Miracle Morning and the 5 AM Club. How to turn myself into a morning person this week.

Rising at 5 AM truly is The Mother of All Routines. It is the one behavior that raises every other human behavior. This regimen is the ultimate needle mover to turn you into an undefeatable model of possibility. The way you begin your day determines the extent of focus, energy, excitement, and excellence you bring to it. Each early morning is a page in the story that becomes your legacy. Each new dawn is a new chance to unleash your brilliance, unprison your potency and play in the big leagues of iconic results. You have such power within you, and it reveals itself most with the first rays of daybreak. ROBIN Sharma – The 5 Am Club. 

If there is one change, just one habit I should develop and the one thing that I know would have a tremendous impact on my productivity, my relationship, recovery in my marathon training, and my general well being – it is go to bed before 11pm and to rise very early the next morning to win the day. 

How hard could that be, really?

Changing habits, and getting new habits to stick is not as easy as one may think. It is not only about willpower, but also rewiring of the brain. It also takes a longer time than most people realize.

As I am looking back in my diary and notes that I have kept on Evernote since 2015, the revelation that I should I’d be more effective in the morning was one of the first things I realized. 
Note after note, I am jolting down that I shall try to get up early, but I am always failing. Before I go to bed, I always find something I need to do, emails to write, itineraries to write up for clients, etc, etc. At the same time, I have wasted far too much time on YouTube clips, and frequent trips to the refrigerator for snacks and beers. 

During the third week of January of my weekly challenges, I hoped this should be the turning point. Getting up early is a habit that I really would like to own.  It would mean so many positive things. 

Here is what I wrote in the New Year’s Resolution post.
Get up at 5 AM every day for a week when not on a birding tour.   Read “Miracle Morning” and “5 AM Club” and Morning Makeover. I have read them before. Early mornings is a constant goal for me that I have a hard time to fulfill. I am a night owl. I often go to bed between 1 and 3:30 AM. If I get up at 5 AM regardless, I will nap during the day to recover.

Getting up at precisely 5 AM is not a magic bullet in itself but it it helps. The trick is to create morning and evening routines.  Before I let you know how it went for me, let me review the three books I mentioned above – all which have become very valuable tools for me.

Morning Makeover

Damon Zahariades has written a bunch of handy, concise, and no BS self-help books. I have read a bunch of them. They are very concise filled with actionable strategies and tips and very cheap for Kindle (Morning Makeover is only $2.99). If you are a member of Kindle Unlimited, they are free. If you are a member of Amazon Prime which also gives you free two-day shipping on most Amazon products, plus a bunch of other benefits, you get them on loan for free.

The Morning Makeover book is only 152 pages packed with information.

• How to know the amount of sleep needed.
• How to get better and more effective sleep.
• How much earlier you should get up to win the day.
• Ideas with how you should fill your morning makeover.

It also summarise the morning routines of these high achievers.

• Tony Robbins
• Gary Vaynerchuck
• Tim Ferriss
• Kevin O’Leary
• Fran Tarkenton
• Scott Adams
• Howard Schultz
• Kat Cole
• Cheryl Bachelder
• Richard Branson

Common nominators for many of these role models are coffee (or tea) and fast for the first couple of hours, meditate, exercise, journaling, and gratitude – and of course, plan the day.
One of the first chapters go through the ten benefits of a morning routine.

1. It gives your day structure, you decide what the most important thing to do during the day is, and your day is more predictable.
2. You’ll experience more energy.  Try a cold shower, yoga, meditating, exercise, and a protein-rich breakfast.
3. Less susceptible to decision fatigue. Some things in your morning routine will become habits. You no longer have to decide whether you meditate or do yoga. You just do it automatically.
4. You’ll be more productive during the rest of the day. Less stress, more energy as you control your time.
5. You’ll feel better. 
6. You’ll experience less stress. You feel you have plenty of time, as you have taken care of many essential items early during the day.
7. More positive mindset.
8. Better health. Lose weight, more cardio, less stress, and mindfulness.
9. Better focus. 
10. Purpose.  It is much easier to work on your long term goals and drive when you have this alone time to reflect.

I can personally vouch for that planing my day with a morning routine works. I have often blamed my lack of focus on the much-over-diagnosed ADD that everyone seems to be suffering from these days, with an attention span of mere seconds to minutes in the constantly bombarding information flow.

I still recognize that a fair amount of ADD and ADHD have been with me since my childhood and explain many of the character traits I display, but the diagnosis is not an excuse for not trying to focus.

Now I am compensating for my weaknesses so that they can become strengths. I have lacked innate empathy towards other people for most of my life, being rather self-centered, and I considered myself unorganized, always distracted, and without focus. I am sure many people who know me well see these traits in me all the time.

Blaming ADD for all my faults is not very helpful. Building routines are actually the best way to combat distractions, procrastination, and disorder. Exercise, early mornings, and short bursts of concentrated work have done wonders for my own productivity – even if I can’t remember where I put my car keys.

The mindfulness acquired by meditation also gives me a tool for making improvements in understanding other people better.
I put myself in their shoes with intellectual empathy, since emotional empathy does not come very natural for me. This has been especially true during the COVID pandemic.
These techniques to overcome ADD to get more structured days can not be underestimated.

I am getting more things done, I have reconnected much more with my family, and I am getting less distracted by social media, etc.

5 AM Club.

Although only published in 2018, The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma has already become a classic. Robin Sharma has been teaching this technique for over 20 years. He put together the main ideas to a story, like a novel, featuring an entrepreneur, an artist, and an old homeless bum (who in reality is a billionaire in disguise) attending a seminar by The Spellbinder. The book has some captivating dialogue, which makes it a fun read.  Eventually, the entrepreneur and the artist gets training at the billionaire’s beach estate on Mauritius. 

The birders will appreciate an appearance of Mauritius Kestrel and Pink Pigeon – two of Mauritius most threatened birds.

If you collect 7 Wonders for your bucket list, both Rome and Taj Mahal come to life in the story.

Some critiques have argued that there is a too much fluff. The essence of the book could would fit in about 20 pages.

I disagree. The format lets the strategies grow on you, and that is perhaps more effective to induce the change in yourself rather than just reading bare bone recipes in Morning Makeover.

Eventually, the morning routine is presented with the 20/20/20 formula consisting of 20 minutes to move, 20 minutes to reflect, and 20 minutes to grow.

The first step is to move – to perform vigorous exercise for 20 minutes. What’s important is to make yourself sweat. That’s because when you sweat your body gets rid of cortisol, the hormone of fear. Cortisol causes stress and impedes memory. Also the body generate the protein BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which repairs brain cells and accelerates new neural connections.
So by sweating for 20 minutes, you’ll think faster!

Then, make 5.20-5.40 a.m. a time for reflection with a period of deep peace and solitude. Before the complexity of the day emerges, reflect on what is most important to you. In an age of distraction, of constant notifications and messages, you’ll be amazed at what visions, dreams, and inspiration drift into your mind when you have a few moments of silence to yourself.
Write these thoughts in a journal. Commit your current ambitions, the things you’re grateful for in your life, and your frustrations and disappointments to paper. Doing so will help you understand your vision and let go of toxic, negative energies.

Take a few minutes to meditate. Research shows that meditation helps lower cortisol, reducing your stress. It’s a proven way to stay calm.

Now it’s time for the last 20 minutes of your first hour. Here, you need to grow, so take 20 minutes to learn. Study the lives of great achievers by reading their biographies. Learn about human psychology. Watch documentaries on innovation, or listen to audiobooks about business building.

The Miracle Morning.

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod (2012) is again about creating morning routines to make you more productive.  Although, published before the 5 AM Club, there are many references to Robin Sharma and other gurus in the book. Afterall, there are many books out there about morning routines.

The Miracle Morning was the first one I read on morning routines, and the strategies resonate well with me.
I often use Hal Elrod’s formula called Life S.A.V.E.R.S to start my day, even when I don’t get up at 5 AM. It gives me a lot of structure.

Here is the formula with the meaning of each letter in the acronym. You don’t have to do these in order.

S=Silence.
It can be meditation.  Right now, I am doing guided meditation from the Waking-up course. Earlier I used Headspace. Both programs are good.  You may also do Yoga, meditate on your own.

A=Affirmations.  Suppose to read those out aloud every day.  Think Muhammed Ali saying: I am the Greatest. Think about what you want, why you want it, and who you have to become to create it and then make that commitment. Those are your affirmations. They can deal with yourself and how you behave, your goals of physical performance or weight goals, family goals, and work goals.

V= Visualizations.

• Visualize your dreams
• Visualize who you need to be and what you need to do.

Visualizations can be a similar state to your meditation practice but instead make mental images of who you want to become.

E=Exercise. This could well be just a series of pushups or jumping jacks to get your body going.  Many people prefer to start with the exercise to get the body going.

R=Reading. 
Self-help books are great reading, which makes you learn new things.  I do a lot of my reading with audiobooks while  I do my runs, and I keep a lot of them on my iPad.  I often do fast scans repeating what I have heard in the headphones the previous day.
Here are a couple of books that the author recommends for you to grow financially and emotionally in your relationship.  The last three were very important for my fourth week of challenges, which shall be my next blog post.

Finance

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Secret of the Millionaire Mind by Harv Eker and Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

Relationships

The five love languages by Gary D. Chapman, The Soul Mate Experience by Joe Dunn and The Seven Principles for Making a Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver.

S=Scribing.  Writing. It could be blogposts or a diary. It is very therapeutic to put down in words your feelings. Many people prefer to write by hand, while I prefer the computer, because I can keep everything in one place (in the cloud) and I use the search function to find things. I am using Evernote for all my note-taking, including drafts of blog posts, newsletters, and journaling.  

As you can see comparing the Miracle Morning and The 5 AM Club is that they have quite similar recipes. I suggest you try to introduce only a few items at the time, unless you want to do the full monty with me in a 30-day or 66-day challenge explained below.

It is important to remember, since we are talking of adding several habits to the the habit of waking up at 5 AM, they will typically not fit in the hour that the authors are giving you. You will be much slower switching between the exercises and you will be distracted. Don’t get discouraged – it is normal.

Many times when I have gotten up at 5 AM, I am still planning my day at 9 AM. It is still a win, because a lot of days, prior to this I did not have a plan at all, and those days were certainly less productive.

The five-minute diary.

My journal is a combination of checking off the Life SAVERS, a to-do list, and the five-minute diary popularized by Tim Ferriss. I also include a lot of checkboxes for things I need to do regularly. Here is an outline of the 5-minute diary. Feel free to add additional thoughts in the morning and the evening.

I am grateful for:
1.
2.
3.

What would make my day great today?
The most important task:
1.
2.
3.

To be filled in at night:
Three amazing things that happened today.
1.
2.
3.

How could I have made today better?
1.
2.
3.

It is a straightforward way to keep tab how things are going for you.

Hal Elrod’s Life Story

Hal Elrod had a severe car crash that almost killed him and in 2016 he fought an aggressive cancer.  Check the new documentary on Amazon Prime Video called the Miracle Morning. Also, here is a recent Key Note talk by Hal Elrod on YouTube that is very inspirational.

My results of getting up at 5 AM for a two weeks.

The first week – and I also admit the second week – I did not manage to get up at 5 AM every day. I have noticed that I get more done when I get up early, and I get better quality sleep when I go to bed before midnight according to my Garmin which monitors sleep.

Sometimes after long runs, I feel very tight legs and realize that I need more rest. So I deliberately have stayed in the bed longer not getting up at 5 AM as planned.

Between Jan 18-24, I managed to wake at 5 AM five days of the seven, and the following week I woke up at 5 AM four of the days. I am quite pleased with the results.  Now, if I only could force myself to get to bed before 11 pm, the sleep would increase in quality. Of the 14 days, sleep time was before midnight only on five days, and only once before 11 PM.  Sure, I napped about 15-20 minutes on days when I felt too sleep deprived, but it is still not right.

A future challenge for my year with 52 challenges will have me going to bed at 10 pm for a week. I shall likely try that next week.  It may prove more difficult than getting up at 5 AM. We shall see!

Join me on a 30-day or a 66-day challenge.

Both the Miracle Morning and the 5 AM club provide challenges to inspire you build a good morning routine that will be come life changing once it is on autopilot.

In the 60s, Dr Maxwell Maltz popularized that it takes a minimum of 21 days to form a habit. To be on the safe side Hal Elrod, like many others, extend that minimum to a full 30 days for the practice to stick.  Find the resources for download on his web-page.

On the other hand, habits can take much longer than just 30 days.  Phillippa Lally – a health psychology researcher in London, and her research team figured out how long it really takes to form a habit.
They examined the habits of 96 people for 12-weeks.  The choose habits ranging from easy, like drinking water throughout the day, to more difficult ones to keep up with, like running for 15 minutes before having dinner. The result was that, on average, it took 66 days before a new behavior became automatic. It varied on the action, the person, and the circumstances.  In Lally’s study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days.

There is a program and an app for the 66 day 5 AM Club Challenge. Check this link to sign up.

Let’s keep each other accountable, and let’s start either the 5 AM Club or Miracle Morning together. They are, in reality, very similar. I intend to make a combo of the two for 30 days and then continue for an additional 36 days. A great tool is this brilliant habit recorder that I found by coincidence.  It is free!
Here is a concise video of how it works.

Chose any habit you would like to acquire and run it for 66 days. If you fail a day, the counter goes to zero again, but on the other hand, your sessions are logged, so at the end of the year, you can tell that perhaps you only missed seven days of running, or that you only drank alcohol for a few days per month. Note that the tracker has South African time, but that can be easily changed in the settings.

Other tools for scheduling that I use include Google’s calendar, to which you can schedule daily habits you want to include in your life, and iPhone/Mac Reminders for which I have a number of different to-do lists inspired by Damon Zahariades To-Do List Formula.

Next weekly challenges.

Last week, of January 25-31, I intended to become a better, more mindful husband, and this has continued this week of February 1-7.
Here is what it said in the original blog post with my New Year’s resolutions.

“Show LOVE to my WIFE” week. I always do that of course, but it will be enhanced focus this week, and I will be more mindful about it. Read: Rewire your Brain for Love, and the 5 Love Languages.

I read both books the past week.
I have also added the other two books mentioned in Miracle Morning and will read these and listen to the audiobooks as I run the days ahead.

The Soul Mate Experience
The Seven Principles for Making a Marriage Work

I shall do a write up about my experience by the end of this week, I hope.

How is your marathon training going, Gunnar?

Thanks for asking! As you know, I am training for Berlin Marathon in September 2021. I am on track with my plan to build milage.
Week 1. 70K. Done!
Week 2. Easy with 45K. Done!
Week 3. 70K. Done!
Week 4. 70K. Done!

More Running is on, as the specific week challenge for the fifth week of the year – Feb 1-7.
One hour of continuous running per day.
I am increasing the amount of running to end the week at 80km (50 miles).  I am also getting a coach which I will tell you more about all this in the next blogpost after Feb 7.

Talk to me!

Let me know how you are planning to grow as a person during 2021. As I said above, it would be a good idea to hold each other accountable. Besides, it is much more fun when you do things together. Let’s share the grit. What will it take to become a better version of yourself during 2021?

I know many people are suffering mentally during the COVID pandemic, and it is tough economically and socially for many to adapt to this weird situation.
Perhaps it is my ADD and the innate lack of emotions that produced a positive change in myself. (Remember that I compensate with intellectual empathy).

So instead of getting depressed and get into dark places, I have gotten more focused, and I have started to care more about the people around me, and I take the time to be available. I believe I have become a better father and husband in the last year.

I feel somewhat ashamed to admit, well aware of the hardship a lot of people are going through, that despite catastrophic personal finances, the pandemic has been a personal blessing, of sorts. Does anyone else have similar reactions to this situation?