Forming Transformative Habits and Channeling your Inner Genius with Robin Sharma

Hey, what's up guys? Jared Goetz here and welcome to the Modern Soul Podcast. For this one, I don't even really want to put a big intro because the conversation really speaks for itself. It goes really deep on routines, on mindset, on a lot of the things that are going on in our world today and ways that we can make our lives better. I'm interviewing the Robin Sharma from The 5 AM Club. Extremely popular book, something I recommend to almost anyone who asks me, what book do you recommend? I almost always say The 5 AM Club. So I was able to interview Robin. We dove deep, and this is one that you guys don't want to miss. So enjoy, kick back, and let me know what you think. Hey Robin, welcome.

Jared, great to see you.

I'm so excited to have you here. I think that In the state that the world is in right now, and, you know, all the crazy stuff going on, especially 2020, and all the uncertainty, and so much information, and, and, you know, people's energy being in a lot of different directions, I don't think that there's too many people that would be more suitable to interview to be able to provide value to people in terms of fulfillment, in terms of the simple things in life that make people feel good. So, I'm excited to dive in. I appreciate you taking some time to jump on with me here.

I really appreciate the invitation and yeah, hope to deliver as much value as I possibly can to your people.

For sure. So, the, you know, the things I like to talk about is I really want to kind of get inside of the minds of people like yourself, your thought patterns, things you do to keep yourself consistent. Routines you, you, you know, you, you do on a daily basis. I mean, your book The 5 AM Club is— when somebody asked me like, what book should I read, I always recommend The 5 AM Club. I thought it was incredibly written.

Um, I think that the fact that you can take a fiction book and put those kind of lessons into it is amazing.

I think it takes some kind of really, uh, incredible creative energy to be able to write those types of stories and get the output and the outcome that you come to. So how do you kind of get in the zone and get yourself in the frame of mind to be able to put out so much creativity?

Well, I think there's a few things. First of all, it starts with philosophy, Jared, and then I apply methodologies. So my philosophies that drive what I do are very much around service. You know, I mean, we are in a messy time. And I'm just finishing a new book right now. And this is month number 11. And, you know, I'm digging very, very deep to try to bring on the best that I could do, but it's sort of challenging after you've gone through the manuscript so many times. But I come from a place of, I want to, I want to deliver the best I can possibly deliver to my readers. I want to serve as many people as possible in a way that allows them to live better lives. So that service philosophy really is a key. I mean, the Secret of Passion is purpose, isn't it? So, that commitment to serve, it brings me a lot of fire. Second philosophical point is, you know, the word mortality comes to mind. And that's why I love reading the Stoic philosophers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius. And, you know, they write a lot about the shortness of life. They write a lot about the fact we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And the more you can keep your mortality and the shortness of life, no matter how long you get to live, front of mind, that's going to allow you to stop postponing expressing your genius. And then I think the final philosophical point that really drives me is I'm not really as interested in applause as I am in impact. I'm not really interested in, you know, I don't have a Ferrari and I'm not interested in those things that much. I love the craft and I feel it's a great privilege that I get to do what I do as a Leadership and Personal Mastery advisor. And I want to work the craft. Like my joy in many ways is how can I optimize my craft? How can I make the next book better? How can I produce something that's very innovative and very fresh? And then we can talk about the methodology methodologies, but those are some of my philosophical things that drive me.

I love that you say that it's a privilege because a lot of people think it's a duty to do these types of things. But for you, it seems like you get to wake up and be grateful for what you're working on on a daily basis because you know that you're, you're not in it for the fancy stuff or the outcomes on your end. You're trying to serve people. So it's a privilege to you. Now, where did this background of wine to serve come from? Like, how did you become you? Where did this start?

Well, you know, I go back to my mentors and it's a great question and I appreciate you asking it, Jared. So I've got an incredible father. He's 83 years old right now. And here's the kind of person he is. So, My son came over for dinner last night. My son had been visiting with my dad, and my dad's— my son said, look, you know, Grandpa gave— sent something for you. And this, this might sound insignificant, but it meant a lot to me. My dad had taken the time to take a pomegranate and take all the seeds out, and then he put it in a little like Tupperware dish, and that was what he sent for me, his son. And to me, that's, you know, it's a small act that has big implications. It's the kind of man that he is. For 54 years, he was a family doctor, Jared Goetz. He would often help his patients, you know, when they couldn't afford things, he would help them. And once he retired, I said, Dad, why did you remain as a family doctor for 54 years? That's a really long time. And he said, because My patients needed me. And he was a huge fan of Mahatma Gandhi. He filled our home with a lot of philosophical books. He would repeat a line by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore very often, saying, Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. So, I come from a family culture that wasn't so interested in accumulation. It was much more about contribution, being helpful, being, you know, my dad's very humble. So, those kinds of values really infused the way that I did things. Then I had another mentor. I used to be a litigation lawyer before I became an author. And my other mentor was a Chief Justice. Again, I learned He was all about public service, humility, integrity. So I've had some amazing early influences that shaped me.

Very good. And where did you grow up?

I grew up on the East Coast of Canada.

In Canada. Okay.

Yes. Cool.

So what, uh, what types of thought patterns do you, or what do you think about, like when you're first getting your day started, when you want to get yourself in the mindset to to serve. What are some of the tools you use internally to get yourself in the right frame of mind to start your day and be able to deliver the best you could?

Well, you know, that's why I wrote The 5 AM Club. It really is an accumulation of my body of work and my methodologies for over 20 years. You know, I've been mentoring elite athletes, NBA stars, major football players, organizations like Starbucks, Nike, FedEx, General Electric, IBM Watson, etc. And when I work with these corporate titans and titans of athletics and movie stars, one of the first things we did was we looked at their habits. And I think it's fundamentally important that genius— to remember that genius is really a lot less about your genetics, it's a lot less about your background, it's a lot less about your education, and it's much more about your daily habits, as simple as that would sound. And so, you know, I think if you want to play at world-class, the first thing you want to do is you want to integrate and install world-class habits, which is exactly what The 5 AM Club is all about. You've got, you know, the science, that model in there, the habit installation process. You've got The 5 AM Club method, which is the 20/20/20 Formula, which is how you can start your day to ensure a world-class day because your days are your life in miniature. If you get that first hour up to world-class, the rest of your day unfolds dramatically differently. And then in the book, there's also the 10 rituals of daily genius like the 2 Massage Protocol, the 60 Second Student. And so if I could pick 2 things, or let me say 3 habits for your many viewers and followers, if they wanted to upgrade their creativity, productivity, and positivity in this world of so much uncertainty, I'd say number 1, join The 5 AM Club and run the 20/20/20 Formula that I explain in the book. High level, it's simply 20 minutes of movement first thing from 5:00 to 5:20. So, you can create that neuroscience that will activate your cognition and activate your energy. Second 20 minutes, 5:20 to 5:40, that's all about reflection. So, you're intentional, deliberate versus living your day like a 5-alarm fire and chasing the day And then the final pocket of the 20/20/20 Formula, very high level, is grow because you want to learn. You want to listen to a podcast, you want to read, you want to work in your journal, you want to listen to something or learn something. Second habit, if I could only pick 3, would be really dial in your pre-sleep routine because the quality of your sleep is going to allow you to get up early, but also perform better, be more productive, and be happier through your day. So, things like no digital interaction, I'd say even 2 hours before you sleep. Sleep in a cold room. Take a nice Epsom salt bath before you go to sleep. Do a little bit of meditation. And no news, no social media before you go to sleep. Third habit, if I could only pick 3, would be the 60-minute student. So make a fundamental commitment. You do not go to sleep unless you have spent 1 hour each day reading. And I'm actually going to— I usually don't say this, but that's no video because video is too easy. And the payoff comes by doing— you want to live a great life, do hard things. So, 60 minutes reading. And I would actually say, Jared, reading something that stretches you in the world where we snack, like we snack on videos, we snack on little bite-sized pieces, like read a hard book.

Yep, yep.

So those would be 3 quick habits.

I— so on the topic of reading versus— I like your term snacking. Something I think about a lot is, you know, in the day and age of information and social media that we live in, there's so— we're developing tendencies to just look for little dopamine hits by scrolling and seeing little videos. And we're actually training our minds to have a really short attention span. And a lot of times people will be snacking and understanding concepts at a high level and mistaking understanding them at a high level for really understanding them. But when you read something difficult and you read something deep and you read something that you need to think about, you're actually training your mind to think at a deeper level. And I always think like, you know, the greatest people in the history of our world A lot of them lived before this age, before this information age. So, you know, the Albert Einsteins of the world, the Mozarts, they would think deeply for days and weeks and months on end on the same topic. But we're conditioned to think very shallow and very quickly. So I love the point that you made about, you know, reading for an hour a day. I like to actually— I like to read when I first wake up. I just— and a tip that I like is like, you know, it seems daunting to read for an hour a day, but if you just tell yourself, you know, read 10 pages and then you get started, it's all about getting started. So on the topic of getting started and being consistent, you know, consistency I think is really key. What are your tips for being consistent? You know, somebody might start The 5 AM Club and they may do it for 3 or 4 days and feel great. And then want to take a day off or 2 days off. How would you tell— like, what would you tell people that are having trouble, like, keeping consistency in what they want to do?

I'd love to answer the question. Do you mind if I go back to what you said a little earlier? Because I think it's incredibly important.

Please.

I think if you want to be a heavyweight on the planet, you've got to be in the master work business. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, for example, they spend 80% of their time on marketing and 20% of time on the craft. What makes a Sistine ceiling chapel, what makes the Mona Lisa, what makes The Catcher in the Rye, what makes a Scarface or whatever it is that you think is a must, a Taj Mahal, is a monomaniacal focus over an extended period of time. And so this whole cyberzombieism that I talk about in 5 AM Club, And this whole impatience culture, we want to know everything in a second. We can't pay attention. We're suffering from fragmented attention syndrome. This is why we're not creating the lives we want. For a lot of us, we wish for the rewards of world-class, but we're not willing to participate in the requirements of world-class. Makes no sense, does it, Jared Goetz? So in the, in, in the 5 AM Club, there is a model called, um, transient hypofrontality, and it, it explains what you just said. Because you're right, what makes a genius, the great ones— Edison, Einstein, these people you mentioned— is that their ability to sit in solitude with a problem for days, weeks, and months. And I call this a GCA, a gargantuan competitive advantage. It's so easy to be at world-class now because how many people do you know can sit with a difficult problem or work on a difficult project like their business plan or their, their book or their screenplay and sit there in acute isolation for days, weeks, and months. Now, when you do that though, even if you do like 3 days, you block away from the noise, you listen to the signal, and you focus on one thing in solitude, you activate flow state in your brain. Your brain waves actually shift from beta to alpha down to theta. Your brain actually releases more dopamine, which you mentioned, and serotonin, and norepinephrine. And you literally create a pharmacy of mastery that is available every human being on the planet. Like, we have genius within us, but if you're playing with your phone all day, we never create the state of genius that births genius-level ideas that allow us to change the world. And then we say Einstein was different from us, I'm just an ordinary person living in wherever. It's not that we can't have genius, we just don't do what genius requires, right?

And The thing is, it's like with all this constant stimuli, like for example, if you're trading in the stock market, you can simply open up Robinhood, you can see your account balance, you can make a trade. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you'd have to call your broker, you have to find out where your numbers are. And that's just one example of a constant stimuli. So one practice that I've put in, and a lot of the practices I've built actually came from The 5 AM Club, and I've Taken what I've learned and I've developed my own sort of things that work for me. Um, but one thing that I've developed, and I want to hear your opinion on it, is I have a 1-hour non-negotiable hour in my morning where I sit in— I built a meditation room in my house. There's a sauna in there. I have some fountains, some nice lighting, a Sonos speaker. I put on some chill music, no phone. I have a notebook and I'll go in the sauna for about 10-15 minutes. I'll stretch for about 15 minutes. I hang upside down on this like teeter machine I have and I just move my body, right? And I feel myself, I'm present. And what ends up happening is the problems like the ambient anxiety that we have from having an overstimulation of information, they start to bubble up and I realize what's causing me to feel discomfort. And then I just write those things down. But if I'm, if I'm living in a reactive state all day, I don't know what's causing me to feel that ambient discomfort and that ambient anxiety. But sitting and just being and focusing on being present and focusing on who you need to be, it allows me to see those problems and feel those problems and then solve them. So what are your thoughts on a routine like that?

Well, I think you're amazing. Thank you. You know, for you, it's someone, you know, you seem, you know, you're a young man. For you to have that wisdom to begin your day like that. And then I'm just making notes about some of the things that you're saying. I think it's very wise. I, you know, I deeply believe the way you start your day dramatically affects the way your day unfolds. But for you to, have gone ahead and built a meditation room and you have a sauna in there and you do your, your physical part of it as well. I, I think it's very profound. And you actually say— you're using language that I don't hear a lot of people saying, which is, you said, I, I don't only think about this, I feel. And I just would love to zoom in on that point because One of the disruptive ideas in The 5 AM Club is mindset is not everything. And I say this with due respect to all the mindset is everything pundits. But wouldn't you agree, in the book, there's the model, the Four Interior Empires. Well, mindset is your psychology. No question, is that important? Without a doubt. Installing the beliefs of world-class, being positive, incredibly important to elite performance, exponential productivity. But are we not more than our mindset, which is our psychology? Do we not, as human beings, feel? The word you used. You know, it's not a bad word. It's not a swear word. So, we have this— I introduced this word in the book called heartset. Mindset, heartset, which is your emotionality. And then as human beings, don't we have a physical dimension, our bodies? That's our healthset. And then there's, do we not have a spiritual life? Even if we haven't reinforced it or interacted with it, do we not have a spiritual life? And that's the fourth interior empire, your soul set. So for you to be talking about, because most people, their languages explain their philosophy and they just go, and I think this, and I'm thinking this. But for you to say early in the morning, you investigate your beliefs, but you also look at your feelings. Like one of the reasons we don't achieve epic productivity is not because we don't know what to do. It's we're blocked emotionally. Like you said, there's the anxiety, there's the fear, there's the shame, there's the discipline. Work through that. And you work through the self-sabotage that blocks your income, your impact, your productivity. But not a lot of people go to the emotional or spiritual side.

Yeah, well, I, I think that it's really hard to come up with the thoughts of what you actually need to do to get to where you want to be if you're not feeling how you need to feel. So like, one of the things I like to say is, you know, I focus more on who I need to be rather than what I need to do, and then what I need to do naturally comes to me. So it's like, you know, if I focus more on being more compassionate and caring more about the people around me, more loving, more grateful, then the thoughts of the tasks that actually need to be done to move forward in life, they come naturally, they flow. And a lot of people, I think, go about it backwards. They're in a negative state of mind, they're reactive, you know, they woke up the first thing they do, they checked Instagram, they saw something about the news, it put them in a weird mindset. Now they sit down at their desk and they're like, all right, what do I need to do? And they can't figure it out. They're moving in all these different directions and they're not actually making any progress. So, and this is why I was so excited to have you on, because like you could verbalize the things I'm talking about at a much higher level. But it's like, you know, you got to just focus on who you need to be and on that feeling, and then those thoughts and, and, and, uh, processes come to you naturally.

I, I couldn't agree with you more. Our income and our impact is a deep reflection of our self-identity. So, if you look at a lot of the positive psychologists, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Martin Seligman, the grandfather of positive psychology, these people talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm sure you know this, Jared. They talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. You see, we see the world— fundamental point that will change your life if you really understand We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. So you're right. What we do as human beings, we say, oh, if I go out there and work harder, hustle and grind, have a better marketing strategy, do all these exterior things, then I'm going to wake up feeling happy. But as Jon Kabat-Zinn, the Zen master, said, wherever you go, there you are. You see, what blocks our income and our impact and having whatever kind of life we want isn't reality. Reality is a function of our psychology and our emotionality and our spirituality. If you have trapped emotions, let's say, of unworthiness, shame, guilt, and you haven't worked through those, if you have beliefs that you learned from your parents, teachers, peers about scarcity. Well, you're then running internal programs or an internal operating system that governs every single move.

Yeah.

Then you don't— then you copy everyone else. You don't innovate. Not that you— not because you can't innovate, but you don't think you're worthy of innovating. You don't ask for the big order. You don't use hard times to actually leverage the hard times into greater success because you're in fear, etc., etc. So, you know, it's fundamentally important. Self-mastery opens up life mastery. That's the fundamental thing to remember. But we do have it backwards. We think the doorway to success swings outward versus inward. It never does.

I love that. I love that. So there's so many different kind of routes we can take here from this conversation. One thing I would like to talk about is a flow state. So, you know, you could acknowledge, I think that, you know, there's some days where, you know, you're in your car and, you know, you're listening to a song and you're just like feeling it and you get on a phone with someone and your thoughts are flowing, your words are flowing and you're just, you're your best version of yourself. And then you might have the next day and you're in the car, you're listening to the same song, and it's like, eh, you know, you get on the phone with someone, your words are, are, you know, they're slow, they're low energy, and you can't really think straight. And I think that I, I'm trying to put an identifier on what that is. I think it's a flow state. Like, can you relate to what I'm saying at all?

Totally. You know what, that, you know, if I was to put an identifier on what you're talking about. Some days you're in flow, you feel like you can change the world, your creativity is simply a download, the muse is showing up. And some days you can't string a word together and you're exhausted. I can put an identifier on that.

What is it?

It's called being human.

Okay, there you go.

It's called being human.

So it's okay to not always be in that state.

It's, it's called being human. I mean, I think— excuse me— I think if you're really in touch with your humanity and your natural rhythms, you could have those cycles in one day, right? I think it's almost like, you know, we're afraid to say, oh, you know what, I'm not perfect all day. We're afraid to say, today I just don't have any energy, I feel like taking a nap. And doing nothing. And yet, you know, to go back to one of the models in The 5 AM Club, the twin cycles of elite performance, the greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest poets, the greatest athletes, the greatest movement makers all have one thing in common. They did not work in a linear way. They were not hustling, grinding 24/7. They were not full of energy all the time. Because no one can sustain that. No one can sustain— you can't sustain world-class if all you do is produce. If you look at the greatest producers, they run those two cycles I teach in the book, the high excellence cycle and the deep recovery cycle. And they run it each day, each week, each quarter, each year, in a lifetime. In other words, when I work in a day, I, I call it the 5 great hours concept. I only work for 5, sometimes it's 4, Jared, sometimes it's 6. But, you know, I'm working on this new book. I started off with a 500-page manuscript 2 weeks ago. I'm down to this. This is all I have left before I finish this round. But, you know, all weekend, for example, This weekend I made a decision to focus on the manuscript because it's crunch time. And so I disciplined and committed to working for at least 5 hours every— each day. And when I work, I work. It's sweaty work. It's intense work. I don't have my phone. I don't— I fast. I drink water. I drink my mint tea. I don't talk to people. I don't— I work. But then after I've done my work, I'm with my family. I went out for a nature walk. Saturday night, we watched this movie. Anyway, it's this new movie about— it's kind of interesting, but I took the time to recover. And so what I'm suggesting to you is the best way to work is in a cyclical way, and it's trusting your natural rhythms. Even like the great, the great authors, they, when they're writing a book, they'll work like a year, 2 years, it's, they're obsessed. And then they take a year off, they take 2 years off, they go to Greece, they go to Italy, they, they have fun. And even in a week, work really hard and then take the rest of the day off. Work really hard during the week and then take 3 days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. You know what, you can actually get much more done by doing much less.

I, I love that concept. The thing is that there's a whole culture around grind and yes, can't sleep more than 4 hours a night or you're, you know, you're, you're a wuss, or like you got to hustle 18 hours a day. And it's like It's just, it's so backwards. It's like, wouldn't you rather have 4 hours of quality work than 18 hours of going in different directions and being stressed and burning yourself out? Like, how do we, how do we get this message across to people? Because there's, there's a strong culture out there that says the opposite, and it's just simply not true.

I know. I've been, I've been teaching these concepts for a long time And it's just the first thing I'd say is you can follow the culture or change the world. You can't do both.

Right.

And then I think the second thing is the very job of leadership is not following the crowd, isn't it?

Right.

So I think it's important for us to, I mean, I'm not just offering a model in the 5 AM Club book. It's based on science. In the book, I talk about the 5 The Five Assets of Genius. I believe we have— every human being has five assets of genius: our mental focus, our physical energy, our daily time, our personal willpower, and our original gifts. If all you do is push those five assets all day long, 24/7 or 16 hours a day, what would that kind of way of working do to your willpower? We know from willpower researchers about ego depletion. It's like a muscle. So we will deplete it. Your mental focus, if you work more than 5 hours at world-class, you are going to be exhausted mentally. Your gifts, you can deplete those. So what I am suggesting in terms of this, the high excellence cycle, the deep recovery cycle, this is just a much more effective way to work. And, you know, why are we doing this? Because this is based on the factory life from the 18th century. We used to go to the factory and our productivity was linked to the time we were on the factory line. And if you stay, if you worked longer, Jared, you'd actually have more output, but we are now what I call blue-collar cognitive workers. I'm a blue-collar cognitive laborer. That's what I do for a living. Well, I'm not on a factory anymore, and I can tell you, between after 4 to 6 hours of like deep intensive creativity, my brain feels a little fried, if you know what I mean. And physically, I need— I can't sit there anymore. So why would I sit there anymore?

Right, right. So, okay, I have a question for you. So whenever I'm watching any of your content, um, you know, you're a world-class speaker. Major companies hire you to come in and speak, like, and you're— it seems to me, at least from an outside perspective, that you're— whenever you're filming or you're, you're speaking, you're in a flow state. You're very present. Your words are kind of coming from your soul, and they're just coming out in the moment. You're not pre-planning what you're going to say. It just flows. And I admire that about you. But if you're living in that cyclical style where, you know, you have the great output and then you have the rest. How do you line up the events in your life and the important days in your life with the top of that cycle?

That's a brilliant question. It's a brilliant question. And I'd say this is less a science and more an art. So the first thing I'd say is like I did, um, I did a, a virtual keynote for, uh, a big Guatemalan bank on Thursday. And before the virtual keynote, I felt sort of tired. But clients don't pay me to show up tired or off game. Like Michael, I don't know if you've seen The Last Dance, but you know, Michael Jordan, amazing, right?

I know Michael Jordan. So that's a side—

Really?

Yeah.

Well, I want to hear about— I'd love to hear about that.

Absolutely.

Let me just answer your question, then if I could ask you some questions, I'd love it. So I'm absolutely fascinated by him and I love The Last Dance. Well, what made Michael Jordan is he performed like a champion when it was hardest to perform like a champion. What made Kobe— I saw one of his last games with my two kids, but not his last game, but I think it was 62 points. So I'm paid to show up at world class for my clients on a stage consistently at world class, whether I feel like it or not. So that's, I have to rise to the occasion and that's a professional. But secondly, when it comes to the videos you talk about or the other things, I have set up my life with my team where they understand I'm a creative. And if I just feel real, like, really, if I don't feel— if I feel very depleted, I didn't sleep well, you know, my dreams were weird, I don't know if— but if I have weird dreams, I'm not on my A-game the next day. And so I have the, the luxury with my wonderful team to say, let's put the shoot off for another day. And so I try to structure my life— like, I can tell you if I've had a high excellence cycle like 3 months, 4 months of traveling when traveling was safe. And I've been doing all these events and then my live events, et cetera, et cetera. I would, I then build in a month or two of recovery where I'm, you know, in Europe or something and resting more, et cetera, to recover. And then I'll schedule September to November, my next version of the High Excellence Cycle where I'm all in, you know, my A-game, because I've actually institutionalized recovery, which I think is really the best way to answer your question.

So, but, but fundamentally and practically, like, let's say you, you were going into an important day and you weren't feeling very good. Do you have any, um, methods like breathwork, meditation, stretching, like anything that you could do to like give yourself a little bit more and get yourself closer to that flow state?

Excellent. I would say, and then I want to hear about Michael Jordan. I'm not going to let you off the hook so easy on that. That sounds amazing. Uh, naps are, naps are my secret weapon. So if I have, like, let's say I get up at 5:00 AM and I run the Victory Hour I talk about in the book, and I still feel really tired afterwards, which doesn't happen very often because the more you do something, the more you just automate it and you just create that state that you're looking for. But let's say it's, believe it or not, 11 o'clock and I feel depleted, not 4 in the afternoon. Let's say it's 11 o'clock. I can go down for a half an hour nap. And I have places to sleep in most of my workplaces, little tactic I use. And I can go down for a half an hour nap and it's like I'm a new person. So napping, number 1. Number 2, hydration, incredibly powerful. Increases mitochondrial function, cognitive function. 3, I use coffee strategically. So coffee is an amazing antioxidant. It's great. Also a great cognitive enhancer. So I'll have, you know, 1 or 2 cups of coffee. It really great for me. Breathwork is very, very powerful. So I'll do some breathwork and nature, nature and exercise, right? Like I'll go for a quick mountain bike ride or I'll, go downstairs if I'm working at home, and I'll get on my spin bike or on my Bowflex and just crank out 20 minutes, get the sweat going. And again, you just rewire your, your neurology. So I think those would be some— oh, last thing, sunlight. Sunlight's incredible. Just go sit in the sun for a little bit, get a little bit of vitamin, uh, the vitamin D. So how do you know Michael Jordan? And tell me about that.

Yeah, so, uh, I moved I moved to South Florida about 4 years ago, and I live in Boca Raton. I'm the youngest homeowner in this neighborhood by like 15 years. It's an older community. And my neighbor is a big attorney, and he's friends with MJ's mother-in-law. So he invited me to go play golf over at the Bears Club. I picked up golf about 3 years ago. And we get to the Bears Club, and we played, and I had no idea what this day was gonna be. And go play some golf. And after the round was over, we got a phone call from my neighbor's wife and she's like, "Okay, you know, MJ's mother-in-law said if you guys want to go over and check out his house," because he has a house in the Bears Club, "you guys are welcome to." So we're like, "Of course." So we drive over. There's no street names in the Bears Club, there's just numbers. We're like looking for his number. We get there, it's 45,000 square foot home, like, Incredible. Pull in, uh, two security guards come out to the park, like basically parking lots, the driveway, but huge driveway. Uh, they follow us, gentlemen. We're following the security guards in, and I'm thinking we're just gonna go see MJ's house. And we're walking through the house, and I— we're walking into the back area, and I see MJ like leaning over his barbecue table watching golf up on the TV. And it's MJ, his mother-in-law, his father-in-law, and his two kids. And then there was this guy sitting on the couch, and that was it. And then me and my neighbor. And I found out the guy on the couch was Ahmad Rashad, who I didn't know who he was at the time, but he's a big NFL sportscaster.

For sure.

Right when I walked in, I had been talking to MJ's mother-in-law for, you know, a few weeks about real estate investments. So she came over, gave me a big hug, and then Mike came over and he's like, You know, good to meet you, shook my hand. I was like, like, holy shit, Michael Jordan. So we're hanging out, you know, he opens up, got the Cuban cigars, we're smoking some cigars, hanging out. He's like, you know, I got my own tequila line coming out, you guys want to try it? So we're like drinking some like high-end tequila.

What?

And my neighbor's like, hey Mike, why don't, uh, why don't we take Jared Goetz to the trophy room? So I'm literally— it's like Michael Jordan, me, my neighbor, we're walking through MJ's house. We walk into his trophy room. I look up and the ceiling is the floor of the Chicago Bulls stadium. And I'm like, I'm standing there in the room and I'm like, it just goes to show you that you don't know what life's gonna throw at you. That morning I had no idea I was gonna be not just meeting Michael Jordan, but spending time with his family. We were there for like 5 hours hanging out. He invited us to come play at his golf course, so we're gonna go there soon. And, uh, yeah, so that's how I met him, just randomly on a random day.

Well, you could— you created the ecosystem and what I call the terroir to make that happen, so I don't think it's as random. And I'm not talking about, you know, law of attraction or anything like that. I, I think— although I do believe I don't want to be very careful with my words, but I do believe in energy and intention. I think it's very powerful. I think human beings are much more powerful than we currently understand. But I think you created the life and you created the lifestyle and you put yourself into a situation where you actually— the universe, you know, smiled on you for that. I'm curious, Jared, what was your, you know, if you were to give me a sense of him Uh, any, any interesting sense of him as a person?

He just had a really strong presence.

Wow.

He, he just had this really strong energy about him. Obviously very confident, very cool. Um, just, yeah, really just confident and cool and a strong presence, I'd say.

That's cool. Wow.

But it just goes to show that back to what we were talking about earlier, you know, focusing more on who you need to be. So like, yes, my neighbor, for example, he's an older gentleman, really nice guy, but we've had really deep and long conversations. A lot of people might be like, you know, it's a random older guy that lives across the street, I don't want to talk to him, whatever. But I think that there's a lot to be, you know, there's a lot of joy that comes from having meaningful relationships And that led to, you know, being in Michael Jordan's trophy room, just from being the person who I needed to be. And I think that's a powerful example of why focusing on who you need to be is actually more important than focusing on what you need to do.

You know, and I think right now in the world that we're living in, I think that's more important than ever before. I think the planet needs more heavyweights And, you know, I think it's very easy to be hypnotized into spending most of our time on social media and trying to outdo other people and, you know, being on the right private islands and wearing the right clothes and, you know, being— showing ourselves sitting on these private jets that sometimes they're just rented for the runway. And I think, I think, you know, part of the value of what we're going through as a species on the planet, whether it is through the pandemic or all the economic upheaval that is going on, is I think there is a time to reset and reprioritize and have a really good look at how we are living our lives. I think that is one of the benefits of these hard times. A lot of people are leaving where they live. They are leaving their jobs. They are spending more time with the family. They are becoming more spiritual. They are becoming more powerful as human beings. And that's why I think, you know, the Four Interior Empires is so important, because it's not only your psychology and your mindset. Imagine getting up every day at 5 AM for an hour, or before you go to sleep, and spending an hour or maybe more working on your mindset, your heartset, you know, your emotional life, releasing all that toxic energy that's built, been built up, and reconnecting with higher vibrational emotions, working on your health set. So, you reduce inflammation, you boost your immune system, you build a healthier brain, and you work on your spirituality. We don't really hear that as much as I think would be wise, but your spirituality is just releasing the egoic side, you know, that voice of fear, and working on our heroic side. You know, that's the last chapter of The 5 AM Club where they're sitting in Nelson Mandela's prison cell and they learn how to be heroes of their own. The characters in the book learn how to be heroes of their own lives. And I think ultimately who we are in the world is not who we are in the outer world. It's about our intimate relationship with ourselves. And that provides, you know, you get that relationship right and you'll find a bliss that makes Ferraris and private jets pale in comparison with that interior wealth. But that's not really talked about very often.

I went through— I know we don't have too much more time, but I literally went through that journey, you know, when I was younger, when I was like 20, 21, I made a lot of money. I lost it all. I moved back in with my mom. You know, I had a big ego and I had nothing to show for it. And then I made, you know, good money again over the last few years. And I realized that, you know, I thought that if I got somewhere financially and I had— I bought a nice Lamborghini, I bought a bunch of things, and I thought it would like— I'd finally be happy. But it made me realize that that's not where fulfillment came from, comes from. And I can riff on this stuff for, for hours, you know. Um, but I know we, we don't have too much more time here. Um, but are you able to talk any more about what you're working on right now, Robin?

Yeah, so, um, thanks for asking. So I started this new book 11 months ago. I rented this hotel room in Tribeca to lock myself away. By the way, great place to work are hotel rooms. You want hotel rooms and airplanes. So I rented this really interesting sort of apartment-like hotel room, and I was there for, I think it was 15 days. And I would get up in the morning and I'd, you know, sometimes do a spin class. One of the things I miss from all this world we're in right now is I love SoulCycle. So I'd go to SoulCycle in Tribeca, have a good sweat, and then I'd get my coffee and I'd go back and I just lock my— turn off my phone and essentially lock myself away. Yeah, and I did it for 15 days. And I thought, hey, you know, I've got the draft of the new book. Well, little did I know, you know, I've used most of lockdown to just polish this book, rewrite it, you know, line after line, model after model. So it's, it's a book about heroism. It's a book about humanity. It's, it's part memoir. I share a lot of stories I've never shared. There's pictures of my childhood and, you know, meetings I've had with interesting people who've been on my stages, you know, like Richard Branson and the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, and Jack, you know, and I share what I've learned interacting with these people and being around these people. It's a book about exponential productivity. And surprisingly, it's a book about Spirituality. And I'm almost done it. I think I have another 2 months on it, and then I think I'm going to give it to HarperCollins. And, you know, it'll be out in 2021. So it's a—

it's—

yeah, I think it'll be an interesting book.

I can't wait to read it. Uh, Rob, this was awesome. Uh, for everyone listening, you know, just a reminder that when we're talking about these topics it's one thing to hear them and understand them, but don't mistake that with practicing them and feeling them. So, you know, if we're talking about building a better relationship with yourself or, you know, feeling your emotions or, you know, working on who you need to be, listening to this and understanding it is good, and it's, it's, it's a good motivator to get you to practice it, but practicing it is where the magic comes from. So just wanted to put that reminder. A lot of people I know listen to these things and they mistake like, oh, I know what meditation is, so I basically meditate. But you don't. And like the deep meaningful, uh, progress that you make really comes from that practice. So I just wanted to maybe kind of end off on that note if you had anything to say about that.

Well, I would— I totally agree with you. I would say It's not just, you know, you asked about being consistent and you're talking about, you know, doing the work. And I think that's an incredibly important point. And the way I look at it is, you know, I'm not saying I'm some kind of a guru, Jared, or I'm perfect. I'm very flawed and I just do my best every day. But I'm a lot better than I was 30 years ago. You know, that's one of the beautiful things about personal mastery and self-leadership work. Every day you do the work, you become a new person in micro ways. It's always a payoff. It's like every workout, you rewire your neurology and you rewire your physicality. So how I would reply to what you said is, you know, ideation without execution is delusion. But I'd even say not applying the ideas we've talked about if they resonate with, with you, with one of the viewers, it's like your honor depends on it. You know, one of the greatest reasons we don't build these empires, whether they're financial empires or spiritual empires, it's because we don't love ourselves anymore. And how come we don't love ourselves? It's because we've experienced a lifetime of broken promises to ourselves. And so we grow as men and women and human beings. We grow as leaders. We grow as heroes by the consistent doing of self-promises. People say, well, how do you become powerful? You practice being powerful long enough that empowerfulness has no room within your orbit. And that comes by saying, I listened to Jared and Robin. And I'm going to do The 5 AM Club for 66 days, which is University College of London's scientific proof of how long you need to stay with it. Or, you know, Jared talked about the sauna thing or about this, and I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to do it when it's easy. I'm also going to do it when it's hard. And I'm going to do it when I don't feel like it. And I'm going to do it when I feel like playing with my phone. And you just keep on doing it until you keep on practicing being spectacular until spectacularity becomes your way of being. And MJ, that's how he did it. He practiced himself into being MJ.

Yep, it's until you outperform those beliefs that you have that you can truly believe that you can be better. And one last concept that I think is really valuable for people listening is, you know, when you're doing these things, whatever those things may be, whatever those practices are, as humans we tend to think that for every bit of input, we should get an equal output and that we're going to grow linearly. But in reality, a lot of times you're, you're, you're not growing at all as you're putting in the input, but then eventually your output surpasses where that line would be going, and there's a valley of disappointment, and that's where most people give up. But if you can understand that concept and understand that there's not an equal output to input ratio, that sometimes your output is less than what you think it should be based on the work you've done, but you know that if you keep going, it'll surpass where you think you should be. That'll keep you in the game. I think that's a powerful concept for, uh, people who are trying to figure out how to be consistent.

And I would, I would actually say they're always— I would actually say every action does have— like, I find it very challenging and interesting what you're saying. And, you know, that gives me a lot of energy, like this kind of a conversation. And here's how I come at it, Jared. I would actually say every action does have a consequence. Every early rise, every workout, every act of kindness, every act of innovation, every walking towards your fear when you're frightened, there's always a payoff. But they could be micro payoffs. But there is a payoff, and they could be invisible payoffs. So we think there's no payoff, even though there is a payoff, because we have at some level recreated our neurocircuitry a little bit with a little new neuropathway, or we've grown a little bit in our bravery. So we might not see the incremental increase, but it's there. And then I do agree very much that if you— and I've been teaching this for many years, which is if you keep on doing those micro wins with steady consistency, over time you get to a point where then there's an— you know, it's the hockey stick. You know finances very well, right? Exponential, exponential increase. And that's the great investors, right? It's— they get to a certain place where all those steady gains hit a point where it becomes incremental— excuse me, exponential increase.

Yep, I love it. Robin, this was really an incredible conversation. Again, I appreciate you taking the time of your day to jump on here. I'm sure everyone listening, uh, you know, loved all the things you had to say, and I really value your time, man. So thank you so much.

Honestly, I love this conversation and I applaud you for your wisdom and everything you're doing and, you know, all the great ideas you're sharing with so many people. It's, you know, it's fascinating what we shared today. Thank you.

Yeah. And if you guys aren't already following Robin on social media, you're just @RobinSharma, right?

Yeah. On Instagram, I try to put out only really strong value. It's at robinsharma.com. I also have a podcast, The Mastery Sessions, and you can just Google or go to YouTube, Robin Sharma, and you'll find all of the podcast episodes. And if anyone wants to read The 5 AM Club, people are loving around the world, they're loving the audiobook. So they can go to Audible. And if they want to read the book, it's in bookstores and they can get The 5 AM Club on Amazon. And, um, the last thing I'd say is at the end of the book, there's a 66-day video-based program, no charge whatsoever. And it'll help you live the models and the ideas. So I'll support you through free video training for 66 days till you lock it in. Because I honestly think one of the finest ways you can transform your life and get through all this and just live a soaring life is to rise before the sun. And, um, spend that time working on yourself.

I love it. And like I said in the beginning, guys, this is a book I recommend to people all the time, and I highly recommend you guys check it out.

So thanks so much, Robin.

Great, Jared, it's a pleasure. Thanks.