Make or Break Your Life Between 5-7 A.M. Here’s What You Should Spend Your…
“Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.” — Richard Whately
When you spend your time trying to find the most important time you’ve lost, you’ll spend your entire life on a lower-level path than you could have followed.
Most of the people reading this article have a schedule that runs from 9 to 5, so the hours before 9 a.m. are ones that make you not like most people.
In other words, successful, financially free, and happier (1).
See, many of us may have kids and other responsibilities immediately pressing on us as soon as we wake up–usually around 7 – 9 a.m.
So, if your day starts at 7 a.m., you’ve already lost a couple of the most important hours for yourself.
You’ve missed the shot to radically separate yourself — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually from the masses.
Investing in your mental, emotional, and spiritual development allows you to see the world from a higher perspective.
As an empowered individual, you can handle the difficult and challenging emotions that accompany growth and evolution.
You will learn how to work with people, solve problems, and create an amazing lifestyle while earning a lot of money.
The last thing you want is to wonder what your life might have been if you had prioritized and maximized your morning hours.
You can never see yourself accelerate and advance at rates that appear impossible, but are actually possible.
Whether it’s your choices, relationships, eating, income, environment, or life, you’ll settle for less.
Setting the right activities between 5 and 7 a.m.
The life you lead would change substantially if you could dedicate two hours every morning to thinking, planning, learning, meditating, praying, and recording your thoughts.
A person’s 5-7 a.m. habits are a pretty good indicator of their success. Is that always the case? Not at all. Can certain circumstances, like those who work night shifts, exempt these hours? Absolutely.
For most people, however, the hours of 5 to 7 a.m. are available and are make or break in the long run. And remember that how you start something is incredibly important.
It’s worth mentioning that prevention is far easier than rehabilitation–in other words, starting right is way easier than correcting the course afterwards.
If you wake up at 5 a.m. and start down a non-optimal path, waking up at that time is insufficient. And “good habits” isn’t enough, either. As Jim Collins has said, “Good is the enemy of great.”
Every person has 24 hours per day. You can make tens of millions of dollars or live paycheck to paycheck depending on how you spend your 24 hours.
The prefrontal cortex of the brain is most active and readily creative immediately following sleep (2). In the morning, your mind is at its clearest and your energy at its highest.
Fitness may not be the best activity to do first thing in the morning, contrary to popular belief. You work out better when you have food in your system.
It is far more productive and powerful to do your workouts in the late morning or early afternoon instead of first thing in the morning when your muscles and joints are still stiff and cold from sleeping hours on end.
And, since you’ve already accomplished more in your morning than most people do in a month, you’ll be pumped to work out.
A workout should be a mental break from your daily routine. You give your mind a rest following your workout and let your subconscious organize and synthesize all you’ve done thus far.
So what am I supposed to do first thing in the morning?
Read quality books
The best way to quickly stand out in life is to read lots of outstanding books. You would read 50–100 books a year if you spent 1–2 hours per morning reading. After 5–10 years, you’ll be an “overnight success,” as they say.
In this highly technological age, information has never been so accessible. It’s also never been more distracting. There are a lot of great books. But for every book that’s life-changing, there are 10 others that are a waste of your time.
As you begin to read, you’ll be guided by the books themselves. Your heart will be stirred by the right books. As a result, you’ll be able to make essential connections that others haven’t yet made.
You can shape culture on your own. You will be able to influence and shape the whole world – starting with yourself, then your family, your friends, your work and community, and eventually, the whole world.
Reflect and Record Thoughts
Reading isn’t enough, though. Think, meditate, and pray if you are inclined, as well as writing in your journal.
Instead of reading for 1–2 hours straight, it is a good idea to switch between reading, thinking, and writing down your insights. This process is made easier by listening to audiobooks.
It is important that you take the time to think about or reflect upon what you learn, and to compare what you learn to what you value and what you want.
Consequently, it’s good to reflect on your current goals while you’re learning. It is powerful to write down your goals in the morning and to visualize them being completed.
Reading old journal entries and realizing that many of your goals have been achieved is both inspiring and humbling.
Whenever you listen to or read powerful information, your mind will be primed to come up with many great ideas.
This is especially true if you have developed meditation, thinking, and prayer skills. The ideas you will get from listening/reading will be VERY helpful for achieving your goals.
The more you get to know the people in your network, the better you will be able to assist them.
Take a moment to reflect when you get a core insight. You can then connect that thought with your utmost goals and relationships in your journal.
You’ll quickly form a branch of connections and gain a deeper insight. Eventually, you’ll discover something very useful. Something you’ll need to act on immediately.
It is through these incremental steps daily that you make quantum leaps in your progression. Your life changes when you gain powerful insights that improve how you live. That’s why it is crucial to continue learning every day.
Parting Words
By reading good books every morning, visualizing and strategizing your goals, and recording your thoughts in a journal, you can:
- nurture your creativity
- hone your strategic decision-making
- become financially successful
- learn and grow from mistakes
You don’t know what you’re missing if you don’t yet join the 5 a.m. club. It’s like trying to describe how delicious sushi is: you’ll never really know until you taste it yourself.
Similarly, you’ll never truly grasp how clarifying, motivating, and empowering getting up at 5 am is. Your behavior shapes your identity and personality. And you can change your life by changing your choices.
Will you sometimes dread getting up early?
Definitely.
But hey, it’s not worth the effort if it doesn’t suck. “You find a kind of perverse pleasure in moving past the pain this might bring.” – Robert Greene.
Besides, once you dip yourself in a different environment, you’ll find that the fog and tiredness go away within 5-10 minutes.
So set that alarm for 5 a.m. and sleep early. Two simple actions, for a lifetime of extraordinary results.
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Sources:
- Rampton, John. “7 Ways Science Proves Early to Bed and Early to Rise Really Works.” Entrepreneur, Entrepreneur, 27 Feb. 2017, www.entrepreneur.com/article/289823.
- Shannon, B. J., et al. “Morning-Evening Variation in Human Brain Metabolism and Memory Circuits.” Journal of Neurophysiology, 1 Mar. 2013, journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00651.2012.