Robin Sharma's TOP Rules for Success | Become the BEST

You've got to be willing to suffer to reach BIW, best in world. It is very hard to come up with your Sistine Chapel. Got it. It is even harder to become a Michelangelo. The hours that ordinary people waste, extraordinary people do. At the end of the day, we are a bunch of people on a little planet in a huge galaxy, and before we know it, we're going to be a bunch of dust. You cannot get to the mountaintop without taking a few missteps.

He's a Canadian writer, speaker, leadership expert, and former litigation lawyer. He's the author of 15 global bestsellers, including The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. He's the founder of a business leadership training firm, Sharma Leadership International. He's Robin Sharma, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success. Number 1 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips.

I mean, the reality is reading a book or going to a conference or having a great conversation where you get this golden information, that's all fantastic. But what makes mastery is execution on the ideas, not the ideas. And so no idea works unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, do the practice, invest the time, put in the effort, do the work. I think we've all observed a lot of people who, they love reading the books, they love showing up at the courses, they do all the online training, and nothing ever changes. And they say, well, you know, I don't know why it doesn't change, why my life doesn't change, why my thinking doesn't change, why my performance doesn't change, why my relationships don't change. Well, it's because ideas don't work if you don't execute on them. So if you look at the great business builders, you look at any great performer, one thing that makes them great is is their grit. One thing that makes them great is their hunger to practice. One thing that makes them great is they are willing to sacrifice. I mean, yes, they're passionate, but did you know the root of the word passion is suffering? You've got to be willing to suffer for your vision. You've got to be willing to suffer to reach BIW, best in world. You've got to be willing to suffer the ridicule and laughter of your critics and your cynics to get to a place called world class. Nothing fails like success. You're successful. Maybe it's in your health, maybe it's in your finances, maybe it's in your career, maybe it's in your family life, maybe it's in the way that you show up in the world. Awesome! You're in a really vulnerable place right now. It is one thing to be successful, it is another thing to sustain success over the coming decades. Is that not a powerful idea? I mean, let's go to the entertainment industry. It's very hard to be a one-hit wonder. Let's not knock a one-hit wonder, but it's even harder to become an iconic rock band or hip-hop band. Let's go to the arts. It is very hard to come up with your Sistine Chapel. Got it. It is even harder to become a Michelangelo. So are you playing the short game or are you playing the long game? This is rule number 2, you know, or lesson number 2 that life has taught me: play the long game. Aim for legendary. Don't just say, I want to be world-class in my dominant pursuit for a little window of time. Say, I want to have the guts and the grit and the acumen and the mindset and the capability and the commitment to create enduring success. And that's why I say nothing fails like success. You look at the restaurant that is hot in your neighborhood right now. They're on the path to obsolescence if they're not really careful. Sure, they went from a little neighborhood shop that made beautiful pasta, that had great service, that had the owner on the floor shaking your hand, getting to know your name. Then they got written up in the magazines, and then they got interviewed, and then word of mouth spread like wildfire. And what happened? They became arrogant. You see, success can be so toxic, and it happens. It is such a pull on every human being. It just plays with your mind, and you literally shift from humility to arrogance. You shift from humility to arrogance, and once the arrogance sets in, in a mindset, it starts to populate every other person on the team, every other person in the culture, every other person in the community, and it is a very short fall from success to irrelevance. So lesson number 2 is nothing fails like success. As you become more successful, become more humble. As you become more successful, work even harder. As you become more successful, care even more about your product. As you become more successful, learn even more. I invite you, when you are the titan of your industry, be sitting in the room with 18-year-olds beginning their game. When you are the icon of your field, be the person who is up not at 5 o'clock anymore, let's play at 4 o'clock, reading, listening to the podcast, writing in your journals, setting your goals, focusing on your intentions. As you become more successful, be more humble. As you become more successful, be even more punctual. As you become more successful, become even more passionate. As you become older, become even younger. Yesterday I was walking on the street and I met this man in his 80s. He said, Robin, I finally retired. He's probably close to 90, and he is a legendary clothier in the country that I live in, and he just retired. And he started his shop, which is now an empire, in 1954. So I don't know what that is, but that is decades and decades and decades and decades. And he did not want to retire. He just retired, but he is still on fire to do amazing things. Age is just a number. Do not let an old person into your body. Nothing fails like success. Number 3, unbelievably important, which is the importance of scheduling. You know, I talk a lot about having a dream, having a plan, you know, being inspired, but all ideas don't work unless you do the work. And some of the best work you can do is getting really good at Creating a one-page plan. Have your Big Five, the five things that need to happen this year for this to be your best year yet, on a one-page plan. Your top five values, put them on that same plan. Your top five sub-goals sequenced into each quarter of this year on that one-page plan. And every morning while your competition or the rest of the world is asleep, get up at 5:00 AM. I'll teach you how to do that in future videos. But look at your One Page Plan. Spend 20 minutes on that so it becomes a brain tattoo, a burning obsession, so it alights you with inspiration. So you go out in the world and you understand that clarity is power and you so intimately know what has to happen during this day, this week, this month, this quarter, this year to get you closer to your mountaintop. Because the ordinary, the hours that ordinary people waste, extraordinary people do. Because they're not bored like most people. Most people need to medicate themselves with too much TV, too much Facebook, too much video, too much chitchat, too much busyness because they don't know their goals, because they don't have a one-page plan, because they don't have a one-page schedule. I mean, I've got my schedule for every 7 days. Almost everything I need to do goes on it. And you might say, Robin, well, that's a very rigid way to live. No, it's a very free way to live because then I have the power to live life on my own terms. I feel inspired. I'm not wasting each day, I'm leveraging each day. Fourth point: become outrageously enthusiastic. And again, you're gonna say, Robin, let's hold hands and sing Kumbaya. You know, being enthusiastic isn't important. Next thing you're gonna tell me is get up in the morning and look in the mirror and saying, I think I am, I think I am, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself. I like myself. But isn't it true that the most enthusiastic person in the room influences people and they elevate people and they encourage people? Another issue of Fortune magazine a little while ago did a, did a story on Richard Branson's Necker Island conference. He invited all sorts of amazing people, and the reporter in in the room said something I've never forgotten. The reporter said, "It was striking to me how in each of the conference sessions, the moguls of these giant firms were always the most enthusiastic people in the rooms." It's amazing to me when I meet world-class CEOs they are the most humble, the most passionate, they are the most engaged, they are the most lively people in the room. I think it's fundamentally important to be the most enthusiastic person you know. I think in so many ways leadership is about inspiring people by your example. It goes back to my dad, you know, and he was very much about humility. I mean, he's 77 right now and he gets up every morning 5:00 in the morning and he goes off to his medical practice and he still sees patients all day. And he said— I said, Dad, why are you still doing that at 77? He said, because my patients need me. And so I think, you know, one of the core values he was so brilliant in sharing with me is to be an instrument of service. And I think the moment your ego runs your brain and the ego runs your business and the ego runs your way of being, then you your gifts and your talents and your focus and your capabilities are off the creativity and the talents and the service that will make you great in the world. And I think it gets to a very philosophical point, if I may. I think it's relevant to any leader, any entrepreneur, any business builder, any game changer. But you know, I mean, there is such an addiction to the shiny toys that the ego sells us. And society and the matrix and our peers and the world says if you get a Ferrari, if you sell 10 million books, if you have lots of money in the bank, if you have the beautiful partner and the big house, then you're going to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and you are going to feel full of joy and peace and feel you're fully alive. And I've had most of those in my life. At a pretty exponential level. I've been very blessed. And not one of those things has provided me with enduring sustainable happiness and fulfillment. And the things that provide me with just deep happiness and deep fulfillment and energize me all come from a position of inner power. And so, you know, at the events you're talking about, I don't derive much power from all the book books I've sold or bestseller. I don't care about that stuff. I really don't. I care less about that than ever before. At the end of the day, we are a bunch of people on a little planet in a huge galaxy, and before we know it, we're going to be a bunch of dust. And the great billionaires get buried next to the taxi drivers and the pizza makers, and we are not that big a deal. And I think all that really matters is while we are alive, Do your best to use every day as a vehicle to birth your talents into the world. And secondly, if you do that, you're gonna serve the world and raise the world with you. And that all just comes from inner power. I mean, that's just deriving your power from a place within. And that's where you get grace, and that's where you get great creativity. That's where you get boundless energy, because it's not about addicted to what the world thinks of you. Yeah, I think failure is the highway to success. And I know that sounds like a platitude, but society or people teach us, right? They say, "Oh, if you fail and feel uncomfortable, you've done something wrong." And what I try to do in all of my books and my presentations and my tweets is you cannot get to the mountaintop without taking a few missteps. And so a business that wants to win, you have to out-fail your competition. And as human beings, failure is not a bad thing. Ask yourself, what's the Take the opportunity from the failure and get in the game, because when you get to the last hour of your last day, it will not be the failures you regret, it'll be all the risks you didn't take. We become our standards in many ways. If you are surrounded by B players or average performers, and that is your standard, then your mindset will operate at the standard that is offered to you by the people around you. I mean, we do become our social orbit. And if you were at a standard internally that I want to be a game changer in my field, I want to be BIW, the best there ever was, I want to be the Van Gogh and the Rembrandt of technology or whatever field you play in, then your behavior always matches your internal identity and your inner standards. So your standards are important. Your standards for your friendships, your standards for the quality of the work you do, the standards of your languaging, the standards of the nutrition you put into your the standards of your love life, the standards of your mindset, the standards of the way you occur in the world. And so my invitation for you, regardless of what you do, is that you raise your game to a place called world-class, and that is all about being a game changer. Now, I should caution you, and I don't like that word because language is so powerful, and caution is a word that really is a little dramatic. But I want to caution you, which is, as you leave the herd and the crowd and perhaps the cult of mediocrity and rise to being a game changer, it's a very disruptive act. And you actually threaten the masses of people around you. And that's why every visionary was first ridiculed before they were revered. And I'm sure you've experienced it. You want to say, you know, I want to take my fitness to a whole new level of world class, or I want to take my craft to a whole new level of world class. Or maybe you're raising your game financially and then you share it with those you love or your friend— your friends, and maybe your friends are those you love and they laugh at you. And how many times have we given up on a dream because we were mocked by the people around you? And all I'm suggesting to you is when you get laughed at and ridiculed and what people don't understand your next level of world class, that just means you've got a great dream and that just means you're on the path of growth. So be a game changer. I run what I call the 20/20/20 Formula. I shared it with you and many people around the world have found great value from it. And it's pretty simple. I mean, it sort of rolls back to what the Spartan warriors once said. And they said that the person who sweats more in training bleeds less in war. And whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're an artist, whether you're a baker, whether you're a yoga teacher, whether you're a mom, whether you're a street sweeper, you know, when you walk out in the world, there's a call on your life to bring your best game to the world and release as much talent as possible. And a lot of people, what they do is they get up every morning and they sort of run their day by default. And they're chasing the day and they let life act on them in a very random way. Reactive way. And so I think what we want to do is see ourselves as warriors of some sort where we take from 5 to 6 every morning and we prepare ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And so to give a tactic to your many listeners, it's the 20-20-20 formula. First 20 minutes as soon as you get up, 5 to 5:20, intense exercise. And that's going to do a whole bunch of things. A lot of my work is very science and it's going to create a pharmacy of mastery. So you're going to release dopamine, which is the motivational neurotransmitter. You're going to reduce cortisol in your brain, which is the fear chemical. You're going to release serotonin, which even if you're cranky, you start to feel good. You're going to release BDNF, which scientists are calling Miracle-Gro for the brain, which actually allows your brain cells to repair from stress. I mean, this is a That's exciting to me. Yeah, it is. Right, so that first 20 minutes, you rewire your brain. What else do you do? You jumpstart your metabolic rate. What else do you do? You prepare yourself for resilience against stress, and it just goes on and on. Second part of the 20/20/20 Formula, you plan. You pull out a journal. You can do an imprint of your day, which is very powerful, or you can look at your Big Five or your plan. That releases hope. It releases focus. Focus, right? Because an addiction to distraction is the death of creative production. Totally. Okay? And then the final part of the 20/20 formula, learning. I mean, he or she who learns the most wins. What made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk is they know more than anyone around them. And so I believe that, you know, the more you know, the more you can achieve. And there's great value investing as as much money as you have into audiobooks or programs like you do at the Genius, you know, the 25K Conference and the Genius Network or whatever it is. But you know, every quarter I make sure I get out of my office and I go off to a conference. I invest a lot of money in learning and training and coaching, and that's the 20/20/20 Formula. Small wins matter. I mean, we sometimes think that an epic life occurs one Sunday, sunny Friday afternoon, when the stars line up and something revolutionary occurs. And what I'm suggesting to you with great love and great respect is a great life is built not by revolution. A great life is built by evolution. Small and steady wins the race. What you do every day is far more important than what you do once every decade. I want you to really think about that idea. What you do every day is simply your life in miniature. And as you live every single day, so you're crafting your life. What you do over the next hours is really building your future. And if you can just get, and I can just get every single pocket of 24 hours right as best as we humanly can, the rest of our life is gonna take care of itself. So small wins matter. You know, the moment in front of the customer, where the pull was to go average and you become merchant of wow, sets you up for the next day of a way of being of wow. The little win with your family when you feel like watching TV sets you up for another win the next day. A little win of getting up at 5 o'clock and running your morning routine sets you up for a habit of a 5 AM club morning routine. Small daily improvements over time will lead you to stunning results. Tiny wins are the way to greatness, and that's one of the things life has taught me. When you look at the great companies, whether it's an Amazon, whether it's, you know, some of the tech startups coming out right now, whether it's a Zappos, whether it's a FedEx, whether it's a Nike, whether it's a General Electric, whether it's some of the, you know, the little shops in your neighborhood that we really admire because people still cook the food with love or they serve the food with love or people have an attention to detail. Great companies are built by those small steady optimizations every single day. If you look at any great product, it wasn't just one day that built the great product. It was a culture and a mindset of daily innovation and optimization when done consistently over time which led to world-class. Even, even relationships. A great relationship. It's all about those small daily wins. When done consistently, leads to a lifetime of love. I was walking in the woods last week and there were these— there was an elderly couple walking in front of me and they really stood out because they were moving fast. And they were also like, they had these ski poles. And so this, I mean, this is the autumn in my hometown and and they were walking with these ski poles, and so I sort of joked as I walked by them because pretty much only the 3 of us in this deep forest, and I said, "You're missing the snow," and they sort of laughed, and we actually walked for about half an hour, and we started going pretty deep, and they said to me, "You know, we've been married 52 years," and I said, "52 years, what's your secret?" And the woman says, "Well," We've— I've had to put up with a lot, which made me laugh. And then it was all about the little small daily things they did to foster a lifetime of love. I was in Johannesburg a little while ago, and I went through the, the airport, and I went into the men's room, or washroom, or bathroom, however you want to call it. And so I walked into the men's room, and the first thing I hear is, "Welcome to my office." And this was the janitor at the Johannesburg men's room. That's funny. Who janitorized— or I'll make up a word— cleaned the men's toilets like Mozart composed music. Now, that man has no money. That man probably has very little education. That man is judged by the world as having a an unimportant job, right? And that man is a hero, could be a hero to millions of people. Why? Because he actually saw himself as an ambassador to South Africa, and his passion was palpable, and his visceral commitment to doing work at the highest level was like you don't see even from the CEOs. And all I'm saying is, even the person with the The person who's down on their knees, whether they see it or not, they have a choice to rise above their circumstances. And leadership and humanity is a testament to the people who have done it. I mean, you read the— you look at Mandela, you know, 27 years in imprisonment. When his son died, he wasn't allowed to attend the funeral of his own son. He said that was one of the great pains of his own— of his life. And one of the things that And what did he do? The victim looks at something like that torture and says, I am broken. And they give up and they close their heart, they close their mind, they close their creativity, and they blame the rest of their life on what happened to them. But Mandela, what he chose to do was to use it as an opportunity because actually the things that break your heart, if you choose, can open your heart. And fear— the world says fear is bad. Fear is only an opportunity for bravery training. And what he did was he used those 27 years of torture to open himself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to the point where when he was released and became the president of South Africa, he invited his jailers to sit in the front row at his inauguration. And he was asked why. And he said, "Because if I don't, I'd still be in prison." And that's a long way of saying, but, you know, we do make excuses because we are very good at self-deception. Because if we actually had to face the responsibility of playing with our bigness in the world, we'd have to let go of our addiction to our excuses and leave what's safe. Am I making sense? No, totally. You have to leave what's safe. I mean, we are addicted to crisis. It makes no sense. We are addicted to pain. And we have to actually leave the pain to go out to the possibility of pleasure and joy and greatness. And believe it or not, that frightens us. So we make these excuses and then we blame people. Oh, Joe or Robin, I don't like the way he looks. He speaks differently. But subconsciously, as you're suggesting, those are just our protective mechanisms to avoid owning the responsibility of our own pain. For brilliance.

Thank you so much for watching. I made this video because Jamal M asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules had the biggest impact on you and why. What changes are you going to make in your business as a result of watching this video? Leave it in the comments and I will join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Christophe Logiste. Thank you so Thank you so much for buying my book. It means a lot to me. For those of you who've bought, make sure you email in your receipt. The information and the link is in the description below. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.

Van Gogh, I heard this recently, Van Gogh never made a penny from his paintings until he died. He did it for the love of his work. I do it for the love of my work. I know you do it for the love of your work. Bono does it for the love of his work. Warren Buffett did it for the love— does it for the love of his work. Steve Jobs was a billionaire and he worked harder than ever before because he— it was a dream and the love of— the love of his work and doing something awesome for the world. People like Mozart and Beckham and the great athletes, humanitarians, entrepreneurs, chess champions, We're less about genetics and gene and natural talent and what makes icons in whatever field you choose is not your talent. It's things like the amount that you practice, your ability to stay with your practice for the 10,000 hours, your social circle. I mean, what made the great Brazilian footballers great was not that they have some natural thing by living in Brazil. It's every little kid from pretty much the moment he's 3 or 4 years old, right, sees the heroes and it's the ticket out of poverty. And so all they do is touch the football every single day and night, and by the time they're 11 years old, they've touched the football millions of times, and they are therefore untouchable compared to anyone else around the world. And all I'm saying is genius is not something you're born with. Genius is something that you apply. You don't get lucky, you make lucky. Success is not something that is, you know, divinely bestowed on you. Success, whether it's prosperity or whatever it is, is something that you earn by grit, hard work, finding the right people, doing the learning, etc. Today's a miracle. You'll never get this day again in your life. Part of success is building a great building a great financial life, building great fitness, but also understanding that the greatest joys in life are life's simplest blessings. Make the time to watch the sun come up. Make the time to listen to a great piece of music today. Make the time to have a conversation with a stranger and restore their sense of humanity. Make the time to look for a great piece of art somewhere. Make the time to read from a book on business or creativity or productivity or time management because the world belongs to the learners. Make the time to tell your kid how much you love them. Make the time to write a thank you note to that mentor who shaped you. Make the time today to look up the stars because if they only came out once every 100 years, you'd be wowed by them. Make the time to express some gratitude. If you have two eyes, two feet, a roof over your head, people who care about you, you are a very blessed person.