The 5am Club - fabulous book

​The 5am Club: Own your morning, elevate your life
By Robin Sharm

You've gotta love some of those books you see at airports. This one caught my eye, and it kept me reading all the way from Delhi to Sydney. I highly recommend this book. It is full of wisdom and motivation. There are so many inspiring quotes, from both Sharma and other great leaders.  I didn't want to just highlight the quotes and thoughts as I read them - I typed them all up, to be able to reference them later on. I'm an early morning riser, so getting up at 5am each morning is something that I already do, but the chapters on habit breaking have given me the motivation to try to crack some bad habits - like having a glass of wine most evenings after work. There is a lot of great leadership content as well.

Here's just a few of the quotes that has inspired me...

Contemplating being 50 years old...
We begin to realise that we’re not going to live forever and that our days are numbered. And so we connect with our mortality...We realise we are going to die. What’s truly important comes into much greater focus. We start to wonder if we’ve been true to our talents, loyal to our values and successful on the terms that are right to us. What will people say about us when we’re gone? That’s when many of us make a giant shift: from seeking legitimacy in society to constructing a meaningful legacy. The last 50 years then become less about me, and more about we. Less about selfishness and more about service. We stop adding more things to our lives and begin to subtract. We start to simplify. We learn to savour simple beauty, experience gratitude for small miracles, appreciate the priceless value of peace of mind, spend more time cultivating human connections and come to understand that the one who gives the most is victorious. And what’s left of your life then becomes a phenomenal dedication to loving life itself as well as a ministry of kindness to the many.
 
All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. 

George Bernard Shaw wrote...
 
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little cold of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
 
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is not ‘brief candle’ for me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
 
In his final sermon before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr., said...
“Everyone can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have t know Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the Second Theory of Thermodynamics and Physics to serve. All you need is a heart full of grace. A Soul generated by love.”
 
I believe the humblest is the greatest. Pure leaders are so secure in their own skin, their mission is the elevation of others. They have such self respect, joyful ness and peacefulness within themselves that they don’t need to advertise their success to society in a feeble attempt to feel a little better. 

No matter what struggles we face and what adversities we endure, no matter what attacks, humiliation, violence we may experience, we must persist and continue. We must stay strong. We must strive to be the best we can be no matter what. Even if it feels the whole world is against us. This truly makes us human beings. Even if it seems that the light will never overcome the darkness keep making your walk to freedom. Model what’s highest for the rest of us. Exemplify grace, demonstrate love. 

Robin Sharma, thank you...I would like to meet you one day! 

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