58 pages • 1 hour read
Robin SharmaThe 5 Am Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.
Nonfiction | Book | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Being Proactive With One’s Morning and Life
Before the narrative reveals who Mr. Riley really is, he reveals the importance of rising early, saying,
Rising at 5 AM truly is The Mother of All Routines. Joining The 5 AM Club 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 really does determine the extent of focus, energy, excitement and excellence you bring to it (36).
He later refers to this specifically as a “keystone habit” (78). The primary reason why this routine has such an immediate impact is that it involves a great deal of commitment. It also provides a regular test of that commitment as the person tries to eventually make it a habit. When a person decides to join the 5 AM Club, they strengthen their willpower daily, which has lasting ripple effects throughout the rest of their day. Therefore, it is foundational to any program of self-improvement. Riley notes the impact that establishing the routine has had on his own life. He says, “In this time of exponential change, overwhelming distractions and overflowing schedules, getting up at 5 AM and running the morning regime The Spellbinder taught me was my antidote to average” (78). Significantly, the morning routine provides people with an opportunity away from the noise of the world where near-constant distraction robs them of focus all day long. Waking up early in the morning acts as a fortification against the distractions caused by living in the digital age. When one is proactive with one’s day, the text argues, one will be proactive and efficient with everything.
While Riley contends that just waking up at 5:00 a.m. is a challenge in itself, he also argues that one should take the first hour they are awake, what he refers to as “The Victory Hour,” and spend it on intentional improvement. Riley says, “It’s not just rising early that makes this regime so powerful. It’s what you do over the sixty minutes after you wake up that makes The 5 AM Club so game-changing” (201). Borrowing from the Spellbinder’s methods, Mr. Riley teaches “The 20/20/20 Formula.” This is a series of 20-minute segments during which a person exercises, reflects, and considers opportunities throughout the day for personal and professional growth. Riley insists that one should exercise first and notes the important physical benefits: “[B]y exercising intensely during the first twenty-minute pocket of The 20/20/20 Formula, you’ll also release dopamine, which you well know is the neurotransmitter of drive, along with elevating your amounts of serotonin, the wonderful chemical that regulates happiness” (209). Exercising right away gets the blood pumping and activates dopamine, also an important neurotransmitter for focus and concentration. For the other two segments, one should take time to practice gratitude and reflect on the great gifts they have received in their lives, both big and small. It is also a great time to write in a journal, whether those thoughts are positive or negative. Most importantly, for the entire victory hour, all access to technological devices should be extremely limited if not altogether avoided.
Reflecting, Embracing Change, and Taking Risks to Pursue One's Goals
The novel stakes out what it believes is a fundamental truth: Change is not easy and can demand monumental energy and effort for those wishing to take it on. It also can be fearsome for people to reflect on their own weaknesses and respond in a way that leads them toward change. Mr. Riley points out that
most people stay the same their entire lives. Too frightened to leave the way they operated yesterday. Married to the complacency of the ordinary and wedded to the shackles of conformity while resisting all opportunity for growth, evolution and personal elevation (66).
Effectively, Riley contends that people would rather settle for whatever the current state of their lives is rather than push themselves toward something better. He also maintains that “[t]he beginning of transformation is the increase of perception. As you see more you can materialize more. And once you know better you can achieve bigger” (89). This perception comes from internal reflection, which must be performed with honesty toward oneself. This adds another layer of challenge to the endeavor, as it can be more daunting than it seems to perform an honest self-evaluation, whether one is seeking to identify needed areas of improvement or gauge their own strengths. As a baseline, Riley and the Spellbinder argue that each person has inherent strengths and that the key to growth is learning how to best access these strengths. Reflection is crucial to improvement, the text argues, and self-reflection is the first step toward it: One must actively change and evolve throughout life, and to understand where one must change, one must first reflect.
As with any endeavor, self-improvement does not come easily, nor does it come without low points or moments when the person undertaking the improvement veers from the path. Mr. Riley notes, “It takes an awesome amount of courage to feel the terror of true personal and professional growth, and to keep going, even when you sort of feel you’re dying […] But continuing when you’re frightened is how you become a legend” (126-27). No matter how daunting the task, or how much doubt can creep in and disrupt the quest, one needs to see these moments as triggers for continuation rather than cause for quitting. Since the quest for personal mastery is really more about the process rather than the outcome, one must learn to keep their eyes trained on the process. Riley states,
[Y]ou need to practice advancing toward personal mastery daily, just as we must dedicate ourselves to any other skill we seek to be world-class at. Fortify and bulletproof and nourish the core dimensions of your inner life and, trust me, you’ll x100 your life (134).
Personal mastery is therefore a daily practice, one in which resolve will be continually tested. In Riley’s view, the most effective way to stay on track is to anticipate that it will be an ongoing quest. This signals not just a change in routine but also a transformation in perception. When the person is able to understand that struggle is necessary, they can more effectively learn to manage it and come to see it as an opportunity for growth. This is a necessary feature of Riley and the Spellbinder’s teachings. Self-improvement requires change by definition, the text states, and requires intense adaptation even when such growth is difficult. One must continually reflect on oneself and one’s moments of difficulty in order to understand what needs to be changed and what needs to evolve. These points of contention are the exact places that need growth, in the text’s view.
Recognizing One’s Inner Self Apart From Society and Technology to Grow
Personal growth is a process, one that should not have an end. Riley and the Spellbinder do not lay out a scenario where a person should ever think to themselves that they have arrived at some final point where the growth is complete. Instead, they argue that this should be an ongoing process. Understanding this concept is central to their teachings. Both teachers also believe that people can lose their way as they age. The childhood version of a person tends to be much purer and a more accurate expression of who they really are. As people age into adulthood, the text states, the expectations of society veer them away from who they really are. They are shaped and influenced by others, and oftentimes in ways that run contrary to their inner selves. The Spellbinder recommends that people reconsider who they were as children. He says, “So, we return to the sense of awe we once knew before a hard and cold world placed our natural genius into bondage by an orgy of complexity, superficiality and technological distraction” (4). In the Spellbinder’s view, this return to childhood in the figurative sense is integral to self-discovery, as it reminds people of what they truly value in life and what their dreams really are.
Additionally, growth and discovery become exceedingly difficult in the digital age. As part of the process of self-discovery, the Spellbinder urges “that you stop being a cyber-zombie relentlessly attracted to digital devices and restructure your life to model mastery, exemplify decency and relinquish the self-centeredness that keeps good people limited” (4). In the Spellbinder's view, and also as in Riley’s view, self-discovery and growth cannot take place if people are absorbed by distractions. Learning about ourselves cannot really happen if we are obsessively wandering down rabbit holes online. Both mentors insist that people should build in time each day when they avoid using their devices. One such time is during the victory hour. Another such time is during the two to three hours before bed. Riley presents his two students with a learning model entitled “The Amazing Day Reconstruction” (235), and in the schedule, there are corresponding “zero technology zones” (235). Discovery takes reflection, and reflection cannot happen in any effective manner when people are disrupted by their devices. Therefore, in order for one to really grow as a person, they need to carve out time in their day when they can step out from the clutches of the digital world and spend more time with themselves.
