Now we're about to get into an interview with Robin Sharma all about how to maximize

your day for productivity, rest, and joy.

Now we recorded this interview long before COVID-19 hits so you're gonna hear us talk

about things like traveling and art galleries and other activities that are just not possible

at this moment.

Now that said, I think that this interview contains a lot of timeless lessons that can

really help us all.

I also want to say, you know, this worldwide pandemic, it's difficult and everyone is

dealing with it in their own ways.

If you're having a really tough time right now, especially as it relates to this interview,

take what works for you and leave the rest.

That said, enjoy it, have fun.

I'm sending so much love Let's dive in.

Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business

and life you love.

Now if you're someone who wants to make the most out of your days, out of your weeks,

out of your years, my guest today has some pretty good ideas to help.

Robin Sharma is a globally respected humanitarian, bestselling author, and the founder of The

Robin Sharma Foundation for Children.

Considered one of the world's top leadership experts, his clients include Fortune 100 companies,

billionaires, athletes, music icons and members of royalty.

Robin's books have sold over 15 million copies in over 92 languages.

His newest book, The 5 AM Club, is available now.

Robin, thank you so much for taking the journey to be here.

Thank you, Marie.

So I want to talk about The 5 AM Club, and we're going to dive deep into that.

But first, for those that don't know your story and your journey, I feel like there's

so many people in our audience that may find themselves in the position that you once were

in a career that you're like, "This isn't necessarily me."

Can you take us back to those days, and tell us a little bit about how you started out,

and what that transition was like from being in a place that didn't feel aligned with who

you ultimately were, to the career that you have today?

Sure.

I think, Marie, life's greatest heartbreak is being untrue to yourself.

I come from very humble beginnings.

I have a great family, and yet the people around me said, "If you become a lawyer,"

like I basically had a choice.

Become an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer.

And so I followed through on that, and I went to law school.

I became a really successful litigation lawyer.

I had a nice place to live, and had a nice car, and I was making great money.

People said, "I'm on... you're on your way to being a judge," and yet I would wake up

every morning, and I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror and I didn't like or

even know the person who was looking back at me.

I love that word, angst.

That angst just got to a point where I said I had to make some changes.

I started listening to that silent whisper of my heart.

There's something I believe in, which is instinct is much more powerful and wiser than intellect.

I think when all of us trust our instinct in a world that says intellect and logic is

everything, we start to enter what Mr. Riley in The 5 AM Club calls “the magic.”

That's what happened to me.

So did you know what you wanted to do instead of your law career, or did you have... was

there a period of transition?

I know for me, when I was on Wall Street and I worked in magazines, I kept hearing that

little voice of, "This is not where you're supposed to be.

This is not who you're meant to be in the world, and not the work that you're meant

to do."

But I was really frustrated because I didn't...

I was like, "Well, can you please tell me what else I'm supposed to do?"

It took me years to find my path.

So I was curious about if you had clarity in that moment, or if you had to take a journey

around to find some discovery in what else you could do?

Yeah, and I totally hear what you're saying.

I find your destiny doesn't knock, it whispers.

It wasn't this epiphany.

I think when you start to trust your instinct, and trust yourself versus the world, and you

block out the opinions of other people, the pace of synchronicity starts to open up, and

these doors that you're supposed to walk through start to present themselves to you.

So what happened to me was I just started...

I mean the angst, and the pain and the confusion.

By the way, I think confusion has a bad rap in society.

Anyone on a path to growth and self-excavation and personal mastery is going to be confused

all the time.

Because the very nature of leaving your safe harbor of the known, going out to blue ocean

where possibility lives constantly means you're going to be out in the unknown, which is where

fear lives, but on the other side of your fear is your freedom.

So I started paying attention to that angst, and that confusion.

I went to books.

I went to books, and I started interviewing people who were financially successful, as

well as emotionally successful and spiritually successful.

I started putting together this new philosophy for living.

Then, as we know, ideation without execution is delusion, and so I started living what

I learned step by step.

I started changing the way that I lived, and given my "transformation," I said, "I want

to share my message with other people."

I self-published a little book called Megaliving.

That was actually my first book.

It had a super cheesy title, 30 Days to a Perfect Life.

I had this little passport picture on the front, and it was poorly designed.

The type was so small you couldn't read it.

I had 3000 copies that were published, and they sat in my little dining room.

That book started selling, and then I self-published a book called The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

in a Kinko's copy shop.

My mom was my editor.

My father helped me sell it at service clubs.

Just one book at a time.

That led into a whole new reality for me, a whole new career for me.

What's so cool about that is when I started my journey, I remember I first published an

ebook, which was new at the time, right?

This is the late '90s.

I just remember that journey in my... it turned from an ebook into a self-published book.

My parents helped me get it out into the world, and shrink wrapped it.

I Just look back at those days, and it was so cool, the beginnings and then to see where

it could go.

So thank you for sharing that, because I know so many people listening right now might have...

whether they want to transition into a career where they share their thoughts and ideas,

or they want to just transition into being an artist, or maybe an engineer or maybe a

lawyer.

Just to understand that it takes time, and that it's okay to start humbly and you can

go to great places.

You just have to listen to that instinct.

I want to transition into The 5 AM Club, because you've shared that this book took you four

years to write.

So how was this process different than your other books?

I wanted The 5 AM Club to be the most beautiful, content-rich, handcrafted book I've ever done.

Now, whether that happened or not is up to the readers.

One of my favorite books is The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

I don't know if you've read it, but it's just...

Yes, I have.

It's just a masterpiece of philosophy.

One of the things that I read about Kahlil Gibran is he carried the manuscript around

with him for five years because he wanted every single line to be the best line he could

possibly handcraft.

That was my intention with The 5 AM Club.

So I wrote it in , which is one of my favorite places in the world.

I wrote it in Mauritius.

I wrote it in Russia.

I wrote it in Sao Paulo.

I wrote it in Switzerland.

It was just this beautiful, dangerous, messy, confusing, inspirational process where I just

wrote to try to make it the best piece of work I could do.

I faced self-doubt.

I faced people who looked at the content and said, "Okay, everyone's talking about mindset.

You're talking about these four interior empires that the book is based upon.

Mindset, Heartset, Healthset, and Soulset.

What's that all about?"

I tried to have images, little pieces of art in there.

I have these frameworks on exponential productivity and elite performance.

Then towards the end of the book, there are those 11 letters from Mr. Riley, the eccentric

tycoon talking about entering the magic, and the mysticism of prosperity, and philosophy

on living a life that soars, and sings, and has an impact and is beautiful.

I just tried to write from the deepest, most honest, honorable place I could because I

think the world is in a very messy place right now.

I think a lot of people are bored, and struggling and exhausted.

This isn't a platitude, I think every single human being has this bigness, and this bravery,

and this creativity, and this magic inside of them.

I've experienced it in my life.

Not everyday, but I've experienced it.

I wanted to share it with people, how they can enter it in their own lives.

So was the process hard for you because you feel like it was a different style of writing,

or was it hard just because of travel and balancing the business?

I'm trying to understand a little bit more about what made this one more difficult or

different than the others for you, because you've written a lot.

You've written a ton of books.

Yeah.

It's a very great question.

It was different for me.

It was different for me because a lot of my other books, it was teaching, and what I tried

to do in this book is balance.

How do you master the world by first honoring and building intimacy with your primal hero?

It was a hard book because I wanted to go deeper.

It was a hard book because there are a lot of new concepts that I believe are disruptive

to the field of call it personal development and elite performance.

There was a lot of self-doubt as well when I wrote this book, because I think when you

try to present anything new to the world, it's... you're going to doubt yourself.

Also, to be completely candid, as I always want to be, I hadn't written a book for roughly

10 years.

Interesting.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

So I really had focused more on other things, and there were people who were saying, "Well,

his best days are over.

Oh, he's the monk who sold his Ferrari, or the greatness guide, or the leader who had

no title but he's not an author anymore, and perhaps he's not relevant anymore."

So I felt that challenge, and I wanted to do something that was hopefully special.

Yeah.

I think you really accomplished it.

Thank you.

Before we... the cameras turn on...

I really, really enjoyed it.

But I think what you just mentioned there is important because so many of us, no matter

what stage of life we're at, I remember when I was in my early 20s having this constant

voice in my head like, "You're too old.

You're too old already.

You haven't done X, Y, or Z by 22 or 23," which now sounds absolutely just...

I could slap myself, right, going back.

But I think that is one of the most prevalent undercurrents of anxiety and fear in our culture

is a fear of irrelevance, and somehow that our best days are behind us.

So thank you for sharing that, because it's something that I think all of us, if we haven't

faced it yet, it's definitely coming.

Yeah.

I think that's an important point, which is I think we live in a world where the seduction

is to push 1,000 pieces of mediocrity, versus deliver one piece of mastery.

What I mean by that is if you spend 20 years on one book, but it is the greatest book that

you could possibly do, then that's a win.

By the way, even if the world doesn't applaud what you bring to the world, if you've delivered

your piece of magic to the world, your Sistine Chapel ceiling to the world, you've won.

Yes.

We live in this world that is much more about egoism versus heroism.

I think heroism is... it's really...

The race is really a race against yourself.

I'm not that into applause and worldly accolades.

I think if you feel you've done your best, and you've been true to your creativity, and

you've lived by your values, and you've released what you believe to be magic to the world,

and you've done your best to raise others while you've honored yourself, you're a hero.