5 Am Club : Book Reads : Part 1

Robin Sharma, is indeed, the modern monk of today’s time. Selling more than 15 million books across 96 countries, he or his books seldom required an introduction.

One such book is his top seller, the 5 am Club. I have been reading and digesting this book for some days now, there is surely a lot of knowledge about how to get your life in order and aim to be a part of the elite club, the “Rare Air Zone” of the successful ones.

One of the key elements he mentions, that world class leaders never compromise and accept only the highest quality on the following 3 aspects of their lives:

1. Food: Remember, the only asset that you truly own, the one that stays with you from your mother’s womb to your deathbed, is your body. Don’t feed it garbage. We need to remember, we eat to be alive and not the other way round. A research from psypost.org on first impressions reveals that people will judge you not in seconds but only in 33 milliseconds whether they find you attractive or trust worthy. Therefore it is imperative for us to understand that being presentable is part of the game, no matter where you are or what you what to achieve, having a big paunch is not going to get you any brownie points. And no, it isn’t about body shaming, but if you can’t be trusted to keep yourself in good shape/healthy, how on earth should the other person trust you with their business or life?
2. People: Jim Rohn, one of the most famous motivational speakers of all time, can explain this point way better than anybody, in his own words, “You are the Average of the 5 people you spend most time with”. That should indeed summarize this point, however let me delve down a little more. When I came across this point, I could, at first just not understand, what the author is trying to communicate by stating that we should only be around the, “Highest Quality of People”. A little more conscience pondering made me realize the different types of people we have in our lives. Some are the ones, who always motivate you, then there are others that just can’t see anything good in what you do, there are some who are constantly depressed and there are some that have no clue on what is happening in life. Post reading the book, I simply prepared a list, bifurcating people in 2 sets, Set 1: Adds value in life (Inspirational, Emotional, Financial, Knowledge etc.) Set 2: The ones that subtract all the aforesaid values. From the next day onwards, I started to seek more time with the ones that were in the Set 1 and reduce time and effort with the ones in the second set.
3. Environment: Now this is the big one, no matter how good you are or want to be, if your environment is not correct, it will surely be very difficult to succeed. For e.g. In India, you may want to stop your car before the zebra crossing and wait for the signal to move forward, however the entire army of cars, buses, auto rickshaws and bikers will just not allow you too with the constant honking, and urging you to move ahead. The author, keep repeating this point over and over again in the book, to succeed you need to set the right environment, without which it is going to take too much effort and burn you in the process. So I have now started to select, where to be and where not be. What places I wish to spend time in and which I want to avoid, however it is to be noted that one cannot control their environment all the time, but given a choice you should always opt for a better place to be in life.

Thoughts by:

Prof. Karan Shetty

Inspirational Speaker I Writer I An Explorer