Notebook for The 5 AM Club_ Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. by Robin Sharma
- History-Maker Focus #1: Capitalization IQ
The Spellbinder taught me early on that investing sixty minutes in developing my best self and my greatest skills during what he called - The Victory Hour would transform the way the rest of my life unfolded mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and giftedness every day of the week. And A-Players don't get lucky. They make lucky. Each time you resist a temptation and pursue an optimization you invigorate your heroism.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
We subconciously adopt a thinking pattern by learning it from the people who most influence us at an early age. Our parents, our teachers and our friends. Then we act according to it. And since what we do creates the results we see, this generally faulty personal story becomes a reality of our very own causing.
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.
as we betray our true power, a part of us starts to die
there's a staggering difference between being busy and being productive.
avoidance tactics from the pain of potential unexpressed are hours mindlessly surfing online, electronic shopping, working too much, drinking too much, eating too much, complaining too much and sleeping too much.
Learned Victimhood
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.
Capitalization IQ, 'that is your ability to materialize whatever gifts you've been born with
- History-Maker Focus #2: Freedom from Distraction
"An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production."
"broken focus syndrome" 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.
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
As you rise toward virtuosity, you'll become anxious about failure, threatened by a concern of not being good enough and insecure about blazing new paths.
The amygdala 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.
One of the fascinating traits of our ancient brain is its negativity bias. To keep us safe, it's far less interested in what's positive in our environment and significantly more invested in letting us know what's bad.
Theodore Roosevelt "Comparison is the thief of joy"
prefrontal cortex This is the part of our brain responsible for higher thinking. "The Mastery Brain."
Abraham Maslow once stated, "If you plan on being anything less than who you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life."
amygdala kicks into high gear as we exit what's familiar and try something new. The vagus nerve gets provoked, the fear hormone cortisol gets released. Then cortisol is released, our perception narrows, our breathing grows shallow and we drop into fight-or-flight mode.
"cognitive bandwidth" we have a limited amount of mental capacity when we rise each morning.
Albert Einstein made the point exquisitely when he wrote, "Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person."
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."
- History-Maker Focus #3: Personal Mastery Practice
school of dolphins
Spartan warrior credo "Sweat more in practice, bleed less in war."
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.
Your influence in the world mirrors the glory, nobility, vitality and luminosity you've accessed in yourself.
Mahatma Gandhi: only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought
your past is a place to be learned from, not a home to be lived in
Charles Bukowski said, "Stop insisting on clearing your head. Clear your heart instead.
Even with battleproofed beliefs and the distinguished thinking of a world-class Mindset, you won't win if your heart is full of anger, sadness, disappointment, resentment and fear.
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.
morning routine needs to have a gratitude practice as part of it.
Video on depression by krugsteistat channel mentions gratitude as a practice for solving depression
Healthset Beautiful things happen once you commit seriously to peak fitness and go hard on cheating aging.
every day is just dramatically better with some exercise in it.
Soulset,
There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportions, English poet Christopher Marlowe said that.
Mindset is all about your psychology and Heartset is all about your emotionality, and Healthset relates to your physiology, Soulset refers to your spirituality.
- History-Maker Focus #4: Day Stacking
We all are so focused on pursuing our futures that we generally ignore the exceedingly important value of a single day. And yet what we are doing today is creating our future.
daily personal and professional optimizations "micro-wins
what you do each day matters far more than what you do once in a while. Consistency really is a key ingredient of mastery.
Often, a bad example teaches us more about who we wish to become than a good one could ever provide.
from Dale Carnegie, the self-help author, and it read: 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
what makes the most successful achievers so great isn't their inherent talent but their levels of commitment, discipline, resilience and perseverance. "Grit"
Albert Einstein wrote "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
The 5-3-1 Creed of The Willpower Warrior
- The 5 Scientific Truths Behind Excellent Habits
- willpower
- discipline
- Recovery
- Installing any great habit successfully follows a distinct four-part pattern for automation of the routine.
- The 3 Values of Heroic Habit-Makers
- Value #1: Victory demands consistency and persistency.
- Value #2: Following through on what is started determines the size of the personal respect that will be generated.
- Value #3: The way you practice in private is precisely the way you'll perform once you're in public.
- The 1 General Theory of Self-Discipline Spartans To regularly do that which is hard but important when it feels most uncomfortable is how warriors are born.
Mughal emperor Shah Jahan Mumtaz, 1631,
ambition without implementation is a ridiculous delusion.
Gargantuan Competitive Advantage,
Gray explained that "the common denominator of success” the secret of success of every man and woman who has ever been successful” lies in the fact that they formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.
twenty-two years, over twenty thousand workers toiled in the scorching Indian sun. Block of marble by block of marble carried from immense distances by over one thousand elephants, the army of craftsmen steadily erected the structure you're seeing.
Oscar Wilde Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
most people are passive instead of active builders of the ambitions within them.
brains can continue to grow throughout our lives. This beautiful phenomenon is called neuroplasticity.
area responsible for spatial reasoning, the hippocampus
The brain can be strengthened, sculpted and optimized” if we choose to make it so.
neurogenesis, which describes the brain's natural ability to actually breed new neurons.
The single best way to build your willpower is to voluntarily put yourself into conditions of discomfort. Strengthening Scenarios.
George Bernard Shaw. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man
how habits are formed 
Your starting point is to create some kind of a trigger. the next step” as you can see from my diagram” is to run the routine you want to encode
All change is hard at first , messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end,
The next step of the four-part pattern to program in a new ritual is to make sure you have a preset reward in place.
final point in the pattern, said the billionaire as he touched the piece of chalk to the word repetition
Well, just remember that willpower weakens once it gets tired. Scientists call the condition "ego depletion.
the key is rest and recovery of the self-control muscle, We make our worst decisions and our lowest choices when we're exhausted.
each morning we wake up with a limited amount of willpower as well as mental focus. So, rather than wasting these valuable gifts by spreading them over many trivial choices like what to wear and what to eat, they automate as many basic things as possible, so they can concentrate their highest powers on just a few important activities.
- On the coding of any new habit, you'll move through an initial period of destruction,
- installation
- integration
sixty-six days, The 66 Day Minimum.
when faced with a choice, always choose the one that pushes you the most, increases your growth and promotes the unfoldment of your gifts, talents and personal prowess.
Automaticity Point
poet Maya Angelou: My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.
- To make a habit last, never install it alone.
- The teacher learns the most.
- When you most feel like quitting is the time you must continue advancing.
Gerald Sykes, the writer and philosopher, that went like this: Any solid achievement must, of necessity, take years of humble apprenticeship and estrangement from most of society.
The 20/20/20 Formula
nothing fails like success.
Not following through on what we tell ourselves we’ll do so destroys our sense of personal worth and dissolves our self-esteem.
Procrastination is an act of self-hatred,”
spinning class or performing a bunch of jumping jacks and burpees or skipping like the pro boxers love to do or doing wind sprints.
The real key here, though, is to make sure you sweat.”
cortisol is the hormone of fear. It’s made in the cortex of the adrenal glands and is then released into the blood. Cortisol is one of the main materials that stunts your genius and devastates your implicit opportunity to make history. Very good scientific data confirms that your cortisol levels are highest in the morning.”
The sweating from a powerful workout releases BDNF—brain-derived neurotrophic factor—which supercharges that organ for a winning day.” Tranquility is the new luxury of our society.
“Reflecting on what’s most important to a life beautifully lived will leave you with what The Spellbinder calls ‘residual wisdom’ throughout the rest of the day.
‘Twenty years from now,’ a quote I think comes from Mark Twain says, ‘you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’”
Pre-Performance Blueprint.
The 2x3x Mindset : to double your income and impact, triple your investment in two primary areas, your personal mastery and your professional capability.
“Leonardo da Vinci said, ‘One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself,’” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3301 “Life is very equitable, Highlight (yellow) - Location 3302 “You’ll receive from it what you give to it. Key natural law there. So, give a lot more by becoming a lot better.
- The 5 AM Club Grasps the Essentialness of Sleep Highlight (yellow) - Location 3356 science now confirms that one of the primary ways we bring on an early death is by not sleeping enough.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3381 the light of your devices activates photoreceptors called ‘intrinsically photosensitive retinal Highlight (yellow) - Location 3382 ganglion cells’ that limit melatonin production and negatively affect your circadian rhythm, which hurts your sleep—but you get my point here.” Bookmark - Location 3410 Highlight (yellow) - Location 3419 ‘early to bed, early to rise’ Highlight (blue) - Location 3422 Mahatma Gandhi’s words ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world,’” Bookmark - Location 3454
- The 5 AM Club Is Mentored on The 10 Tactics of Lifelong Genius Highlight (blue) - Location 3498 A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh: “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live Highlight (blue) - Location 3498 without you.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3506 Life’s finest treasures live in its simplest moments, contemplated the billionaire. In those daily occurrences that most of us take for granted. Until we lose them. Highlight (blue) - Location 3643 Thomas Edison, the great inventor. Highlight (blue) - Location 3644 “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3651 The 10 Tactics of Lifelong Genius. Highlight (blue) - Location 3656 Edison once said, ‘Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment.’ Bookmark - Location 3680 Highlight (yellow) - Location 3682 The 10 Tactics of Lifelong Genius Highlight (yellow) - Location 3683 Tactic #1: The Tight Bubble of Total Focus (TBTF) Highlight (yellow) - Location 3687 The five primary assets that all superproducers defend are mental focus, physical energy, personal willpower, original talent and daily time. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3705 Tactic #2: The 90/90/1 Rule Highlight (yellow) - Location 3706 Doing real work versus artificial work, daily and with absolute consistency, will give you a Gargantuan Competitive Advantage born of mastery. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3715 Tactic #3: The 60/10 Method Highlight (yellow) - Location 3729 Tactic #4: The Daily 5 Concept Highlight (yellow) - Location 3740 Tactic #5: The 2nd Wind Workout (2WW) Highlight (yellow) - Location 3741 Moving the body regularly lifts your concentration, speeds up the processing potency of your brain as well as accelerating its learning capacity, raises your energy, elevates your optimism, helps you sleep better via the production of more melatonin and promotes longevity through the release of human growth hormone (HGH), along with the lengthening of your telomeres. Telomeres keep the ends of our chromosomes from fraying—they’re like plastic caps at the tips of shoelaces. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3758 Tactic #6: The 2 Massage Protocol (2MP) Highlight (yellow) - Location 3760 The benefits of a massage include a 31% reduction of cortisol (the fear hormone) levels; a 31% increase in dopamine (the neurotransmitter of motivation); a 28% elevation of serotonin (the neurochemical responsible for regulating anxiety and raising happiness); Highlight (yellow) - Location 3771 Tactic #7: Traffic University Highlight (yellow) - Location 3781 Tactic #8: The Dream Team Technique Highlight (yellow) - Location 3793 Tactic #9: The Weekly Design System (WDS) Highlight (yellow) - Location 3805 Tactic #10: The 60 Minute Student
- The 5 AM Club Embraces The Twin Cycles of Elite Performance Bookmark - Location 3889 Highlight (yellow) - Location 3892 Becoming legendary in your industry is all about sustainability. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3901 “supercompensation.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3902 your five assets of genius surge when you actively push them past their usual limits and then allow for a period of regeneration. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3911 linear approach—‘work harder to produce better’—is seriously flawed. It isn’t sustainable. It just leads to burnout. Exhaustion. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3921 ‘periodization.’ Highlight (yellow) - Location 3928 The 5 Assets of Genius,” continued Mr. Riley as he looked at the diagram, “are your mental focus, your physical energy, your personal willpower, your original talent and your daily time. Highlight (yellow) - Location 3939 “HEC is our High Excellence Cycle and DRC is our Deep Refueling Cycle?” Highlight (yellow) - Location 3950 THE LEGENDARY PERFORMANCE EQUATION: PRESSURE × REFUELING = GROWTH + ENDURANCE Highlight (yellow) - Location 3978 “Dream big. Start small. Begin now” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4127 The first charm was a small mirror. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4128 The Billionaire’s Maxim #1 To Create Magic in the World, Own the Magic within Yourself. Highlight (blue) - Location 4131 French mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4146 The second magic charm was in the form of a flower. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4147 The Billionaire’s Maxim #2 Highlight (yellow) - Location 4148 Collect Miraculous Experiences over Material Things. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4150 The pursuit wasn’t about acquiring things. It was about exploring life. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4156 Never sacrifice your well-being and quality of life for greater annual income or larger net worth. The determinants of a magnificent life have remained the same for centuries: a sense that you’re growing and capitalizing on your human potential; effortful work that draws out your finest productivity and is profitable for humanity; weighty connections with positive people who escalate your jubilation; and time doing that which nurtures your spirit as you advance through your days with a grateful heart. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4169 train yourself through steady and ceaseless practice to immerse yourself fully in this moment. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4172 The third magic charm was a symbol of a door. “Every ending marks a new beginning. All we experience happens for a helpful reason. And when one door closes, another will always open for you,” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4174 “Trust—always—that life has your back—even if what’s unfolding makes no sense.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4175 The Billionaire’s Maxim #3 Failure Inflates Fearlessness. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4186 wooden paintbrush about the size of a finger was the next magic charm Highlight (yellow) - Location 4191 The Billionaire’s Maxim #4 Proper Use of Your Primal Power Creates Your Personal Utopia. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4210 The next object was a nazar, an eye-like amulet that some cultures use to ward off evil people. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4220 The Billionaire’s Maxim #5 Avoid Bad People. Never underestimate the power of your associations. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4222 “emotional contagion” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4222 we model the behavior of the people we spend our days with. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4232 paper money of a large denomination. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4233 The Billionaire’s Maxim #6 Money Is the Fruit of Generosity, Not Scarcity. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4245 positive expectancy, active faith, ever-increasing gratitude and extreme value delivery. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4257 Much of the sadness in our culture is because too many of us don’t have enough money. This need not be so. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4260 miniature running shoe Highlight (yellow) - Location 4262 The Billionaire’s Maxim #7 Optimal Health Maximizes Your Power to Produce Magic. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4273 The eighth symbol was of a tiny mountain climber. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4276 “The whole game of the A-Player is to always be rising. When you summit a high peak, you’ll see the next range of peaks waiting to be scaled. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4279 The Billionaire’s Maxim #8 Continue Raising Your Life Standards Toward Absolute World-Class. Hedonic adaptation describes the psychological circumstance where human beings adapt to environmental and life changes. You receive the pay raise you’ve wanted for years, and you’re overjoyed for a day. Then, this new income level becomes your new normal. The joy you felt fades. Or, you move into a noisy apartment close to train tracks, yet over time you stop hearing the trains. Or maybe the dream car you just purchased staggers you with excitement until, after a few weeks, it becomes just another part of the scenery. These are examples of hedonic adaptation Highlight (yellow) - Location 4291 Invest in the finest books you can buy, and you’ll be rewarded in multiples. Eat fantastic food of the highest caliber, even if all you can currently afford is an excellent starter salad at a luxurious local restaurant. Go have a coffee at the greatest hotel in your city. If where you live has a professional sports team that you love, sit courtside for one game rather than hanging out in the cheap seats for a few seasons. Drive the best car you possibly can. Listen to joyful music daily. Visit art galleries, like I have taught you, so the creativity and consciousness of the painters will rub off on your soul. And remember, be around flowers often—they raise your frequency as well as your ability to see the alternate universe all visionaries tap into. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4298 Magic charm number nine was a heart. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4299 The Billionaire’s Maxim #9 Deep Love Yields Unconquerable Joy. Highlight (blue) - Location 4301 William Penn has guided most of my life and served me wonderfully. It goes, “I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing that I can do to any fellow-being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4314 figure of an angel. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4316 The Billionaire’s Maxim #10 Heaven on Earth Is a State, Not a Place. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4334 miniature coffin. Highlight (yellow) - Location 4335 The Billionaire’s Maxim #11 Tomorrow Is a Bonus, Not a Right.
- The 5 AM Club Members Become Heroes of Their Lives Highlight (blue) - Location 4356 “Live like a hero. That’s what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?”—J.M. Coetzee Highlight (blue) - Location 4486 “Nelson Mandela wrote, ‘As I walked out Highlight (blue) - Location 4486 the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.’” Highlight (yellow) - Location 4499 The Heroic Human Circle. Bookmark - Location 4500