The 5 am club

—Steven
Pressfield
“Um. Wow!” declared the entrepreneur with a crooked smile that displayed
part surprise and part delight.
“We were at your seminar. Um. You were brilliant up on that stage,” she
finally managed to express, pivoting impressively from soft shock to the
master-of-the-universe business bearing she was more accustomed to. “I lead
a technology company. We’re what pundits in our industry call ‘a rocket ship’
because of the exponential growth we’ve been experiencing. Things were
going phenomenally well until a little while ago . . .” The entrepreneur’s voice
trailed off.
She looked away from The Spellbinder and stared at the artist. For a
moment she played nervously with her bracelets. The lines along her face
became more vivid. And her visage gave off a heavy, tired and injured look in
that instant, on that spectacular beach.
“What happened?” asked The Spellbinder. “To your business?”
“Some of the people who invested in my enterprise felt I had too much
equity in it. They wanted more for themselves. Super-greedy people. So, they
manipulated my executive team, convinced key employees to rally against me
and are now trying to throw me out of the firm. That place is my whole life.”
The entrepreneur choked up.
A school of luxuriously colored tropical fish swam through the shallow
water at the edge of the sand.
“I was ready to take my life,” she carried on. “Until I showed up at your
seminar. Many of your nuggets of knowledge gave me hope. A lot of your
words made me feel strong again. Not sure exactly what it was, but you

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pushed me to believe in myself and my future. I just want to thank you.” She
embraced The Spellbinder. “You’ve started me on the journey to optimizing
my life.”
“Thank you so much for your generous words,” The Spellbinder replied,
appearing dramatically different from the way he looked the last time the
entrepreneur and the artist saw him. Not only did he have that healthy glow
people get from time in the sun, he now stood steadily and had gained a little
weight.
“I’m grateful for what you’ve said,” The Spellbinder continued. “But the
truth is that I didn’t start you on the quest to improve your life. 
You
are
changing your life by starting the process of bringing application to my
insights and methods—by 
implementing
my teachings. So many people chat a
good game. They tell you all the ambitions they’re going to get done and all
the aspirations they plan to deliver on. I’m not judging. I’m just reporting. I’m
not complaining, I’m just saying: 
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. So
many good souls among us are just so scared they refuse the call on their lives
to go out into the blue ocean of possibility where mastery, the dignity of
bravery and the authenticity of audacity await them. You had the wisdom to
act on some of the information I shared at my event. You’re one in a tiny
minority of people alive today willing to do what it takes to become a better
leader, producer and human being. Good on you. And I know transformation
isn’t an easy play. Yet, the life of the caterpillar must end for the glory of the
butterfly to shine. The old ‘you’ must die before the best ‘you’ can be born.
You’re so smart not to wait until you have ideal conditions to step up to a
work world and private life of stainless excellence. Great power is unleashed
with a simple start. When you begin to close the loop opened by your utmost
aspirations by making them real, a secret heroic force within you makes itself
known. Nature notices your effortful actions and then goes ahead and replies
to your faithful commitment with a series of unanticipated wins. Your
willpower heightens. Your confidence climbs. And your brilliance soars. A
year from now, you’ll be so happy you began today.”
“Thank you,” said the entrepreneur.
“I heard a man say he needed to lose weight before he could start running.
Imagine that. Lose the weight so he could initiate the running habit. That’s
like a writer who waits for inspiration to begin the book, or the manager who
waits for a promotion to lead the field, or a startup that waits for full funding
before launching a status quo–disrupting product. The flow of life rewards

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positive action and punishes hesitation. Anyway, I’m thrilled I could
contribute to your rise, in some small way. Sounds like you’re at a difficult
yet exciting time on your personal adventure. Please consider that a bad day
for the ego is a great day for the soul. And what your voice of fear claims is a
mean season the light of your wisdom knows is a splendid gift.”
“We thought you were dead,” the entrepreneur announced, unfiltered.
“Thank God you’re okay. And I appreciate how humble you are.”
“I believe the humblest is the greatest. Pure leaders are so secure in their
own skin their main mission is the elevation of others. They have such self-
respect, joyfulness and peacefulness within themselves that they don’t need to
advertise their success to society in a feeble attempt to feel a little better. I
should also say, if I may, that there’s a big difference between real power and
fake power,” The Spellbinder explained, dropping even deeper into the guru
mode that had made him so famous worldwide.
“Our culture tells us to pursue titles and trinkets, applause and acclaim,
money and mansions. All that’s fine—it truly is—so long as you don’t get
brainwashed into defining your worth as a human being by these things.
Enjoy them, just don’t get attached to them. Have them, just don’t base your
identity around them. Appreciate them, just don’t 
need
them. These are only
forms of fake power our civilization programs us to believe we must pursue to
be successful—and serene. The fact is that should you lose any one of these
things, the substitute power you derived from them evaporates. Just vanishes
in an instant, revealing itself as the illusion it was.”
“Tell us more, please.” The entrepreneur was absorbing every word.
“Real power never comes from anything external,” The Spellbinder
continued. “A lot of people with a lot of money aren’t very wealthy. Take that
line to the bank,” stated The Spellbinder as he slipped off his bright yellow
flip-flops and placed them neatly on the sugary sand. “Genuine power—the
stuff legends are made of—doesn’t arise from who you are outside and what
you possess externally. The world is lost right now. True and enduring power
expresses itself when you contact your original gifts and realize your most
lavish talents as a human. I should also say real riches come from living by
the noble virtues of productivity, self-discipline, courage, honesty, empathy
and integrity as well as being able to lead your days on your own terms versus
blindly following the sheep that so many in our sick society have been trained
to become. ‘Sheeple’ is what too many people now are. The excellent news is
that this kind of power I speak of is available to 
anyone
alive on the planet
today. We might have forgotten and disowned this form of potency we have
as life has hurt, disappointed and confused us. But it’s still there waiting for
us to build a relationship with it. And develop it. All of the great teachers of

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history owned very few things, you know. When Mahatma Gandhi died he
had about ten possessions, including his sandals, a watch, his eyeglasses and a
simple bowl to eat from. Mother Teresa, so prosperous of heart and rich with
the authentic power to influence millions, died in a tiny room containing
almost no worldly goods. When she’d travel, she’d carry all her things in a
white cloth bag.”
“Why do so many of the heroes of humanity have so little?” asked the
artist, now relaxing on the sand.
“Because they’ve reached a level of individual maturity that allowed them
to see the futility of spending their days chasing objects that count for nothing
at the end. And they had cultivated their characters to such a degree that they
no longer had the common need of most to fill the holes within themselves
with distractions, attractions, escapes and luxuries. The more their appetite for
superficial possessions dematerialized, the more hungry they became for
substantial pursuits like honoring their creative vision, expressing their
inherent genius and living by a higher moral blueprint. They viscerally
understood that being inspirational and masterful and fearless are all inside
jobs. And once 
true
power is accessed, external substitutes pale in comparison
to the feelings of fulfillment this treasure provides. Oh, and these
heavyweights of history, as they discovered their supreme natures, also came
to realize that one of the primary aims of a wonderfully crafted life is
contribution. Impact. Usefulness. Helpfulness. What business-builders might
call ‘unlocking stakeholder value.’ Like I suggested at my seminar before I
fell, ‘to lead is to serve.’ The philosopher Rumi made the point much more
brilliantly than I ever could when he observed, ‘Give up the drop, become the
ocean.’”
“Thanks for sharing,” offered the entrepreneur sincerely, sitting down next
to the artist on the sand and placing one of her hands carefully only a short
distance away from one of his.
“It’s good to see you’re doing better,” mentioned the artist, his boots now
off. He was sockless. As he basked in the strong rays like a sunbathing cat he
asked, “What the heck happened to you anyway?”
“Exhaustion,” confided The Spellbinder. “Too many cities. Too many
airplanes. Too many media appearances. Too many presentations. I just
ground myself down in pursuit of my mission to help people accelerate their
leadership, activate their gifts and become heroes of their lives. I know
better.”
The Spellbinder then pulled off his sleek sunglasses and extended a hand
to his two students. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you both.”

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“You too, brother,” the artist replied. “Your work has helped me make it
through some tough times.”
As the artist spoke these words, he spotted a catamaran overflowing with
festively dressed tourists whizzing along in the distance. Another school of
fish, called capitaines, could be observed swimming busily in the clear water.
The Spellbinder spied them, smiled broadly and then continued.
“You must be wondering why I’m here,” he stated.
“True,” said the entrepreneur as she took off her shoes and twisted her feet
into the white sand alongside her companion.
“Well, I’ve been advising Mr. Riley since he was a thirty-three-year-old
man. All pro athletes have peak performance coaches, and so do all
extraordinary businesspeople. You just can’t get to iconic alone. He was
starting out when we met, but even then he understood that the more one
learns, the more one can achieve. Growth is the real sport that the best play,
every day. Education truly is inoculation against disruption. And as you
become better you will have better, within all arenas of your life. I call this