers, not takers.
Do heroic work – stagger your marketplace by the quality, originality and helpfulness of your offer or product. The true reason to be in the game is to be helpful to society.
The teacher learns the most. As you teach, your own understanding of the material will deepen.
Optimising oneself is the best way to improve the state of the world.

LIVE ON YOUR OWN TERMS

Play and succeed in the game of the world but disconnect from it often so you are never owned by it
Use your joy as a GPS. Only perform pursuits that feed your bliss, only be in places that make you feel most alive.
Collect miraculous experiences over material things. Own and enjoy things, but don’t let them own you.
Never sacrifice your quality of life and well-being for a greater income.
Life’s too short not to treat yourself as amazingly as possible.
Take daily voyages into awe and regular adventures into wonder.

THE 5AM MIRACLE!

Own your morning. Elevate your life. Take excellent care of the front end of your day, and the rest of your day will take care of itself.
Victory is made in those early hours of the morning in intense training, when no one is watching, when everyone is sleeping. Your primary assets (mental focus, physical energy, personal willpower, original talent, daily time) are highest early in the morning – that’s why you should maximise them towards your desired pursuit during this period and set up your day.
Intensely visualise all you want to be and the higher order of life you wish to create. Envisage your ideal performance for the day ahead.
Seize this time in your day to live and create a life on your terms rather than blindly following like sheep as you have been trained to become. Concentrate on high-value activities instead of letting your day control you. This time allows you to deliberate and plan, rather than do and react.
It’s not about rising at 5am alone – its what you do with the next 60 minutes that makes the difference, that makes it your Victory Hour.
Apply the 20/20/20 Formula during this hour. Move/Reflect/Grow.
EXERCISE for 20 minutes. Why Exercise? Studies show there is a vital link between physical exercise and cognitive ability. It generates more energy, focus and productivity, and de-stresses.
REFLECT for 20 mins by meditating, praying, journalling, or planning which stimulate greater positivity and creativity, and decreased reactivity.
GROW for 20 mins through reading or listening to motivational texts, books on leadership, business or creativity, reviewing goals or studying. This increases inspiration, personal growth and increased mastery of your pursuit.
Rituals run deepest when performed as a group. Install the morning routine together. Become a member of the 5am Club!

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