Hi, it's Robin Sharma, author of the 05:00 a.m. club. And I am absolutely delighted that you've made the time to be here with me in this episode of the mastery Sessions. This episode is called six things I wish I'd learned when I was 20, and I'm going to get right into the first one. The first thing I wish I'd learned when I was 20 is that you can play with toxic people or you can live at world class. You can't do both. It's very easy for very good people to suffer from a lack of creativity and productivity because they're surrounded by energy vampires, dream stealers, and negative naysayers. And what I've learned over the years is simply this.

One of the most powerful ways that you can live a rare air life, whether it's in terms of your productivity or performance, or in terms of your prosperity or in terms of your happiness and sense of peace, is delete the people who steal your joy. I'll repeat that again because I believe it's so important for you. Delete the people who steal your joy. In the 05:00 a.m. club, there's a model that has been absolutely transformational to people across the planet, and it's called joy as a gps. There are three elements that will help you dramatically improve not only your success and your performance, but also your levels of inner joy. And one of those three things that I teach in the book is the people who steal your joy. In other words, you can do a list in your journal later today or right after this episode, write down in the first column on the left hand side of the page, who in my life is stealing Orlando diminishing my joy.

And then in the right hand column, write down, who are the people in my life who elevate my joy and then have the wisdom and bravery to start removing and releasing the people in your life who are bringing you down. And then I always get this message a lot or this question a lot. Well, what if it's my mother? What if it's my best friend? What? I'd simply say to you, people come into our lives for reasons, seasons or lifetimes. And one of the ways you can tell a victim in action is they give away their power to other people. You have a lot more power than you may be exercising an awareness, and you have the power to let go of people, even if it's a family member. Or you could say it's going to be selective association rather than talking to them every day. I'm going to speak with them once a week or see them once a month, or you can never see them again. You can see them less often.

It might be in between, but you have the power to do what feels right to you. The larger point is simply this. The first thing I wish I'd learned when I was 20 is you can be around energy vampires or you can change the world. You don't get to do both. The second thing I wish I'd learned when I was 20 is that everything that happens to you is for your growth. A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. So the ego might be saying, oh, that was terrible. That was a tragedy.

That was a difficult meeting. That was a hard moment. That's just your ego chattering. And your ego is really the voice of your fear. You want to become much more aware not of your ego, but of your higher self, that primal genius, that native hero that lurks at your core under the layers of fear, doubt, and disbelief. And the more you start to get to know your bravest, strongest, truest self. And the more you stand in your true power versus your fake power, the more you're going to realize everything that happens to you, whether it's been a tragedy, a subtle adversity, is for your growth. Therefore, it's all good.

You know, what I'd offer to you is simply this. Be a resentment collector. It's a term maybe you've never heard from me before. Be not a resentment collector. A lot of people, what they do is it's all about being positive. It's all about everything. Being in the sunshine, well, that's not really a true life. As a matter of fact, if you want to be a legendary leader, you've got to go through a lot of suffering.