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

by Robin Sharma

“When you deconstruct how the superstars, virtuosos and geniuses achieved what they did, you’ll realize that it was their heightened awareness of the opportunities for daily greatness that inspired them to make the better daily choices that yielded better daily results.”

“Superficial understanding of their power to rise. Superficial intimacy with the possibilities of their potential. Superficial knowledge of the neurobiology of mastery, the daily routines of the world-builders and the very ambitions they wish to prioritize the remainder of their lives around. The majority is stuck in vague, imprecise thinking. And vague, imprecise thinking yields vague, imprecise results.

Developing high awareness around the things that we do and having a painstaking approach to making our work perfect. Refining the details. Sweating the little points. Producing with precision rather than being unprofessional and careless.

granularity versus superficiality.”

“How does this philosophy of rigor and granularity play out in personal relationships?” “Not well,” was the candid reply of the shirtless baron. “The Spellbinder schooled me on a concept called ‘The Dark Side of Genius.’ Basically, the idea is that every human gift comes with a downside. And the very quality that makes you special in one area is the same one that makes you a misfit in another. The reality is that many of the great virtuosos of the world had messy private lives. The very gifts of seeing a vision few else could see, holding themselves to the absolute highest of standards, being content alone for long stretches of time as they worked monomaniacally detailing the most minor points on their projects, behaving relentlessly in following through on their masterpieces, acting with rarely seen self-discipline and listening to their hearts while ignoring their critics made personal relationships hard. They were misunderstood and seen as ‘difficult’ and ‘different,’ ‘rigid’ and ‘unbalanced.’”

3 Step Success Formula. See, with better awareness of your natural ability to achieve great things, for example, or on how installing The 5 AM Method into your morning routine will upgrade your productivity, you’ll rise from the community of superficiality that currently dominates the Earth up into the society of granularity. This heightened level of insight and consciousness will then optimize your daily decisions. And, logically, once you get your daily choices right, you’ll accelerate your leadership, accomplishment and impact dramatically. Because it’s your decisions that make your results.”

“The Spellbinder calls the phenomenon pervading commerce these days ‘The Collective De-Professionalization of Business,’” noted the billionaire. “People who should be working, delighting customers, showcasing extraordinary skills, unlocking otherworldly value for their organizations so both they and their firms experience success are watching inane videos on their phones, shopping online for shoes or scrolling through their social feeds. I’ve never seen people so disengaged at work, so checked out and so exhausted. And I’ve never seen people making so many mistakes.”

Mastery is a rarity, and people who play at a brilliant level are a scarcity. So, the field is yours! If you show up the way I’m encouraging you to show up. Here’s the powerful insight: There’s a ton of competition at ordinary, but there’s almost none at extraordinary.

Consistency really is the DNA of mastery. And small, daily, seemingly insignificant improvements when done consistently over time yield staggering results.

I understand that getting up early is a new skill you’re installing and everything you’ve heard about chasing greatness, leaving the crowd, relinquishing average and renouncing ordinary is probably overwhelming. So just breathe—and relax, please. Exceptionalism is a journey. Virtuosity is a voyage. Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?”

you are most alive when your heart beats quickest. And we are most awake when our fears scream loudest.”

tighten up our A-games, elevate our performance and accelerate our contribution to the world: calibration. Dialing in the finest of attitudes and refining the littlest of details is what granularity and ascension into the orbit of your inherent genius—and a life magically lived—is all about.”

Why do you think Plato encouraged us to ‘know thyself’? He understood intimately that we have vast reservoirs of ability that absolutely must be accessed and then applied in order for us to lead energetic, joyful, peaceful and meaningful lives. To neglect this hidden force inside of us is to create a breeding ground for the pain of potential unused, the frustration of fearlessness unembraced and the lethargy of mastery unexplored.”

Here is the learning model that the two students saw:

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.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Too many among us have bought into the collective hypnosis that those with extraordinary skill are cut from a different cloth and have been divinely blessed by The Gods of Exceptional Talent. But that just ain’t so,”

Each time you resist a temptation and pursue an optimization you invigorate your heroism. Every instant you do that which you know to be right over the thing that you feel would be easy, you facilitate your entry into the hall of fame of epic achievers.”

“Victims have big TVs. Leaders own large libraries.”

“Human beings are hardwired to act in alignment with our self-identity, always. You’ll never rise higher than your personal story.

“The positive psychologists call the way we embrace a story about who we are and what we can achieve and then behave in a way that makes that fantasy actually come true ‘The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.’

the more we accept that core belief about our inability to produce excellent results in whatever it is we hope to do, the more we not only reinforce it so it becomes a trusted conviction but we also deepen the behavior that’s associated with it so it becomes a daily habit,”

A lot of us have been minimized and pushed down so much by the dark and toxic influences around us we’ve forgotten all we truly are. We’ve become masters of compromise, slowly and steadily allowing in more aspects of mediocrity until a point arrives where it’s our standard operating system. Real leaders never negotiate their standards. They know there’s always room to improve. They understand that we are most connected to our sovereign nature when we are reaching for our best. Alexander the Great once said: ‘I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.’”

Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote, ‘Most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of the world. A few do not. Join them.’”

The more we decrease the volume of our unhealthy narrative which, neurobiologically speaking, is a creation of our limbic system, the more we will hear this sublime call on ourselves to rise up to the blatant expression of our greatest genius.

“The Spellbinder calls this whole phenomenon ‘Learned Victimhood,’” the billionaire carried on in a wonderfully exuberant way. “As we leave our youth, there’s a pull toward complacency. We can start to coast, settle for what’s familiar and lose the juicy desire to expand our frontiers. We adopt the paradigm of a victim. We make excuses and then recite them so many times we train our subconscious mind to think they are true. We blame other people and outer conditions for our struggles, and we condemn past events for our private wars. We grow cynical and lose the curiosity, wonder, compassion and innocence we knew as kids. We become apathetic. Critical. Hardened. Within this personal ecosystem the majority of us create for ourselves, mediocrity then becomes acceptable. And because this mindset is running within us each day, the viewpoint seems so very real to us. We truly believe that the story we are running reveals the truth—because we’re so close to it. So, rather than showing leadership in our fields, owning our crafts by producing dazzling work and handcrafting delicious lives, we resign ourselves to average. See how it all happens?”

entrepreneur. “Absolutely,” confirmed the billionaire. “Every time you become aware of yourself dropping into victim mode and make a more courageous choice, you rewrite the narrative. You raise your self-identity, elevate your self-respect and enrich your self-confidence. Each time you vote for your superior self you starve your weaker side—and feed your inherent power. And as you do this with the consistency demanded by mastery, your ‘Capitalization IQ,’ that is your ability to materialize whatever gifts you’ve been born with, will only grow.”

billionaire pointed to the model with a pinky finger. “Remember that important brain tattoo of successful people? ‘An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production.’

the importance of winning the war against diversion and cyber nuisances because it’s an extremely serious issue in our culture. In some ways, the new technologies and social media are not only eroding the Everests of our glorious productive potential, they are also training us to be less human. We have fewer real conversations, fewer true connections and fewer meaningful interactions.”

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. And socially, have fewer friends but go deep with them so the relationship is rich. Accept fewer invitations, major in fewer leisure activities and study, then master, a smaller number of books versus skimming many.

“Stop managing your time and start managing your focus,”

“Once you are aware of the fact that, as you near your highest talents and most luminous gifts, the scared side of you will rear its ugly head and try to mess up the masterpieces you’ve been creating by pursuing every distraction and escape route possible to avoid finishing, you can manage that self-destructive behavior. You can step outside of it. You can disempower it, simply by watching its attempts to denounce your mastery.”

Comparison is the thief of joy,’”

“As we leave our comfort zones, the ancient brain gets triggered. As we raise our expertise and lift our influence, it gets frightened by the change.” “Exactly,” applauded Mr. Riley. “Then cortisol is released, our perception narrows, our breathing grows shallow and we drop into fight-or-flight mode. Actually, the three options of fear are flight, fight or freeze.” The artist added, “Our higher thinking wants us to grow, evolve, do more masterful work, lead better lives and inspire the world,” continued the artist. “But there’s a battle of our brains going on. And the ancient, lower—more primitive—brain inside all of us wants to stop our evolution.” “Exactly,” said the billionaire as he fist-bumped the painter. “And so, speaking to the second focus of history-makers on the model you’re walking us through—freedom from distraction—I guess it’s because of this fear we face that we embrace as many diversions as possible to make us feel better, even if only for a minute?” questioned the entrepreneur. “Truth,” confirmed the billionaire. “And to escape the discomfort that comes with us becoming more intimate with our inherent genius.”

“And that’s where being a member of The 5 AM Club can also work its magic for you,” he told his audience of two. “One of the ways the great men and women of the world avoided complexity was by incorporating tranquility and serenity into the front part of their days. This beautiful discipline gave them absolutely essential time away from overstimulation to savor life itself, replenish their creative reservoirs, develop their supreme selves, count their blessings and ground the virtues that they would then live out their days under. Many of the people who fueled the progress of our civilization shared the habit of rising before daybreak.”

“The great ones all spent a lot of time alone,” offered the billionaire. “Solitude—the kind that you can access before the sun comes up—is a force multiplier around your power, expertise and connection to being human. And your escalation requires your isolation. See, you can be in the world all day long chatting endlessly on your phone about one thousand senseless things or you can change the world by exploiting your talent, refining your skills and being a light of upliftment that raises us all. But you can’t do both. Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir has used the term ‘cognitive bandwidth’ to explain the point that we have a limited amount of mental capacity when we rise each morning. And as we give our attention to numerous influences—ranging from the news, messages and online platforms to our families, our work, our fitness and our spiritual lives—we leave bits of our focus on each activity we pursue. Massively important insight to consider. No wonder most of us have trouble concentrating on important tasks by noon. We’ve spent our bandwidth. Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Minnesota, calls the concentration we deposit on distraction and other stimuli ‘attention residue.’ She’s found that people are far less productive when they are constantly interrupting themselves by shifting from one task to another throughout the day because they leave valuable pieces of their attention on too many different pursuits. The solution is exactly what I’m sugg...

“When you’re up early and all alone, away from the overstimulation and noise, your attention isn’t being fragmented by technology, meetings and other forces that can limit maximum productivity,” mused the billionaire. “And so the prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain responsible for rational thinking—as well as constant worrying—actually shuts off for a short time. Lovely information, right? That’s the ‘transient’ part of transient hypofrontality. It happens only temporarily. Your nonstop analyzing, ruminating and stressful overthinking stops. You pause from trying to figure everything out and being so concerned about things that will probably never happen. Your brain waves actually shift from their usual beta to alpha, and sometimes even down into theta state. The solitude, silence and stillness of daybreak also triggers the production of neurotransmitters like dopamine, the inspirational fuel that serves superproducers so well, and serotonin, the beautiful pleasure drug of the brain. Automatically and naturally, you enter what I described earlier as ‘The Flow State.’

“During your Victory Hour, from 5 to 6 AM each morning, concentrate on upgrading what The Spellbinder calls The 4 Interior Empires. This will be the smartest, and sometimes the most difficult, work you will ever do in your life. Deeply working on you. Cultivating the four central inner arenas that I’ll walk you through in a moment is your golden key to transformation. It won’t be easy—I need to reinforce that. But it will be totally worth it.”

“Because inner empires need to be unfolded up to world-class before you’ll ever see outer ones. And your fortune always follows your fearlessness. Powerful insight, cats: Your influence in the world mirrors the glory, nobility, vitality and luminosity you’ve accessed in yourself. Very few people in this time of superficiality and human creatures behaving like artificial machines remember this essential life truth. External always expresses internal, without always reflects within. Your creativity, productivity, prosperity, performance and impact on the planet are always a sublime expression of what’s going on inside of you. For example, if you lack faith in your ability to get your ambitions done, you’ll never achieve them. If you don’t feel deserving of abundance, you’ll never do what’s required to realize it. And if your drive to capitalize on your genius is weak, your fire to train is dim and your stamina to optimize is low, it’s clear you’ll never take flight into the rare-air of outright mastery. And realize domain dominance. External always expresses internal. And to experience empires in your outer life you need to develop your inner ones first,”

a superbly developed Mindset without a magnificently purified Heartset is a hollow triumph. Just working on your Mindset will never deliver the fullness of your sovereignty and fully express your resident genius,”

“So many of us know what we should do mentally but nothing extraordinary ever happens because our emotional life remains a mess. We stay stuck in the past. We haven’t forgiven the unforgiven. We’ve repressed all those unhealthy emotions from all that has hurt us. Sigmund Freud wrote that ‘unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and they will come forth later in uglier ways.’ And we wonder why our attempts at positive thinking aren’t working! What I’m sharing with you explains why so many self-improvement books don’t lead to lasting evolution. And why so few conferences make an enduring difference. Our intellectual intentions are good. We really wish to become brighter producers and better people. But we merely get the information at the level of thought. And then we sabotage our lofty aspirations with the residue of our broken hearts. So, nothing shifts. So, nothing increases. So, nothing transforms. If you want to experience exponential growth and unparalleled performance you need to dial in a masterful Mindset but also repair, rebuild and reinforce a winning Heartset. So that all the dark and toxic emotion from your past pains are cleared out. Released and cleansed and purified. Forever. And so your heart, once hardened by life’s trials, reopens in all its noble glory.”

“I should also mention that working on your Heartset isn’t only about removing negative emotions that have built up from life’s frustrations, disappointments and burdens. It’s also about amplifying the healthy ones. That’s why part of your morning routine needs to have a gratitude practice as part of it. To feed your sense of awe and fuel your reservoirs of exuberance.”

“One of the main elements of your rise to legendary is longevity. Here’s a quick tip if you want to lead your field and experience continuous escalations of your eminence: do not die. You’ll never become a titan of your industry and an icon who makes history if you’re dead.”

spend some time in the quietude of the early morning to make the return to the courage, conviction and compassion within you. All I’m encouraging is that you soar with the angels of your highest nature and dance with the gods of your most precious talents for a little time before sunrise, as a tribute to what’s most wise and true within you. Only then will you begin to know—and understand—the Shangri-las of greatness and Nirvanas of light that inhabit your sovereign self. Soulset is all about remembering who you truly are.

always stay sincere to what’s most important in a life greatly lived,” pleaded the billionaire. “Be not seduced by the superficialities that suffocate the human spirit and divorce us from the best within us.”

“A few navigational shifts, seemingly irrelevant and infinitesimal, when done consistently over a long voyage, make the difference between ending up in breathtaking Brazil or fantastic Japan. All you need to do to pretty much guarantee a hugely successful and a splendidly meaningful life is Own the Day. Make those 1% course corrections and improvements over each twenty-four-hour allotment you receive, and these days will slip into weeks and your weeks into months and your months will slip into your years. The Spellbinder called such daily personal and professional optimizations ‘micro-wins.’ Enhancing anything in your day, ranging from your morning routine to a thought pattern to a business skill to a personal relationship, by only 1% delivers at least a 30%—yes, 30%—elevation only a month from starting. Stay with the program and, in just one year, the pursuit you’ve been focusing on has elevated 365%, at least. The main point I’m making here is concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days—and they’ll stack into a gorgeous life.” “Small daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consistently over time, yield staggering results,”

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

“I hated every minute of training. But I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” —Muhammad Ali