I know you've had some difficult times in your life. We all have. I get that you might be feeling things haven't turned out. The way that you thought they would when you're a little kid for the fire desire and wonder you didn't plan on each day looking the same did you in a job that might be smothering your soul, dealing with stressful warriors and endless responsibilities that stifle your originality and steal your energy lusting after unimportant pursuit and hungry for the instant fulfillment of trivial desires, often driven by technology that enslaves us instead of liberates us. Living the same week a few 1000 times and calling it a life. I need to tell you that too many among us diet 30 And are buried at 80. So I do get you. You hope things would be different, more interesting, more exciting, more fulfilling, special and magical. That is one of the paragraphs that I have highlighted in the book the five a.m. Club by Robin Sharma.

And that really stood out to me amongst a heap of other ones which I'll cover off on a couple as we go through today's session, which is a little bit of a book review of what I'm reading at the moment and how I'm implementing these lessons into my life currently. Now if you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I protect the first and last hour of my day. So think about how many people you know or this might even be you, where the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning when your alarm goes off is reach over, grab your phone, turn your alarm off, and then start scrolling where you're checking off notifications, you're checking your emails, you're replying to messages, you go into social media etcetera. Now consider this, that is starting your day being reactive, whereas if you turn your phone off, get out of bed, make your bed, brush your teeth, do some meditation, do some stretches, do some movement, do some learning, do some reading, um might be walking, it might be opening the blinds, getting some light, getting some fresh air etcetera, owning the first hour of your day means you're being proactive, you're doing things that are serving you, you're doing things that are setting you up for the rest of your day.

It is basically putting you on the front foot. Okay, so doing the important things early for yourself is extremely important in maintaining your discipline, your direction, your drive, your motivation, and your vision. Now it's very easy to get drawn into and distracted by all of these other things and a lot of people live their lives being distracted and if you're being reactive at the start of the day, that sets the scene for the entire day. So, my day actually starts the night before, so like I said, I protect the first and the last hour, so the last hour before I go to bed, I have no phone, I have no blue light and I've spoken about this in a lot more detail in the sleep episode, which is part of the Swiss Eight miniseries, okay. But basically the last hour of my day is where I switch off, I start down regulating everything.

I start preparing my body for sleep. Okay. So many people just watch netflix and um you know, do whatever they're out and about and they don't prepare their body for sleep. Um And then they wonder why they sleep poorly or most people don't even understand that they sleep poorly. Now ask yourself this question, How often do you wake up in the morning before your alarm feeling refreshed going fuck, I feel good. I felt like I slept really well. My body is recovered, my mind's recovered, I'm going to get up, I'm going to get after today. All right now, this is something I've been doing for years, I've been refining the process, but now I'm reading the five a.m. Club, I'm started tighten the screws on things. I've already got a really solid routine and I protect that anyone that knows me knows that you know, I'm turning my phone off at nine o'clock every night and you know, I'm asleep but I'm trying to be asleep um somewhere between 10 and 10 30 I'm normally getting up at 66 30. But what I'm actually doing now is tightening those screws because I find my morning routine, You know, I'm quite productive there, but then if I need to leave to go to work then I'm breaking that creative flow and you know, I want to have a little bit of extra time in the morning.

So I've actually been getting up at 5:30 this week. I'm going to bed at 9 30. I'm getting up at 5 30 so that gives me an extra 30 minutes to record a podcast to do some study. I've been practicing my tire lessons, I've been doing some anatomy and physiology. I've been recording podcasts and I don't need to break that creative flow to walk out the door. Alright, so again, I'm starting that day the night before that means that I'm going to bed and I'm turning my phone off at like 8 30 now And I'm trying to be asleep somewhere between 9:30 and 10 because sleep is important for me. I need to set myself up for that. Okay if I have a poor night's sleep, then I'm going to have a pretty average day the next day. So again protect the first hour and protect the last hour. Now something I want to say here is that some people read the book the five a.m. Club and be like, cool, I'm going to start getting up at five a.m. All right now if you normally get up at seven o'clock and you start getting up at five o'clock, you're gonna be fucking tired.

Okay, it's all well and good to set these goals, but you must have the structure in place to apply the principles. Alright, again, I was getting up an average wake up time for me was quarter past six. Alright, last week I woke up at 6:00 every day, Okay? And that was easy for me to do. So I was like, all right, I'm going to challenge that a little bit more this week. I'm going to get up at 5:30 every day. Now, here's the thing, if for whatever reason, I'm not sleeping very well and I'm tired by the end of the week, I'm recording this on Wednesday. So if by the end of the week I haven't got up at 5 30 every morning and felt good, then I'm not going to push back to five o'clock next week, I'm going to stay at 5 30 Get my body adjusted and adapted to going to bed at that time, waking up at that time feeling good, then I make some adjustments, then I might push back to 5:00.

So now I get an extra 30 minutes in the morning before I need to walk out the door and I'm going through that creative process and again for me, my most creative juices are flowing first thing in the morning, the more that my day passes, the more time goes by, the less disciplined I become. So I really like to um do the most important things first thing in the morning and if I'm being distracted by other things, then those things aren't going to get done. And particularly not as my day starts rounding out, I'm not going to get that shit done as the day progresses. So very important for me to go through my personal growth, my discipline and work on my project, my own personal projects. First thing in the morning, we've become masters of compromise slowly and steadily allowing in more aspects of mediocrity until a point arrives where it's our standard operating system, real leaders never negotiate their standards. They know there's always room to improve.

They understand that we are most connected to our sovereign nature when we are reaching for our best alexander. The Great once said, I'm not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep, I'm afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. Now, Robin Sharma has written a number of books and I've read another one of his books and this book came highly recommended to me from a number of credible sources. So I decided to follow it up. And so far I'm about a third of the way through it. And I'm really enjoying the story so far. Um, and I really liked Robin Sharma's style of writing. And the first book that I read of his is the monk who sold his Ferrari. And if you haven't read that book, I highly recommend that that is also an excellent read and his style of writing is to write fables where he tells the story of a number of people, but imports a heap of uh philosophical questions.

Um, social psychology, um biology, neuroscience. You know, there's so many aspects that he has put together very, very well in being able to tell a story and push across the principles that he's trying to teach. So to round out this episode, I'm going to finish with one last paragraph from the book in a culture of cyber zombies, addicted to distraction and afflicted with interruption. The wisest way to guarantee that you consistently produce mastery level results in the most important areas of your professional and personal life is to install a world class morning routine. Winning starts at your beginning and your first hours are when heroes are made wage war against weakness and launched a campaign against fearfulness. You truly can get up early and doing so is a necessity in your awesome pursuit towards legendary, take excellent care of the front end of your day and the rest of your day will pretty much take care of itself.

Own your morning, elevate your life