Jeff is the host of the 5am miracle podcast, which is currently ranked number one in iTunes in the self-help and business categories. It has been nominated for two 2015 podcast awards and has exceeded 1.5 million downloads.

Among other things Jeff is a 10-time marathon runner, personal improvement junky and a passionate raw vegan. He is also a productivity author and coaches, specialising in helping others dominate their day before breakfast.

In this Episode we discuss what it means to find your passion, becoming more productive and managing your time better and how to start your day off to help you reach peak performance.

“Dominate your day before breakfast.”

What does living life with passion and purpose mean?

Really comes down to energy and enthusiasm. If you have lots of energy and excited about what you are doing you can pretty much do anything. This is why the 5am routine for him is so critical.

Summary

He has just completed writing his book “The 5 am Miracle”. His goal is to help individuals to help become their best self with a focus on healthy lifestyle and productivity. His journey really began after completing college when he discovered personal development. Reading a lot more and realising that he had the power to change his life. This lead him on his journey to experiment and explore more about what he could achieve. 

His life now all revolves around achieving goals and pushing himself further and along the way helping others to the same.

If you have a day job that is not your passion you need to continue to explore in every free moment as to what you truly want to do. This may mean to continue working your current day job until you find your passion and than after that finding a way to replace your day job with this. This is really by growing that side passion by hustling, experimentation and continual learning.

We discuss how we can find more time to allow us to focus on growing our passion and being more intentional with our time. This is a key focus of his book The 5am Miracle. By simply waking up with a thorough plan with how your day looks you will without a doubt find the time to get those things you need to do. This is because you really utilise the time you have and not waste it on things that are irrelevant of unessential.

“Time is already there you just have to find it.”

Perhaps the biggest time killers are social media and television, remove these and you will instantly discover more time. With the average person watching around 5 hours of T.V per day it is no surprise that most people cannot find time to live their dream.  

Early mornings are just one simple technique to discovering more time in the day but among many that can assist you to becoming more productive in your life.

We discuss why experimentation is key to finding your calling and your why. Trying new things and being willing to put yourself out there in the world to discover new connections is key. When you find what you’re naturally good at and what the rest of the world is looking for it is at this intersection that you will discover something your will enjoy and be great at.

The fear of needing to have a stable income for many of us holds us back from really discovering our true calling in life. How can you monetise your passion? You have to have the desire and the plan to make it work but if you do you will have a life with no regrets. Don’t be fearful to leap out and follow your dreams.

We talk about overcoming fears and rather than avoiding something to instead actually stepping into what we fear. By doing these little steps daily we can snowball our lives into greater success. Often our fears are not actually as real as we believe at the onset.

What is your mindset, do have a growth mindset? Ask yourself the question of ‘how can I’ do something rather than approaching things with the limiting mindset that ‘I cannot’ or thinking that something is impossible.

We delve into his book and what he describes as a 5am blueprint that will provide you with great insights to assist you in leading a more productive day. It really is all about being intentional with your life not necessarily does this mean waking up at 5am but certainly this is advisable. These are step-by-step tools and techniques on how to dominate your day.

Jeff has just taken the leap to follow his passion himself and shares his struggles, strengths and views that are valuable for all of us on a similar path. He is addicted to growth and it is this addiction that he really wants to share with the rest of the world.

If you’re looking to start working on your passion, learning the techniques that we share in this show will be beneficial. Have a listen and go out there and grab copy of Jeff’s book and start living your life with greater passion and purpose.

Please leave your comments and question below and reach out. Peace, passion and purpose.

His Moment of Realisation

After graduating from college he got a job as a door-to-door sales man. While in this role his boss encouraged him to read a book by John Maxwell who previously he had never heard of. This book called “Your Road Map for Success” blew him away and was certainly his revelation and catalyst for learning that there is s lot more to life and lots more to be gained.

This was the inspiration for his journey into self-improvement. Prior to this while in school he was a little clueless as to what he would do in life. This led him to starting his first blog and his first book called “Graduated and Clueless”. Having this awareness really encouraged him to learn more, experiment more and continue asking questions to lead a more passionate and purposeful life.

The role in sales was short-lived among many others jobs after that. The foundation for his life was the desire, the curiosity and the wanting to learn more about self-improvement. While working on this outside his regular job he has been able to build up his knowledge and from there create a career out of his passion.

The epiphany for him was then discovering what he was naturally good at and how he could help serve others. It is now what he loves to do and that is through writing, podcasting, speaking and providing tools to benefit others.

Key Take Outs

·      Experiment more. In efforts to find your purpose in life and to continue to search for what you are not only great at but also passionate about it is important to keep experimenting and trying new things. In this way you will open up doors and opportunity to help you discover your why.

·      Read more. This is a great way forward in self-improvement. If you really want to achieve exponential growth you must read, all the successful people claim to do it so why not. It’s affordable and provides much greater value than perhaps watching the T.V.

·      Ask questions. By asking questions you will learn the reason why behind everything you see, hear and do. Understanding the reason and the why will allow you to develop clarity and purpose in all that you do.

·      Value and solutions. Find what your talent, skills and essential your value and than help provide a solution to the wider community. If you can do this you can make a career out of your passions.

·      Face your fears. By understanding your fears, labeling them you will be able to find a better way to approach them but certainly the key is to not avoid your fears but to face them. You will overcome your fears when you do so. Also it is helpful in analyzing your fears to understand what the worse casse scenario is. You will likely notice it’s never as bad as you may have thought.   

·      Take action out of inspiration not fear. Action is the key to progessing however when taking action takes it out of inspiration not fears. When you take action out of fear you are essentially avoiding what it is you should face, this will ultimately slow you down.

·      Self focus vs. selfishness. Self-improvement and pursuing your self-goals can sometimes leave you with feeling of guilt and selfishness but there is a difference. By truly understanding and improving you first you will ultimately be able to provide great value to all those you love and beyond, this is not selfish.

·      Don’t compare yourself. A common trap of us human beings on a mission to succeed is that we compare ourselves to others all around us. This often will lead you to disappointment when someone is achieving perhaps more than you. It can also lead us to a tendency to benchmark our success against others yet often we can outperform others in many other ways. Don’t compare, focus on what you’re doing.

·      To leap or to ease. We are all different and our approach to change may also need to alter. If you decide you want to get up earlier everyday to create more time you can choose to either go all out and jump straight to the 5am start or alternatively you could build up to it slowly. Understand what works best for you and follow that strategy.

·      Find your reason. Changing any habits can be challenges but the greatest challenge is to find your reason for doing something. If you reason is not compelling enough you may struggle to achieve what you set out to achieve.

·      Remove barriers. When starting a new habit you want to remove the barriers of entry. Waking up early for example the barrier may be to hit the snooze button. Remove this barrier by having an alarm without a snooze button, setting two alarms or placing the alarm out of reach so you have to get out of bed. This can apply to any habit you try change.

·      Taking a break. It’s important to break when you need to rest. Its ok to pump hard for days in a row but if you don’t rest if you don’t break you may burnout and resist the desire to start again. It is ok to rest, it is ok to enjoy life.

His interpretation of success

He stole his definition of success from Earl Nightingale that is “the progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal”. To break that down success is making progress towards the goals you want to achieve.

Quick round questions

Favourite Food

He likes bananas and if you know much about the vegan lifestyle he eats plenty, 10 to 15 per day.

Favourite Leisure Activitiy

He likes trail ridding but being outdoors and within nature in general is good.

Favourite book(s)

Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes

Your Road Map for Success: You Can Get There from Here by John C. Maxwell

The 5 A.M. Miracle: Dominate Your Day Before Breakfast by Jeff Sanders

Quote

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein

How to Find Jeff and other Links

Want to find out more about Jeff, ask him questions or just reach out please visit his website here.

You can also find his podcast the 5am miracle in iTunes.