the private habits of game-changers - robin sharma › academy › tgcb › pdf ›...

© THE TITAN ACADEMY GLOBAL AG

1ROBIN SHARMA

THE PRIVATE HABITS OF GAME-CHANGERS

TRANSCRIPT

2 THE PRIVATE HABITS OF GAME-CHANGERS

Hi. It’s Robin Sharma, author of The Leader Who Had No Title, founder of The Titan Academy and I could not be

more excited to have you here with me on this training video. This video is all about the private-not the public-the

private habits of game-changers. What do people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, what do people like Winston

Churchill or Da Vinci, what do people like Taylor Swift or Kanye West or the great athletes, what are they doing

when no one is watching? That’s what this video is all about.

I’m going to walk you through at the beginning 5 of the myths of being a legendary performer. Once you know

what the myths are you can actually have the awareness not to drop into the myths and so you can rise to your

next level of world class. After that we’re going to get into the tools and the habits. This is really where the rubber

hits the road so to speak. We are going to get in what you need to do every single day to get the best results of

your life in the following key areas: In your mindset, in your confidence and bravery, in your health and energy, in

your focus, in your creativity and in your production, in your personal relationships and in your internal life in a

way that you influence the world.

Without further adieu, I want to congratulate you for being here because, as you know, the one who learns the

most wins. You can’t put a price tag on the value of education and learning. I call it 2X-3X mindset. You want to

double your income and impact, best way to do it... Triple your investment of your time and your focus and your

resources in 2 key areas, your personal development and your professional education. Thank you for being here

with me and let’s go right into the 5 myths.

Number 1, the myth of the gifted prodigy. Society sells us this bill of goods that those who are great performers

are somehow cut from a different cloth. They are child prodigies. Mozart is a great example. If you look at the

backstory of Mozart, he, for the first 10 years of composing music, was very average. His early works for 10 years

were described as mere curiosities. They showed no signs of great talent. If you’ve watched video 1, you know

exactly now the science behind genius and that you can be a genius. It’s not about genetics. It’s about doing the

right things and installing the right beliefs.

The key idea on Mozart is it took him 10 years of daily focus. His father was a music coach. His father said, “You

must be doing this all the time,” in composing music. He pushed him very hard because that’s how the family

survived in terms of an economic income and Mozart just spent the time. Anders Ericsson has the preeminent

research in the field of exceptional performance. He’s the one who actually came up with this famous 10,000-


3ROBIN SHARMA

hour rule. The myth of the gift of prodigy really is a myth that says the Elon Musk’s and the Google guys and the

great tennis players and the world-class violinists and the great entrepreneurs and the great humanitarians and

the great scientists were child prodigies. They had this natural inborn talent.

The real idea that society sells us is you don’t have that. You’re just ordinary. I’m just ordinary. Resign yourself

to average and spend your best years not dreaming too big and not reaching too high. The key idea I invite you

to really think about is genius and legendary performance is so much less about your DNA. It’s so much less

about what you are born with and it’s so much more about what you do with your potential. Again, video number

1, I shared with you psychologist James Flynn, his idea of capitalization intelligence. It’s not really the potential

you’re born with. What makes the best athlete for example is how much of their potential they capitalize on to

bring it into their skill.

Boom Boom Mancini, I believe he was the heavy champion of the world for a while. I still remember a great

documentary on him. The documentary said he said, “I wasn’t the most gifted. My brother actually had longer

arms and he’s more talented naturally, but I worked hard and I had a bigger heart and I was more devoted. I was

obsessed with being a great boxer and that’s what made me great.”

Which brings me to myth number 2 about legendary performance, the myth of the overnight sensation. We put

these people that we admire up on a pedestal, those people who look otherworldly when they’re performing

theirs skill. We think that we see them or we witness them at the end result of their years of training, learning,

practice. We see them in the full blazing glory of their epic skill. We fall into the trap of thinking, “They must

have had an overnight success.” If you look at the backstory, every great performer they feel the idea, It took

me 20 years to become an overnight success. I just want you again to wrap your brain cells around the idea that

patience is more important than natural talent.

Grit. Remember Angela Lee Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania? She studied very successful students,

very successful people. Their number 1 common trait was not their natural IQ. It was this word she coined, grit,

their ability to stick with it, their ability to be patient, their ability to be knocked down and get back up, their

ability to play the long game.

Myth number 2, the myth of the overnight sensation really reminds you patience truly is a virtue when it comes


to legendary performance. Don’t play the short game. Be in it for the long game. What you do every single

day is much more important than what you do once every few years. You want to be consistent. You want to

do the training. You want to do the learning. You want to run the right routines and rituals. Small daily acts of

optimization and focus when done consistently over time are guaranteed to yield you remarkable results.

Myth number 3 of legendary performance, the myth of the privileged producer. Again, we look at people who

are world-class and we say, “They must have had rich parents. They must have lived in the right neighborhood.

They must have gone to the right schools. They must have had lucky breaks. They must have come from blessed

background.” That’s just not true if you look at the research and you look at the backstories. Let’s go to the

Brazilian footballers. These are some of the most talented footballers or wherever you’re from you might call

them soccer players, but they are truly world-class. If you look at their backstories, many of them came from the

poorest areas throughout Brazil. They were not privileged and they didn’t have great backgrounds. What they did

have in common was a few things.

Number 1, a commitment and a desire to be BIW, best in the world. Number 2, they were members of talent

hotbeds. They were in communities when they were little kids where every single one of their friends in Brazil

also wanted to be a legendary soccer player. They looked at their heroes or the great Brazilian football players.

They knew they lived in beautiful houses. They basically saw football or soccer whatever you want to call it as a

ticket out of poverty and that gave them the fire in the belly.

Because all their friends were doing it and because the Brazilian government had set up these training institutes

that were using cutting-edge training techniques where they touch the ball a lot more, by the time the Brazilian

footballers had reached 14 or 15 they had touched the football millions of times. When compared to their

counterparts in other places around the world, they were undefeatable. They were undefeatable. It wasn’t natural

talent. It wasn’t divinely-blessed gifts. It was just a reflection of the talent hotbed, the skills that they learned,

the coaches that they were blessed with versus privileged backgrounds.

You can do this, too. That’s really what training video number 1 was all about in many ways, lots of science, lots

of tactics, game-changing ideas for sure. If you haven’t seen video number 1, you need to take the time to watch

that video. It is a tour to force on what makes a game-changer a game-changer. The bottom line is you can do it.

You can do this. It’s not about natural gifts. It’s about learning what to do and then applying it every day.


5ROBIN SHARMA

Other talent hotbeds, let’s look at Silicon Valley. When Steve Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple in the garage, every

one of their peers was thinking about technology. There was that homebrew club that Steve Jobs was a member

of where Steve actually met Wozniak. Every one of those people was thinking about technology and they were

thinking about computers. Because they were in that talent hub and Hewlett-Packard was helping them with

resources and there were people that were coaching them, they were inspired to grow these companies and now

the world pedestals Steve Jobs, Wozniak and Larry Ellison and all of those people that were around at that time

as geniuses. They weren’t geniuses. They just did different things.

Final example of a talent hotbed would be Florence during the Renaissance age. Incredible art came out of there,

incredible inventions but, again, it was less about these people having privileged backgrounds. If you look at

someone like a Michelangelo, and one thing I invite you or encourage you to do before you get to the end of your

life is go to the Vatican and witness the Sistine Chapel. I was there a number of months ago with my children. As

I walked in, my heart was so touched, tears filled my eyes. Why would tears fill my eyes? Because I saw human

possibility in action.

When we witness greatness, something deep within us is triggered and it reminds us of the greatness you have

within you and I have within you. As I shared in video number 1, we all have that greatness. We all have that

genius. We all have that destiny. We all have that giftedness within us. It’s smothered as we leave the perfection

of childhood and we receive the messaging of our mom and our dad, well intention as they were, but they start to

share the fears that they were trained to fear with us.

Then we go to school and our teachers say, “Fit into a box and think like everyone else and don’t dream too big.”

We get the messaging from the media and the rest of society and the peers around us that says, “Live within

a box and eat from a box and drive to work in a box and die in a box.” We live the best years of life in this box of

mediocrity or averageness versus stepping up to the bigger game of planning it world-class, which is what this

video is really all about.

I want you to think about Florence and Michelangelo. He was told to be small. He was told to have a real job. His

father wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer and he wanted to be, what did he want to be? He wanted to be an

artist. He wanted to be a sculptor. He just was relentless and relentless and eventually his father used to beat

him for his idea and his vision to be a sculptor. Eventually his father relented, found an apprentice and look what


happened to Michelangelo. It took him 4 years of obsessiveness to create that Sistine Chapel.

What you heard is back from it. He had to create special scaffolding that the world had never seen. People

laughed at him. His sponsor actually said, “We’re no longer going to pay you because things were so delayed.”

Frustration after frustration. Where the victim sees failure and adversity, the game-changer sees opportunities

and a chance to pursue your craft.

I just want you to remember that third myth, which is really you don’t need a privileged background. You actually

don’t need a lot of money to be a game-changer. You actually don’t need special skills and talent. You just need

to have the education, the learning, the exposure then surround yourself with the right, what I call, talent army,

which is coaches, the right peers and friends who support your rise from where you now are to where you want to

be.

Number 4, the fourth myth of the legendary performer, the myth of the balanced virtuoso. As candidly as I

possibly can share with you, balance and world-class can’t live in the same room together. What do I mean by

that? I am someone who really loves balance and I believe you can make your rise to be a game-changer and a

legendary performer and a human being who leverages the rest of your days to make history, but you can’t do

everything. It was Confucius who said it beautifully, “The person who chases two rabbits catches neither.” You

can have some form of balance, but you can’t be a jack-of-all-trades. If you really want to be a virtuoso, you do

have to be obsessed with what I call the vital few.

We live in a world that is addicted to distraction. I shared in the first video 63 pieces of information every single

day. It is so easy to become addicted to distraction now and you see people succumbing to this seduction.

They’re walking around checking their smartphone, gossiping, making excuses, over stimulated, absolutely

exhausted, too much TV, too much video games, too much web surfing, too many notifications, but the virtuoso

is so different. They live in this tight bubble of total focus. They are monomaniacally obsessed around being

world-class at just a few things.

Van Gogh didn’t want to be a world-class chef. Ferran Adria, one of the greatest chefs in the world, didn’t want to

be an NBA player. Roger Federer didn’t want to be a rock star or a racer. Edison didn’t want to be whatever it was.

What I’m suggesting to you is pick your battles. Pick your obsessions. You might say, “Robin, what’s this word


7ROBIN SHARMA

obsession?” An obsession it was only a bad thing if it’s an unhealthy obsession and so pick your obsessions. It

might be the vital few. I call it The Big 5.

If you’ve seen my other training videos, I talked a lot about The Big 5. It could be a great parent and a great

family man or family woman. Your second part of your Big 5 could be world-class fitness and a strong spiritual

life and internal core. Then it could be world-class at your skill of choice, which could be a manager or a baker or

an entrepreneur or a business leader or a humanitarian. Your fourth of your obsessions could be impact on the

world around you in whatever way. The fifth one I don’t know what it is. That’s the great thing about being human

and a game-changer. You get to pick your 5 obsessions, but the key idea is it is a myth that you can be brilliant at

everything.

Why? Because you just need to tighten up your focus. You need to put in the training. You need to put in the

learning on those few things. If you do the few things every single day versus trying to do many things, of course

after the 10,000 hours and the 10 years 3.4 hours a day according to science, 3.4 hours a day on the training of

your skill, you need to put in that obsession and focus over time for you to rise to a place where witnesses say,

“She is gifted. She is so talented. She is scary good. He is unbelievable.” The backstory is from video number 1

and this video is it’s not natural talent. It’s about doing the right things.

Myth number 5 of the legendary performer, so very important. I call this the myth of the unscarred titan, the

myth of the unscarred titan. I’ve worked with a lot of titans, billionaires across the world for almost 20 years.

They show up every year in Toronto at my famous Titan Summit, which is recognized as one of the greatest

gatherings in the world for some of the smartest people in the world, some of the most successful people in

the world. We’ve had Richard Branson in the room with us, Shaquille O’Neal on the faculty, Seth Godin. Many

of the thought leaders from around the world on longevity, performance, productivity, growing the world-class

company and living a life that makes history have been on my faculty at the Titan Summit.

The bottom line from observing these people, from watching these people, from being a private coach to these

billionaires that the world celebrates, you can’t … I’ll put it a tedious way. You can be world-class or you can be

popular and be loved, but you just can’t be both. If you look at every single person who has done anything great

whatever the field is, whatever the endeavour is, they’ll have one thing in common and I’m about to share with

you some of their daily habits. All of these people as they left the herd of average, people started to hate them.


Jealousy, hatred is the price ambition and greatness pay to reach iconic. You have to and I say this with great

love, but you just have to develop a tough skin and say, “As I write the glory within me and as I express the

fullness of my gifts and as I change the world by who I’m becoming and what I’m doing and the value that I’m

pouring out into the world, people are not going to like it.” People will be threatened. Why? Because you are

modeling the possibility every one of them has. That’s a pretty scary thought because they then have 2 choices.

Either they go, “I do the same,” but that would mean they would have to leave their safe harbor of the known, they

have to change, they have to face their fears and most people don’t have the guts to do it so they bring you down.

The other choice is they model your possibility and they say, “How did you do that? What did you learn? What are

the beliefs you’re running? What are your daily habits and rituals? Allow me to model them too,” but that takes

bravery. It takes bigness. It takes an open mind. It takes an open heart to say, “I’m going to leave my circle of

average and I’m going to have the guts to sail in the blue ocean of possibility and I want to be like you, too.” Very

few people are willing to do that.

Why are you watching this video? Because you’re the person who wants to be a game-changer. You’re the person

with the bravery to say, “I’m going to challenge my beliefs.” I’m going to invest the online courses. I’m going to

read the books. I’m going to put in the 10,000 hours. I’m going to leave the energy vampires who hated me or

laughed at me or ridiculed me. I’m going to find a new circle of genius to play with. I’m the person who’s going

to use the rest of my days to rise to legendary and take the world along with me. When I get to last hour from my

last day, I will not only have lived the fullness of the potential I was born into but I will have inspired hundreds

of people or thousands of people or perhaps millions of people and I will have brought them up with me. That’s

really what the game is all about.

Let’s shift gears a little bit and get right into the daily habits of the game-changers. What are the private habits

and rituals and routines that the best of the best are doing on a consistent basis that most people don’t know

about? Before I get into these 8 tools, these 8 routines that you can wire into your life to go from where you

now are to a place that you’ve never imagined you could be in terms of your performance, your mindset, your

confidence, your bravery, your influence on the world and your overall results, I want to share with you a piece of

data that really is fundamentally important in its research that was done at University College of London and its

all about how long it takes to install a new habit.


9ROBIN SHARMA

We’ve heard these, 30 days. Some people say 21 days. According to the latest research, it’s actually from

University College of London, it’s 66 days to the point that they call automaticity. This is a key idea, 66 days of

daily practice on the new habit that you’re trying to wire in as a new mental or neuro pathway before you reach a

point that they call automaticity. It just becomes automatic. What does that mean? It means after 66 days of you

staying with this you will reach a time or a point where it becomes easier to do the new habit than not to do the

new habit.

Please remember this. The things you now find automatic and easy you once found difficult and that’s the power

of neuro-plasticity. Our brains are built like muscles. They can bend and they can grow. That’s the power of our

emotional architecture internally according to science. We are built to grow like a muscle emotionally every part

of our capacities, whether it’s intellectual, whether it’s emotional, whether it’s physical. The more you run or the

longer you run or the more weight that you lift you can actually tear down your old ways of being and reinstall

better ways of being.

Just imagine this idea. Stay with the tools and the rituals and the habits I’m going to share with you all laid to

them or pick the ones that are going to work best for you. Maybe it’s 1 or 2. Focus is better. Stay with them for

at least 66 days. I’m going to tell you none of this is a quick-fix. This is not magic pie. This is really hard-hitting

information, tools and tactics that work for you on elite performance and being the best you’ve ever been in your

life and being an industry leader and living a life that makes history. You’ve got to do the work to get the results.

I’m going to tell you right now at the beginning of installing some of these routines it’s going to be hard because

all change is hard at first. It’s messy in the middle and it’s beautiful when you get to the end, but 66 days is not a

long time.

Let’s get right into the first of these tools or these habits and I call it the bravery box, the bravery box. One of the

things that causes us not to follow through on the course or the commitments we make is as soon as we hit the

first beat of resistance we give up. Amygdala, the reptilian brain. Amygdala starts to scream and we go back into

the old patterns and the old ways of thinking and behaving. What you want to do is get to a place where every

single time you run into resistance you witness the resistance and you go, “There’s my amygdala. There is my

voice of fear. There is my internal saboteur,” but you’re not your saboteur. You are so much more than that and

you actually move through your sabotage.


One way to do it is you get a box, maybe it’s a shoebox, maybe you build a box, I’m sure you can find a box. You

fill it with evidence of you being brave. Maybe it’s a picture of you giving the speech that frightens you to death.

Maybe it’s a rejection letter that you disbelieved and you continued and you followed through on your dream. I

don’t know if you know my backstory but The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, it was self-published in a coffee shop.

My mom was my editor. People laughed at me and I still remember going to my first editor who read The Monk

Who Sold His Ferrari and I’ve actually since framed the rejection letter.

Basically, he mocked my talent. He said, “Writing looks easy. It’s really, really hard.” He said, “Your characters

don’t amount to anything. No one will ever be moved by this book.” As you might know, that book has sold

millions and millions of copies in over 75 countries across the world and more than anything else it has

transformed so many lives. You want to fill this box with evidence of you being brave.

Anytime you feel discouraged you look at that box, which is maybe at your office or maybe it’s on your bedside

table. You reconvict yourself and you find yourself pouring that neurotransmitter of dopamine into your brain

versus the fear chemical which is cortisol and you feel strong again. Part of being a game-changer and a

legendary producer is being a merchant of hope. You never want to lose the emotion of hope pulsing through

your veins and the bravery box is a great daily ritual or regular routine to keep you focused on you getting to

world-class.

Daily habit number 2, to be a game-changer. This comes from a piece I read in the Harvard Business Review. It

was all about small wins and there’s this theory called The Small Win Theory that has been proven by research.

Bottom line the researchers asked these managers in this one cohort or this one study group to keep a regular

progress diary that recorded their small wins at the end of every day and the other group didn’t.

The conclusion of the research was the managers in the businesses that kept this what I call a Progress Diary at

the end of every day where they recorded little wins, small wins, tiny acts of greatness like, “I celebrated a team

mate. I turned off the technology and I focused on the project that was making a difference. I went for a walk at

lunchtime,” whatever their small win was, it released that pharmacy of mastery within their brain, the serotonin,

the BDNF, the dopamine which is the motivational neurotransmitter.

Because of that burst of energy and that burst of confidence that started cascading through their days with


11ROBIN SHARMA

consistency, those people were by far much more productive, much more creative and much more optimistic

than the other study group. What I’m encouraging you to do at the end of every day, pull out your Progress Diary

and record 3 or 4 or 5 little wins every single day. Make it a practice. Do it for how many days? 66 days and then it

becomes automatic and it becomes easier to do this new habit than not do it.

The next tool, the 10-by-3 tool. You’re going to absolutely love doing this one. It is going to give you such great

results, but again consistency is the mother of mastery. You don’t want to do it once a year. You want to do it

every day just like the great athlete. The great boxer gets up and does his or her roadwork every day while the

competition is in bed. You want to get up and do your metaphorical roadwork to be a game-changer every single

day while your peers are in bed counting sheep.

The 10-by-3 tool, what’s that all about? Every single morning build a daily habit or routine where 10 times you

think about who you want to become. This is a 1-sentence power phrase. It could be, “Today I am creative, a

fanatical learner, the most optimistic person in every room and someone who does the things most people won’t

do.” I don’t know what your 1-line phrase is going to be, but the 10x3 tool you think it 10 times and then you write

it in your journal 10 times, because writing is so powerful. It imprints that 1-line in terms of your self-identity, not

only on your conscious mind but on that incredibly powerful unconscious mind. Then the final part, 10 times you

speak it. Words are so powerful.

Again, neurolinguistics have studied the power of words. If you fall into the seduction of victim speak, “I can’t. I

hate. I’m sick of this. I don’t like my life. Nothing ever works for me. I’m not the kind of person who could do the

things Robin is doing. I don’t love learning. I love too much TV. I am a complainer,” if you speak like that then you

think like that. If you think like that you feel like that and if you feel like that you produce like that.

It’s not because the world doesn’t want you to fly and be iconic. It’s because you are your own worst enemy.

Victims can’t see it because they are so seduced by the hypnosis of their victimhood. What I am challenging you

with great love and respect is today please step out of any victim mindset that you might have fallen into and

step into you being the best thinker, producer, performer that you can be. Don’t just do it for yourself and your

family, do it for the world because the world will be better as you become happier, as you become more creative,

as you become more energized, as you start producing the results that wow all witnesses.


The third thing to do is you look in the mirror and you repeat this power phrase 10 times, the 10x3 tool. Words

have such power. There’s the victim speak and then there’s the language that A players use. It’s all about “I can.”

It’s all about the language of possibility. It’s all about “I am excited.” Here’s an exercise I want you to do. I want

you to actually write down or maybe do it right now. I wan you write down a series of “I am” statements; “I am the

person who loves learning”; “I am the person who understands the power of education”; “I am the person who

follows through on my commitments”; “I am the person who watches videos right to the end”; “I am the person

when I fall I get back up”; “I am the person who uses the right words”; “I am the person who leaves people better

than I find them”; “I am the person who knows more about what I do because of my investments in learning, my

love of learning, my surrounding myself with the right people, who does things that other people can’t believe I

do.”

Before I get into tool number 4 to help you because these videos are all about serving you, all about helping you,

I see myse- … You and I are in this together, that’s the best way I could put it. You and I are in this together. I am

here with you on this ride to you becoming world-class in the core areas of your life, but ultimately no idea works

unless you’re willing to do the work.

Habit number 4, you absolutely want to nail. Get your sleep cycles right. I’ve become very well known around the

world for the 5am Club and my 20/20/20 formula. I’m not going to get into it right here, but the key idea is this.

As you begin your day or the way you begin your day dramatically determines how you produce and perform in

your day. The Spartan warriors say, “The person who sweats more in training bleeds less in war.” You want to get

those first 60 minutes of your day right. I call it the holy hour. While the rest of the world is asleep, use those first

60 minutes to get fit, to prepare yourself, to do your power phrase, to do your morning declaration so you prime

your mind.

Write about forgiveness in your journal. Write about gratitude to your emotional life. Get completely invigorated

during that Holy Hour. Get on a treadmill, drink your water. I can teach you later about some of the things to do

in the 60 minutes. What I want to suggest to you right here is the Holy Hour and getting up at 5:00 and giving

yourself those 60 minutes to prepare yourself to be world-class during your workday and in your private life, it

doesn’t mean you sacrifice sleep. In the social media, people say, “I need sleep.” According to very goo sciendce,

the number 1 way we cut our longevity is we don’t get enough sleep.


13ROBIN SHARMA

Tool number 4 is really about getting your own sleep cycles right. Some people need … Mariah Carey says, “I

need 15 hours of sleep a day,” and this is pretty interesting. She sleeps with 20 humidifiers around her according

to Business Insider, 20 humidifiers around her. She said, “It’s like sleeping in a sauna,” but that works for her and

that’s what she needs. Hip hop legend Eminem, he sleeps with tinfoil on his windows. He needs it and he sleeps

with it even if he’s travelling with a noise machine. White noise works really, really well for him. Winston Churchill,

he loved to nap just like John F. Kennedy.

I love to nap. It’s one of my secrets; I don’t like the word weapon, but it’s a positive weapon. I get up usually at

4:15 but in the late afternoon; I learned this from my dad, I take a nap and it just reinvigorates me. Winston

Churchill would say, “At 5:00 every single day.” This is consistency. He would have his whiskey and then he would

sleep for 2 hours. Winston Churchill said that allowed him to get a day and a half of work in every 24-hour cycle.

Final example of someone who just experimented and they found the right sleep cycle for them was Da Vinci.

This is called; I think you’ll love this, the Uberman Sleep Cycle. Every 4 hours Leonardo Da Vinci would nap or

sleep deeply for 20 minutes. Find the sleep cycle that works for you, but this is a key ritual that you want to wrap

into your life to get big things done.

I mentioned quickly the Holy Hour and the way you begin your day drives the way you produce and feel and live in

your day. A great habit many game-changers and titans observe is really a morning declaration. As I mentioned,

your words are so powerful. Neurolinguistic experts say that our language provides a filter or windshield on

the way we see the world. Victims, through the language they use, they train their brains to focus on what’s not

working. The A players use, whether consciously or unconsciously, they are choosing different language and the

language forms a context or filter or windshield so that they actually see not the negative but the opportunities,

the possibilities.

Then as I suggested to you, your language affects your thinking. Your thinking affects your feelings. Your feelings

affect your behavior. I mentioned this at The Titan Summit that so many people talk about that I run every year.

I created this Titan’s Morning Declaration. I thought just to give you an example of something you could recite

every single morning to prime your focus and build your confidence and imprint your unconscious on what

matters is most and how you live the day. I wanted to read the Titan’s Morning Declaration from last year’s Titan

Summit. Imagine reading this every single day. It only takes a few minutes.


Today I stand for my highest and absolute best. I am fearless, curious, excellent, and kind. Challenges provide

fuel for my growth. Setbacks offer material for my growth. I think world-class thoughts. I do world-class work. I

live a world-class life that amazes those around me. I am a lion, not a sheep. I am a warrior, not a victim. I am a

leader, not a follower. I am an icon, a legend, a possibilitarian. I think, achieve, and play at 100X so that at my last

hour, I know I gave my best. I am a Titan. I will honor the gift of this day.

The sixth private habit that the best of breed, the epic iconic performers all do is in their private moments they

spend a lot of time thinking. Here’s one of the key things they spend a lot of time thinking about, how they can

make a difference to the world. This might sound very romantic and it might sound very esoteric and not very

practical. All of the best of the best they seriously, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, they have found some

cause that fuels their passion and touches their emotions.

I mentioned in video number 1, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla, he set himself at Stanford University in an interview

a less than 50 percent chance that they would succeed. Who does that? Why would he invest his personal

resources after selling PayPal? His personal resources, this is not investors. Why would he do that with such

a limited chance of success? He said, “It had to be done for the fate of humanity.” Electric cars, for the fate of

humanity. His goal of putting people on Mars, for the fate of humanity, the coming population crisis. Steve Jobs,

not driven by being a billionaire. When he finally got a house, he just had a few things in there, including this

beautifully designed lamp and a Fulton. These people are not driven by money.

Let’s go to the research in case you’re dismissing what I’m saying because you’re saying, “No, no. These people

are all about money.” According to some very good research recorded in the German socioeconomic panel

survey, which is actually the largest database in the world of what makes people happy, the number 1 driver of

happy people, the number 1 was not their genetics. The happiest people, wasn’t their lifestyle. It wasn’t where

they live. It wasn’t their geography. You want to write this one down. It was their commitment to creating value

for others. It was their devotion to altruism.

Sonja Lyubomirski is one of the most respected positive psychologists in the world along with people like Marie

Saldmann. She did a study. She got these people to do 5 altruistic acts or these acts of kindness every single

week and then the other study group didn’t do them. Those who did 5 simple acts of kindness every single week

with great consistency; I want to say 66 days but it wasn’t 66 days, but they did 5 simple acts of kindness every


15ROBIN SHARMA

week, which they recorded, were significantly happier than those that didn’t.

Then you’re going to say, “What does happiness have to do with peak performance and being an icon and a

legend?” Happy people get great things done. Happy people create that neuropharmacy of outright mastery.

Happy people block out the cortisol which is the fear neurotransmitter which stuns you and paralyzes you and

makes you stuck so you can’t even get out of bed when things are falling apart. When you are happy, you leap out

of bed, whether your world is wonderful or whether your world is miserable when you look at the happiest people

according to science and research. These are the people who find happiness not only when things are going

beautifully, when things are falling apart. You definitely want to use this tool and I call it the 10X value obsession.

Ask yourself on a consistent daily basis in your morning routine, how can I contribute greater value to the world?

How may I best serve the most people? You can write it down in your journal for that day. How can I actually give

10 times the value to my company that they have any right to deserve? How can I give my community 10 times

the value by smiling at people, by finding good things about strangers to the world? The world is in a pretty

messy place. You definitely want to run this 10 times value obsession. It’s a great habit that the best people run.

The final tool habits of legendary performers, habit number 7, which is the 5-minute movie. Visualizers are elite

performers. The mind thinks through pictures in so many ways. It thinks through words. It thinks through ideas,

but pictures and imagination and visualization is one of the things that the best skiers in the world, the Olympic

athletes, the gold medalists, even the best entrepreneurs do on a daily basis. A 5-minute movie is simply a

5-minute visualization or a 5-minute meditation.

Please again keep your mind open. Meditation is not religious. It’s not spiritual. Tons of great science, meditation

releases serotonin, which is a pleasure neurotransmitter. It makes you feel stronger. It builds confidence. It helps

you respond differently from stress. You actually train personal happiness into your brain through 5 minutes of

meditating or visualizing every morning or every night. What you do is you sit down. You focus on your breathing.

You get really quiet and you imagine yourself doing the things you want to do. Maybe it’s doing work that

frightens you. Maybe it’s making the difficult sales call. Maybe it’s being graceful under pressure versus reactive

under pressure.

Maybe it’s listening to your son or your daughter or your spouse versus thinking about other things and not


being fully present, because one of the greatest things you can give your loved ones is the gift of the fullness of

your attention and presence. The 5-minute movie is another great tool to pick from and select from to put into

whatever daily routines you choose to install for the next 66 days for you to make the leap from where you now

are to where you’ve always wanted to be.

Which brings me to the final tool, tool number 8, get fit like a professional athlete. There’s a great book you

definitely want to read. It’s called Spark. There’s great science coming out on the power of physical fitness.

Physical fitness on a daily basis releases BDNF, which has been called by some of the experts, like Dr. Ratey,

miracle grow for the brain. He has actually shown that when you exercise, brain derived neurotrophic factories

released in your brain which get this, actually grows new brain cells and repairs damaged brain cells that have

been damaged by stress and worrying and the vicissitudes; there’s my word of the day, vicissitudes of daily life.

Bottom line is you definitely want to install for 66 days whenever what works for you. It might be in the morning.

It might be in the afternoon. It might be at lunch time. It might be at night. You want to run or you want to do your

yoga or you want to do your burpees. You want to do your calisthenics. You want to do your swimming. You want

to do your boxing. I don’t know what works for you, but one of the most important things you can do, it’s a game-

changer, absolutely, is you want to get seriously fit and into the best fitness of your life.

Please remember all change is hard at first. If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be good change. It’s messy in the

middle as you tear down your old-belief systems, your old ways of being your old emotional architecture, your

old routines. It’s going to be messy, but you’ve got to go through these 66 days. At the end of those 66 days, you

have got to that point of automaticity and you say, “I did it.” You don’t need that much will power anymore and

you move on to the next routines and the next level of growth. That is the greatest way to live your life. You will

become on fire. You will have so much confidence and you can do this and I’m here to do it with you.

Please remember no idea works unless you start doing the work. Today is a great day to start your journey. Don’t

do this later because now is the best time in the world.

This is the end of our time together on this video. I have poured my heart out and you can feel that. I’ve given you

through the myths and then the tools, great information and actionable ideas that you can apply starting today.

More than anything else I want to congratulate you for being the person who watches a video like this to the end,


17ROBIN SHARMA

someone who really gets the power of investing in your learning. The world does belong to those who learn.

I want to congratulate you for your commitment to going through this video and hanging in here with me in this

age of dramatic distraction says a lot about your commitment and says a lot about what’s deep within you, you

want for the rest of your life. It also says a lot about the strength within you to do amazing things. I know that as

you apply the ideas you’re going to see some absolutely magnificent results.

the private habits of game-changers - robin sharma › academy › tgcb › pdf ›...

Documents