Break up with your snooze button.
This book has ushered me into adulthood. I am officially in The 5 AM Club.
Do you know the you who does sleep math when their alarm goes off, trying to see how many times you can hit snooze and calculating multiples of nine before you absolutely have to get out of bed? That was me. Now I wake up early enough to eat breakfast, finish my coffee, do dishes, a little yoga, and take longer walks with my pup versus old me rushing into work last minute with my patients already seated and topical placed. “Own your morning. Elevate your life.” Sharma repeats this throughout the entire cheesy book, in traditional Sharma style, but he speaks truth.
The structure for your first hour awake comes from his 20/20/20 Formula. The first twenty minutes is spent moving. When you wake up in the AM your cortisol levels are high. Exercise completely cleanses this away along with activating a ton of other neurobiological benefits that will optimize your focus and productivity for the day. For the next two segments you will just have to pick up the book. Sharma will teach you the science behind every process he wants you to implement, and it is the science that really convinced me to join the 5 AM Club.
I never understood self-sabotage or even thought it was a real thing. Sharma’s explanation of this concept highlighted all of my unrealized goals in a new, frustrating light. Stick with me here. Your limbic system constantly scans for danger, keeping you away from hungry lions, and has been since the beginning of time, while the more advanced prefrontal cortex is working at a higher level. The prefrontal cortex is where we increase our intelligence, creativity, productivity, and performance. The limbic system, or primitive brain, senses we are leaving our comfort zone, releases cortisol, and basically prevents us from accomplishing our dreams. (This is the short explanation by the way.) You know that moment where you want to do something, you’re excited about it and have done the research, you have a plan, you are on the precipice of great change… and then you don’t take that next step? That’s your primitive brain sabotaging the real you. Self-sabotage.
I cannot count the number of times I have stood on that precipice. Your primitive brain senses a threat that just happens to be “essential to [your] personal ascension and professional advancement. We absolutely must venture into those unexplored places where possibility lives to… become all we are meant to be.” I know better now. There is so much I still have left to give this world. I will not let my own neurobiology distract me from my potential.
Rating: 5 Teeth
There is so much more to this book than what I’ve shared. Buy it. Read it. Re-read it. Save it. Highlight in it. Make your friends read it. Hint: being in the 5 AM Club is much easier when you do it with an accountability partner. This book is like when you walk into work and the schedule is full, and perfectly appointed. The day flows well, you’re efficient, all the patients are happy, you crush it, and everyone on your team just has the best day. 🤗 When you wake up at 5 am it sets you up for success on an entirely different level. Every day can be like this. Did you know that?