The 5 am club

necessary
for the expansion of your
capacity,” voiced the billionaire.

---

“You must push your talents hard,” the billionaire continued. “Even when
you don’t want to. Past your comfort zone. Only then will they grow. Always
remember this: 
The time you least feel like doing something is the best time to
do it
. And part of the reason for this, as you also now know, is because when
you enlarge your willpower muscle in one important area, your self-discipline
in every other area rises with you. The larger point I’m trying to make here is
that pressure and stress are wonderful blessings that A-Players exploit. Our
gifts don’t increase when we stay in our safety circles. Nope. Challenge and
stretch your capacities past the normal. Muscles expand only when we take
them past our usual limits. And then allow for some time to refuel and
recover.”
The billionaire surveyed the vineyard. Then he added, “I recall having a
fascinating conversation with a pro athlete who showed up at one of my
charity dinners. You know what he told me?”
“What?” wondered the artist.
“‘I rest to allow all my training to take effect,’” pronounced the
billionaire. “Profound way of seeing things. All work and no break depletes
your greatness, over time.”
“Hmm,” murmured the entrepreneur, rolling her mountain bike over to a
stake and leaning the seat against it.
“If you want to build stronger abdominal muscles you stress them past
their current boundaries,” said the billionaire. “If you usually do a hundred
sit-ups, you do two hundred. If two hundred is your daily quota, go up to
three hundred. This actually causes the muscle to rip apart. The exercise
physiologists call the phenomenon ‘micro-tearing.’ Yet, if you want the
muscle to grow, you can’t keep exercising it relentlessly or you’ll experience
injury. You need to rest the muscles for a day or two.”
“And it’s in that recovery cycle when the actual growth happens,”
interjected the artist, locking in on the principle he was learning.
“Absolutely correct!” enthused the billionaire. “Growth happens in the
resting phase—not in the performing stage. Recall early on in our work
together on my beach in Mauritius I told you cats I grew up on a farm, long
before I moved to Malibu?”
“Think so,” spoke the entrepreneur. “Mauritius feels like another lifetime
ago.”
“Well, there’s a metaphor that I learned at our farm that will help you fully
understand 
The Twin Cycles of Elite Performance
. Talk to any farmer and
she’ll tell you about the ‘fallow season.’ Before it, there’s an intense period

---

when the soil gets tilled, crops get planted and serious work gets done. Then
there’s that season of resting. Seems like nothing’s happening. Looks like
time is a wasting. Yet here’s the neat part: It’s in the fallow season that the
harvest is really blossoming. All the produce that shows during autumn is just
the visible end result.”
The billionaire slurped some more coffee. He spilled a little on his t-shirt.
The container that held the java had “Dream big. Start small. Begin now”
written on it.
A yellow butterfly with tender flapping wings that had blood-red veins
along them glided by. Three eagles announced their authority overhead.
“God, I love butterflies,” the billionaire said wistfully. “And rainbows,
shooting stars, full moons and glorious sunsets. Why be alive if you’re not
going to be totally 
alive
?
“I was like a robot when I was in my twenties,” he admitted. “I took
myself too seriously. Didn’t have a minute to waste. Every hour was
scheduled. Every car ride had to have an audiobook running. All flight time
was about productivity. Here’s the thing . . .” his voice trailed off as his eyes
appeared lonely, melancholic and lost.
“I was exhausted a lot of the time. The Spellbinder saved my life. He
really did. And the model I’m walking you through this morning helped
immensely.”
The billionaire took a deep breath, then went on. “My assets of genius
became eroded over time. My creativity was floundering—as was my
effectiveness. I’ve since realized that I’m paid by my group of companies to
think. To come up with visions and ideas for new products and innovations
that will shatter the compass and deliver humongous value to all our clients
around the world. But I didn’t understand that back then. The Spellbinder
assisted me enormously. Taught me