Why I’ll Never Join the 5 AM Club
Every self-help guru seems to have their take on what to do to be successful.
Get up at 5 AM they say. There are fewer interruptions.
“Winning starts at your beginning. And your first hours are where the great heroes are made. Own your mornings and you’ll master your life.” — Robin Sharma
Take a cold shower. You’ll be healthier and have more energy they say.
“A routine (hot-to-) cold shower resulted in a statistical reduction of self-reported sickness absence but not illness days in adults without severe comorbidity. “ — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025014/
Journal before you go to bed and when you first wake.
“Writing is fundamentally an organizational system. Keeping a journal, according to Dr. Pennebaker, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience, and we sleep better.
This in turn improves our immune system and our moods; we go to work feeling refreshed, perform better and socialize more.” — https://www.nytimes.com/by/hayley-phelan
Well, here’s my take on being successful. It doesn’t matter what time you get up. It doesn’t matter how you want to structure things. It doesn’t matter if you take a cold shower or a warm bath — All that matters is that you:
Put you and your priorities first.
Here is the bottom line. That self-help guru, though well meaning isn’t living your life.
They don’t know what you are earning, how many you have to support, if you live in a home or a shelter or on the street. They don’t know your education level or skill set. They don’t know your health or level of motivation.
Only you do.
All you have to do is decide your priorities for the short-term, medium-term, and long-term and then come up with a plan. (This can be done in a variety of ways: a list, a note, a calendar, a planner, a chalkboard/whiteboard drawing, or a complete data set in MS Excel.)
You also have to have some form of accountability along the way, so you will reach these all-important priorities by the deadlines you set. Some of us need outside help for that while others use a checkbox system.
Then you have to take actions that support your desire, and those actions need to be your priority. Those actions can happen at 5 AM or midnight. They just have to happen.
So you see, it is not about getting up at 5 AM. It is not about taking a cold shower. It is not about journaling. It is simply knowing what you want and designing a lifestyle, accountability and a schedule that allows you to go after it.
It is about protecting your dream while leaving room in your life for those you love.
It is being conscious and aware, awake and alive and purposefully driven in pursuit of your happiness, whatever that looks like. It is removing the distractions that stop you from this pursuit. It is revisiting what works and what doesn’t to support your needs.
You decide.
