Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Imagine you’re visiting a foreign city for the first time. The streets are unfamiliar, and the signs are in a language you don’t understand. How will you find your way around? And how will you reach your destination?
If you ask a stranger on the street, you may receive a few tips like “Turn right!” or “Take this bus!” And sure – these may help in the short term. But eventually, you’ll end up lost again. A more effective strategy would be to find a map, right? With an accurate picture of the world around you, you can find your own way – again and again.
Well, navigating life is similar. While certain small actions can be useful, it’s far more valuable to grasp a few fixed and guiding principles and make a habit of following them.
When author Stephen Covey looked back at 200 years of self-help advice, he observed an interesting pattern. He found that most advice that is given followed one of two paradigms. The first is the Personality Ethic. This paradigm argues that success comes from learning a series of tricks and techniques. It says that if you talk the right way or complete the right tasks, you’ll achieve your goals. This advice is attractive – but it often leads to rather superficial changes that don’t make a fundamental difference.
The second paradigm is different. It’s based on the Character Ethic. This approach argues that there are underlying principles to success. These principles aren’t specific to any one situation. They’re deep, unchanging truths about the world. If we align our inner character with these rules, we’ll achieve lasting results.
So how does this paradigm work in practice? Well, let’s say you want a happier marriage. The Personality Ethic would tell you to adopt a new communication style or take a certain kind of vacation. In contrast, the Character Ethic encourages you to work on yourself. It says you must become the kind of person who has a good marriage by cultivating a character based on principles like fairness, empathy, and trust.
Of course, this is easier said than done. If you want to develop an inner character based on good principles, then you need to change the way you consistently perceive and approach the world around you. In short, making changes based on the character paradigm requires that you cultivate good habits.
In the following blinks, we’ll take you through these habits one at a time.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) is one of the most celebrated self-help books of all time. This enormously influential guide presents a series of practical principles that will help you succeed in your personal and professional lives.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trialBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma