0
SPEAKER_01
Hello, Passion Struck community.
0
SPEAKER_01
Today, we re doing a very different type of interview than I ve done before.
0
SPEAKER_01
In fact, this one was supposed to be live, but we ve had some technical challenges.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I m gonna bring this out to you as quickly as I can.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I wanted to welcome you to episode 385 of Passion Struck.
0
SPEAKER_01
And thank you, all of you who come back every single week to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I just wanted to recognize that earlier in the week, I had Lucia Aranica on the podcast.
0
SPEAKER_01
And she s an expert in genetics, epigenetics, and personal nutrition.
0
SPEAKER_01
And we really went deep into how our personalized nutrition impacts our epigenetics, which impacts our longevity.
0
SPEAKER_01
So if you liked that episode or this incredible special one I m bringing you today, please give it a five-star rating and review because I know our guests, like the one I have today, love to hear your comments and I do as well.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, without further ado, let me do a little bit of introduction for you on today s guest, who I have wanted to have on this podcast for such a long time.
0
SPEAKER_01
You all have been asking him to join me and we actually got him.
0
SPEAKER_01
So today we are embarking on a journey of profound transformation with a guest whose life story is as remarkable as his impact.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hal Elrod, the visionary who is on a mission to elevate the consciousness of humanity one person at a time.
0
SPEAKER_01
And Hal isn t just the author of the Miracle Morning, which has been the catalyst for change for millions of people across more than 70 countries.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s a living testament to the human spirit s resilience and power.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as the founder of the Miracle Morning book series, host of the Achieve Your Goals podcast,
0
SPEAKER_01
and the executive producer of the Miracle Morning movie, How Continues to Impact Lives Globally.
0
SPEAKER_01
Welcome to the show, Al Elrod.
0
SPEAKER_00
John, this is long overdue for us to finally connect face-to-face, man.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m so excited to be here, and thank you so much for having me.
0
SPEAKER_01
Man, I ve never had to rifle through an intro like that, so I was glad I was able to do it without too many stumbles.
0
SPEAKER_01
But man, we are so overjoyed that you re here today.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I m going to just put up a copy of your book.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s behind you.
0
SPEAKER_01
But for those who are going to be watching this, man, this book has altered my life in so many ways.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I am just such a huge believer of the stuff that you preach.
0
SPEAKER_00
Awesome.
0
SPEAKER_00
But well, and I mean, oh, go ahead.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I wanted to say in case people don t know something, one thing that I ve realized, I ve seen some of the podcasts I ve done and people go, oh, miracle morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
I love that.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they don t realize there s a new edition of the miracle morning that came out yesterday.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I just I wanted to mention that because the book you held up, it is the new updated and expanded edition with over 70 pages of new content, new chapters, so on and so forth.
0
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, I just I realized that, oh, some people just hear Miracle Morning and they go, oh, yeah, I read that five years ago.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I just I wanted to make sure people know, you know, this is the new Miracle Morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, continue.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hal, I was about 27, 28 years old and I remember it was my first day to work in Houston.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was going to take this new job with Arthur Anderson that probably should have been an omen for me of things to come.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I remember driving down the highway and I was coming from one highway to make a turn
0
SPEAKER_01
onto the next highway, and there were two turning lanes.
0
SPEAKER_01
There was a tractor trailer in the one next to me, and I was on the outer turning lane.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as we went to go right, I went right and the tractor trailer went straight.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I remember in this instance, just spinning and spinning and spinning and then ended up facing oncoming traffic.
0
SPEAKER_01
And when you were 20, you had a critical moment
0
SPEAKER_01
More dramatic than that, where your life took a turn you would have never imagined.
0
SPEAKER_01
Your car was hit head on by a drunk driver, leading to extraordinarily severe injuries.
0
SPEAKER_01
What in the world was your initial reaction when you regained consciousness after being in a coma from such a traumatic event?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so when I woke up, I was hit head on by the drunk driver, as you mentioned.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then the worst was actually yet to come because my car spun off the drunk driver and the car behind me at 70 miles an hour crashed into my driver s side door.
0
SPEAKER_00
And if you could imagine, if anybody listening to this, look over your left shoulder and imagine a car is coming at 70 miles an hour and just broadsides you.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the devastation, the entire left side of my car smashed and crushed and broke the left side of my body.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I broke 11 bones,
0
SPEAKER_00
instantaneously.
0
SPEAKER_00
My femur broke in two pieces, my pelvis broke in three places, my arm broke in half, my eye socket, my ear was severed, on and on.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I was found dead at the scene.
0
SPEAKER_00
My heart stopped for approximately six minutes and that was one hour after the car accident because I was pinned in the car and they had to use the jaws of life to cut me out.
0
SPEAKER_00
And when they did, I had lost so much blood that I bled out and I stopped breathing.
0
SPEAKER_00
My heart stopped and
0
SPEAKER_00
Thank God the paramedics were able to, on the medevac helicopter, within five or six minutes of me not having a heartbeat, they kept trying to bring me back to life, and they did.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I was rushed to the hospital.
0
SPEAKER_00
I spent six days in a coma, and I flatlined twice more.
0
SPEAKER_00
And when I came out of the coma,
0
SPEAKER_00
I m 20 years old and I m confused.
0
SPEAKER_00
Why am I in a hospital?
0
SPEAKER_00
I had brain damage, which I still suffer from to this day.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I had like no short term memory.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I would wake up, my parents would tell me that I was in this horrible car accident.
0
SPEAKER_00
Then I would fall asleep, wake up an hour later, and I would not know what happened.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they d have to keep retelling me the story.
0
SPEAKER_00
And within a few days, so the doctor said, you re probably never going to walk again.
0
SPEAKER_00
You need to face this new reality and you have permanent brain damage.
0
SPEAKER_00
And within a few days, I was smiling and I was laughing and I was joking, joking around with everybody.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the doctors called my parents in about a week after the car accident for an update on my condition.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they said, we re concerned that Hal is in denial.
0
SPEAKER_00
He seems, you know, he s laughing and smiling and joking, and this isn t normal for a 20-year-old that s being told you re never going to walk again.
0
SPEAKER_00
However, it s not uncommon for an accident victim that has such a horrific, you know, outcome to just check out.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, they can t handle this reality, so they re just going to distract themselves with nonsense.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they said, the problem is he will eventually have to face what has happened to him.
0
SPEAKER_00
And we want him to do it here in the hospital in a safe environment, because if it s out there in six months, he could turn to drugs, alcohol, suicide, and we don t want that.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so my dad came into the hospital room.
0
SPEAKER_00
And again, this is two weeks after the crash, one week after him out of the coma.
0
SPEAKER_00
And he said, Hal,
0
SPEAKER_00
The doctors are a little concerned.
0
SPEAKER_00
Physically, you re in the clear, but how are you feeling mentally and emotionally?
0
SPEAKER_00
They said, you re not normal.
0
SPEAKER_00
You re not acting normal.
0
SPEAKER_00
You should be sad and scared and angry and depressed, and we need to process these emotions.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know if those are exact words, of course, but he said, how are you really feeling at night when the lights go off and there s nobody to talk to, and you re thinking about what happened to you?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you sad?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you scared?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you angry?
0
SPEAKER_00
Depressed?
0
SPEAKER_00
And I went, I really went inside cause I m looking at my dad and his face is red.
0
SPEAKER_00
His eyes are welled up with tears.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, he s, this is hard for him.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I really got on it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I go, okay, am I sad?
0
SPEAKER_00
Am I scared?
0
SPEAKER_00
Am I angry?
0
SPEAKER_00
And it took probably John, maybe 30 seconds, not very long.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I looked at my dad and I smiled and I said, dad, I thought you knew me better than that.
0
SPEAKER_00
He said, what do you mean?
0
SPEAKER_00
I said, remember I lived my life by the five minute rule that I learned a year and a half prior in my Cutco sales training.
0
SPEAKER_00
And he said, remind me of what that is.
0
SPEAKER_00
I said, the five minute rule states that when something goes wrong in your life, big or small, you set your timer for five minutes.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the time s arbitrary.
0
SPEAKER_00
You might need five.
0
SPEAKER_00
I needed five days at this point, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was a big, big event, but the point is this.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s no point in dwelling on something that you that is now in the past and you cannot change and feeling sorry for yourself and feeling depressed and feeling angry and like perpetuating negative self destructive emotions that don t serve you.
0
SPEAKER_00
is futile.
0
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t change anything.
0
SPEAKER_00
It just makes you miserable.
0
SPEAKER_00
I said, dad, I ve been practicing the five minute rule for a year and a half in much milder adversity.
0
SPEAKER_00
Granted, you know, traffic and, you know, minor disappointments and this and that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I said, but the principle is the same.
0
SPEAKER_00
I can t change that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was in a car accident.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I ve consciously decided there s no value in me wishing I could wishing it were different, feeling sorry for myself.
0
SPEAKER_00
If I m in a wheelchair the rest of my life, and I m not accepting that, dad, you know that, I believe I can walk again, I m gonna give it everything I have.
0
SPEAKER_00
But if I end up in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I never walk again, dad, I ve decided I ll be the happiest, most grateful person you ve ever seen in a wheelchair.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because I can t change at that time that I m in a wheelchair, but I can choose to be at peace with my reality, grateful for what I have, and happy for the sake of being happy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And John, I ll just close that out by saying,
0
SPEAKER_00
If you re listening to this, you ve been lied to your entire life.
0
SPEAKER_00
You ve been conditioned by society to believe that you only get to feel good when good things are happening in your life, and that when bad things are happening, you have to feel bad.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I m here to offer you a different paradigm.
0
SPEAKER_00
that no matter what happens, whatever has happened in the past is happening now or might happen in the future, you have the power to choose how you experience every moment of your life.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the question is, do you want to be at peace?
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you want to be grateful?
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you want to be happy, even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances of your life?
0
SPEAKER_01
hear what you re saying and it reminds me of a personal story of a friend of mine and a person I just interviewed.
0
SPEAKER_01
The personal friend of mine, Mark, we were at the Naval Academy together.
0
SPEAKER_01
We were both on the sailing team and as fate would have it this one day, we re out there sailing and there are some gale force winds happening and just a freak accident happened and the boom
0
SPEAKER_01
just swept away, he didn t have time to rack, nails him in the head, and he s helicoptered off the boat, and he s never the same.
0
SPEAKER_01
He has such traumatic brain injury that he has to leave the Naval Academy, and for a while he was in a coma, almost a vegetarian state, but he used the same
0
SPEAKER_01
logic to live his life that you did.
0
SPEAKER_01
He realized that in that second, he had a choice to either accept reality or to live a miserable life the rest of his life.
0
SPEAKER_01
He has gone on to complete college, get married, do things that no one in a million years thought would be possible of him.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then another great example is I recently interviewed Travis Mills, who you may be familiar with.
0
SPEAKER_01
Travis is now a New York Times best-selling author.
0
SPEAKER_01
But when he was in Afghanistan, he was hit by an IED and became one of only five quadruple amputees that survived the war.
0
SPEAKER_01
And
0
SPEAKER_01
Waking up at Walter Reed, can you imagine without your legs, without your arms, just your body mutilated?
0
SPEAKER_01
He made the decision that not only was he going to come back, he was going to come back to a point that he was self-sufficient.
0
SPEAKER_01
And today he is a keynote speaker.
0
SPEAKER_01
In fact, the man is doing 40 to 50 keynotes per year.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s got two bestselling books.
0
SPEAKER_01
He also drives himself all around, takes the kids to school on his own, completely autonomy.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it just, it s just something that I want people to take from your words and these examples as you can have the worst things happen to you.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so oftentimes we choose to be miserable instead of choose to be happy.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that decision point is so important.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
So your journey from the hospital bed to defying all the odds is nothing short of remarkable.
0
SPEAKER_01
Can you share with us as you were going on that journey to recovery, you ve ran an ultra marathon, walked again, did all these things that no one thought would ever be possible.
0
SPEAKER_01
What were the beliefs and the mindset shifts that propelled you to be able to do that and exceed every expectation set before you?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s a great question.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think the first belief is that if another human being has done it, that s evidence of what s possible for me.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s a great belief to tag on to what you just said, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
You just gave examples.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I shared my story and you just gave two other examples of people that have been through horrific
0
SPEAKER_00
experiences that would break most people.
0
SPEAKER_00
But it was their mindset, their attitude, the choice they made about to not wish it didn t happen, but say, how can I make the best of what life has given me?
0
SPEAKER_00
And again, if another human being has done it, it s possible for you as well.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then what led to, you mentioned the ultra marathon.
0
SPEAKER_00
And for those of you that hate running, I have my hand up.
0
SPEAKER_00
I hated running then.
0
SPEAKER_00
I hate running now.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t use the word hate very often, by the way.
0
SPEAKER_00
Running might be the only thing in life that I say that about.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s why I ran the ultramarathon because I wanted to become the type of person that could overcome such a limitation, a limiting belief thinking I hate running, I m not a runner, I ve never run more than the high school mile that they made you do every year and I didn t like it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I thought who would I have to become
0
SPEAKER_00
to run 52 consecutive miles.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that belief was born from a Jim Rohn quote, or that result.
0
SPEAKER_00
Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that is actually the quote that gave birth to the Miracle Morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because it was back in 2008 when the US economy had crashed and I had crashed with it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And like millions of Americans, I lost over half of my income.
0
SPEAKER_00
My house was foreclosed on.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m moving back in with my parents at 29 years old.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I thought I had lived the dream.
0
SPEAKER_00
I had started a successful business, and then it all fell apart.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I heard this Jim Rohn quote after this kind of six-month downward spiral.
0
SPEAKER_00
And Jim Rohn said, your level of success, again, will seldom exceed your level of personal development.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you might have heard that before if you re listening.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think I had, but it never hit me the way that it did.
0
SPEAKER_00
I quantified it and I went, okay, if my level of success is not going to see my level of personal development, I need to ask myself two questions.
0
SPEAKER_00
A, what level of success do I want?
0
SPEAKER_00
And B, what is my level of personal development?
0
SPEAKER_00
And I ll kind of define that.
0
SPEAKER_00
The level of success I wanted was 10 on a scale of one to 10.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s true for all of us.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I don t mean just success like the worldly success, like money and business success or career.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m talking about your level of success and fulfillment and life satisfaction in your health and your finances and your relationships and your spirituality, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Every area of life that matters on a scale of one to 10,
0
SPEAKER_00
I believe we all have an innate drive and desire to fulfill our potential to self-actualize and experience every area of life at a level 10.
0
SPEAKER_00
So then the next question I had to ask myself, and this is the question I would ask you to consider, is, well, what s my level of personal development?
0
SPEAKER_00
And let me define that for you so you can answer it, because it s kind of a vague term.
0
SPEAKER_00
To me, personal development is
0
SPEAKER_00
What are your, what s your daily rituals that are enabling you to become the person that you need to be to create the levels of success that you want?
0
SPEAKER_00
What are, how are you developing yourself every day into, let s say a level 10 person, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
It s able to create the success at a level 10.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so for me, the answer to that question, what s my level of personal development?
0
SPEAKER_00
was like a two or three.
0
SPEAKER_00
At that time in my life, I had been depressed for six months.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was in debt.
0
SPEAKER_00
My house, I was waiting for the final pink slip to leave my home.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, like I was, I was really a mess and I wasn t doing, I didn t have a dedicated personal development ritual every day to ensure that I became a better version of myself.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so that quote is what led me to go, okay, if I want level 10 success in every area of my life, I ve got to develop the most effective personal development daily ritual that will enable me to accelerate how quickly I can become
0
SPEAKER_00
the level 10 version of myself or let s start with four and then five and right work my way up gradually but but I need a daily practice to become the best version of myself that would be capable of thriving even in the great recession the 2008 great recession and we ll get to the practice and all that I m sure but within two months of doing the daily practice in 2008 when the economy continued to plummet
0
SPEAKER_00
I m more than doubled my income.
0
SPEAKER_00
I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to committing to run a 52 mile ultra marathon and my depression didn t take two months to go away.
0
SPEAKER_00
It started fading on day one because I went from feeling hopeless.
0
SPEAKER_00
thinking I m not in control of my life.
0
SPEAKER_00
The economy is in, like my finances are being dictated by the economy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And instead I went, oh, wait a minute, I m gonna become the person that can thrive even in the midst of this economy.
0
SPEAKER_00
And all of that happened so quickly, it felt like a miracle.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I went and told my wife, this morning routine is changing my life so fast, it feels like a miracle.
0
SPEAKER_00
And she goes, it s your miracle morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
I go, I like that, I like that a lot.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then the rest is history as they say, but we can go in any direction that you want in terms of the details.
0
SPEAKER_01
Al, I could take this in so many directions from what you just said.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m going to back up a couple of steps actually, before we unpack the miracle moment, because I want to, the miracle morning, because I want to hunker down for those who are listening.
0
SPEAKER_01
Cornell University, as you cited in the book, asked thousands of people on their deathbeds to name the biggest regret in their entire life.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I love this because one of my favorite books from last year was The Power of Regret by Dan Pink.
0
SPEAKER_01
And what amazed me, and I m going to use this in keynotes, is that
1
SPEAKER_00
76% had the same answer.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was not fulfilling my ideal self.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you were just talking about self-actualization.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is such a hard number to comprehend.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you think about it, 75% of the population will reach the end of their life, wishing that they had the courage to fulfill their potential.
1
SPEAKER_00
What stops people from making that choice?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think it s, honestly, it s human nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s human nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s multiple reasons, but we ll start with the fundamental, which is human nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
And what I mean by that is human nature is to take the easy path.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if you think about it, let s go back.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m not an expert in archaeology or in the caveman era, but if you think about our ancestors,
1
SPEAKER_01
when you were, when we were, you know, cave men and women, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
When like it was, you know, we re living in really primitive circumstances and our objective is to feed ourselves.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s to survive.
1
SPEAKER_01
There are no leaderboards.
1
SPEAKER_01
There is no social media.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re not trying to get ahead in the corporation that you work for.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re literally trying to, you re trying to catch food or grow food or hunt food.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then once you do that,
1
SPEAKER_01
You just enjoy the hunt and you sit back and you would spend time with your loved ones and with your family.
1
SPEAKER_01
Again, you weren t trying to hunt more than the next guy or gal.
1
SPEAKER_01
You weren t trying to beat anybody.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was no competition.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m sure maybe there was some competition.
1
SPEAKER_01
The point being,
1
SPEAKER_01
We are hardwired to do the minimum necessary to survive and then just chill and then just take it easy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I think that s for most of us, that s hardwired in us.
1
SPEAKER_01
But in our society today, it doesn t really jive.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now I lean more toward that, I try to.
1
SPEAKER_01
I want to go back to simpler times.
1
SPEAKER_01
I want to live a simpler life.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just wanna love on my family and live with them and spend time with my kids all day.
1
SPEAKER_01
That is my ideal.
1
SPEAKER_01
However, if we want to fulfill our potential, and in today s society, there are many reasons you might want to do that.
1
SPEAKER_01
It might be because you want to achieve remarkable goals.
1
SPEAKER_01
You want to make a big impact in the world.
1
SPEAKER_01
You want to live your full potential.
1
SPEAKER_01
For me, it s my purpose.
1
SPEAKER_01
My purpose is to fulfill my potential in service of other people.
1
SPEAKER_01
Namely, my children.
1
SPEAKER_01
I have a daughter who s 14 going on 20, 25 now.
1
SPEAKER_01
My son is 11.
1
SPEAKER_01
But to me, my purpose in life, and that s where the Miracle Morning kind of gave birth to this purpose, but it s, I m gonna dedicate time every day to becoming the best version of myself.
1
SPEAKER_01
To doing everything in my power to fulfill my potential.
1
SPEAKER_01
First, selfishly, for me.
1
SPEAKER_01
so that I can show other people, I can lead by example and show them how to do the same.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s a really simple answer.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you ve struggled to fulfill your potential, it s not something to beat yourself up about.
1
SPEAKER_01
If I hadn t have met a mentor when I was 19 years old and I started, you know, a career working for Cutco Cutlery,
1
SPEAKER_01
My mentor taught me how to overcome all of my self-imposed limitations and all of the insecurities and the fears and the self-doubt and the laziness that I had lived my entire life with.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if it wasn t for him, I don t know that I would have been able to achieve my goals and move, you know, self-actualize to the level that I have, which I still feel like there s a long way to go.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I think that s it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think it s human nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I think the second piece is, it s self-imposed limitations, which I alluded to.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s saying, well, I ve never done anything that tells me that I m capable of doing what I want to do.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve maybe, like for me, I had settled for less than I was capable of for my entire life until I finally drew my line in the sand.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I went, wait a minute, why not me?
1
SPEAKER_01
Again, if another human being has done something, that s evidence of what s possible for me.
1
SPEAKER_01
That belief was born at age 19 when I started this career and I thought, I want to break some records.
1
SPEAKER_01
I want to do something I ve never been done before.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m tired of being mediocre in my life.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m tired of accepting and struggling, accepting less than I m capable of.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so to me, those are the two main answers to your question, which is human nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
not your fault.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re hardwired to do the minimum we need to do to survive.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the second piece is our self-imposed limitations, which is simply self-doubt, insecurity, and fear.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that is developed throughout our childhood.
1
SPEAKER_01
Every time we get rejected, it builds self-doubt, not self-confidence.
1
SPEAKER_01
Every time we try something and we fail,
1
SPEAKER_01
it reinforces our insecurities and our limiting beliefs.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so with those two, you know, it s kind of like the odds are stacked against us and we have to have some practices each day to consistently focus on who we re committed to being, why it s a must for us and what we need to do not to make a quantum leap.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to go from where you are to this extraordinary, ultra successful level 10 version of yourself.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s about gradual,
1
SPEAKER_01
simple step-by-step improvement, and eventually you wake up 30 days from now, you can wake up and go, oh my gosh, I m a different person than I was 30 days ago.
1
SPEAKER_01
If that s possible in 30 days, what s possible in the next six months of my life?
1
SPEAKER_00
What you re saying is something that I talk to the audience all the time about.
1
SPEAKER_00
Becoming passion-struck or becoming self-actualized isn t an end state.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a constant
1
SPEAKER_00
direction that you re trying to guide your life towards, just as it s, I m sure, the same with you with living a level 10 life.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to just make sure we hammer this point with the audience, and I m going to do it through a quote from Seth Godin, who s a friend of mine, from your book that I loved, and it s, life s too short
1
SPEAKER_00
It s, life s too short is repeated enough to be cliche, but this time it s true.
1
SPEAKER_00
You don t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just pointless.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s painful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I wanted to then take that quote and give some statistics that you give.
1
SPEAKER_00
The average American today is 10 pounds overweight, more than $10,000 in debt, lonely, disengaged at work.
1
SPEAKER_00
and we could go on and on.
1
SPEAKER_00
We have epidemics like you were bringing up of hopelessness, loneliness, helplessness, and we are allowing ourselves to live in this pain of mediocrity that you so well explained.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think I just want to come back to what Jim Rohn said and just bring this home for people.
1
SPEAKER_00
You attract
1
SPEAKER_00
the person who you become.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you want success, it is so important to do that self-work.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was listening to a podcast this morning and the guest brought up something that I hadn t really thought about.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was saying in the world today, the biggest skill gap that we are not taught is self-awareness.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I shook my head for a couple of seconds, but then thought, you know, he was kind of actually right.
1
SPEAKER_00
How often do we ever learn how to be self-aware?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t.
1
SPEAKER_00
And yet it s one of the most important things that I think we need to master.
1
SPEAKER_00
What are your thoughts on that?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I agree.
1
SPEAKER_01
And actually that brings up something for me.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the mission, the Miracle Morning mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one person and one morning at a time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that mission was born out of me really kind of self-awareness of going, what s the Miracle Morning doing for me?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I had read David Hawkins  work about the scales of consciousness.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I realized that when I do the Miracle Morning, I elevate my own consciousness.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now let me define that, because again, kind of like personal development, it s like, what does that mean, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
So to me, to elevate your consciousness is to become more aware and more intentional, intentional, I almost said intentionable, I m making up words.
1
SPEAKER_01
But to elevate your consciousness is to become more aware and more intentional about how your thoughts, words, and actions impact you and the people around you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that s what I realized is as I m doing the miracle morning every day and I m spending time in silence and I m crafting really intentional affirmations around what I m committed to, why it s a must for me, which specific actions I ll take and when I will take them.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m reading those every day and they re keeping my highest priorities top of mind.
1
SPEAKER_01
As I m visualizing what I want in my life and what I need to do today to mentally rehearse showing up at my best today.
1
SPEAKER_01
as I m exercising, getting blood and oxygen to my brain, as I m reading new books and gaining new insights, as I m scribing every day, I m journaling, I m writing things down, what s on my mind, what s weighing me down, what I m grateful for, what my highest priorities are.
1
SPEAKER_01
As I m going through the six practices of the Miracle Morning, I realize I am elevating my consciousness daily, consistently, every single day, I am becoming more self-aware,
1
SPEAKER_01
of how my thoughts, words, and actions impact other people.
1
SPEAKER_01
And by default, that makes me more intentional because when you become aware of, oh, this thing I m doing is not serving me.
1
SPEAKER_01
a level of intention is born.
1
SPEAKER_01
A heightened level of intention is born out of that awareness.
1
SPEAKER_01
You go, I need to be more intentional.
1
SPEAKER_01
I need to make a change.
1
SPEAKER_01
I need to show up differently so that that thing I m now aware of doesn t continue because it s not serving me.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if I keep going down that path,
1
SPEAKER_01
I m going to wake up five years from now and I m going to be, I m going to have a regret.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m going to be in pain.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m going to, right.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so that is the answer is that it is crucial.
1
SPEAKER_01
Self-awareness is crucial.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s the first half of the equation where intentionality is what is born out of that self-awareness.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you put those two together and it transforms your life.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hell, thank you for sharing that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I did a couple of podcast interviews myself for my upcoming book today.
1
SPEAKER_00
And on one of them, the guest asked me to explain intentionality because a lot of people get the concept wrong.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think I m going to use something that you wrote in your book to explain it.
1
SPEAKER_00
When we are unintentional,
1
SPEAKER_00
We choose to do the easy things, which means we re choosing to do things that are out of alignment with our values and our goals.
1
SPEAKER_00
Instead of being intentional, which is when we re doing the hard things, which are the right things we need to be doing to live the life we want, which are in alignment with our values and will move us closer to our goals.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I just want to kind of end this whole section by
1
SPEAKER_00
Leaving the audience with this question that you raise in the book, what can you as an audience member do today to stop settling for less than what you re capable of so that you can create a level 10 life that Hal has been talking about so that you can live this fulfilling life and not get to the end of it with this 75% of regret that so many people are feeling?
1
SPEAKER_00
So Hal, I m going to use this as kind of a transition point to now exploring the Miracle Morning.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in this, you came up with a metaphor or an analogy, and I love that you have so many of them in the book, but your core one is called SAVERS.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you elaborate for us on the SAVERS method and how each component contributes to personal transformation?
1
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely, and I ll start by telling you how this came to be.
1
SPEAKER_01
So when I heard that Jim Rohn quote, I ll say it again, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I had the epiphany, I want level 10 success.
1
SPEAKER_01
My personal development s like at a two or three, I need to create the most effective personal development ritual.
1
SPEAKER_01
I went and Googled, what are the world s most successful people do for personal development?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was just brainstorming and taking ideas.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was looking for one to three practices.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I ended up with a list of six, and it was meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m going, I m overwhelmed.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m going, I can t do all of these.
1
SPEAKER_01
Which one is the best?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m going back and I m reading these articles and watching videos and trying to figure it out and distill these into the best two or three.
1
SPEAKER_01
And there was an article about Fortune 500 CEOs who swear by meditation.
1
SPEAKER_01
And keep in mind that this time in my life, it s 2008.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m six months into this downward financial, mental, emotional and physical spiral.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve lost over half of my income.
1
SPEAKER_01
My house is foreclosed on.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m in a bad spot.
1
SPEAKER_01
I need money, like that s my main, I m in debt, I need money.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I go, okay, wait, if these Fortune 500 CEOs, they attribute their financial success and their business success to their meditation practice, I never would have thought about it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I always thought of, you know, monks in a monastery meditating, not Fortune 500 CEOs.
1
SPEAKER_01
In fact, Ray Dalio, many people probably know this, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Billionaire investor, if you ask him the number one key to his success, he says it s his meditation practice.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I thought, well, I have to meditate.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I came across a video interview of Ellen DeGeneres interviewing Will Smith.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, I always joke now, this is like pre-Chris Rock slap Will Smith, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
So, and I m not taking anything away from Will Smith, he s done amazing things, but she asked him, Will, you know, this is 2008, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
So we re talking 15 years ago, she said,
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, right now you ve got the number one movie in the country, you ve got one of the top TV shows in the country, your album is top on the charts, everything you do is successful, yet you grew up in a middle-class Philadelphia family, how did you do it?
1
SPEAKER_01
And to paraphrase what he said, he said he learned about affirmations when he was 15 years old, but the way he explained them was different than I had heard these goofy, I m a money magnet and blah, blah, blah, these funny affirmations, he said,
1
SPEAKER_01
He clarified in writing what he wanted in his life, who he needed to be to achieve what he wanted in terms of the attributes, the habits, the values, and then what he needed to do each day to become that person to achieve what he wanted.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he said he simply read those affirmations every day.
1
SPEAKER_01
They aligned his thoughts and his actions to live in alignment with those three components.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he eventually just simply self-actualized.
1
SPEAKER_01
He lived in alignment.
1
SPEAKER_01
He became that person and achieved the results that he affirmed.
1
SPEAKER_01
I thought, well, I ve got to do affirmations.
1
SPEAKER_01
And essentially, to keep a long story a little less long, it was that way with all six practices.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was no clear winner.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I almost threw in the towel.
1
SPEAKER_01
I go, I can t do all of them.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I went, wait a minute.
1
SPEAKER_01
What if I did all of them?
1
SPEAKER_01
What if I woke up tomorrow a little bit earlier, you know, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, I did the six most timeless proven personal development practices that the world s most successful people from all walks of life have sworn by for centuries.
1
SPEAKER_01
I thought that would be the ultimate, if you will, level 10 personal development routine that would enable me to become the best version of myself as soon as possible.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I woke up the next morning and John, I didn t know how to do at least half of these.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had never meditated before.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had never visualized before.
1
SPEAKER_01
I never done affirmations before.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had, you know, journaled, read whatever, but I did all six practices, you know, mediocre, uh, poorly.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that first day I went from feeling depressed and hopeless.
1
SPEAKER_01
thinking the economy is tanking and I have no power over that, to turning the finger that I was pointing the economy back on myself and going, wait a minute, if I do this every day and I feel this energized and this motivated and inspired and focused and intentional, I thought it is only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be to turn my life around.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I already mentioned earlier, I was thinking six to 12 months,
1
SPEAKER_01
It happened in less than two months.
1
SPEAKER_01
I doubled my income, even though the economy got worse, I got better.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as I was writing The Miracle Morning, which I taught all my coaching clients, all of them resisted, said, I m not a morning person.
1
SPEAKER_01
gave it a shot.
1
SPEAKER_01
Two weeks later, 13 out of 14 coaching clients said, Hal, oh my gosh, it s working.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m waking up early.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m loving it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m having the best weekend in my career.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m exercising.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m journaling.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m meditating.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that s when the light bulb went off.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I said, if it worked for them and it worked for me, this could,
1
SPEAKER_01
change anyone s life and I started writing the book and as I was writing the book I hit a wall which as an author you know John like you hit writer s block and you get frustrated and you you get stuck and one day I went to my I saw my wife in the hallway I said sweetheart um
1
SPEAKER_01
She noticed I was frustrated.
1
SPEAKER_01
She said, what s wrong?
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, I ve got these six practices, but I didn t invent any of them naturally.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re hundreds, thousands of years old.
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, I don t know how to organize them.
1
SPEAKER_01
All these authors have some sort of formula, like Robert Kiyosaki s got the cashflow quadrant and Stephen Covey s got the seven habits of highly effective people.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just got these hodgepodge practices.
1
SPEAKER_01
She said, why don t you get a thesaurus and find synonyms and see if you can create a memorable acronym.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that s where SAVERS was born.
1
SPEAKER_01
S-A-V-E-R-S.
1
SPEAKER_01
The first S is for silence.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s your meditation or your prayer or your breath work.
1
SPEAKER_01
The A is for affirmations.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I d love, maybe we circle back, because I want to give a little mini masterclass on affirmations, because I believe that master, or not masterclass, affirmations are the most mistaught, misunderstood, and the most effective form of personal development.
1
SPEAKER_01
The V in Sabres is for visualization.
1
SPEAKER_01
The E is for exercise.
1
SPEAKER_01
The R is for reading and the final S is for scribing or a fancy word for writing or journaling.
1
SPEAKER_01
The savers can be done in as little as six minutes.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a whole chapter in the new book called the six minute miracle morning.
1
SPEAKER_01
They can be done in any order and they re very customized.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a chapter in the book on customizing the sabers to fit your lifestyle.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to give a quick testimonial, if you will, from Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, not a testimonial, but what Robert said about how he uses the sabers.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Robert and I spoke at an event.
2
SPEAKER_00
I gave him a copy of the book.
2
SPEAKER_00
I thought he would never read it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And three weeks later, he emailed me and said, Hal, or I m sorry, his assistant emailed me and said, Hal, Robert has read your book three times in the last three weeks.
2
SPEAKER_00
My jaw dropped, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, what?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s doing the Miracle Morning every day and it s changing his life.
2
SPEAKER_00
He wants to have you on Rich Dad Radio.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I was on Rich Dad Radio a few weeks later, and here s how Robert summed it up at the end of our interview, and I had never thought of it this way.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, Hal, before you wrote The Miracle Morning and you created the savers ritual, he said, every successful person on the planet swears by at least one of the savers.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they do two or three.
2
SPEAKER_00
In fact, most do.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, but I ve never heard of anyone
2
SPEAKER_00
that did all six of these timeless ancient best practices.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he said, I think you named the book correctly because any one of the sabers will change your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
But he said, my experience over the last few, at that point, it was a couple of months.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, when you do all six of the sabers, it literally creates miracles in your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that that is absolutely true.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um, and so, yeah, so those are the savers and I m happy to, we don t have to unpack them all, but whether it s affirmations or any, I m happy to dive in and kind of give some advanced teaching on any of those practices.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just want to pause there and give another quote that you say in the book because I think it fits right here.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s from Albert Einstein where he says there are only two ways to live your life.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
2
SPEAKER_01
The other is though everything is a miracle.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I just love that and I think it fits so well.
2
SPEAKER_01
Hal, I thought a way we could explore this is I actually used the methodology, and I thought maybe we could take a couple of these.
2
SPEAKER_01
I kind of combined this with the 5am club, and I kind of did both in conjunction, but like you,
2
SPEAKER_01
I was never a, I would say, morning person.
2
SPEAKER_01
Even though I was in the military, it wasn t something that naturally came easy to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I decided that I was going to do the sabers, and I decided I would just start getting up every day at 5 a.m.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I remember the first day I got up, I was excited, but I didn t really know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I felt like so much apprehension
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like how am I going to do this?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I just got into this routine and I m going to walk you through it that I have now done every single day for over four years.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the first thing I do is at 5 a.m.
2
SPEAKER_01
I love
2
SPEAKER_01
that the world is quiet.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s one of the few times when you can go outside and you re not bombarded by traffic or anything else.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I just love getting out there because it s, and sometimes it s eerily quiet, but I like it when you can hear the crickets, you can hear the birds making sounds, you can hear the wind.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the first thing I do when I go outside is I try to find the moon, I look for the stars, and I say two affirmations to myself to set up the day that I want.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I always say, today is a glorious day, and I m going to live it at excellence.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I think from the second we wake up, we have a choice to determine our mindset for that day.
2
SPEAKER_01
no matter how we feel when we get up.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I don t put headphones in or anything else for that next 15 to 20 minutes.
2
SPEAKER_01
I try to visualize the day I want to have with the steps I want to take and the way I want to feel at the end of the day, feeling that I ve accomplished what I set myself up for.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m doing this obviously while I m exercising because I m walking my dog while I m doing it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then we do it typically about a three mile walk and then at the halfway point.
2
SPEAKER_01
I then put the earphones in and I either read via listening to books or I will listen to podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_01
And if I listen to the podcast, I will then come home once I m done, read for about 20, 25 minutes, and then I spend about 10 minutes journaling.
2
SPEAKER_01
So for me, that s what I ve done.
2
SPEAKER_01
I found that the two hardest things for me to learn were how to
2
SPEAKER_01
allow myself to visualize the day that I wanted and to start picturing the person I wanted to become.
2
SPEAKER_01
And for me, the other thing was learning how to journal, because I remember the first week I would just sit there for 10 minutes and I might be able to scribble down two words, but I didn t know what to do, how to do it, etc.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you could pick those two.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know you wanted to touch on affirmations, but I think for each person, there s going to be an element of this that s probably harder for them than another one.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I relate to that.
2
SPEAKER_00
My first Miracle Morning, the night before I Googled, I opened six windows.
2
SPEAKER_00
Actually, I probably didn t need how to exercise, but I opened windows.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wrote how to meditate, how to do affirmations, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I ordered tabs on my browser or opened them up because, yeah, I didn t know how to do half the practices.
2
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, I d love to jump into those too.
2
SPEAKER_00
So visualization, first and foremost,
2
SPEAKER_00
I believe visualization similar to affirmations is mistaught.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think we re only taught half of the equation and it s the least important half.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what I mean by that is we re taught to visualize the end result.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whether it s through just close your eyes and picture yourself 20 pounds thinner or put pictures on a vision board of what you want so you can see the end result.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s value in that.
2
SPEAKER_00
but it can also be actually counterproductive.
2
SPEAKER_00
It can actually diminish, it can be worse than better.
2
SPEAKER_00
And here s what I mean.
2
SPEAKER_00
The value in it is that when you see what you want and you visualize it vividly and you feel the emotion of what it ll feel like to achieve that thing or experience that thing, that fuels your fire to make it a reality.
2
SPEAKER_00
The problem is if all you do is visualize the end result over and over and over and over,
2
SPEAKER_00
You are cementing an image in your subconscious that it is happening.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s as good as done.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the way that can be counterproductive is now you ve lost that healthy drive, almost based on a little bit of fear, like if I don t do the things I need to do today and every day, I m not going to get there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you see it so many times without visualizing yourself each day doing the thing you need to do today that will move you toward that vision without that second step.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m going to break that down.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is the most important part.
2
SPEAKER_00
I spend about
2
SPEAKER_00
60 seconds visualizing my ideal outcomes to just fuel that fire and go, that s gonna feel amazing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I ll use an example.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I was training for my ultra marathon, I would spend 60 seconds visualizing crossing the finish line with 52 miles ran behind me and how that was gonna feel.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it got me excited.
2
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I printed off a color picture of the finish line of the marathon I was running so that I could look at it and then close my eyes and feel it.
2
SPEAKER_00
However, I d spend three or four minutes with step number two of Miracle Morning visualization.
2
SPEAKER_00
Step number two is the most important part.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would visualize my phone in front of me going off at 7 a.m., which is when I had planned and committed to go for my training runs.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would literally hear it beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would visualize my hand reaching out and turning off the alarm.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I would visualize myself.
2
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, this is through my own eyes.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a question I get a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are you seeing yourself like a video camera filming your body or are you seeing out your eyes?
2
SPEAKER_00
For me, it s out my eyes, reaching out like a first player shooter game, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Where you reach the hand out and you can see it.
2
SPEAKER_00
turning off the phone, and then I d visualize myself getting off the couch, walking into my bedroom, into my closet, getting dressed in my running clothes.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t skip a step.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would picture the whole thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I would visualize myself heading back through my living room, reaching down, grabbing my front door handle, opening it, seeing my sidewalk.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I would go back to recite my affirmations.
2
SPEAKER_00
Three steps, what I m committed to, why it s a must for me, and which specific actions I will take and when.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I ll tie in affirmations right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I would imagine looking out that front door, and I would say to myself, I m committed to running 52 miles on October 29, 2009, no matter what, there is no other option.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would affirm it with conviction.
2
SPEAKER_00
then I would affirm step two, why it s a must for me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I am committed to doing this so that I can develop the mindset and the capabilities to achieve any goal I ever set for the rest of my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not doing it for the run, I m doing it for who I ll become by doing this really difficult outside of my comfort zone thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then step three of the affirmations, which specific actions will you take and when?
2
SPEAKER_00
So as I m visualizing myself staring at the sidewalk,
2
SPEAKER_00
I would say to myself, in order to follow through with my commitment, I will follow the training plan taught in the book, the non-runners marathon trainer to a T every single day that it says to run, no matter what, there is no other option.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would get myself excited as I visualize the sidewalk to go for that run.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I d combine the affirmations with the visualization.
2
SPEAKER_00
And John, here s how that played out in real time.
2
SPEAKER_00
when the alarm on my phone actually went off at 7 a.m.
2
SPEAKER_00
and started beeping in front of me on my coffee table.
2
SPEAKER_00
Human nature, which we talked about earlier, what holds us back, would have been, nah, I wanna do the easy thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m just gonna procrastinate, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
If you re listening to this right now, raise your hand if you ever put off doing the thing you know you should do, you intended to do, you said you were going to do,
2
SPEAKER_00
But when it comes time to do it, you do what you feel like, which is nothing, which is not the thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m raising my hand.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do it every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have to override that human nature.
2
SPEAKER_00
But here s what happened when the alarm went off at 7 a.m.
2
SPEAKER_00
John, I didn t procrastinate because that s not what I mentally rehearsed during my visualization that morning.
2
SPEAKER_00
Instead, almost like a robot, in the best possible way, I stood up, I went into my closet, I got dressed in my running clothes, I walked to my front door, and as I reached out and opened the front door and saw my sidewalk, I was flooded with the dialogue of my affirmations.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was flooded with the positive emotions that I had generated that morning during my affirmations and visualization and I saw the sidewalk and I was triggered to go for that run that human nature would have prevented me from doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is the power of just two of the savers affirmations combined with visualization.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can apply that to making cold calls.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you re a salesperson, you can apply that to playing with your kids on a Saturday.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you re going to engage with the kids, you affirm it, you visualize it.
2
SPEAKER_00
You literally can apply those two steps and the rest of the savers to
2
SPEAKER_00
every single goal you have in your life, and it will amplify your ability to achieve that goal and every single role you have in your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
I follow that formula as a dad, as a husband, as an entrepreneur, and so on and so forth.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love that explanation.
2
SPEAKER_01
And people have come to me, and I m sure they ve come to you and said, what do you attribute your success to?
2
SPEAKER_01
How has your podcast done what it s done?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I come back to him and I say basically what you re talking about.
2
SPEAKER_01
I take intentional daily action that is consistent.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in your book, you explain it this way.
2
SPEAKER_01
The key to achieving any goal or to improve any aspect of your life is harnessing your ability to make a commitment and maintain that commitment for as long as it takes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s exactly how you put a miracle morning into action, is you just consistently practice it until it becomes second nature.
2
SPEAKER_01
And as you explained, once you start doing it,
2
SPEAKER_01
you re going to see other areas of your life magically take off in ways that you can t even comprehend.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know that s what it did for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they were in areas that were completely in many ways unrelated to my morning routine, but were impacted by it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now,
2
SPEAKER_01
Your book has two new sections that you added to it, and I wanted to touch on each one quickly.
2
SPEAKER_01
The first one you talk about is Miracle Evenings.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I know there are a ton of people in the audience right now who are trying to overcome difficulties falling or staying asleep.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people go to bed with stressful thoughts or they don t set up their environment properly to either go to bed or to wake up appropriately.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so you came up for another acronym for this called SLUMBERS.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you just quickly go through what that is?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so this goes back to what you just said is so true right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whenever I give a speech, I always say, how many of you are struggling with sleep, either falling or staying asleep?
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s almost always more than half the, or roughly half or more than half the audience.
2
SPEAKER_00
In 2020, I had been on chemotherapy for three years after being diagnosed with a rare aggressive form of cancer.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it broke my brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know any other way to explain it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I developed extraordinary anxiety and I started sleeping two to four hours a night for about six months.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I went through such a horrific sleep deprivation, chronically, that it almost ruined my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was suicidal.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I relentlessly pursued, how do I solve my sleep problems?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I did.
2
SPEAKER_00
I finally figured it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
I hired Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor, world famous sleep doctor.
2
SPEAKER_00
I researched it on my own and I figured it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so
2
SPEAKER_00
I really wanted that to be an important part of this book.
2
SPEAKER_00
The chapter is at the end of the book, it s the miracle evening, your strategy for blissful bedtime and better sleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I won t go through all of the slumbers.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll just say the general, the first one is stop eating three to four hours before bed.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s how long it takes to digest a meal.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you go to bed and you eat too late, you re not going to sleep well because your body is working all night.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll dive in on the L in slumbers, which is let go of stressful thoughts and feelings.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the most important piece.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s a technique I teach where how do you it s basically how do you flip the switch?
2
SPEAKER_00
Meaning when it s bedtime, it doesn t serve you to ruminate over what happened during the day that you cannot go back in time and change.
2
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t serve you to stress out over things that are out of your control.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so you have to have a process to where you can not just let go of the stressful thoughts and feelings, but replace them with peaceful, grateful thoughts so that you drift off.
2
SPEAKER_00
Again, I call it blissful bedtime.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I went from being stressed out at bedtime
2
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean my life s perfect now.
2
SPEAKER_00
I still have a million things to stress about, but it doesn t serve me.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you have to learn how do you flip the switch so that you can go to bed and literally drift off to bed.
2
SPEAKER_00
let go of the problems and the challenges and the things in your life that are causing you stress during the day and feel genuinely grateful and happy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And here s one of the most important reasons why this is true.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not just so you fall asleep and you sleep well, but so that you wake up well.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because your first thought in the morning is almost always whatever the last thought was that you dwelled on before bed.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you become conscious, you go, oh, God, I ve got that meeting today.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, God, my life s a mess.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my finances are in disarray.
2
SPEAKER_00
Instead, you go to bed feeling peaceful, grateful and happy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And as soon as you wake up, you wake up in that blissful state and you enter your day.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like you said, how you start your day, it sets the tone and the context and the direction for the rest of your day.
2
SPEAKER_00
So even though I ve got things to stress about, I don t allow those to derail my sleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I wake up feeling just as peaceful, grateful and optimistic and happy as I did when I fell asleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that leads into the miracle morning, which I m then able to get really intentional and really self-aware.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that leads into showing up at my best every day for those I love and those I lead, but it starts the night before with the miracle evening.
2
SPEAKER_01
And thank you so much for going into that, Hal, and a lot more in that chapter for people to absorb when they buy the book.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re going to end on discussing the miracle life, and I m going to end kind of where we started, and that s on the topic of self-awareness.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we oftentimes become conditioned to believe that our mental and emotional well-being are dictated by outside forces, which is a key component that you raise in this chapter.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what I loved is the Miracle Life offers an empowering paradigm.
2
SPEAKER_01
No matter what happens,
2
SPEAKER_01
Getting back to the self-awareness theme, I feel however I choose to feel.
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you recommend, as a closing thought, how the audience should take control of their mental and emotional state so they can choose how to experience the moments that make up their life?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it starts with realizing that you only have one life, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s no do-overs.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, depending on your spiritual beliefs, you might believe there s multiple.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but we know that we have one life right now that we re living.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think far too many of us are living it in fear.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re living it in stress.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I believe, my theory is, that when we get to the end of our life,
2
SPEAKER_00
Life s going to happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s going to be ups and downs and good days and bad days.
2
SPEAKER_00
I personally believe that when I get to the end of my life, I m going to look back and I m going to go, if I wasted too much of it, stressed out, fearful, living in inner turmoil,
2
SPEAKER_00
that much of it is self-created.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not all of it, but much of it is self-created, especially when you learn the tools that we ve talked about today to optimize your mental and emotional state and choose how you experience every moment.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think at the end of my life, I m going to look back and go, man, I wasted so much of my life allowing
3
SPEAKER_01
myself to be upset over things that I couldn t change when I should have just been at peace with life exactly as it was.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so the miracle life, it s made up of what I call the ABCs of miracle life.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just like the acronyms, it s intentional to have simplicity
3
SPEAKER_01
so you can remember and implement strategies.
3
SPEAKER_01
How many books have we read where the books were all over the place and while you re reading them, you re like, oh my God, there s so many great ideas, but they weren t simplified in a cohesive manner.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you don t even remember what all you learned in those 150 or 200 pages.
3
SPEAKER_01
For me, I m all about how do I simplify the formula so you never forget.
3
SPEAKER_01
The ABCs of the miracle life are this.
3
SPEAKER_01
A stands for accept life exactly as it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s what I talked about when I came out of my coma and was faced with this reality.
3
SPEAKER_01
What if I never walk again?
3
SPEAKER_01
I will accept life exactly as it is so I can be the happiest, most grateful person anyone s ever seen in a wheelchair.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m grateful that I didn t end up spending my life in a wheelchair.
3
SPEAKER_01
Accept life exactly as it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
The B is be grateful for each moment, and we talked about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can literally be grateful even for the difficult moments because gratitude is a superpower that enables you to find the good, find even the lesson in the challenge, and live every moment in a state of gratitude.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the C in the ABCs of the Miracle Life is to choose your optimal state of consciousness.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you decide that?
3
SPEAKER_01
That goes back to what you talked about.
3
SPEAKER_01
You literally get to decide what state of consciousness would best serve me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then in the book, I teach you a technique as far as the silence practice for the miracle morning, and I tie it into the miracle life, which is called emotional optimization meditation.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s where you identify your optimal mental, emotional, and state of consciousness, and then you hardwire it in your nervous system so that it literally becomes your default
3
SPEAKER_01
state of consciousness.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so to me, that s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We get one life.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you quoted Albert Einstein, you can never see everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle to me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Every moment of our life is a miracle.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if we choose to see it that way.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so to me, it s, we get one life.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s enjoy this one life.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve been blessed to live, even though yes, it s going to be difficult.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
There are going to be challenges, whether it s car accidents or cancer or losing a loved one or financial collapse, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Those have been the big ones for me.
3
SPEAKER_01
No matter what, we get to choose how we experience this one life that we re blessed to live.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I hope and I pray that more and more people will read that Miracle Life chapter and they ll realize, hey, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_01
I get one shot at this.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna stop allowing myself to experience so much emotional pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m gonna utilize these tools to enjoy the life I m living while I create the life that I really want.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hal, thank you so much for being here today.
3
SPEAKER_00
For the listener or viewer, what is the best way for them to find all things Hal Elrod?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can buy the new edition of the Miracle Morning, the updated and expanded edition, wherever books are sold.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble, wherever you want to get a book.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the hub for everything Miracle Morning, that s the Miracle Morning movie, the Miracle Morning app, the 350,000 person Facebook group, the Miracle Morning community of people that wake up and support each other.
3
SPEAKER_01
go to MiracleMorning.com.
3
SPEAKER_01
MiracleMorning.com is the hub for everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s this global community in over 100 countries, millions of people, 350,000 of which are in the Miracle Morning Community Facebook group that wake up every day
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I m talking, like they re waking up, they re fulfilling their potential, they re helping other people do the same thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s inspiring to be a part of like your community, John, a group of people that are living to their highest potential.
3
SPEAKER_00
Man, it s awesome.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you so much for being here, Hal.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was such an incredible honor and congratulations on the relaunch of your book.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thank John.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thank, I cannot thank you enough, brother.
3
SPEAKER_01
You are, you are a, an angel among us.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know that might sound cheesy, but I mean it sincerely, like how you show up for people, how you show up for your listeners, for your community, your audience, um, is extraordinary.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s why, that s why you ve grown such a great following because you are authentic and you care and you serve.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know that about you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Um, and so, yeah, the, the honor is mine, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for having me.
3
SPEAKER_01
It means so much to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Honor is mine, man.