Name: The Everyday Hero Manifesto
Rating: 4.2 (800 reviews)
Author: Robin Sharma

What’s in it for me? Unleash the superhero within and live your best life!

You don’t need a Batmobile or a golden lasso to be a superhero. All you need is . . . to be yourself!

That’s right. We all have the makings of an everyday hero within us – and the tools we need to bring that reality to life are those you most likely already possess: a thinking mind and a loving heart. Being a hero to yourself means unleashing your highest potential.

In this Blink to Robin Sharma’s The Everyday Hero Manifesto, We’ll share with you surprisingly doable tips and take you through some tested techniques you can use in your own life to bring your inner hero to the forefront. No secret weapon training here – instead you’ll see how simple shifts in life can reap enormous rewards.

Take control of your environment, both exterior and interior, by carefully curating a space for focus and creativity. And in doing so, free the pure, happy, successful version of yourself who waits within.

In this Blink, you’ll learn

why JD Salinger built a secret tunnel;
five simple shifts from victim to hero; and
what a hotel room can do for your productivity.

Each of us can become an everyday hero through intentional, hard work.

Hero: it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot.

We read about heroes who storm burning buildings to rescue others or those who land planes in frightening conditions. Heroes like Mahatma Gandhi or Rosa Parks stand up to oppressors while others surmount the odds to rise to dizzying heights in sports, music, and the arts.

But a hero doesn’t always have to be loud and public. Author and motivational speaker Robin Sharma wants readers to know that within each of us lies a heroic force. Anyone who consistently strives to live their life with beauty, honor, self-respect, joy, bravery, and creativity can aspire to the title of everyday hero. Becoming a genius does not require hitting the genetic lottery. It’s a goal attainable by anyone willing to put in the work to get there.

Take the author, for example. He decided in his 30s that he wanted to live his life in a better, richer, more meaningful way, so he set out to teach himself how. Every day, he woke up early while his family slept, and studied ways to improve his productivity, confidence, and happiness. He attended conferences, hired coaches, and worked with experts until, three years later, he felt transformed. He wrote a book to share his journey, calling it The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

There was just one problem. He didn’t know a single thing about publishing. His mother, a teacher, edited the book, and his father, a family doctor, drove him to the copy shop to print out his first few copies. The copies were hard to read. Editors discouraged him. Hardly anyone showed up to his first reading. Yet he persisted, self-belief rising above all external discouragement.

And then, one day, when he was in his local bookstore signing the six copies of his book that he’d given the store owner on consignment, a man approached him, curious about the title of his book. Robin eagerly filled him in, using this opportunity to pour out to the stranger all his enthusiasm, hopes, and dreams for the book and its message.

As luck would have it, that man was the president of the publishing giant Harper Collins. The rest, for anyone familiar with the blockbuster status of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, is history.

The moral of the story? Well, there are a few.

One is that the capacity for great work lies in all of us, and it’s our job and even our duty to find it, polish it, and let it shine. Second is that your act of heroism requires self-belief and commitment to excellence that can’t be denied. And finally, it may take time for things to work out, but if you handle your journey the right way, you will reach your destination.

But the very first lesson for becoming the everyday hero of your life? Don’t wait. “Action delayed is greatness betrayed,” is a saying Robin is fond of quoting.

On that note, let’s get started on our journey.

Through simple shifts in how you think and act, you can begin priming yourself for heroic work.

All of this may sound wonderfully inspirational, but how, you may ask, can you actually become heroic? It’s easy to feel trapped by the constraints of family expectations or the necessity of paying bills. It’s easy to push away that voice in your head that whispers that you can do so much better and reach higher by shouting back that this isn’t the time.

Robin doesn’t just inspire – he has practical tips and step-by-step plans to help take you from a humdrum existence to one radiating joy and promise. Let’s start with his five suggestions for shifting from victim to hero.

Curate your mind, body, and environment for optimal conditions to become your best.

When J. D. Salinger was deluged with overwhelming attention following the success of The Catcher in the Rye, it became hard for him to avoid his crazed fans. So Salinger had an underground tunnel built that allowed him to walk from his home to his office in peace.Salinger understood the importance of protecting his personal ecosystem. The energy you surround yourself with permeates your mind and heart and affects the trajectory of your life and career.

Who do you talk to every day? Which influencers do you follow on social media? What do you read, watch, and listen to? What do you eat? How do you get around? Everything you take in plays a role. Robin calls this the IPOP principle: Input Positivity and you’ll Output Positivity. It’s important to create and curate your environment carefully to protect your dreams and inspirations.

Use tools, hire help, and learn techniques to protect and optimize your productivity.

Let’s go deeper into how to protect your productivity. It’s both harder and easier than you think to do this, and making the effort to do it can yield exponential rewards.

We all have a cognitive bandwidth, which is the limited amount of attention that the human brain has available each day. This is a finite amount, so guard it well. When engaged in a task, focus on that one task without switching back and forth, because every time you switch from one activity to another, you leave behind a few drops of focus. This phenomenon is called attention residue. So the next time you see a message flash across your cell phone screen while you’re engaged in work, think twice before picking up the phone and whether you want to pay that creative cost.

When your heart and mind work together, your true heroism benefits not just you, but humanity.

We’ve talked a lot about priming your mind to do its best work. But the mind does its best work when it’s backed up by the heart. It’s important to go all in, and that means with your whole heart and soul.

However, the heart is a complex thing. Almost everyone has past hurts and feelings that lurk just beneath the surface and affect today’s actions. Rather than ignoring them or considering them a waste of time while gunning for a goal, the best thing to do is to acknowledge this “field of hurt.”

Key ideas in The Everyday Hero Manifesto