Our Dadly Daily Declaration series continues today with readings from Robin Sharma‘s newest book, The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life.
Here are a few insightful items from my reading today:
- Neglect your power long enough and you’ll eventually believe you don’t have any.
- The fact is that good, well-intentioned, talent-filled people have allowed the forces of their sovereign selves to become corrupted so often they’ve succumbed to a state of acute passivity. Unconsciously they’ve manufactured a series of excuses about why they can’t show up as leaders in their work and capable creators of their lives because they’re so scared to leave the safety of their stuckedness and make the very improvements that would bring them to glory.”
- Daily discomfort is the price of enduring success. Pushing ourselves hard builds the kind of brain that generates military-grade discipline.
- The single best way to build your willpower is to voluntarily put yourself into conditions of discomfort.
- You have the capacity for world-class self-control. The real key is to push your brain to develop new neural pathways and to force your willpower muscles to flex and stretch, intentionally working these natural resources up to their highest level. This is how anyone can become so strong, courageous and indefeatable that, no matter what obstacles they face and difficulties they experience, they continue on their quest to meet their glorious goals. Why bravery—and the capacity to do the difficult things that are necessary for the fullest expression of your greatness—isn’t a divine blessing.
- It’s a voluntary practice. Toughness—and a will of iron—takes devotion. So exceptionalists began as ordinary people. And through relentless practice and constant drilling to wire in excellent daily habits, their power to manage themselves against their cravings and temptations grew stronger until the culture perceived them as superhumans.
- What looks to the human eye like invisible and infinitesimal optimizations around your willpower—when performed daily—are what make you into a Michelangelo or a da Vinci or a Disney or a Chopin or a Coco Chanel or a Roger Bannister or a Pelé or a Marcus Aurelius or a Copernicus over extended periods of training.
- Legendary performers practice being spectacular for so long that they no longer remember how to behave in non-spectacular ways.
Those quotes lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
Exercise your brain aggressively to make new habits like getting up early your new normal. Neurons that fire together, wire together. As you repeat the routine you wish to add to your lifestyle, it becomes easier—and more familiar.
You don’t have the brain you want, you have the brain you’ve earned. Or to put it another way, you don’t have the brain you desire, you have the brain you deserve—based on how you’ve been operating it. Spend your days diverted by your devices, tethered to television and majoring in mindless pursuits and your brain will be weak and flabby through your mistreatment of it. Just like other muscles, it will atrophy….when you use your brain intelligently by expanding its limits and running it like a titan, it will expand and increase its connectivity causing important gains in your productivity, performance and influence.
