Worst First
How to Do What Must Be Done

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #521: Worst First: How to Do What Must Be Done

Jeff Sanders
There's a reason why this podcast focuses on early mornings, and it has almost nothing to do with a beautiful sunrise or quiet space for yourself.

Early mornings are your first chance to do the things you know you need to do, those tasks and projects that can change your life forever. 5am may sound early, but it's nothing more than a grand opportunity to those who have set out to transform their own lives.

This is the 5am Miracle, Episode #521.

Worst First - How to Do What Must Be Done Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

In the episode this week, I'll break down why a 5am miracle is more than a potentially painful wake-up call, how to finally do what you've been avoiding for so long, and why personal responsibility is your secret weapon to accomplish anything you set your mind to.

Let's dig in.

Many years ago, there was a young lad by the name of Jeff Sanders who decided one day to wake up at 5am and change his whole life.

That was me 15 years ago when I thought it was a good idea to stop doing what I had been doing and by that I mean avoiding my future.

I don't want to mince words here.

What I was doing was intentionally, unintentionally messing up my own life.

It's just so goofy.

So what I mean by that is that I was essentially a passive bystander in my life.

I was watching things go poorly, wondering why they were going poorly, and knowing the whole time that I had the power to change my life.

And all of that fun could begin bright and early.

In a nutshell, what I decided to do was to say, "Okay, I've got a day job."

This is me 15 years ago.

I've got a 9-5 job.

I've got a side business that I would love to do full-time, which is now what I do.

And I have this marathon to train for that I don't really have time for outside of late at night or on the weekends or whenever I just feel the motivation to run.

And so what I chose to do on one random morning was to get up at 5am and run before work.

And it changed my life forever.

I'm only here today doing this because of that day.

That one decision, that one time to try something that I knew I had the power to do and I'd just been avoiding.

It's so easy to look at your life and complain about your problems, to look at someone else who is successful and feel jealousy or envy.

It's easy to play the victim in your own life.

And I'm speaking from personal experience here.

That's my life story.

That's what I've done for a long, long time.

Yes, there are many examples of times in my life where I have not done those things, where I have taken the reins of my own life.

I've harnessed the power that I have.

The 5-am miracle is one of them.

But I have so many other examples where that's just not true, where I have fallen victim to being a victim, where I have decided to not decide.

I have procrastinated, postponed my future, postponed my potential, where I have simply said, "You know what?

I'm not going to do that today.

I'm not going to step into my destiny today.

I'm just going to do what's easy.

I'm going to do what's comfortable.

I'm going to do what I'm used to.

But I'm not going to take that chance.

I'm not going to take that risk.

I'm not going to step out and see what's possible."

You know, the origin of the 5-am miracle from my personal experience, you know, this one day that I chose to wake up early, this one day that I said, "Today is going to be different."

It's a very simple decision.

It's not complicated.

It wasn't hard to do.

It didn't cause great difficulty in my life.

I wasn't having to sacrifice enormously for it.

I just set my alarm a little bit earlier.

I woke up and I did something that I had done before.

I just did it at a different time of the day.

I went for a run.

It wasn't even a very long run.

It's just a short run to move my body, get my mind functioning, my physicality in order so that when the actual workday began, I'd have more energy, more enthusiasm, more potential.

It worked.

I then, and I today, have an opportunity to do the things I don't normally make time for.

But more importantly, I today have the opportunity to do what must be done.

And every day, I have the opportunity to step into my future and make decisions I don't normally make.

I don't want to make this episode feel like I am giving a speech to someone else, to you.

This is group therapy for me.

This is me.

I'm mad at myself.

Let's put it that way.

I have my own regrets, my own disappointments in my past behavior.

And a large chunk, let's say, of the motivation to do this episode this week is stemming from some recent experiences where I have had those moments of enlightenment, those moments of realizing I'm screwing this up.

I've got some more awareness that says there's a better way for me to live and I need to finally step into that.

And it's not that a new year has recently passed and now we're in a new fresh start.

Sure, that could be true, but I felt these feelings for years, maybe even a decade.

And in so many ways, I'm going through a season where I not only want to reconnect with my origin story, let's say, but more importantly, a season where I have this heightened awareness, this enlightenment of my own mistakes, my own poor choices, that the current problems I'm experiencing I have now come to realize very acutely are my fault, that I walked myself into these scenarios, whether I was aware of it or not, choices that I made in the past led me to where I am today, for better and for worse.

But there's just this grander sense of clarity that if I want a better future for myself, which I definitely do, that I have to become a new person, make different choices, do different things, say yes to things that in the past I've said no to, become the kind of person who would do the kinds of things I tend to avoid.

All that to say, the episode this week is about doing hard things.

It's about prioritizing the things we've been procrastinating, the things we know we should do, the things we've been actively avoiding at every turn, and in the process, you know, pointing fingers perhaps, blaming, making excuses, all these things, right, the yada yada yadas, just fill in the blank.

We all do this.

I do it all the time.

I know this firsthand.

I do this constantly.

And so the challenge of the episode this week is to do something we don't normally do, is to do the hard thing first, or what I'm calling the episode this week, worst first, you know, how to do what must be done, right?

Not everything is worst.

Not all of these activities are going to be hard.

I mean, the example before of wake up at 5 a.m. and go for a run.

It's not actually that hard.

In fact, I would argue it's one of the easiest things to do.

I just recently did that.

I got up super early.

I went for a run.

If you've seen my social media feed in the last few weeks, you may have heard the story of what happened to me that day, which was in a nutshell that I tripped in the dark and I fell on my face and I injured myself and it hurt.

And in the process of doing so, I had to recover and it was bad.

It was a really bad situation.

But what it exemplified to me was my willingness to do the worst first, my willingness to wake up early.

On the day that I did this, it was very cold.

So I put on my cold weather running gear.

I went for a run in the dark and I challenged myself to do the thing I knew I should have been doing that I had not been doing for a while.

Yes, in the process of doing so, I got injured and that sucks.

But that wasn't a reason to stop doing it.

It's not a reason to quit.

Doing the worst first is potentially risky.

Even the hard things are risky.

But the risk to not do them, that's way worse, way worse than any small injury that may occur, whether it's physical, emotional, whatever the case may be.

The sacrifice that we make for our goals, that's all worth it because the sacrifice that we make by not pursuing those same goals is exponentially worse.

It is the lesser of two evils.

We are choosing the path that is on paper harder in the short term, that in the long term is absolutely fundamentally better.

To choose the easy path today is the harder path tomorrow.

And the opposite is also true.

The harder path today is the easier path tomorrow.

It's your choice of when you pay the piper, so to speak.

What choice do you want to make here?

Which door are you going to go through?

And if you keep making the same choices tomorrow that you've been making all this time, where will you end up?

Now, that's a question, like where will you?

It's an honest question.

Your trajectory will dictate your results.

An individual day, better or for worse, no big deal.

Data is fine to say we have exceptions.

We have outliers, no big deal.

How is your life trending?

Trending to the positive, to the benefit of you and your future?

Trending to the negative, going down, getting worse?

Staying neutral, which neutral, by the way, is bad?

The goal here is to grow, it's to improve.

And whether it's fortunate or unfortunate from your perspective, the opportunity exists to do the hard work now that provides the amazing end result down the road.

So on the episode this week, I want to break down this concept of what sounds like bad, worst, first, but actually is very, very good, which is saying yes to opportunities that will allow you extraordinary benefits and results.

So let's first start the conversation going back to this concept of a 5 a.m. miracle and asking the question, why is a 5 a.m. miracle actually worth your time?

And I don't mean that from the perspective of why listening to this podcast is worth your time or reading my book.

I'm talking about you deciding to prioritize your most important objective as your first activity in the day.

That's what we're talking about.

Worst first literally means your first decision of the day is that choice to do the thing that will have the greatest impact.

If you've read the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, it asks the question, what is the one thing such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary?

That is the question posed to you in a 5 a.m. miracle.

What is your miracle?

What is that thing that will miraculously transform your life?

What is that thing that if you said yes to it bright and early at sunrise, maybe even before when it's dark outside, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do that's going to change your life?

And if you say yes to that thing, if you wake up and say, I'm in, I'm going to do this, well, then you have the chance to get these results that you otherwise have just been watching somebody else get, perhaps.

That's been my story.

I know a lot of people in a similar place in life as I am, and yet their results are better than mine in a lot of ways.

So it's up to me to decide whether I'm going to step into my own potential or not.

So for you, why is a 5 a.m. miracle, let's use this example, why is a 5 a.m. miracle more than a painful wake-up call?

Yes, I love a good sunrise, of course.

I love alone time.

I thrive in alone time.

I have alone time right now, actually.

It's great to have these things, to go for a run in the morning, to write your novel, to make sales calls, to clean out your closet, to get to inbox zero, address the elephant in the room, the big thing you've been avoiding.

But for me, all of this stuff really stems down to a 5 a.m. miracle is your chance to face your fears.

It is to go all in on your future.

It is your chance to step into your destiny. 5 a.m. is not a painful wake-up call. 5 a.m. is an exciting starting line.

It is the chance to say, "Oh my gosh, I get to do what?

I get to open the door to possibility doing what?

Oh my gosh, that's awesome."

You fill in the blank there of what you're excited about.

But if you get to feel that way, if you get to step into your own destiny and get that kind of experience, what's possible for you?

What does this make possible for you?

I can't answer that question for you, but what I can tell you is that the intentionality to build a life based upon making these kinds of choices where the very first thing you do is to do the thing that's going to make the biggest impact on your future, nothing else is going to mean more than that.

No other decision you can make in the day will have more power than that because that's the decision, that's the thing that's going to define the rest of your life.

To step into that, to agree to that lifestyle choice, that can be a transition.

It could be a challenge.

But as my example from before, that first day that I ran at 5 a.m. shocked me because of how easy it was.

I had this false sense of sacrifice.

I thought it would be painful.

I thought it would be hard.

I thought it would be awful.

I thought it would be worst first, and turns out it was best first.

And that's the opportunity.

It's not actually worse.

It's actually way, way better.

Now, not everything is easy.

Not everything is fun.

Some choices really do suck.

Some things you have to go through are just hard.

But once they're over, they're over, which is what brings me to some of these books I've read in the past.

"Eat That Frog" by Brian Tracy, "Do the Hard Things First" by I believe his name is Scott Allen.

I'll have to double check that later.

But these books that talk about these concepts of wake up early, even my own book, "The 5 A.M.

Miracle," you wake up early and you say yes to the difficult task, yes to the thing that is the hardest, yes to the thing that just transforms how you feel about yourself and your to-do list and your goals.

This episode, maybe the vibe is a bit negative.

I feel that sense in the room here.

But what really is is that smack in the face, that wake up call of saying, "Wait a minute.

If I'm committed to this, if I'm all in on this, if I actually believe in the BS that I say that I believe in, then when I do the action, when I wake up early, when I say yes to the hard thing, and then I get that result and I feel that way and it's great, that's all I want to do.

I want to do it again and again and again."

Because it just transforms the apprehension into enthusiasm.

It transforms that fear, that sense of agony you might experience.

It transforms that sacrifice into something that's just amazing.

And that's what we're going for.

Because when you change your mentality around it, you change your lifestyle around it, you change your habits around it, you change your daily default response around this concept, all of a sudden it's easy.

It's effortless.

Greg McKeown's book, Effortless, that's the entire basis of that book.

Let's take what's hard and make it easy.

Let's take what's challenging and make it effortless.

Let's take the things we're afraid of and make them no big deal.

Because then all of a sudden, it is no big deal.

And all of a sudden, the results that you were basically convinced would never happen are just flowing in left and right.

And that's where it comes from.

It's from that decision to live differently, make different decisions, say yes to the thing that's the hardest right up front.

Most people don't like early mornings.

I actually, shocker, don't love early mornings, at least from that default kind of innate DNA-based version of me.

If I had kind of an ideal day that didn't involve any kind of sacrifice, yeah, I'd sleep in.

Of course.

I have those days all the time.

It is a choice to wake up early, even for me, many years into this process.

It always will be.

Because my default response is not to wake up early like that.

I have to train myself to do it.

But the training works.

The effectiveness behind it gets results.

The transition that you make into that lifestyle is effective.

And it is repeatable.

And it no longer feels like a sacrifice for most people most of the time.

I know people who have sacrificed like that against their will, and then later on chose a different path.

So, I'm not arguing here that everyone has to choose a 5 a.m. miracle.

Of course not.

But what I am arguing is that the first choice you make in the day absolutely can define your day.

The first choice you make to step into that destiny, to face those fears, to do the hardest thing first, to eat that frog, to experience your miracle.

That first choice, regardless of when you wake up, will define your day.

My point here is that we know ourselves.

We know what works for us and what doesn't.

But if something's not working, something has to change.

If what you've been doing hasn't been producing the results, something's got to shift.

And a 5 a.m. miracle decision, a worst-first perspective decision, is life transforming.

It is.

It's saying yes to the hard thing, to run uphill, to use that metaphor, to do so on purpose, is a choice.

I use that as a pretty good example, too, because recently I was on a trail run here in Nashville on a trail that has plenty of hills.

And there's at one point a fork in the trail, and you can go one way or the other, and one of them is reasonably hilly, and the other one is intensely hilly.

And I always choose the bigger, more intense hills on purpose.

I always take the fork in the road to say, "I'm going to go left, because I know turning left here has a big hill right up front, and then another big hill after that.

I know that that's the trail, how it works, and I want the hill.

I want the challenge."

I say yes to it.

Is it harder?

Of course it's harder.

Right?

Does it hurt?

Absolutely.

But I love it.

I love it, because it is so transformative.

The hard stuff, let's put it this way.

I read this quote years ago.

Y'all have to find this after the episode.

That your greatest happiness, the happiness that you seek, is just on the other side of your greatest fears.

Your greatest successes, your greatest achievements, they are just on the other side of your most acute fear. [music] Once you can clearly identify the thing that you're avoiding, that thing you're afraid of, that thing that you will not say yes to, regardless of what time of day it is, if you all of a sudden said yes to that first thing in the day, imagine the possibility.

Imagine how your body physically transforms when you choose to run up a hill.

Physically, do that.

Now imagine how your mindset will shift when you say yes to the hard task first thing in the day, regardless of what you're after.

That's the transformation you can experience.

That's where it all happens.

Now, in part of this challenge, let's go back to the example of those who go to the gym first thing in the new year.

Many of those new people at the gym are doing something that's actually fantastic, which is they are starting before they feel ready.

When you begin a new exercise program, for example, many people believe they can't go to the gym and exercise because they're not already in good shape.

"Well, I can't lift a lot of weight, therefore I'll lift none.

I can't run a marathon, therefore I'll run zero miles."

The all or nothing mentality kicks in.

We believe that because I can't do the most challenging and ridiculously high level thing, I can't do anything.

That line of thinking leads to zero progress.

Nothing ever happens.

It's just this self-defeating, excuse-making thought process.

Of course, once again, I know this because I do this myself.

But it's not effective.

We have to acknowledge that some progress is progress.

A little bit of progress is progress.

Beginning before we feel ready is absolutely progress.

Now, sometimes you want to jump into the deep end on purpose.

Sometimes you want to go full in on the most difficult thing, run up the biggest hill right away.

I don't think you need that, though.

I think what you need to do is just simply say yes to something.

You start wherever you can.

You make any kind of forward movement and let that snowball into more movement over time.

You could use James Clear's discussion from his book Atomic Habits, where he talks a lot about the 1% rule, where your goal is just 1% forward movement. 1% progress.

That's it.

It's really, really tiny.

But over time, it becomes enormous.

Sometimes it's all it takes.

You don't need to jump into the deep end.

You just need to move.

And sometimes that movement is at 5 a.m.

You begin.

You don't feel ready.

You're not emotionally into it.

But you're there.

You showed up.

And you did something.

And now tomorrow, you do it again.

You show up again.

You have movement again.

And that progressive realization of a worthy goal, that's the definition of success.

Literally, the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal from Earl Nightingale many years ago.

Look that one up.

It's a great one.

That's how I view success.

A progressive realization, meaning you are making progress over time consistently towards the thing you want.

And to make the progress even more impactful and transformative, we choose the hardest, most difficult, most ridiculous things sooner in that process rather than later.

Now at the top of the episode, I pitched this idea that personal responsibility was a secret weapon.

I want to break this one down.

Because everything I've just been discussing fits under that umbrella.

I saw this tweet from John Acuff on Twitter.

John's been on the podcast a couple of times in the past.

He lives here in Nashville.

He's a very famous author and speaker.

And this tweet, I thought, was kind of the epitome of this conversation.

I mean, he said this a few months ago.

But this was his tweet.

John said, "Today I did my 100th day of CrossFit this year.

What I learned is I had to do each day myself.

A politician won't write your book.

A boss won't run your miles.

The faceless 'they' you're angry at won't change your life.

Personal responsibility isn't popular, but it's the superpower."

When I read this tweet, instantly I knew I had to discuss it.

I had to bring it on the podcast because it really spoke to where I was that day I read it and how I am today.

Though personal responsibility isn't sexy.

It's not this thing that's quite popular or would cause you to sell a lot of books or a lot of podcast downloads.

Personal responsibility is the crux.

It is the agreement that you make with yourself that you will not only own the problem, but you will fully own the solution to whatever it is you're after.

To the example that John listed here of someone else is not going to write your book or run your miles or this person you're mad at won't change your life.

All of this comes back to the 'I', to you.

Whatever you want, you own it.

You own the solution, fully.

It doesn't always mean that you're the one doing the work, but it means that you're the one responsible for the work getting done.

And from that perspective, you realize, "Wait a minute.

I'm the CEO of my own life.

I'm the one in charge.

I'm the one who makes the grand decisions.

I'm the one who casts the vision.

I'm the one who ensures that if I want something, it happens."

It's the Superman quote.

No, Spider-Man quote.

With great power comes great responsibility.

That's what this is.

It's power that you have to change your life.

It's power to make choices that are transformative.

It's power to wake up early and do something different, to choose the worst thing first, to get the thing done that needed to get done.

I'll use the example of this podcast.

I record this show every week.

And every week, there is some methodology that I go through, some series of events where I delay the recording.

Every week.

Now, recently, I moved to a system where I kind of bash record episodes all at the same time, but the same thing happens then too.

I find a way to delay the recording.

Now, why?

Why in the world would I, as a podcaster who's been doing this show for over 10 years, want to delay the thing that I'm theoretically good at and enjoy doing and provides value?

Why would I postpone that literally every time?

It's the same reason all this stuff exists, that it's potentially challenging.

It's potentially hard.

The bar is potentially high.

There's potential risk.

All of this, life itself, is this decision to step into the work or not, to say yes or not.

Now, if I delay it but eventually do it every time, fine.

A little delay that still results in action still gets the job done.

I'm not opposed to that.

But what I am opposed to is not acknowledging reality, that I'm actively doing that, that that's part of how I flow, is I postpone my own reality frequently, daily.

It's a common thing.

Owning the problem and owning the solution and being responsible for your life is this acceptance of that contract that you have with your own life, that you're in charge, that it's on you.

You have the power.

You definitely have responsibility.

Because of that, you have opportunity.

The opportunity is to do that worst thing first, to wake up and say yes and to go.

I feel like I've made this point pretty clear, so I don't want to say this over and over again.

But I just feel like there's such a chance for you to finally make the choice that you know you need to make.

The choice to say, "You know what?

I'm not going to rely on others.

I'm not going to assume that something will happen, a magical moment will take place.

Instead of that, I'm going to be the purveyor of my own magic.

I'm going to be the builder of my own dreams."

I used the example before in the podcast that, you know, asking the question, "What would the hero of your story do now?"

You first have to admit that you are the hero in your story and that the person who's going to make these changes, the hero is you.

And you accept that because you have the dream.

And because you have the dream, you have the obligation to see it through.

And I say that because this is something that has been so clear to me recently.

I've signed a few new contracts.

I'm working with some new people now.

And one thing that I really realized was that nobody else actually cares about me or my success more than I do.

Nobody else cares.

Not really.

They might on paper.

They may be incentivized to care about my success.

But at the end of the day, nobody else cares more about me than me.

And no one else cares more about you than you.

No one else is going to root more for you than you.

Also, no one else is going to save you more than you will save yourself.

Because you are your hero.

You do what must be done.

You may find someone else to do part of it for you, but you are the one who at the end of the day, on the dotted line, signs your name and says, "This is my life.

These are my choices.

These are my results."

A is for the action step this week.

Oh, you know it.

Do the hardest thing first every single day.

But get that big win under your belt.

Achieve your own 5am miracle.

Do what must be done before anything else gets your attention.

The cool thing here is this is a skill and can be improved with time and persistence.

Hard things don't necessarily have to be hard, but they are certainly more challenging when you avoid them over and over.

So just get to it.

Overcome the fear head on, because this is the answer you've been waiting for.

If you love this show, please subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and the fun begins bright and early.

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