Episode 07 The 5 AM Club
Hello and welcome to Episode 7 featuring the The 5 AM Club, Own your Morning Elevate your Life by Robin Sharma.
This book impacts the core genesis of one’s understanding of time, by inscribing the mighty routines of legends and elite performers in the world around. Dissecting the ebb and flow of ‘change’ through a neuroscience backed approach.
“All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end”
As this one inspires bounties of joyous wonders, it plays in leaps and bounds the methods, tactics and techniques used by business titans and legendary artists to produce astonishing achievements. Enchanting one to activate a holistic sense of exceptionalism, self-mastery and diligence, this book is a promising compass aiming at a lifelong pursuit of greatness.
Crystallising this gorgeous window of opportunity every morning to cultivate on higher assets simply sets you up for a glorious day. This is the exact ‘me time’ concept which Robin introduced over 20 years ago. Spinning from the idea that so many of us lead a time-starved life and the absolute thing required to get out of that whirlpool is to hold the reins to an unfolding day and hoist a head start to be able to concentrate on high-value activities instead of letting the whims of the day control your emotions.
My first takeaway is about ‘Granularity over superficiality’, integrated over time, it profoundly compounds to creates marvelous results. “The beginning of transformation is the increase of perception. The innovations and progressions start by reengineering thinking and reinventing awareness. In so doing, one enters a secret universe that few can perceive. Which, in turn allows making daily choices few choose to make and thus automatically deliver daily results few get to experience.
Upon deconstructing and teasing how world-class performers achieved what they did, one realises that it was their heightened awareness of the opportunities for greatness, that inspired them to make the better daily choices that yielded better daily results and not a mindset of superficiality. Robin caveats this as the 3 step formula, “With better awareness, come better choices, which deliver better results” or even better, ‘The hours that 95% waste The Top 5% treasure. 5 AM is the time of least distraction, highest human glory, and greatest peace.’
My second takeaway is about understanding the concept of ‘Transient Hypo frontality’. In other words, the time when your monkey brain temporarily stops ruminating; trying to figure out everything and when the solitude and the stillness of the daybreak trigger the production of neuro chemicals. To simply say, this speaks to chasing the high of inspirational neuro-transmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, released in periods of intense exercise, meditation and recovery.
This perfectly links the morning ritual to some kind of trigger that embeds early-rising, to jump straight out of bed before your reasoning mind can give you a bunch of excuses about why you should go back to sleep.
The brain is malleable and has an element of muscularity so to speak, and as science now confirms that our brains continue to grow throughout our lives (neuroplasticity) it speaks to the fact that the human brain, like personal willpower, is a lot more like a muscle than previously understood, so making sure that you exercise your brain aggressively to make new habits your new normal is highly useful.
My final takeaway is to remember that an addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production. Taking one hour for yourself before the day starts, in the serenity beyond the complexity prepares one for an exceptional day. And not to forget that “When you feel like surrendering, continue as triumph loves the relentless.”
Like always, leaving you with some words to live by,
“Most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of the world. A few do not. Join them.”
Thank you for reading through this episode of Metamorphosis, catch you soon in the next!
