The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life

by Robin Sharma

“We will have eternity to celebrate the victories but only a few hours before sunset to win them.” —Amy Carmichael

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

It blended insights that fortified the warrior within our characters with ideas that honored the soulful poet who resides inside the heart.

“Life’s too short to play small with your talents,” The Spellbinder spoke to the room of thousands. "You were born into the opportunity as well as the responsibility to become legendary. You’ve been built to achieve masterwork-level projects, designed to realize unusually important pursuits and constructed to be a force for good on this tiny planet. You have it in you to reclaim sovereignty over your primal greatness in a civilization that has become fairly uncivilized. To restore your nobility in a global community where the majority shops for nice shoes and acquires expensive things yet rarely invests in a better self. Your personal leadership requires—no, demands—that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital devices and restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited. The great women and men of the world were all givers, not takers. Renounce the common delusion that those who accumulate the most win. 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. This, my friends, is how you soar with the angels. And walk alongside the gods.”

You need to remember that your excuses are seducers, your fears are liars and your doubts are thieves.”

“Ideas are worth nothing unless backed by application. The smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of intentions.

I believe that the seduction of complacency and an easy life is one hundred times more brutal, ultimately, than a life where you go all in and take an unconquerable stand for your brightest dreams. World-class begins where your comfort zone ends

“We’ve encouraged a culture of soft, weak and delicate people who can’t keep promises, who bail on commitments and who quit on their aspirations the moment the smallest obstacle shows up.”

drive to produce wasn’t inspired by the ego fuel of popular applause but by a wiser instinct that enticed him to see just how much of his creative power he could unlock, no matter how much hardship he had to endure.

“Anyway, let me simply say that the place where your greatest discomfort lies is also the spot where your largest opportunity lives.

Picasso said you should learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace”

“The moment when you most feel like giving up is the instant when you must find it in you to press ahead.”

Life’s way too valuable to hang with people who don’t get you. Who you just don’t vibe with. Who have different values and lower standards than you do. Who have different Mindsets, Heartsets, Healthsets and Soulsets.

Art feeds my soul. Great books battleproof my hope. Rich conversations magnify my creativity. Wonderful music uplifts my heart. Beautiful sights fortify my spirit.

“Own your morning. Elevate your life.”

“Adults are deteriorated children,” he went on. “When you were much younger, you understood how to live. Staring at stars filled you with delight. Running in a park made you feel alive. And chasing butterflies flooded you with joy. Oh, how I adore butterflies. Then, as you grew up, you forgot how to be human. You forgot how to be bold and enthusiastic and loving and wildly alive. Your precious reservoirs of hope faded. Being ordinary became acceptable. The lamp of your creativity, your positivity and your intimacy with your greatness grew dim as you began to worry about fitting in, having more than others and being popular. Well, here’s what I say: participate not in the world of numbed-out grownups, with its scarcity, apathy and limitation. I’m inviting you to enter a secret reality known only to the true masters, great geniuses and genuine legends of history. And to discover primal powers within you that you never knew were there. You can create magic in your work and personal lives. I sure have. And I’m here to help you do so.”

Pain is the doorway into deep. Know what I mean? And tragedy is nature’s great purifier. It burns away the fakeness, fear and arrogance that is of the ego. Returns us to our brilliance and genius, if you have the courage to go into that which wounds you. Suffering yields many rewards, including empathy, originality, relatability and authenticity.

‘one who sweats more in training bleeds less in war.’ And I liked his line ‘high victory is made in those early morning hours when no one’s watching and while everyone else is sleeping.’

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.

Here’s the precious little secret that the titans of industry, the standout performers of artistry and the ultra-achievers of humanity will never share with you: gargantuan results are much less about your inherited genetics and far more about your daily habits. And your morning ritual is by far the most essential one to calibrate. And then automate. When we see the icons in action, the forceful seduction sold to us by our civilization is to believe they were always that great. That they were born into their exceptionalism. That they won the fortunate DNA lottery. That their genius was inherited. Yet the truth is that we are watching them in their full blazing glory after years of following a process, one that involved ceaseless hours of practice. When we observe magnificent players in business, sport, science and the arts we are observing the earned results of a monomaniacal concentration around a single pursuit, astronomical focus on one skill, intensity of sacrifice applied to one aim, unusual levels of deep preparation and extreme amounts of solid patience. Remember, every professional was once an amateur, and every master started as a beginner. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary feats, once they’ve routinized the right habits.

Heavily resist all piracy of your mastery from this world tempting you into distractibility and causing digital dementia. Force your attention back to the Everests of potential aching for fuller expression and, today, release all reasons that feed any stagnation of your strengths. Start being an imaginationalist—one of those rare individuals who leads from the nobility of your future versus via the prison bars of your past.

We all want to reaccess our birthright of towering talent, limitless joy and freedom from fear, but few of us are willing to do the very things that would cause our hidden genius to present itself.

“please remember that the job of the leader is to help disbelievers embrace your vision, the powerless to overcome their weaknesses and the hopeless to develop faith.

Obstacles are nothing more than tests designed to measure how seriously you want the rewards that your ambitions seek. They show up to determine how willing you are to improve into the kind of person who can hold that amount of success. Failure is just growth in wolf’s clothing. And pretty much nothing else is as important in life as personal expansion, the unfoldment of your potential.

‘the part of you that clings to fear must experience a sort of crucifixion so that the portion of you that deserves high honor undergoes a kind of reincarnation.’

‘The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.’”

the soreness of growth is so much less expensive than the devastating costs of regret.”

“All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.”

“That’s what I call men and women who’ve caught the virus of victimitis excusitis.

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.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

“Victims love entertainment. Victors adore education.”

Tolstoy once noted that “only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer great sorrow,” while the Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”

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.

“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

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.

“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.” —Steven Pressfield

most people stay the same their entire lives. Too frightened to leave the way they operated yesterday. Married to the complacency of the ordinary and wedded to the shackles of conformity while resisting all opportunity for growth, evolution and personal elevation. So many good souls among us are just so scared they refuse the call on their lives to go out into the blue ocean of possibility where mastery, the dignity of bravery and the authenticity of audacity await them.

“I believe the humblest is the greatest. Pure leaders are so secure in their own skin their main mission is the elevation of others. They have such self-respect, joyfulness and peacefulness within themselves that they don’t need to advertise their success to society in a feeble attempt to feel a little better.

real riches come from living by the noble virtues of productivity, selfdiscipline, courage, honesty, empathy and integrity as well as being able to lead your days on your own terms versus blindly following the sheep that so many in our sick society have been trained to become.

“Why do so many of the heroes of humanity have so little?” asked the artist, now relaxing on the sand. “Because they’ve reached a level of individual maturity that allowed them to see the futility of spending their days chasing objects that count for nothing at the end. And they had cultivated their characters to such a degree that they no longer had the common need of most to fill the holes within themselves with distractions, attractions, escapes and luxuries. The more their appetite for superficial possessions dematerialized, the more hungry they became for substantial pursuits like honoring their creative vision, expressing their inherent genius and living by a higher moral blueprint. They viscerally understood that being inspirational and masterful and fearless are all inside jobs. And once true power is accessed, external substitutes pale in comparison to the feelings of fulfillment this treasure provides. Oh, and these heavyweights of history, as they discovered their supreme natures, also came to realize that one of the primary aims of a wonderfully crafted life is contribution. Impact. Usefulness. Helpfulness. What business-builders might call ‘unlocking stakeholder value.’ Like I suggested at my seminar before I fell, ‘to lead is to serve.’ The philosopher Rumi made the point much more brilliantly than I ever could when he observed, ‘Give up the drop, become the ocean.’”

The 2x3x Mindset : to double your income and impact, triple your investment in two core areas—your personal mastery and your professional capability.”

Health is the crown on the well person’s head that only the ill person can see, you know? Or, as one tradition says, when we are young we sacrifice our health for wealth and when we grow old and wise we realize what’s most important—and become willing to sacrifice all our wealth for even one day of good health. You never want to be the richest person in the graveyard, you know.

Rest and recovery isn’t a luxury for anyone committed to mastery—it’s a necessity.

No more rushing in my morning! Imagine what that alone does for the quality of your day. Starting your day luxuriating in the quietude only the early morning provides. Beginning your day feeling strong and centered and free.

capability is one of the special factors that allows them to generate such high-quality results in a world where too many people dilute their cognitive bandwidth and fragment their attention, accepting poor performances and ordinary achievements while leading lives of disappointing mediocrity.”

“The best in the world have depth. Members of the majority often get stuck in a mindset of superficiality in their work. Their whole approach is light. No real preparation. Very little contemplation and then the setting of a towering vision for the desired outcome along with patiently considering the sequencing of executions that will result in an awesome result. The 95% of performers don’t invest painstaking attention into the tiniest of details and fail to refine the smallest of finishes like the great masters do. For most people the truth is that it’s all about the path of least resistance. Getting what they need to get done fast and just sneaking by. Mailing it in instead of bringing it on. The minority of exceptional creative achievers operate under a completely different philosophy.”

“The grade of work you offer to the world reflects the strength of the respect you have for yourself. Those with unfathomable personal esteem wouldn’t dare send out anything average. It would diminish them too much.

“If you want to lead your field,” Mr. Riley went on, “become a performer and person of depth,” he reinforced. “Commit to being a highly unusual human being instead of one of those timid souls who behave like everyone else, living a sloppy life instead of a magnificent one, a derivative life instead of an original one.”