Five Years of 5 AM – an ode to being 51

Five years and one day ago, the day before my 46th birthday,  I set an alarm for 4:40 AM and rewrote my story.

There’s a reason it started then and it wasn’t pretty.

I wasn’t trying to be a superhero,  I was falling apart—businesses collapsing, the world locking down and me... slowly drowning in a cocktail of scotch and despair, livestreaming the end of the world through Donald Trump’s daily pressers.

I caught a glimpse of myself—not in the mirror, but in the way my daughter looked at me. She needed me. My wife needed me. My team, scattered across time zones, needed something solid to believe in. All I had to offer them was a half-empty glass of wine and a growing sense of dread.

So I started waking up early. Not to fix the world. But to stop falling apart. I wanted more from myself. So began the most uncomfortable, confronting, liberating experiment I’ve ever done.

I joined the 5 AM Club.

Why I Did It

I’d always flirted with the idea of early starts. Optimisation. Peak performance. The kind of language that makes you feel like you’ve read Deep Work but never really lived it.

It wasn’t about spreadsheets or schedules. It was about sanity. I needed to feel in control of something. Those quiet hours before the world woke up became the safest place to rebuild.

I couldn’t control the pandemic, but I could control my alarm clock.

It gave me something to do besides drinking and doomscrolling. Something to hold onto when the rest of life was falling through my fingers. I told myself it was for self-improvement, but deep down, it was a lifeline.

It also became my quiet protest against a world gone mad. Everyone else was losing their minds—I was going to find mine. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up watching me unravel. I wanted her to see strength. To see someone choose better. 

What It Felt Like

Those early days? Brutal.  I literally questioned my own sanity because there is nothing going on at 4:40 AM. You think a lot.

How was it?

Like peeling off skin and standing in the wind. Every bone in my body screamed, every instinct begged me to go back to bed. But every morning I got up anyway. Fumbled into clothes in the dark. Fought with the silence.

Slowly, that silence began to fight for me. But at 3pm when I would crash it was strangely absent!

Some mornings I ran through empty streets under curfew like a ghost. No cars. No noise. Just me and the sound of my breathing and footfall echoing off the walls of deserted buildings. At first, I felt like a lunatic. But then, slowly, I felt free.

It wasn’t pretty. I journaled like a man possessed. Scribbles, rants, raw reflections. Pages soaked in coffee stains and existential panic. But somewhere in that mess, I found pieces of myself I’d forgotten.

It wasn’t zen. It wasn’t easy. But it was mine.

What I Gained (And Lost)

I gained space. Perspective. A strange sort of peace.

 I lost businesses—four of them - over that 5 year period. Including a travel company I’d poured my soul into. That one gutted me. Watching something you’ve built with love and find circumstance that meant I couldn’t stay but the business would go on.  Then hearing what it was sold for and knowing it could’ve been different... that kind of grief doesn’t leave quietly.

A progressive reconciliation of years. Then realizing to stay would have meant losing it all. So much unsaid.

But I also watched people I’d mentored rise up and do the job better than I ever could. The one regarded as a “data entry specialist” now runs a team twice as big, for a company 5 times larger, grown in stature and humility and one of my most loved people in the world. 

The real leader. You know who you are.

 I started other ventures. Some fizzled. One limped. One might still make it. But through it all, I showed up. Every damn morning. Before sunrise. With a pen, a plan, and often, a prayer.

If you go purely financially there would be literally months where if I had stayed in bed there would be more money in the bank….

I supported my people. Some of them I cooked for, cleaned for and at times even bathed them when they could not do it themselves.  Against what was best for my business, I supported people to work in others ventures instead of my own to keep sanity and to keep earning.  Even though I think I was losing both!

The hardest decisions are often the right ones to make. So many decisions to make, I definitely made mistakes, win or learn. No play book at that time.

I also have gratitude for the experiences that I have not had, but understand may happen, with the hope that I will handle them with grace and dignity.

But at the same time, was creating the experience and the building and the growing and the launching for the next period of life.  Relationships survived and prospered, both in home, and around the world. My wife and daughter continue to grow and become new and more amazing people that every day I just remember with gratitude. The cuddles this morning were rich.

My daily meditation, reflection and affirmation ends in much the same way each day although the intention of my morning meditations has grown.

Regrets? I think it’s more powerful hindsight, wisdom, knowledge, probably a midlife crisis hidden by a global pandemic which eventually finished, the planes took off and then they landed and the orange man is back in power and what the fuck actually happened?

Shit, now I've written that I don't think I'll be allowed to land in some countries apparently.

Now computers run the world, jeez.  I might grow tomato’s again.

So now today

Five years on, I’ve rebuilt parts of myself I didn’t know were broken. I’ve found rituals that work. I’ve replaced evening television with morning movement. I strive to be the kind of man I used to admire from afar.

Amazingly I’m fitter, stronger more mentally agile. Definitely more educated.  Calmer, less judgemental.  I’ve stood in front of and mastered a crowd of 600 people in a foreign country in a day that was designed to boost a business that I'm yet to master. Been a lot of learning.

I’ve done terrifying things. Willingly. I’ve fasted, ice bathed, extreme sports, tried and failed and tried again, knowing that will all happen again, in cycles, but maybe taking that on with more smiles.

I'm a qualified health and wellness coach, mental fitness coach, a few new qualifications, some agile stuff in there, more scary experiences under the belt, Spartan racing has begun.

Could be worse; actually, I know its pretty good.

Today I'm 51

Not f#$%ing exactly how I thought that would all pan out.

If you're struggling right now, I’m not here to sell you a sunrise.

But I will say this—there’s magic in the margins. In the quiet. In doing the hard thing before your excuses wake up.

So maybe it’s not about joining the 5 AM Club. Maybe it’s about joining yourself. Fully. Finally.

While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I’ve got something even better—a process. A rhythm. A relationship with myself that was forged in those cold, dark mornings when it felt like no one else in the world was awake.

If you see me present, see me work, see me physically train or maybe I'm coaching you - b, you'll see in action 5 years as part of the answer towards "who and why I am".

Five years older than the guy who staggered into this experiment at 45. My hair is greyer, I’ve lost innocence,  sleep, and some businesses—but I’ve gained something far more valuable:

Time I used to think I didn’t have.