The 5AM Club

Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.

Robin Sharma
Book Note ~ Dave Kraft

I only surround myself with human beings who fuel my joy, stoke my peace and excite
me to become a better man.

“Done Is Better Than Perfect.”

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.

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 observe magni cent 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 sacri ce applied to one aim, unusual levels
of deep preparation and extreme amounts of solid patience.

Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary feats, once they’ve routinized the right
habits.

Most of us in this age spend our most valuable hours being busy.

Mario Andretti said: ‘If everything seems under control you’re not going fast enough.’

Norman Cousins said: “The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us
while we live.’”

I’d rather live a thoughtful life. A risky life. A real life. An artist’s life. Drives me crazy how
super cial people have become.”

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

Make a giant shift from seeking legitimacy in society to constructing a meaningful

legacy.

All change is hard at rst, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.

Unfortunately, they evaluate their achievement by what they’ve collected versus by the
character they’ve cultivated.
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 We’ve caught the virus of victimitis excusitis.

Never be a "drama Mama.”

Never work only for the income. Labor for the impact.

There’s not one person alive today who cannot lift their thinking, performance, vitality,
prosperity and lifetime happiness magni cently by wiring in a series of profound daily
rituals and then practicing them until they become your second nature. Commitment,
discipline, patience and work—Values few believe in these days,

Nothing works for those who don’t do the work.

Victims love entertainment. Victors adore education.

Multiplying your success in this age of scattered attention, so the weapons of mass
distraction don’t destroy your amazingness.

Success is cool. But signi cance is rad.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

We live in a world where too many people say things they never do and make promises
they fail to keep.

We are married to the complacency of the ordinary and wedded to the shackles of
conformity while resisting all opportunity for growth,

The ow of life rewards positive action and punishes hesitation.

Please consider that a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.

Pure leaders don’t need to advertise their success to society in a feeble attempt to feel
a little better.

When Mahatma Gandhi died he had about ten possessions, including his sandals, a
watch, his eyeglasses and a simple bowl to eat from. Mother Teresa, so prosperous of
heart and rich with the authentic power to in uence millions, died in a tiny room
containing almost no worldly goods.

Good leaders viscerally understand that being inspirational and masterful and fearless
are all inside jobs.

Growth is the real sport that the best play every day.

Rest and recovery isn’t a luxury for anyone committed to mastery—it’s a necessity.
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Inspiration gets fed by isolation. We get our ideas that change the world when we’re
rested, relaxed and lled with delight.

Anyone can be a critic. It takes guts to be an encourager.

“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth and
wisdom.” —Aristotle

No idea works until you do the work.

Great performers have developed the ability to concentrate on optimizing their particular
skills for long, uninterrupted periods of time.

Protection from distraction is precisely how you need to work if you’re serious about
dominating your eld and winning at your craft.

The more powerful a person truly is, the less they need to promote it. And the stronger a
leader is, the less they need to announce it.

I’m starting to realize how much we’ve been hypnotized away from our brilliance and
brainwashed out of our genius.

They entered a secret universe that the majority could not perceive. And this, in turn,
allowed them to make the daily choices few choose to make. Which, automatically,
delivered the daily results few get to experience.

For most people the truth is that it’s all about the path of least resistance.

Commit to being a highly unusual human.

In their work, the maestros of mastery are extraordinarily thoughtful. They think
precisely about what they are doing.

Geniuses understand that it’s smarter to create one masterwork than one thousand
ordinary pieces.

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
-George Orwell

The Top 5% go granular versus applying a super cial mindset to their daily attitudes,
behaviors and activities.”

With better daily awareness you can make better daily choices, and with better daily
choices you’ll start seeing better daily results.
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How often do you meet someone at a store or in a restaurant who is fully present,
astoundingly polite, unusually knowledgeable, full of enthusiasm, incredibly
hardworking, intensely imaginative, noticeably inventive and gasp-worthily great at what
they do? Almost never, right?”

Tighten up our A-games, elevate our performance and accelerate our contribution to the
world.

Most of us alive today wish we had more time. Yet we waste the time we have. Stop
wasting time on insanely trivial things.

Successful people use their mornings well and do that by rising before daybreak—I’d
win a primary victory that would set me up for a triumphant day.”

intelligently exploiting whatever primal gifts you’ve been given.

Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and giftedness every day of the week.

You do that which you know to be right over the thing that you feel would be easy.

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.

Your perception isn’t reality. It just isn’t. It’s just your current perception on reality, kindly
remember that. So, there’s a large difference between reality and our perception of
reality.

Human beings have a tragic habit of remembering the things that would be smart to
forget and forgetting the wonderful things it would be wise to remember.

We become our associations.

There’s a staggering difference between being busy and being productive.

Freedom from Distraction. An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative

production.

Please model all of the great masters of history and strip away all the layers of
complexity from your days. Simplify. Streamline everything.

An intense concentration only on what matters most is how the pros realize victory.
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

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

“Comparison is the thief of joy,” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Abraham Maslow- "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.’

Three options of fear are: Flight, ght or freeze.”

Work on one high-value activity at a time instead of relentlessly multitasking—and do so

in a quiet environment.

your past is a place to be learned from, not a home to be lived in.

After Mindset and Heart-set. You also need to fortify your Health-set each morning.”

Every day is just dramatically better with some exercise in it.

Mindset is all about your psychology and

Heart-set is all about your emotionality, Health-set relates to your physiology, and Soul-
set refers to your spirituality.

Be not seduced by the super cialities that suffocate the human spirit and divorce us
from the best within us.

Small daily, seemingly insigni cant improvements, when done consistently over time,
yield staggering results.

Elite producers and everyday heroes understand that what you do each day matters far
more than what you do once in a while.

What makes the best the best is not their genetics but their habits, not the extent of their
gifts, but the strength of their grit.

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.

Dreams don’t come true while you’re sleeping.

Anyone can be great for a minute. The sport of icons is sustaining genius-grade
performance over a lifetime.

Oscar Wilde~ “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

Yes, most people are passive instead of active builders of the ambitions within them.

Real leaders always feel great joy when they shine a light on the talents of others.
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Small, daily, seemingly insigni cant improvements, when done consistently over time,
yield staggering results.

All change is hard at rst, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.

It could be taking a nap later in the day, another favored rite of the planet’s greatest
creatives.

You become undefeatable in the world by what you do when no one’s watching.

Your willpower really is weakest when you are most tired.

They automate as many basic things as possible, so they can concentrate their highest
powers on just a few important activities.

Persistency sits at the threshold of mastery.

Awesome takes patience. And genius takes time.

And knowledge unimplemented leaves potential undercapitalized.

Persistency is necessary for all forms of mastery.

Any solid achievement must, of necessity, take years of humble apprenticeship and
estrangement from most of society.

Help the leader manage the inevitable invitation to egotism that all great success
inescapably brings.

We always perform in a way that is aligned with the way we see ourselves.

Developing a tremendous imagination is a highly important portal into a celebrated

fortune.

All great artists dream about a future few believe is possible.

Clarity breeds mastery. Right?

Private desire without personal development is like dreaming of having a gorgeous

garden but not planting any seeds.

We don’t spend much time on meaningless entertainment because we’re just too
invested in endless education.

Benjamin Franklin,~ “The early morning has gold in its mouth.”

One of the primary ways we bring on an early death is by not sleeping enough.”
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 What makes genius-level performance is a delicate balance between the mastery of
your morning routine and the optimization of your nightly ritual.

You need ve complete ninety-minute sleep cycles. That’s what the scienti c studies are
now con rming. That’s seven and a half hours of sleep each night.

If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.” —Michelangelo

Everyone dreams of being a legend until it comes time to do the work that legends do.

Edison~ "The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about
one."

If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would
succeed.

Don’t diffuse my genius on being pretty good at many things when I have it in me to be
legendary by working intensely only on one thing.

An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production.

So your private time is free of negativity, energy vampires and soul-hurting pursuits.

Ideally, restructure your entire life so you’re doing only the things you’re great at—and
love to do.

Show personal responsibility and human maturity by habituating a practice to architect a

thoughtful and clear weekly script that ampli es your energy, organizes your choices
and ensures balance.

Preserving your A-game over a lifetime.

Longevity really is a key to legendary.

All work and no break depletes your greatness, over time.

Dream big. Start small. Begin now.

it’s only mis ts, oddballs and eccentrics that change our world. Being different is really
cool. And eccentricity is very hip.

Passionate possibilitarians.

Work-life boundaries for sustained legendary performance.

I own my things, but they don’t own me.

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 Sad to note that many good people are donating the best mornings of their nest days
as they put money over meaning, pro ts over people, popularity over integrity, being
busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

Collect Miraculous Experiences over Material Things.

Never sacri ce your well-being and quality of life for greater annual income or larger net
worth.

Become a collector of awesome experiences instead of a consumer of material things.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that
you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default,” said J.K.
Rowling.

The mighty goliaths of ambition and the massive behemoth of imagination within you
must never be abducted by the tiny cowards of: “What would people think?”

You can allow yourself to become paralyzed by a fear of rejection or you can go out
there and astonish the world. But you just don’t get to do both.

Failures focus their thinking on their lack instead of plenty.

We model the behavior of the people we spend our days with. Allow dream stealers,
energy thieves and enthusiasm bandits into your Tight Bubble of Total Focus and please
know you’re sure to become like them.

Peak health really is true wealth.

A sane person in a world gone crazy has always been considered insane, you know?

Suffering can either embitter us or ennoble us.

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