Waking Up at 5 AM: The Morning Routine of Legends

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Robin Sharma: Hi, it’s Robin Sharma. I hope you are amazing. This video is going to be tremendously helpful to you if you are interested in increasing four areas of your life. Number one, your creativity. Number two, your productivity.

CREATIVITY

Number three, your prosperity,

PROSPERITY

and number four, your impact on humanity. So, I wanted to give you some specific insights on the value of rising before the sun and joining The 5 AM Club, which is a concept I’ve been teaching to my billionaire clients and CEO clients and executives at companies like Starbucks and FedEx and IBM and Nike and other organizations that I’ve worked with for over the past two decades with tremendous success in terms of helping them increase their focus, their energy, their productivity, and their performance.

So, there’s a reason why the visionary founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, rises before the sun. There’s a reason why Michelle Obama rises very early. There’s a reason why Tim Cook, who’s leading Apple, gets up before the dawn. First of all, the hours between 4 and 6 are the time of least distraction in this age of dramatic interruption. Number two, the hours before the sun rises is the period where your brain is most available to your primary creativity. So, while you’re sleeping, your brain actually washes itself, but also, it lets go of the residue of the previous day while you are resting and while you are recovering. When you wake up, your thinking is fresh, your creativity is most pristine. You are most available to access your gifts and your talents. Those are some of the reasons why I encourage you to get up early.

You might say, “Robin, well, I’m not an early riser. I can’t put mind over mattress.” “I can’t win the battle of the bed.” “Grandma never got up early, dad couldn’t get up early.” “I guess I’m not the kind of person who could rise before the sun.” And what I would suggest to you is simply this. What science confirms, and in particular, the data of University College London, you do any new habit, practice it for 66 days, and you will arrive at the place of automaticity. In other words, it’ll be easier to run the new habit than not to. IT’LL BE EASIER TO RUN THE NEW HABIT THAN NOT TO. 66 days of rising at 5 AM will get you to a place where it’s easier to get up at 5 AM than not to get up at 5 AM. You’ll reach a place of automaticity. In my book “The 5AM Club,” I say, “All change is hard at first, and it’s messy in the middle, and it’s gorgeous at the end.” I’ll repeat that again because it’s so important. All change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and it’s gorgeous at the end. In the book, there is a chapter on The Habit Installation Process that actually explains the three phases every habit goes through before you wire it into the place where it’s automatic. Number one, destruction. Number two, integration, and number three, implementation. Really important to remember them.

So, you can get up early. You can install habits. As a matter of fact, neuroplasticity, which is the phenomenon that speaks to the fact, the brain is like a muscle. The more you flex it and push it the more it’s going to grow. You have that gift. It’s not just for Federer and Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey and Shakespeare and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. You have a brain that has the capability to grow and adapt. YOU HAVE A BRAIN THAT HAS THE CAPABILITY TO GROW AND ADAPT. But ideas don’t work for people unwilling to do the work, and part-time, this is another idea from “The 5AM Club,” part-time commitment leads to part-time results.

Okay, so, once you’re up at 5 AM, you’ve practiced it for 66 days, you’ve gone through the difficulty at the beginning and then the messiness in the middle, and now you’ve installed it towards the end of the 66-day protocol, then, what do you do during this process between 5 and 6? Why call it The Victory Hour? I go into great depth into exactly what to do in “The 5AM Club,” but for now, very high level, The 20/20/20 Formula basically tells you exactly what to do from 5 to 6. And this is your period of preparation, The Spartan warriors said it well, “Sweat more in training and you’ll bleed less in war.” SWEAT MORE IN TRAINING AND YOU’LL BLEED LESS IN WAR. Well, business right now and the world right now, it’s sort of a war. There’s so much distraction, there are so many seductions, there’s so much competition, there’s a lot of complexity, so from 5 to 6 is really when you sweat more in training. It’s your training period where you protect what I call The 4 Interior Empires,

Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset

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Robin Sharma: E2 MINDSET HEARTSET – your Mindset, your Heartset, your Healthset, and your Soulset. Everyone’s talking about mindset these days. I think that’s only 25% of the personal mastery and elite performance equation. Why, because your mindset is your psychology. Of course your psychology is important, but a great psychology with a toxic emotionality, in other words, if your Heartset, your heart, is full of unprocessed-through pain of the past or if you’re angry or if you haven’t forgiven the people who have hurt you or if you’re full of resentment and disappointment, well then, you’re going to sabotage your psychology. That’s why a lot of books don’t work and a lot of training doesn’t work. The teacher is talking only about Mindset without working on the emotional part of the human being. But it’s not just Mindset and Heartset, and again, I go into great depth into this in the book, but it’s not just Mindset and Heartset. It’s also your Healthset, okay? I mean, if you don’t have energy, you don’t have vitality, you don’t have stamina, you’re not going to win. And then it’s also The 4th Interior Empire, your Soulset. Soulset, you might say, “Well, it’s not relevant to me, I’m not a religious person.” Well, soulset has nothing to do with religion. Soulset is all about building fluency and intimacy with your true wisdom and the hero within you and the primal genius that lurks at your core. You see, we all have an ego side, and that’s just our scared, insecure self, and then we have a heroic nature. Yes, you do, right in you, right now. You might not know it, you might not have a strong relationship with it, but it’s there with you. And that’s what Soulset’s about. It’s about building that relationship with your highest nature, and the relationship with your highest nature sets up the relationship with your family, strangers, your teammates, suppliers, customers, your prosperity, your creativity, and your impact on humanity.

Okay, so, what is The 20/20/20 Formula that lies at the core of The 5AM Club method? Well, the first 20 minutes, move. Sweat. You’ll release BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which will increase the neural connections of your brain as well as repair brain cells damaged by stress and also promote neurogenesis, which is the formation of new brain cells. I know this is a lot of information, but I want to give you great content in this video. Exercising for 20 minutes first thing in the morning from 5:00 to 5:20, the first part of The 20/20/20 Formula, releases dopamine, which is the inspirational neurotransmitter. How valuable is that for your creativity and productivity for the rest of the day? Cortisol, the fear hormone, is highest first thing in the morning. Exercising will reduce it. Serotonin is released, so you’ll feel happier. Now it’s 5:20. You’re full of energy. You’ve optimized your cognition. Your focus is increasing. It’s only 5:20, the rest of the world is asleep. Just imagine that advantage you already have.

Second pocket of The 20/20/20 Formula is all about reflection. We live in a world where people don’t reflect anymore. A lot of people are busy being busy, but what’s the point of being busy around the wrong things? So, for 20 minutes from 5:20 to 5:40, you reflect. You pray or write in a journal or meditate. You can visualize, you can script out a blueprint for a great day ahead, which habit researchers call a pre-commitment strategy which actually increases your willpower and your ability to get your most important priorities done. Okay, now it’s 5:40. From 5:40 to 6:00, this is the final 20-minute pocket of The 20/20/20 Formula. The first pocket was about move, the second is reflect, and the third is grow. I’ve coached billionaires and CEOs and NBA superstars and members of royalty for over 20 years. Here’s what I realized when I work with the best of the best. They love to learn. They love to grow. They don’t see investing in yourself or investing in your skills or investing in your growth a cost. They think about the value received. I call it The 2x3x Mindset. To double your income and your impact, triple your investment in two core areas, your personal mastery and your professional capability. So, for 20 minutes, what do you do? You listen to a podcast, you review your journal notes, you read a book, you watch a valuable video. You just do something. You read an autobiography, you do something to grow your capacities and materialize more of the potential you have been born into. And now it’s 6:00. You’ve optimized your Mindset. You have purified your Heartset. You’ve calibrated your Healthset. You’ve escalated your Soulset. You feel fundamentally different.

In “The 5AM Club,” there’s another model called The 4 Habits Of History-Makers, and one of the elements is day stacking. The whole idea is simply this. Get your mornings right, your days are going to be fundamentally more energetic, creative, productive, and high-impact. And a great week is nothing more than a series of great days, and a great month is the same thing, and a great quarter is just a series of well-lived weeks. And it just continues and creates this upward spiral of success just by getting from 5 AM to 6 AM, your Victory Hour to world-class every morning. Consistency really is the mother of mastery. Own your morning, you’re really going to elevate your life. I believe rising at 5 AM and running my 20/20/20 Formula that has worked so well for my high-level clients for so many years really is the mother of all habits. Hope this video has helped you. If you want to go x100 deeper, definitely go ahead and read “The 5AM Club” book. It’s forming a movement already around the world. It’s racing up bestseller lists across the planet, and it really is a book that I’ve worked four years on. I put my heart and soul in the book. It’s full of amazing models, real-world tactics, world-class content that will truly help you own your game, dominate your domain, and live a much more valuable and happy life as well. So, definitely read “The 5AM Club.” It’s a small investment in you materializing your personal mastery and living the life I really want for you not only so you have a great life and so your family has wonderful experiences, but also so you can do your part to lift the world and make it a brighter place, okay? Information on, well, you can find “The 5AM Club” on Amazon, in great bookstores around the world. The audiobook is amazing. You can get that on Audible

. You can download the e-book, and I’m sure you know how to find the book. Thanks for your attention. I hope I’ve been of service to you. I wish you great mornings and all green lights.