Each of us has something special inside we were meant to discover, develop, and use to shape a better life and world. You may know what your true purpose is, or you may still be searching for it. Either way, when you incorporate the behaviors and tips of the 5 AM Club, you’ll deepen your understanding of your unique genius and true self so you can master your creative and productive potential. When you truly understand your purpose, you’ll reach great heights and become an exceptional achiever in your chosen field.
The 5 AM Club describes people who’ve learned the importance of rising early and starting their day with the intention of getting the most from it. The first hour after you wake up is your most productive hour of the day. Your body and brain are recharged and more capable of focus and creative thought. When you rise before dawn, the world is quiet and devoid of the distractions that zap your attention and cognitive energy. If you follow the steps to create a successful morning routine, you can begin your day focused, grounded, and ready for the tasks ahead.
You have the ability to master your creative genius and reach your peak performance level to produce exceptional results. But too often, distractions—such as technology, social media, and the news—steal your mental energy and deplete the cognitive resources required for optimum productivity.
Another barrier to productivity is motivation. As a society, our willingness to be distracted and seek out easy lives and cheap thrills have made us lazy. We settle for “good enough” because we live in a world where mediocrity is the standard. We’ve lost our childhood wonder about the possibilities in life and what we’re capable of achieving. We’re impulsive and passive rather than creative and productive.
You need discipline, willpower, and determination to reach your creative goals. Real legends— those whose creative and productive output positively affect the world—understand the importance of focus, practice, sacrifice, education, and patience in their work. They create solitary spaces to connect with their genius and reflect on their work.
You can do this as well by starting each day committed to harnessing your mental, emotional, and spiritual power through a standardized early morning routine.
There are five tenets of the 5 AM Club:
When you incorporate these beliefs into your life, you separate yourself from the mere dreamers and ordinary workers, who make up 95% of the population. They move through life like robots, performing the same actions every day and hoping for new results. To become extraordinary, you need to shed this way of thinking. To transform yourself, you must allow your old self to die to make room for a new you.
To rise above mediocrity:
These steps will give you a competitive advantage in your field. Small changes of even 1% in any of these steps will have huge results
The time between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. is called the “Victory Hour” because of how much you can accomplish within the first hour you’re awake. You will learn the activities you need to perform to optimize this first hour in a later section, but first, you must understand why this hour is so important. All activities performed during the Victory Hour are aimed at strengthening the four power arenas of your life: Strength Building, Brain Training, Personal Growth, and Positive Accumulation.
Use the solitude of this first hour to learn about your strengths and how to increase your power to gain a better perception of who you are and what you’re capable of. What you believe you can achieve directly correlates with what you will achieve. Once you start to understand what makes you exceptional and believe you can do exceptional work, you’ll start making the right choices, rather than the easy choices.
Two regions of your brain are activated when you begin new behaviors. The first, the Ancient Brain, controls your fight or flight reflex. Its main functions are to warn you of dangers in your environment and trigger the release of cortisol, the chemical that stimulates fear. The second, the Mastery Brain, is considered the “high mind” because it’s responsible for cognitive reasoning and analysis, creativity, productivity, and foresight. These two parts of your brain compete for your attention. The Ancient Brain sees changes in your familiar routine as threats and stimulates you to sabotage your efforts. Sit with your thoughts so you can acknowledge your fears and confront them. Your resistance to self-sabotage strengthens your courage and resilience.
You have four internal empires that influence how you approach life. When you nurture these empires, they support your personal and professional growth.
Strengthening these empires creates a calm, stable, and inspired internal environment, from which you can engage more easily with your full potential.
When you focus on one day at a time, you can put all of your energy into reaching peak productivity that day. Generate high-performance days to gain a high-performance life.
Consider positive accumulation like a shift in a flight plan. If you take off from Los Angeles and fly a straight path for five hours, you’ll land in New York City. But if every 10 minutes, you adjust the plane to the right by 1 inch, you could end up in the Caribbean or Australia.
Refine and elevate your morning ritual on a regular basis to achieve levels of creativity, performance, and success you didn’t know were possible.
Mastery doesn’t happen overnight. You must consistently show up and work within the guidelines of the 5 AM Club to unleash your potential. Persistence separates the dreamers from the achievers. You need resilience, willpower, and determination to make waking early a habit.
Real behavior change that persists over time is difficult. But with the proper Mindset, you can be better prepared to reach your goals. The following ideas can help strengthen your understanding of the type of willpower needed to make successful long-term habits.
5 Truths About Creating Habits
3 Principles for Discipline
1 Theory for Greatness
You’ll experience growing pains as you start to shift your life, but true change requires struggle. If you can make it to the other side of this struggle, you’ll be rewarded with a new life. The following four steps of habit formation will help you begin the process and stick with it to the glorious end.
Step 1: Start with a trigger that jumpstarts your new behavior. To wake at 5 a.m., this trigger is your alarm clock.
Step 2: Begin the ritual of the behavior you want to make a habit. After the alarm goes off, jump out of bed immediately before your brain convinces you to go back to sleep.
Step 3: Reward yourself to reinforce your ritual. Each day you get out of bed at the sound of the alarm, give yourself a treat that creates joy. You will begin to associate the ritual with joy.
Step 4: Repeat the process every day. Repetition is the key to new habits. Each day you successfully perform your ritual, you’ll alter the wiring in your brain by creating a new neural pathway for that behavior. Eventually, the pathway will form to the point where the new behavior becomes automatic.
You must go through these steps for 66 days to build a new neural pathway. During this period, you’ll travel through three 22-day stages on the way to automaticity: Destruction, Installation, and Integration.
Stage 1: Destruction
To rewire your brain to ingrain a new way of life, your old way of life must cease. During the destruction phase, you will feel your old self begin to slip away. This sensation will stimulate your Ancient Brain to thwart your progress. This stage is where courage and willpower will help you escape your brain's efforts to scare you off with fear and doubt. If you remain disciplined in your practice, you’ll eventually succeed in moving to the next stage.
Stage 2: Installation
Now that you’ve successfully erased your old patterns from your brain, the work of rebuilding begins. Your army of neurons will work overtime to construct your new pathway brick by brick over the next 22 days. Because of the energy required, the rest of your faculties will suffer. You may feel out of control, anxious, or confused, and you will want to quit. But these feelings are part of the struggle required to transform. Realize that you are far along the path, and stick with the practice to get to the end.
Stage 3: Integration
The final 22 days are when the magic happens. You’ve pushed out of your comfort zone and created a new pattern of behavior. Each day you continue your practice, you pave the new neural pathway to cement the behavior. When you reach the end, your new behavior has reached automaticity, and you no longer have to think about it. You will be fully immersed in your new way of life.
Now that you know how to make rising early a habit and what you should focus on during the Victory Hour, you’re ready to learn how to use those 60 minutes to strengthen that focus.
The Victory Hour is separated into three 20-minute periods to prepare your brain and harness your power for a successful day.
Period 1: Exercise from 5 a.m. to 5:20 a.m.
After you get out of bed, perform vigorous physical activity. Go for a run, do jumping jacks, or follow along to an exercise video. The activity is not as important as the level of activity. When you exercise to the point of sweating, you trigger beneficial chemical processes in your brain. Your brain releases hormones and neurotransmitters that help to transmit positive feelings throughout the body, improve mood, and support cellular reproduction. These chemicals also stabilize the Ancient Brain by reducing the release of cortisol. At the end of the 20 minutes, you’ll be more psychologically sound and focused.
Period 2: Reflect from 5:20 a.m. to 5:40 a.m.
You stimulate your internal spirit when you sit quietly for periods of reflection. By staking claim to this solitary and tranquil period before the rest of the world wakes up and tries to distract you, you fortify your four internal empires and begin the day more connected to your true self. During this period, you might sit with your thoughts, journal, or meditate—better yet, do all three.
Period 3: Grow from 5:40 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Read books about icons in your industry, listen to podcasts that increase your knowledge and skills about your craft, watch videos about innovation, or consume self-help materials to deepen your personal awareness.
This process is perfectly designed and ready to use to help you achieve deep awareness and peak performance. You have no excuses for wasting that precious first hour. Stick with this process for 66 days to make living an exceptional life a habit.
You won’t be able to successfully exploit the benefits of the Victory Hour if you’re exhausted. How you end the night before is just as important as how you start each day. You must get enough quality sleep to support your mental capacity and overall health.
The benefits of sleep are endless. When you’re asleep, the brain cleanses itself with cerebral spinal fluid. Think of it like washing your car. Your neurons are scrubbed clean so they are shiny and new and ready for the hard work ahead when you wake up. Human growth hormone is also released when you sleep, which regulates emotions, improves cognition, and increases energy. These processes keep your brain healthy, which helps keep the rest of your body healthy.
You disrupt these processes when you don’t get enough sleep, and sleep deprivation has been shown to lead to premature death. A successful nightly ritual will help you sleep better and wake stronger so you can tackle the Victory Hour fully recharged and ready to grow.
You should be in bed and ready to sleep shortly after 10 p.m. to be able to wake up recharged at 5 a.m. If you’re used to staying up late, this ritual will be difficult to follow, but you can use the same steps of habit formation to build your nightly routine.
The following are suggestions for how to manage the last three hours of your day:
You’ve worked hard to organize your evenings and mornings to create exceptional thoughts, beneficial behaviors, and successful outcomes. Now use the following tips to amplify your growth and keep the momentum going.
Your brain is like a muscle, and like any muscle stretched to its limits, it needs time to recover and prepare for more strenuous activity. The period of recovery is when real growth happens. When you stop and rest, you give your brain time to incorporate what it’s learning. If you don’t rest, you will overextend your brain and hit a wall, which is commonly known as burnout.
Take technological vacations two days a week, spend time in nature, and do things that delight you, like cooking or dancing. When you return to your creative space, you’ll be relaxed, focused, and ready to produce.
You uncover your full potential and true spirit when you use the principles and practices above to join the 5 AM Club. As you master these processes, you’ll feel all aspects of your life synching together to create a new self embodying seven virtues: 1) bravery, 2) forgiveness, 3) integrity, 4) understanding, 5) sincerity, 6) politeness, and 7) humility.
Exemplify strength by staying steadfast in your work. Exemplify courage by waging war for your life every day. Exemplify grace by spreading as much love as you can to everyone you see. People will recognize your power and strength, and you will be remembered as a legend.
Robin Sharma wrote The 5 AM Club as part fictional narrative, part instructional guide for creating a quality morning routine and life. The narrative is used as an entertainment device to develop the principles and practices as behaviors of four fictional characters. In this summary, we’ve focused primarily on the principles and practices required for you to form a more successful morning routine, better habits, and a more exceptional life filled with creative productivity.
The chapters of the book are reorganized into the following sections for focused benefit:
Part 1 advises on how to find your creative genius and create an existence that allows it to shine through.
Part 2 provides the guiding principles that underlie the steps involved in creating a successful morning routine.
Part 3 takes you through the steps of creating a positive morning routine.
Part 4 helps you optimize the rest of your day and life to maintain your productive progress.
Part 5 conveys the importance of recuperation and how to find the balance with productivity.
Part 6 provides final thoughts on how to leave a lasting impact on the world.
In a dark room, a once strong and successful woman considered taking her life. She was in her 30s and had built a profitable company that was regarded as one of the best in its field. But recent events had taken her will to live. Investors and members of her board were trying to steal her company, and it was too much to bear.
While contemplating the end of her life, she noticed an invitation to a personal optimization conference her mother had given her. These sorts of mystical self-help programs were not the entrepreneur’s usual cup of tea, but she felt drawn toward it. Perhaps she needed a new perspective on her life. Changing her life seemed like a better option than ending it, so she decided to go.
Thousands of people attended the personal optimization conference to hear the wise words of the sage, known as the Spellbinder. This man spoke about developing your true creative spirit and increasing your productivity to extraordinary levels. But as he spoke, he seemed to be losing strength. Without warning, the Spellbinder collapsed to the floor, and the conference hall was cleared out. (He later recovered.)
But three individuals were too shocked to leave. The entrepreneur found herself in the company of a heavy man with dreadlocks, who she learned was a painter. The artist had come to the conference to learn how to tap into his creative potential. He wanted to produce art that would make a mark on the world, and he needed to learn how to quiet the inner demons that thwarted his efforts.
There was another man who approached the entrepreneur and the artist, a homeless man. He was dirty and dressed in rags, but there was a spark in his eye the others couldn’t quite explain. He also wore a large expensive watch and spoke with authority. The homeless man was well-versed in the teachings of the Spellbinder. He spoke of using those teachings to build an immense fortune. Of course, the other two thought he was crazy, but they were intrigued when he offered to fly them on his private jet to an island to learn the lessons of the Spellbinder.
The entrepreneur and artist learned that the homeless man was, in fact, a billionaire and titan of industry when a Rolls Royce picked them up and took them to a private jet. It turns out the billionaire often dressed like a vagrant to stay grounded in the reality of life.
Over the next several weeks, the entrepreneur and artist traveled with the billionaire to his private compound on the island of Mauritius off the coast of Africa, Rome, South America, and South Africa. The billionaire told them about the magic of the 5 AM Club and said they could join if they committed to his teachings and opened themselves up to personal growth.
Each day started at 5 AM, and the billionaire guided them in understanding the theoretical principles guiding the methods of the 5 AM Club. At first, both the entrepreneur and artist struggled to adjust to the early hours and take in the lessons. But over time, waking up got easier, and they started to notice a shift in the perceptions of themselves and life and gained more inner peace. They also started to fall in love and eventually got engaged.
Once the artist and entrepreneur had developed a stronger mindset, the billionaire taught them the methodology of owning your morning to own your life. The three of them become bonded in their journeys of self-discovery, so when the billionaire started to show signs of poor health, the couple became concerned. But sickness would not stop the billionaire from taking them to the end of their journey, which would include a wedding ceremony in South America.
Along the journey, the entrepreneur received threats from her competitors back home. At first, she was scared. But after gaining a new sense of strength and belief in her abilities, she felt more confident and spiritually grounded. Eventually, with the help of the billionaire, she was able to defeat her enemies.
Finally, at the end of the journey, the entrepreneur and the artist went home together to start their new lives as members of the 5 AM Club.
Five years later, they were still practicing the methods and living a more joyful life. The billionaire had succumbed to his ailments and died shortly after their trip ended, and he left the couple his compound on Mauritius.
The entrepreneur was able to let go of her doubt and fear and took her business to great heights. She became incredibly wealthy and successful and used her morning routine to train for marathons. She’d run four since their trip. The artist went back to his studio and released his inner demons. He started creating important work and was now a renowned painter. He also ran two marathons with his wife and became a vegan.
The journey of the entrepreneur, artist, and billionaire is the same journey you will take emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually to tap into your creative and productive potential. You will learn the principles and methodologies of the 5 AM Club and be able to reach similar success in your life by committing to your journey of transformation.
Before you learn the beliefs, principles, and instructions that guide the behaviors and habits of the 5 AM Club, you must understand what the 5 AM Club is.
The 5 AM Club is a group of people who’ve learned the importance of rising early and starting their day with intention to improve their lives. The first hour after you wake up is your most productive hour of the day. Your body and brain are recharged and more capable of focus and creative thought. When you rise before dawn, the world is quiet and devoid of the distractions that zap your attention and cognitive energy. If you follow the steps to create a successful morning routine, you can begin your day focused, grounded, and ready the tasks ahead. People who are part of the 5 AM Club are leaders in their fields, innovators, and social icons. This book will help you learn how to become part of this exceptional group.
You were born to be a titan—to discover your truest talent, live your wildest dreams, climb the ranks of success, and leave a legendary legacy. You have everything you need inside you to be your best self, but to do it, you must let go of your mediocre self first. Change requires struggle, but if you’re brave enough to accept the challenge of reaching your professional, personal, and spiritual goals, the struggle will reap great rewards.
In this section, you will receive insights that help ground you in your warrior spirit and honor your poetic soul. You have nothing to fear when you’re on a journey of self-discovery. The only thing to fear is a lack of awareness and effort. Follow the advice in this section to cultivate the fortitude you need to grow into your greatness.
Your unique purpose in life is to use the creative genius you’ve been given and develop it in a way that feeds your life and that of others. But you live in a world in which average effort and results are the norm. This ordinary environment helps to limit your ideas about who you are and what you’re capable of because you don’t feel extraordinary. When you realize that what you believe about yourself is based on fears, doubts, and excuses, you’ll be better equipped to move forward in power.
Too many people are stuck. They work in unfulfilling jobs, worry about money and responsibilities, and long for relief from the tediousness of daily life. This relief places us on a path of desiring insignificant things that create instant gratification. Living this way is not truly living. It’s just routine and uninspired.
Perhaps you’ve experienced tragedy or strife, situations where you felt let down or hurt. You may have felt lost and alone or like a failure. When these events and feelings occurred, the creative genius inside of you started to diminish, as well as your fortitude to keep moving forward. But pain and suffering are not the antitheses of mastery. Your past doesn’t have to preclude a beautiful future if you open your wounded heart to the possibilities of love and fortune in your life.
You’re stronger than you know, and wherever you are right now is exactly where you need to be to learn from your life lessons and grow. Hard times are simply moments when your fear outweighs your belief in yourself. When you push through those fears and recognize that each wrong step along your path is actually a right step toward your destiny, you’ll feel your gifts awaken inside and carry you forward.
Having dreams and acting on them are two different things, and the latter is not easy. If it was, everyone would be living out their heart’s desires. You have to do the work, and part of that work is removing distractions that hold you back.
We’ve become complacent as a society, seeking ways to make life easier and settling for cheap thrills. We don’t live with intention, and we are soft, fragile, and feeble because of it. We flake on commitments, break promises, and give up when things get hard. We have no patience for struggle and believe that obstacles indicate failure. We believe we are who we have become and are not capable of real change.
The problem is that you, like the rest of us, have lost your sense of childhood wonder. When you were little, you understood the pleasure of living. You chased fireflies at night, stargazed, daydreamed, and played for hours in the sun. Then, you grew up, and real life suffocated that youthful boldness and vigor for life. You lost hope in the dreams you once had and accepted an ordinary life. You gave up creativity for impulsivity and productivity for passivity.
Technology has advanced to a stage in which you’re connected to your electronic devices like life support. You take selfies, play games, watch hours of television, and pass judgment on photos of food and social activities. You throw out lazy opinions and engage in childish arguments in cyberspace. You buy things you can’t afford to fill holes in your life and pretend that posting pictures of your life is the same as living. You’re so busy keeping yourself busy, you no longer remember what it means to have a direction that drives your behavior.
If you can leave behind the distractions of empty technological pursuits, easy pleasures, and lackluster thoughts, you will begin to reorganize your life to support decency, benevolence, and behavior that fills you with peace and prosperity.
You will feel the most challenged when you’re most ready for change. Your true strength of character resides in difficulties. You tap into the parts of you that are special, inspired, and creative when you suffer. True happiness is working through the hard times and coming out the other side satisfied that you’ve sincerely earned your newfound peace. And when you finally find your strength and heal your relationship with yourself, the rest of your life will fall into place.
All great people had to overcome adversity to become their best. Miles Davis pushed through what was expected of him to create his own unique sound. Rosa Parks suffered abuse and humiliation on her path to changing the world. Stephen King was rejected time and again before he broke through with his novel Carrie, a manuscript he tossed in the garbage at first. Your biggest successes are consequences of your greatest discomfort. Lean toward your fears and insecurities to land in your universe of possibilities.
Your environment influences your outlook and capacity for productivity. Make your environment one where greatness is welcomed.
Your perspective on life is shaped by the things you include in your life, and when those things impact you positively, you’re more likely to be inspired to implement positive behavior.
Let go of your ego, façade, and fear so you can reach authentic brilliance. The first step is to become open to that authentic brilliance. In this space, you start to appreciate the beauty around you every day, find gratitude for the blessings you’ve been granted, and find value in a quiet mind. You stop being a “drama mama,” or someone who only sees the bad and relishes in having something to complain about. The moment you open your heart to greatness, life will give you the lessons that allow you to achieve more than you thought was possible.
Part of expanding your life to include greatness is forming successful habits. The people you see who are stars, icons, and titans of industry didn’t get to those positions by chance. They set their intention to master their unique gifts and created positive routines. They focused their full energy on pursuing their goals through practice, sacrifice, education, and patience. They created a process for achievement and dedicated themselves to following it.
You can create this process in your life. Whether your gift is teaching, painting, building machines, writing code, or raising a family, you were made to be exceptional at it. Focus your energy on your immeasurable potential and let go of the doubts that stifle your power. The best way to start your process and focus your power daily is by creating a strong morning routine.
The most productive part of your day is the early morning. Everyone else is asleep, which means there is no one, real or imaginary, to interfere or judge you. You may not believe you’re the type of person who can wake up early, but if you stick to a routine, waking up with the dawn will become a habit.
How you start each day is the foundation for how you will approach your life. You can harness the power of focus, effort, enthusiasm, and success every day if you start with a profound morning ritual. Each morning brings a clean slate for your life, and you will start to rise to great heights in your behavior and work when you take the time to honor that first hour—the Victory Hour—of a new day properly.
People who understand the power of the Victory Hour to shape their lives are part of the “5 AM Club,” wherein they wake each day at 5 a.m. to begin their morning ritual. Managing the activities of your first waking hour with intention leads not only to personal mastery and extraordinary results but also instills you with patience, discipline, a strong work ethic, and fortitude. The consequences for your day after this first hour are extreme productivity, and you’ll accomplish more in just a few hours than most will accomplish all week.
As the rhythms of your sleep cycle stabilize, your health, mind, and soul will also stabilize and become enriched with potential. The world is quiet at 5 a.m., and the peace and tranquility provide the space your mind needs to assess your heart and the essence of who you are. Once you recognize who you are meant to be, you’ll begin to undergo a magical transformation of spirit. You’ll begin your journey down your true path and find tremendous opportunities awaiting you. You’ll be able to envision a new future, one that suits your personality and skills, and all the achievements you’ll make.
And when you’re firmly walking down your charmed path, you’ll be more inclined to greet each person you meet along the way with kindness and love. You won’t need to compete with or compare yourself to them. You’ll be full of love and strength and can share it with them.
The next section will provide the foundations of the 5 AM Club in both beliefs and behaviors. Through these teachings, you can find a way to join the 5% of society who live a masterful life.
(Shortform note: For another perspective on the value of starting your day early, read our summary of The Miracle Morning.)
In today’s society, it’s hard to shut down all the distractions in your life, but learning to find the balance can help you feel more productive and successful.
What forms of technology do you use the most and for what?
Does your reliance on social media and the news cause you to be less productive during the day? In what ways? And if not, how do you avoid distractions?
What are two changes you could make to your daily technological use that would reduce the level of distraction in your life?
What aspects of technology enhance your productivity?
There are five maxims underlying the 5 AM Club that can help guide your journey to excellence.
1. One hour of tranquility leads to a lifetime of achievement. Great achievers know how to shut down the distractions in their lives to allow their creative spirit to thrive. When you take an hour each morning to exist in peaceful isolation, you lay the bricks for a productive day, which lays the bricks for a productive life.
2. There is no power in excuses. You can rationalize your way out of any behavior—it’s unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or too extreme. If these excuses keep you from being open to change, then you’re validating them. Waking up early may not be familiar, comfortable, or normal, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be one day. Small adjustments on a daily basis are all that is needed to create real growth and change in your life.
3. Without struggle, there will be no glory. The trajectory of change moves from difficult to chaos to beauty. Everything that now comes naturally to you was awkward and hard in the beginning. Getting up early will challenge you, but persisting through the difficult moments will make it routine, and you will rise shining bright with the sun.
4. Being extraordinary means being different. The 5 AM Club is an elite group not because of their status, but because there are so few people willing to commit to becoming excellent. Only 5% of people are willing to push out of their comfort zones to focus on mastering their craft. The other 95% will ridicule your behavior and call you eccentric. If you’ve reached the level of eccentricity, you’re well on your way to achieving your highest level of greatness.
5. There is only one direction that leads to greatness. Starting this morning routine will hurt, and challenging yourself to dive deep into your personal power will scare you. You’ll want to quit and retreat back to safety. But clarity and mastery only happen when you do the work to attain them. The only direction to the excellence you want is forward. Be relentless, even when you have lost all hope of victory.
The above maxims separate the weak from the strong and serious from the dilettantes. Many people talk a good game but don’t walk their talk. They tout dreams and ambitions and regale you with ideas about how they will achieve greatness, but they don’t do the work required to achieve their goals. They move through each day like a robot, doing the same things and hoping for new results because they’re too afraid to pursue new actions that lead to new results.
The 95% of people content to live mediocre lives seek validation from the external world. Their egos run the show, and when they lose their status or the admiration of the outside world, they lose themselves and power. In contrast, the 5% seeking mastery realize that real strength comes from tapping into your true nature and exploring your inherent gifts. When you take responsibility for your growth, you gain courage, awareness, integrity, and willpower.
A butterfly must shed its caterpillar skin before it can fly. You, too, must shed your old life to begin the process of forming a new fulfilling life.
The first day you choose to implement the 5 a.m. morning ritual, you create a shift in your world. As that shift leads to more adjustments in perspective and productivity, your confidence and dedication will grow and wash away your fears. You will stumble during this growth period, but a defeat for your ego is a victory for your soul. You can use these hits to your ego as markers for your success along your journey.
You don’t need much to be an influential person. Your days should be spent pursuing your creative power and vision of excellence, not material items that have no bearing on who you are as a person. Pursuits of integrity over selfishness give you the power to contribute meaningfully to the world.
You can have this amazing life by making one change to elevate your days. When you make waking early your keystone habit, you start each day in peace. You’ll feel more centered because your mind is more focused and your heart more at ease. The pathway this habit creates opens your power source wide so you can achieve “flow,” or a heightened mental perception that encourages uninterrupted high-quality processing. You will tap into a deeper well in your psyche and see how much more you have at your disposal to achieve. And when you reach this flow state, your old patterns reshape into a new path for ultimate success.
A 3-step success formula encompasses the foundational model of the 5 AM Club. This formula focuses on granularity—attention to a precise level of detail—which is required to master your craft and excel. Exceptional performers in art, industry, and life understand that the work they put into the world reflects back onto them. Their characters are represented in the value of the work they do, and they refuse to show anything but the utmost respect for their work or themselves.
If you want to be a great achiever, you need to go beyond the superficial level of your work. Too often, the path of least resistance is enough to get by, but you aren’t someone looking to get by. You want to achieve greatness, which means you need to be thoughtful in your work and consider every detail as a significant detail. Keep your standards high and accept nothing less than perfection. Focus on one piece of work to show it the respect it deserves. One great piece of work is worth a million mediocre pieces. You must aim for this level of greatness daily and do what it takes to follow through.
This formula is at the foundation of every lesson you will take from the practices of the 5 AM Club.
The 95% of average achievers will call your process obsessive or outlandish, and they wouldn’t be wrong. You must approach your craft with unwavering commitment and a zeal for refinement to attain the “GCA,” or gargantuan competitive advantage. Your refusal to compromise on perfection is what leads to high-level achievement. When you approach your work on this granular level, you can see the details that elevate your work. This level of detail is so important because it only takes one tiny error or overlooked factor to turn something amazing into a disaster.
Remember, education leads to high awareness, which leads to better choices about the work, which leads to better implementation of your efforts, which leads to better outcomes. Have pride in your process and determination so you can have pride in your work. Small incremental successes daily build to a triumphant life, and how you manage that first hour is the most important aspect of preparing yourself to successfully move through the formula.
Before you can use the Victory Hour successfully, you must understand the elements underlying it: Strength Capitalization, Brain Training, Internal Enhancement, and Positive Accumulation.
Mastering these four arenas is important because they help bring you closer to who you truly are and the necessary actions that bring out your inner genius daily. Mastering your life means making space for gratitude, courage, and commitment in your morning routine. You can use the Victory Hour to increase your energy, peace of mind, and significance in your actions.
As you’ve learned, what separates the successful from the mediocre is a steadfast determination to take the gifts you have and maximize their benefit. This maximization happens during the Victory Hour, when you have an opportunity to learn about your strengths and what is required for you to cultivate them to a high standard.
This dedicated time is the antithesis of how many of us live. We’re used to rushing during the day, feeling like there’s never enough time to complete everything we want to do or need to do to feel successful. Your life becomes controlled by time, not you, and peace and joy are always just out of reach. But when you wake early and commit to dedicated and disciplined practice, you gain an advantage over your time and actions, essentially making your own luck by accentuating what is possible over what is known.
Research suggests that your perception of your potential dictates your behavior and results. If you believe you’re not capable of achieving greatness, you won’t ever achieve it because you likely won’t put forth the effort to try. Why study, train, and work hard to succeed if there is a cap to what you’re able to accomplish?
You have the potential to become great in whatever you set your mind to. You have a unique gift you were born to excel at, and you have an inherent drive to reach your full potential that, when allowed to flourish, can motivate you to strive for greatness. Regardless of whether you want to be a professional athlete, a CEO, or a baker, you can use the Victory Hour to examine your potential and shorten the distance between reality and your perception of reality.
When you bring awareness to your life, you start to see the lessons presented to you to help you grow. Until you recognize the steps along the path laid out before you, you will not progress from your current life. You must start searching for the right solutions, rather than the easy ones, to uplift your life.
You must approach your life with a childlike wonder, respect, and confidence so you can clearly see your path and begin to make intentional steps down it. This intention is the definition of strength capitalization.
You have two areas of your brain battling for your attention daily. The first is called the “Ancient Brain,” which is the lower-functioning portion of the brain that encompasses the limbic system. This part of the brain is hardwired to identify threats in your environment and try to thwart them.
The Ancient Brain triggers chemical processes that ramp up your fear and activates your fight or flight reflex. You feel stressed or anxious, even when there is no immediate threat in your environment.
The other part of the brain is the prefrontal cortex, or the “Mastery Brain.” Some scientists refer to this part of the brain as the high mind because it is responsible for cognitive reasoning and analysis. Your creativity, productivity, and foresight live within this part of the brain.
When you start the process of growth, the Ancient Brain kicks in. It recognizes that your comfort zone is being challenged and warns you against the invading dangers. This sensation creates self-sabotage, wherein you actively destroy the work and processes of growth and achievement. You may turn to distractions or allow negative thoughts to take over and keep you from attempting to become more.
Your task is to become aware of the tactics of the Ancient Brain so you can acknowledge them for what they are and ignore them. The only way to tap into your unique genius is by venturing into the unknown parts of yourself where strength, courage, and creativity reside. You must turn to the Mastery Brain, and you must do this by refocusing your life on only what is important to your achievement of those goals.
You have a finite capacity for thought each day that gets used with each new activity you give your attention to. The more things you turn your attention to, the more diminished your capacity for thought becomes. And when you start your day without intention, you’re essentially walking into the world like a magnet, ready to attract whatever distraction comes your way. You’ll have no mental capacity left by the end of it to give to internal reflection and growth.
The solitude and peacefulness of the Victory Hour provides the space for you to sit with your fears and confront them, rather than let them run your life. When the world is quiet and devoid of distractions, you are able to hear your inner voice and open yourself up to your strength and talent. Silence and tranquility activate your brain to produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, which sends pleasure signals to your nervous system, and serotonin, which improves mood. These chemical processes create the flow state mentioned previously.
Victory loves resiliency. Challenges are what help you grow. To win the battle of the two minds, discover your courage and hold tight to it when fear threatens to hinder your progress. You must remove the distractions you turn to for safe harbor that dilute your creative potential. When you do this, you will find your true self along the path of discovery and mastery and begin to lead an authentic life, one where your full potential is celebrated.
The quality of your internal awareness dictates the quality of your life. Nothing happens in the external world that isn’t a mirror image of what’s happening internally. There are four internal structures, or empires, that can create an environment ripe for growth when you intentionally consider and nurture them. When you give these areas attention during the Victory Hour, you begin each day balanced and ready for peak performance. The four empires are Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset.
1. Mindset
You are likely familiar with the adage, “Mind over matter,” which means that positive thinking leads to positive outcomes. You must have a strong Mindset about your potential to be able to take the necessary steps to achieve it. But a powerful mind is only 25% of what is needed to own your creative and productive potential.
2. Heartset
Your heart is an important part of your internal state because it is where emotions live. To win the war against distractions and apathy, you must clear out any emotions that hinder your growth. Clear your heart of toxicity by letting go of pain, heartache, fear, rage, and jealousy and champion the positive emotions of love, forgiveness, gratitude, and inspiration. Your heart must be at peace if you want to truly transform.
3. Healthset
Your physical health is just as important as your spiritual health. Your goal for achieving your creative and productive potential is to create a life of meaning and impact, and you can’t do that if you’re dealing with poor health or prematurely aging. Focus on strengthening your body and defying age so your gifts can be celebrated and advanced for decades to come. When you use the Victory Hour to exercise and focus on strengthening your physical form, you’ll start each day with more energy and cognitive bandwidth. Exercise also promotes the release of serotonin, which helps reduce stress and anxiety.
4. Soulset
You have a beautiful spirit inside of you that is pure and intuitive. When you sit with your spirituality, you earn a greater capacity for insight, love, and benevolence and can begin to shape a more positive philosophy for your place in the world. To do this, you need to use the solitude of the Victory Hour to reflect on life and be available to the messages your soul sends to you to give you spiritual direction.
Your power resides in the attendance to these empires each day. When they combine, they create a calm, undisturbed, and inspired internal environment in which you can truly begin to do the work to achieve your full potential.
The most important aspect of the Victory Hour is the way it sets the stage for a productive day. Each day should be seen as a singular representation of your full life. What you do today adds to the path that leads to your future.
Think of it as a flight plan. You set a path from Los Angeles to New York and follow it to the destination. But a small shift in direction every half hour, such as a 1-inch adjustment to the right, will accumulate into a massive detour. You might end up in the Caribbean or Australia by the time your journey is over. These small adjustments in the four empires (Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, Soulset) each morning have the ability to disrupt your current life plan in the same way. All it takes is a 1% shift daily to lead to a new life over time.
These enhancements can also be external. Changing your morning routine, how you approach colleagues, what you choose to read, and how you spend your free time are all adjustments that accumulate into life-altering events. Your task is to accumulate as many of these positive 1% shifts as you can to head down the path to fulfillment and growth.
The reason practitioners of the 5 AM Club are so successful at achieving their goals and potential is because they are consistent in their efforts. You can adjust the morning routine to serve your week as you see fit, but realize that a part-time commitment will never lead to full-time results. Own each morning to allow your momentum to increase exponentially and create a beautiful and full life.
Good habits are the key to aligning your internal structure for success. Mastery does not happen overnight. You gain mastery through persistence in performing behaviors that tap into your power. This persistence is known as “grit,” or a state of resilience, willpower, and steadfast determination. Grit is what separates those with ambitions and those with success. Make persistence a habit, and you’ll discover parts of yourself you never knew existed.
Making a substantial change in your life is difficult, and forming that change into a lasting habit is even harder. Follow the 5-3-1 doctrine to adopt the right mindset.
The 5 Tenets of Successful Habits
The 3 Principles of Disciplined People
The 1 Theory That Guides Greatness
You will endure setbacks, rejections, and ridicule from others when you make persistence a priority. You will be forced to sacrifice what is comfortable and familiar to reach greatness. But you cannot transform if you don’t suffer, so you must accept that and remain loyal to your goals regardless of how hard the path becomes.
You may feel absolutely certain that you are not the kind of person who can join the 5 AM Club. Waking early doesn’t fit your lifestyle, or you doubt your ability to stick with it. But you have the ability to join the 5 AM Club because you have the ability to rewire your brain for excellence.
Science has proven that the brain is capable of growing and forming new neural pathways even into adulthood. Your brain is like a muscle, and like your biceps, the more you train, the stronger it grows. When you work to create a new habit, you’re training your brain to rewire itself to make your actions automatic. The more you push your willpower to overcome obstacles, the stronger your neural pathways become; eventually, they are formed so completely that they become ingrained.
There are four phases of habit formation that, when worked through, signal the brain to ingrain new behavior: the trigger, the ritual, the reward, and the repetition.
Your capacity for willpower is the strongest first thing in the morning. This is why the Victory Hour is so important. But your willpower has limits. Like muscle fatigue, your work to make the right choices each day creates mental and emotional fatigue. Take time to rest and allow your mind to recuperate so it can be strong again the next day.
You can also reduce the strain on your self-control by reducing the number of decisions you make daily. Focus on important things, and remove distractions to ensure your mental energy is directed at what is useful, rather than what is wasteful.
Once you start working through the four steps to form a new habit, you must stick with it for 66 days. This is the amount of time it takes for the brain to create a new, ingrained behavior. You will travel through three different stages along the way before your behavior becomes automatic: destruction, installation, and integration.
Phase 1: Destruction
True change is hard. You are essentially rewiring your brain to let go of familiar and standard patterns and create new patterns. Think of it as a death—the old you has to die for the new you to be born. You will require a high level of willpower to kill off the old you because the forces of that old life will do what they can to hold you down.
This stage will last for 22 days, during which time the gravity of your old life will hold your growth hostage. But the more you wage war with your old self and succeed in implementing positive change, your ability to escape those clutches increases. This is called “escape velocity,” and you build it by the momentum of your continual efforts to rise above your fears and discomfort to reach for something greater. Stay disciplined in your morning ritual, and you will make it over the first hurdle and move on to the next.
Phase 2: Installation
At this point, you’ve successfully fought your inner demons and destroyed your old way of living. You have a clean slate, and this is the moment when you start to rebuild. The installation phase is challenging because the energy it takes your brain to fully connect the new pathway from neuron to neuron is considerable. Your other faculties will begin to suffer as a result.
You’ll start to feel discombobulated, anxious, and out of control. The stress of experiencing this level of instability will make you want to give up even more than before. But continue forward because this high level of confusion and exhaustion is the consequence of positive changes happening inside.
This phase will last for another 22 days. Be patient and disciplined. Each day lays another one of the 22 bricks necessary to reach implementation. Stick to your ritual, and you will soon reap the benefit of all your suffering.
Phase 3: Integration
The light at the end of the tunnel begins on Day 1 of your final 22 days, or Day 45 of the process. Your neural pathway of your new behavior is almost completed. Your ability to wake up at 5 AM is easier now, and as you continue the ritual over these final 22 days, you reinforce your new behavioral pathway. And at the end of those days, you will have reached the point of automaticity. You no longer have to think about performing your ritual because it is now ingrained behavior.
Joining the 5 AM Club as a full member creates a new foundation for your life that allows you to continue growing to exponential levels. From this new foundation, you can build additional new habits. This is how masters build exceptional lives. They don’t stop with one great habit. They use their increased strength and discipline to continue growing.
You have something you were born to do, but it’s not always easy to know what that is or how to create a life that celebrates it.
What is your main passion in life, and what do you do to engage with it?
Does your current job relate to this passion, and if not, what would working within your passion look like? If so, are you able to reach your goals in your work? Why or why not?
What is one thing you wish you could do more of in your life, and how would you incorporate that into your current life?
How could following your passion help contribute to a better life and the world?
We all have things we wish we could do more of in life but aren’t sure how to make them happen. The tips for building better habits may help you learn how.
What are two habits you wish you could form for a better life?
How have you succeeded or not succeeded in attempting to incorporate those behaviors into regular habits in your life?
What is a habit you’ve tried to form and couldn’t make stick? Why did you struggle in forming this habit?
With the steps provided in this chapter, how do you feel more prepared to form that habit? What will be the first step you take toward making that behavior a habit?
You’ve committed to joining the 5 AM Club and are ready to start the 66-day journey to forming the habit of getting up early. But waking early is only useful if you use the Victory Hour wisely.
Goals are only as powerful as the efforts made to achieve them. Now that you understand the foundational components of the Victory Hour, you are ready to learn the steps for focusing on those components to create an exceptional life. The 20/20/20 Formula describes the three 20-minute periods that make up the 60-minute Victory Hour. Move through these periods in the designated order to prepare your brain properly and harness the power of the 5 AM Club.
The first thing you need to do after jumping out of bed is engage in vigorous physical activity. You can go for a jog, do jumping jacks, take an exercise class, or dance. Do whatever activity suits you, but it must make you sweat.
The reason physical activity first thing in the morning is so important is that it activates positive chemical reactions in your brain that benefit the rest of your day.
When you sweat first thing in the morning and activate all of these benefits, your psychological perspective will improve. You’ll be calm, focused, and more productive.
Reflection is important to ground your spirit and harness the power of your Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset. You might reflect by sitting quietly, meditating, or journaling for these 20 minutes, but a combination of all three is recommended. Taking the time to reflect each day has a number of benefits for your day and life:
When you take the time to be still and allow yourself to focus on what you believe, what you feel, and who are you, you strengthen your connection with your true self. And engaging with your true self allows you to discover your true genius.
Take some time during these 20 minutes to allow your mind to soar like a child’s mind. Imagine the impossible, dream of greatness, and visualize yourself achieving your dreams. Use part of the time to write in a journal. Use the journal to create a blueprint for your day ahead. Write down what you hope to accomplish that day so you have a map designed with love to follow.
Or use the journal to release your thoughts. Don’t stop to think, just allow the flow of your mind to take over. Write about what you’re grateful for, what ambitions you have for your life, and any fears, guilt, or other negative emotions holding you back. You must feel your emotions to heal from them. Simply naming your bad feelings and writing them down can bring them to the front so they can be released. As you release these toxic elements, you create more space inside for your four empires to rule.
Then, find a few minutes to quiet your mind and focus on your breath. Meditation is considered one of the best ways to bring internal peace and unlock hidden parts of your soul. You tap into your inner light that realigns your energy toward goodness and strength.
When you take the time to reflect in the morning, you start your day calm, stable, and spiritually powerful. From this foundation, you can attract great things to your life and impact others for the better with your positivity.
If you want your life to grow, you must take time to grow your mind. The final 20 minutes should be devoted to enhancing your knowledge of the world and your craft. Deepen your knowledge to increase your aptitude for success. While others are sleeping, you’re taking steps to improve your mind and skills, and those steps will give you a head start each day. Improving your knowledge base is important for many reasons:
You don’t have to go back to school or study like a doctoral student to grow your knowledge base. Read books about people in your field or great influencers of the world. Seek out information that enriches your understanding of leadership and innovation. Gather information in the self-help realm to strengthen your internal empires. Watch videos or documentaries about icons and their journey to stardom.
Whatever you can do to enrich your awareness of the world around you, your place in it, and the work required to succeed, the more powerful you will be when you turn toward the day’s work. Be curious and hungry for knowledge. What you put into life is what you get out of it.
The magic of the 20/20/20 Formula is the way it creates intention for your day and creates ripples in your sense of self that lead to tidal waves. The more you engage with the full routine, the more you build on the positivity of the day before. The successful days accumulate into a successful life, and you become more powerful and capable than you thought possible.
You must follow this routine in order every day. You can customize it to suit your needs, such as exercising for 30 minutes if you prefer. But make each period at least 20 minutes long and keep them short enough to not exhaust your body or mind, which can lead to burnout. The periods are designed to be short enough to maintain focus without feeling burdensome.
One important aspect of the 20/20/20 Formula is to keep your focus on optimization. Your decision to join the 5 AM Club is a decision to grow and transform into the best version of yourself. You can’t continue to grow if you become complacent in your morning ritual. Push yourself to change your activities with an eye toward higher achievement each morning.
When you continue to reach for more peace, awareness, and knowledge, you keep your growth trajectory moving in the right direction and reduce the influence of ego, which develops from a false sense of mastery. Never settle for where you are. Keep moving the boundaries of your abilities to reach extraordinary levels of personal and professional excellence.
This process is organized and ready to use the first day you decide to form the habit of waking early. All the hard work of understanding how to optimize the Victory Hour has been done for you. You now have no excuses for wasting your precious time of opportunity.
The success of your Victory Hour routine will depend entirely on the success of your “Final Hour” routine. You can’t optimize your mind and body for peak performance and creativity if you’re too tired to wake up in the morning or exercise. How you approach the last hour of each day should become as much of a habit in your quest for personal and professional mastery as the first hour.
Sleep is a time when significant processes happen in the brain that support optimal focus and cognitive functioning. Both the amount of time and the quality of your sleep are essential for supporting your mental capacity and overall health.
When you sleep, cerebral spinal fluid floods the brain and acts as a sanitizer. Your neurons shrink to more than half their normal size to allow the cleansing process to proceed unimpeded. This process also helps them rest and recharge so they can fire on all cylinders the next day.
The brain also releases human growth hormone, or HGH, from the pituitary gland when you sleep. This hormone promotes healthy cell tissues, a good metabolism, and longevity. HGH also improves mood, concentration, critical thinking, and energy and regulates other chemical compounds in your system that trigger hunger. Exercise releases HGH, but a majority of this hormone is sent through the body while you’re asleep.
Without proper sleep, your body is not getting the supportive treatment it needs to stay healthy. Sleep deprivation can deplete health and lead to premature death.
Technology is a major issue when it comes to inducing sleep deprivation. We have become dependent on social media, television, streaming services, and other adventures on the Internet for entertainment, and we absorb all of these things through electronic devices. But research shows that these devices are wreaking havoc on our ability to sleep.
The blue light radiating from device screens is correlated with low melatonin production in the body. Melatonin is a hormone that acts like nature’s sleeping pill. It encourages the body to sleep and helps keep you asleep. When you stare at device screens in the evening, you stymie the effects of this hormone, which disrupts your circadian rhythm. This is why you may have trouble falling asleep or are prone to waking up throughout the night.
Forming the habit of early rising is a difficult process, and forming the habit of going to bed early is equally difficult if you’re used to staying up late and winding down with technology. The following is a suggested routine for how to manage the last few hours of your day to prepare you for a productive morning. You’re welcome to adjust the process according to your personal needs, but you must be willing to experience the discomfort of changes to your normal routine if you are serious about transforming your personal and professional lives.
These steps should become as ingrained as your morning ritual. Do them nightly, and as you do, you’ll begin to feel more energy, focus, and power than you knew existed. You can reach your full potential when you are well-rested, recharged, and grounded in your internal empires. Each decision you make along your journey to mastery builds to the next. A series of successful steps builds to an exceptional existence, one where you are in full command of your body and mind.
(Shortform note: For more tips on getting a good night’s sleep, read our summary of Why We Sleep.)
Starting the day before the sun is up is hard to imagine. But a solid morning routine can provide great benefits to your life.
Do you prefer to get up early or sleep in? Why do you have this preference?
In what ways would starting your day earlier benefit your life? List three specific changes an early start would create in your life.
What are the first things you do every morning when you get up? How do those actions affect the rest of your day and your productivity?
If waking up at 5 a.m. is too big a task, what are a few ways you can incorporate the teachings in this chapter to optimize your morning for a more successful day?
There is so much knowledge in the world, it can be hard to choose what to learn about. But finding a few topics that interest you can help build a good foundation for continued education.
What are two subjects you wish you knew more about?
What could you do to deepen your knowledge about these topics? List two specific ways you could learn about them.
Do you feel knowledgeable about the field you work in? If not, what keeps you from learning more. If so, what steps can you take to continue learning about your work?
What are two autobiographies about influential people you would like to read? How can you incorporate this reading into your daily routine?
You have what you need to maximize the power of your genius with a strong morning routine and a supportive evening routine. But what happens in the middle is also significant. Simply starting and ending your day well is not enough to keep your creativity and productivity safe from external distractions and internal doubts. The following are 10 tips to amplify the progress you make each day you follow the 20/20/20 Formula during the Victory Hour.
When you occupy your mind with technology or managing the energies of negative people, you diminish your cognitive power, peace of mind, willpower, and inspiration. You need to protect your genius by surrounding it with a shield to ward off distractions. Within this insulated place, you have the power to decide what external elements and the type of people you allow in. If you recognize toxic energy from either of these realms, keep it locked out.
To accomplish this force field of protection, create a space of mastery and leave all technological devices on the outside when you step into it. This should be a private space where you feel happy and comfortable and can focus on the important work ahead. Schedule your time in this special place so you can intentionally transform into your highest creative self when you enter. You can create this space for both professional pursuits and personal sanity by avoiding people who do not support your endeavors or tax you with negativity.
Some ways to create this space include removing entertainment devices from your house or a specific room, avoiding the news, avoiding crowds and loud places, ending toxic relationships, and shutting down communication notifications.
You have lots of goals you want to accomplish and responsibilities you need to attend to in your life, but mastery cannot happen when your focus is spread thin. Your most productive time of the day is in the morning, when your cognitive capacity is still full. You need to train yourself to focus on one important activity at a time to harness the power of this productive period and truly attend to mastering your unique genius.
For 90 days, commit to using the first 90 minutes of your workday to invest your energy in one project. Go into your solitary bubble to create a boundary from other ideas or distractions. When you concentrate all of your mental power on one thing for 90 minutes, you engage deeply with your focus and creative energy, which leads to legendary results.
High achievers don’t push themselves to the point of mental depletion or physical exhaustion. They switch between productivity and rest so they are always operating at full capacity when it’s time to work. Research shows that you are most able to concentrate and dive deep into your idea pool when you’re relaxed and energized. You can activate all of your mental powers by fluctuating between periods of deep focus and moments of recuperation.
After your 90-minute period of focused work on one project, use the next 60 minutes to be unflinchingly productive on whatever you wish to work on. Find a comfortable position that you can maintain without movement for one hour, and work quietly and efficiently. Commit to doing your best work and producing at a high rate for 60 minutes. When the time is up, take the next 10 minutes to relax and reenergize.
Take a walk, read something that stimulates your mind, meditate, listen to music, or daydream about your goals. When the 10 minutes are up, start your next 60 minutes of high-functioning work. You will be rested, fully inspired, and focused on the tasks ahead. Continue this cycle throughout your workday.
You can create your future by setting mini-goals each day. It only takes a 1% improvement in any aspect of life, or micro-improvements, to create astonishing results. Then, celebrate each successful completion of those micro-improvements. When you intentionally acknowledge the small victories you make throughout the day, you safeguard your motivation, confidence, and willpower against self-doubt, fear, and criticism.
You have a better chance of following through with your goals if you write them down. Therefore, during the reflection period of the Victory Hour, write five accomplishments you’d like to make that day in your journal. These are five things you need to do to feel like you’ve had a successful day. If you commit to five micro-victories each day, after a month, you’ll have accumulated 150 wins that make you feel valuable, accomplished, and confident. As you become more confident, the level of your micro-achievements will grow, and within a full year, you will have made 1,825 amazing strides toward your masterful life.
You now know the amazing benefits that exercise brings to your body and mind, so why would you only tap into those benefits for 20 minutes? You can supercharge your mental processes and physical vitality by adding another focused period of exercise to your day. This second workout should come after your workday is over. Doing so helps you reset your peace, energy, and focus so you can make positive choices for how to end your day. You’ll also remove the evening cravings that hit the body when it’s depleted.
Take an hour-long walk in the woods to gain another period of distraction-free solitude and further attend to your four internal empires of Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset. Go for a bike ride or take an exercise class. Whatever activity you choose is fine, as long as you move for an hour.
Science has proven that deep-tissue massage invigorates the body in several ways, including stimulating brain activity, reducing stress, providing pain relief, and elevating mood. Massages decrease cortisol levels by a third and increase levels of dopamine and serotonin by a third, as well. Regular massages that are more about relaxation do not get deep enough in the tissues to stimulate these responses. Your massage should hurt a little if it’s going to truly help.
Schedule two 90-minute massages each week to gain these physical advantages. You may think that’s a lot of time and money to account for on a weekly basis, but the joy, calm, focus, and improved overall health are worth it. The cost of providing your body with this gift is less than the negative repercussions of an unhealthy body and mind.
You likely work out of the house, which means you must commute every morning and evening five days a week. Whether that commute is 20 minutes or two hours, how you spend that time affects your ability to achieve optimal cognitive functioning. If you drive, you may listen to the news or talk radio, which fills your mind with superfluous or negative information. These influences can erode your cognitive capacity before you even start your work. If you are on a form of public transportation, you may sleep or play games on your phone. These activities are deenergizing and mind-numbing.
Use your commute time to continue your life-long commitment to educating yourself. Listen to audiobooks or meaningful podcasts that enrich your knowledge base about life or your specific field. Listen to programs about new topics you may know little about. You never know where inspiration is going to strike, but if you don’t remain curious and put forth the effort to continue learning, you guarantee it never will.
Even the best athletes have a personal team of professionals to help them with all aspects of their training beyond the performance of their sport. They’re able to rise to meteoric heights because they can focus on their gift without distraction. You can also increase your creativity and productivity by outsourcing tasks beyond the scope of your talents to other professionals. You won’t waste precious time and mental energy on things that don’t support your mastery of your gifts if you ask for help with the trivial things. And focusing fully on only what you love to do will help stabilize your psychological and emotional states.
Hire a trainer to create a suitable exercise routine, a chef to help prepare meals each week, an assistant to worry about your schedule or write communications, or a counselor to help you deal with difficult relationships. Get help with whatever areas of your life zap your energy and take your focus from what’s important to your soul and progress.
You already have many tips and instructions for how to reorganize your life to tap into your full productive potential and creative genius, but don’t leave the success of your routine to chance. Ensure your success daily by taking the time to schedule your weekly activities in advance. Spontaneity and surprises throughout your days are wonderful, but you’re on a journey of transformation and excellence, so don’t drop the ball on your responsibility to shape your life specifically to support your strength, willpower, and happiness.
Each Sunday, take 30 minutes in the morning to write out a blueprint for your week. Make a ritual of this process to emphasize its power and your ability to stick to it. Start by acknowledging everything that happened over the past week, celebrating the micro-accomplishments. Write down any insights you gained over the week. Then, create an hour-by-hour plan for each day of the new week starting at 5 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m.
In your weekly schedule, chart time for the 90/90/1 and 60/10 rituals and your second workout. Mark times for both solitary and social activities or any other activities you need to accomplish that week. Nothing is too insignificant because if you write it down, you’re more likely to follow through. Each week will be lived with purpose, which will build to enriching months and years over time.
You’ve already been told to enrich your mind during the grow period of the Victory Hour and during your commute to work. But to truly become an exceptional producer and leader in your field, you need to make learning part of your daily activities regardless of these additional times. You will become formidable in your field and influential in the world the more knowledge you gain about life and your work. So few people take the time to be lifelong learners that you will set yourself above the competition if you continue to push the boundaries of your knowledge.
Create a “student hour” in your daily routine for deep study. Whether through books, podcasts, videos, online courses, or in-person courses, take in whatever information you can to maximize your professional prowess and expand your natural gifts. The more you learn, the higher your foundation of knowledge grows, and you continue to build on it by gaining more sophisticated and significant ideas that set you apart. You might also find it useful to study your progress in your journal or find a mentor to work with. Whatever you choose, approach the work like a student thirsty for knowledge.
You now have the tools you need to reshape your life into that of an elite performer. With the rituals and tips provided above, you know how to optimize your willpower, inner strength, and creative genius to reach a mastery level of productivity and take your work from ordinary to extraordinary. You’re all set to hit the ground running to make it to legendary status, but to become a legend in your field, you have to maintain your high level of performance over time. The next section will show you how to maintain increased mental and physical output over time.
Reaching a mastery level of creativity and productivity requires sustainability over the long term. Maximum ceaseless effort can lead to burnout. If you put your head down and just go, go, go without ever taking the time to recuperate, you’ll wear down your stamina, motivation, and creative juices. Think of this principle as the 60-minute on, 10-minute off ritual supersized. You must make time to recharge your energy sources, your mental capacity, and your creative spirit. If you don’t, you’ll run straight into a brick wall and collapse.
Talent and desire are not enough to reach the pinnacle of your productive output. Success requires time for your ideas to grow, your work to take shape, and your results to have an impact. The only way you can accomplish these feats is by ensuring your four empires are operating at full capacity and you are able to approach your work with fresh vitality and endurance.
There are two significant ways that taking periods of rest support your capacity for peak performance. These are best understood through the lens of an athlete:
An athlete who overtrains without cool-down moments runs the risk of injury. They push their bodies to get stronger and faster, but the overexertion causes them to blow out a knee. The damage to the muscle tissue or tendons is so severe, they aren’t able to play again. If they had taken time to recover between workouts, they would have:
This second point is important to understand. Periods of rest not only ensure that you don’t damage the assets required for you to perform your work but also allow your assets time to strengthen as a result of your intense training. This process of strengthening during rest is called “supercompensation,” and it describes the way that growth happens during moments of respite.
Our society is built on the foundation that success comes from hard work. To accomplish more, you must work more. But science does not support this philosophy. Research shows that your skills actually sharpen and grow stronger when you’re not working. Think again of the athlete—they stretch their muscles to their limits during intense periods of training, but one or two days of rest allows the muscle to repair into a more durable and elevated tool.
Your mind needs time to recalibrate based on the training and productivity you’ve put it through so it can take all of that information and effort and reshape it into a stronger and more capable machine. When you return to work, your brain will be stronger than it was before, and your baseline of achievement will be elevated.
You have 5 assets at your disposal when it comes to your work: 1) mental focus, 2) physical endurance, 3) motivation and willpower, 4) natural gifts, and 5) productivity time. You must protect these assets so you are always able to work at a peak performance level when you sit down to create. When these assets have time to recalibrate and fortify, they lead to extraordinary capacities for creative output and productivity.
As you know, these assets are strongest in the morning, which is why you push to exploit them during those valuable first hours. But as your cognitive capacity wanes over the course of a day, you become less productive and able to make good choices. This is true when we turn our attention from a day to a week. Your willpower and cognitive power are greatest at the beginning of the week and exhausted toward the end. Just like your evening ritual is important to recharge your batteries for another productive Victory Hour, days off are important to recharge for another week of intense focus and creation.
High achievement is not a straight line of activity but a pendulum clicking back and forth between cycles of excellence and cycles of deep restoration. You must shape your life to swing completely in the direction of passionate, unrelenting focus and effort and then swing back to times of inactivity and peaceful enjoyment of life. You may believe that doing nothing equals a lack of motivation or a waste of time, but doing nothing is required to develop higher levels of performance and increased energetic output.
To accomplish the most, be committed to your work. The tennis legend Billie Jean King suggested that pressure was a sign of greatness. You only feel pressure and stress when you’re striving for something big and important. If you were striving for mediocrity, the level of pressure would be low.
Recognize that pressure and stress are symbols of high achievement and lean into them. Push forward and keep producing at a high level, even when you feel like quitting. The times you are least motivated to work are when you can grow the most. When you actively push your willpower and discipline to the limit, they will grow stronger when you stop to rest. This strength creates a new foundation for the rest of your life.
So what does a cycle of deep restoration look like? The key to restoration is self-care. You must take care of yourself to perform your best work, and the precursor to self-care is self-love. Self-love is the internal expression of loving your external life. Finding the joy in life and having fun are essential for a life well-lived. Success without joy is not true success. There is a magic in life available to anyone willing to seek it, and you seek it by following your heart.
Taking time off and lounging begrudgingly is not a representation of joy. You must use your cycle of restoration to fill your heart with goodness and your body with wonder and light because these things repair the strained and torn muscles of endurance and motivation.
The following are some ways to bring more joy into your life:
The key to restoration is finding your version of Heaven on Earth. Heaven is not a location but a state of mind. You can’t think your way to Nirvana; you must feel your way toward it. Your instincts are smarter than your intelligence, and if you can shut down your work brain and open your heart, you’ll be led to the things you enjoy. When you submerge yourself in your heart’s delights, you open a frequency to your spiritual energy.
Take time to find the magic of life so your Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset can become infused with the love they need to amplify. You will be brought closer to the pure nature of your character that was readily available as a child before fear and worry clouded your sense of wonder. There is so much beauty in the world that can uplift and inspire you if you’re willing to move through it with curiosity and vision.
There is great power in the universe, and you can tap into it anytime you want by trusting your heart, staying positive, and pursuing activities that reflect the kind of life you want to live. The following mottos will help you keep your focus on creating a beautiful life.
Motto 1: Find Magic in the Universe by Finding Magic in Yourself
The most important relationship you have in this world is with yourself. When you look in the mirror, you must love the person reflected back. How you love yourself equals the amount of love you have to share with the world. Approach your internal relationship like you would a relationship with a loved one. Find isolated time to be with yourself so you can explore your soul and become aware of your most special traits. Sit peacefully with your heart to discover your passions. Quiet your mind so your true beliefs rise above those influenced by the external world. When you create a space to understand yourself better, you receive valuable insights about your unique genius that will transform your life and work.
Motto 2: Value Experiences over Possessions
You’ve been told by society that the amount of money you make, the kind of car you drive, and the size of your home are all indications of success. Your status at work has become what defines your identity. Seeking these fortunes has replaced your childlike desire for fun and adventure with a focus on acquiring material things. But possessions don’t equal happiness. Seek out activities that make you laugh, touch your heart, or blow your mind. Be playful in your life and develop a hunger for miraculous experiences. Collect joy like you collect paychecks. Happiness is the only currency that counts at the end of your life.
Motto 3: Be Willing to Fail
If you don’t experience failure from time to time, it means you’re playing life so safe that you never take a chance. And you cannot succeed to your full potential if you don’t take chances. Fear of rejection, humiliation, or self-loathing keeps you from putting everything on the line to achieve something unbelievable. This is because you believe failure is a sign of weakness. You must stop tamping down the power of your gifts and possibilities because you’re afraid to fail. Failure breeds growth, and being willing to fail breeds courage. Say yes to opportunities that scare you so you can rise above your limitations and soar to great heights.
Motto 4: Be the Architect of Your Life
Satisfaction with your life is a slippery slope. You might tell yourself to be happy with what you have so you can feign satisfaction for a life unlived to its full potential, but complacency is the enemy of growth. When you rationalize your dreams away and ignore the power you have to create beautiful things that impact the world, you build a mediocre future. But you have four tools in your toolbox that help you create the life you want if you’re willing to start the process of building it: your thoughts, feelings, language, and actions. Use your thoughts to envision your goals and what it feels like to accomplish them. Use your feelings to show gratitude for what you have and all the good that awaits in your future. Speak only about hope, strength, and abundance. And behave in the manner that aligns with your most hopeful version of yourself. Use the gifts you have now to build a truly satisfying life.
Motto 5: Remove Toxic People From Your Life
Negative people are like leeches who drain your life force. Scientists call this leeching “emotional contagion,” which describes the influence that bad energy has on your environment. Many people have experienced so much drama in their lives, they feel most comfortable when their world is in turmoil. You may know them as drama queens or kings. But you are on a journey of self-love and immense personal growth and discovery. If you surround yourself with people who only exist in the dark, you will become swallowed up by their shadows. Treat everyone with kindness and take the high road when someone tries to bring you low. And do what you can to engage with positive people, for their emotions are the ones you want to rub off on you.
Motto 6: Live With Abundance to Create Abundance
Money is one of the biggest stressors in life, and a fear of lack drives many people to hold onto money with an iron fist. But money is meant to flow like electrical currents, and to allow that current to flow into your life, you must continue the flow in the other direction. Be generous with money to let the universe know you have enough to share, and you will receive even more. Tip waiters, drivers, attendants, and housekeepers well. Give money to charitable organizations. Lavish your friends and family with gifts or financial support. Show gratitude for what you currently have and what you’re able to do with it. You only live in scarcity if you believe in scarcity. You don’t need to go into debt, but you must remove your conditioning that money is finite. Create positive expectancy about money, wherein you believe that it will always come to you when you need it, even if you don’t know from where, to attract abundance into your life.
Motto 7: Prioritize Physical Health
If you focus on maintaining good health, you reduce the need to waste valuable time trying to recover from poor health. That time can be put toward your creative output and joy fulfillment, and you will be able to engage with those endeavors longer. Many people don’t realize what poor shape they’re in because a low state of health is their baseline. But when you reach a high level of fitness, you begin to realize just how unfit you were before. Regulate your sleep cycles, eat nutritious foods, elevate your heart rate, and sweat to encourage positive chemical reactions in your brain. Your extraordinary vitality will set you above the competition.
Motto 8: Never Settle for Good Enough
Human nature is highly adaptable. You have the ability to adapt to changes in circumstances and move forward with your new normal. The problem with this new normal is that the novelty soon wears off and your achievement becomes just another aspect of life. You reason that it’s good enough and become complacent. To avoid this conundrum, focus on growth rather than accomplishment. Never settle for a better plateau. Seek to continue climbing to the highest peak available. Keep your standards high and your efforts focused on reaching beyond your current limits. This doesn’t mean being dissatisfied, but rather increasing your strengths and powers.
Motto 9: Give Love Away Like Your Life Depends On It
Love generates love. You were put on this earth to take the love you have and share it with the world. Never miss an opportunity to show someone love, and tell the people in your life how much you love them. As you expand your capacity to love, you expand your capacity to experience love, which leads to joy. Write letters to your friends or “thank you” notes to people who’ve supported your life. Show more interest in the lives of others than in professing your own value. Each person you meet has the ability to bring something fresh and amazing to your life, and you can unlock those gifts through the sharing of love.
Motto 10: Seek Peace Within, Not Without
As stated, Heaven is not a location to be found but a state of mind to be captured. Your personal Heaven lies within your Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset. Cultivate a better relationship with yourself. You are the only one who knows what you’re made of, and you discover who that is when you find inner peace and joy. Everything that has happened to you has been to get you to this point. Reflect on the journey and find gratitude for the lessons and insights it's brought to your life. Within that landscape is the secret to who you are and where you’re going. Open yourself up to growth and experience Heaven.
Motto 11: Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last
None of us is guaranteed a tomorrow. Accidents, illness, and tragedy happen every day, and missed opportunities become set in stone. Each second you’re alive is a blessing. Don’t waste it worrying about the future or planning to be happy. You can’t wait for great things to happen to allow yourself to feel pleasure and joy with your life. Embrace your mortality so you appreciate each moment you are alive. Share the love you have in your heart now, take risks, and create space to be unreasonable. Celebrate the small victories and soak up the majesty of the world and your life with each breath you’re still able to breathe.
In this busy world, it’s hard to remember to stop and enjoy life. But seeking joy in small ways can help create more happiness overall.
What are two ways you practice self-love during the week?
If you don’t regularly take time to engage in self-care, what stops you?
If you had all the time in the world, what are some things you would do to experience more joy?
What are some small daily activities that could lift your spirits throughout the day to improve your emotional state?
You will struggle in life. There is no getting around it. But how you approach this struggle is what will separate you from those who will suffer eternally. Everything you must endure in life is part of the grand plan to draw you closer to your true self and your unique gifts and give you the direction you need to move forward as the brilliant hero you are. You will be presented with doorways of opportunity that will swing wide open for you to walk through and discover your deepest power and purest good nature. You just have to be willing to walk through to make it to the other side of tragedy or injustice.
Nelson Mandela said that true freedom is not achieved simply by removing the things that hold you down, but by engaging with the world in a way that honors others’ freedom. The darkness you experience in your life can either bind you to the shadows or lead you to the light. Every legendary producer had to endure great suffering to reach their pinnacle. They were able to achieve great feats because they leveraged the great pains of their lives to reinforce their strength and inspire their souls.
There are seven virtues that live within each hero, and these virtues live inside you if you are willing to see them: 1) bravery, 2) forgiveness, 3) integrity, 4) understanding, 5) sincerity, 6) politeness, and 7) humility. You must aspire to live with these virtues at the forefront of your life to truly become a leader capable of impacting the world.
Today, make the decision to remove the shackles of your life so you can walk freely. Let go of past grievances, shame, blame, anger, hate, and apathy. Commit to rising at 5 a.m. to anchor your body, mind, and soul in the pursuit of greatness without any darkness clouding your heart. Allow your genius to reveal itself to you and develop it through discipline. Use the Victory Hour and the other rituals of the 5 AM Club to deepen your spirit and give you the type of character that can infect the world with good. Exemplify strength by being steadfast in your endeavors. Exemplify courage by showing up each day to win the battle for your exceptional future. Exemplify grace by spreading love to everyone you meet. This is how you build a legacy and become a legend.
Most people only dabble in legendary status. They reflect on their lives and their accomplishments in small bursts before the rest of the world swoops in and steals their focus with distractions. They think about how they live among others and what their impact will be between notifications and social media posts. These people will not be remembered as heroes.
Building your legacy must be a lifelong, focused effort. You need to actually reshape your life to live for something greater than yourself. You must demand more than mediocrity from your efforts and use your energy to produce great works that will leave a mark on the world. This is what being a hero in your own life and the lives of others means.
Don’t wait to become great when you have the time. Make the choice to commit to your transformational path, and open your heart to the immense possibilities that live inside you. Doubt, fear, and disappointment will be part of your journey, but you do not have to give them power. Stop focusing on them, and they will have no bearing on your decisions or actions. Celebrate every part of your majesty and all the miracles the world has to offer. Become a force of good in your life so you can be a force of good for the world. It all starts at 5 a.m. every morning.
There are many ways you can tap into your special talents to improve your life. And waking up early might be a good place to start.
What parts of the lessons in this book resonate with your life?
Are you interested in joining the 5 AM Club? Why or why not?
Do you believe you can create a positive morning routine starting at 5 a.m. and follow the 20/20/20 Formula? If yes, what fears or doubts do you have about the process? If not, are there other aspects of the routine that could enrich your life?
Do you feel like you’re capable of making your dreams come true? Why or why not?
In what way would you like to make a bigger impact on the world, and what would you like your legacy to be?