Hal Elrod Reveals 6 Steps To Quickly Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) Even If You Hate Mornings

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This is Brad Costanzo and I have been looking forward to this interview for about five or six weeks. So today I've got Hal Elrod who is the number one best selling author of what is now being widely regarded as one of the most life changing books ever written. I've heard many people say that. I heard somebody else recommend his book to me and I read this book about six weeks ago. I'll give you the story behind that in just a second. But the book is called the Miracle Morning. The not so obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8am now, as a copywriter by nature, I love the title of that book. It's amazing and it hooked me from the beginning. But it's also one of the highest rated books on Amazon with I believe it's got over 1,000 five star reviews right now. It's really insane. I heard about the concept of a morning routine back when I was interviewing Dan Martell. Maybe you listened to this. And I immediately remembered somebody recommending Hal's book. So I went out, I picked it up, I read it and loved it. Read it in a day. I said I'm going to do this morning routine and ritual. And immediately I tweeted out to Hal, who I'll introduce you to here in just a second. And I said Hal loved your book and telling everybody about it. I would love to interview after my 30 days is up, after I've committed to doing this. And he said yes. So he's on the line with me today. Hal, thank you for joining me.

My pleasure, Brad. Thanks for having me, man. I'm looking forward to this as well.

Yeah, it's been something that actually has helped me with the sticking to it to the morning routine. I was like, no, Hal said he was going to jump on my show. So the worst thing I can do is let him down, which has been a great way for me to commit to my morning routine. That's really what the entire book's about. But before we dive into that, you do have an incredible story. You've told it on a lot of podcasts, a lot of interviews and I don't want to go into it too much Because I really have a lot of things that I want to ask you. But you basically died at age 20, right? You were hit by a drunk driver.

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to give you the short version because you're right. I definitely often go in depth on this topic. But no, see, I was 20 years old and I was a top salesperson for my company. And as a top consistently having been in the top, one of the top performers, I was always asked to give speeches at conferences and I gave a speech at an event, I left that event and I was driving home at 11:30 at night on the freeway doing 70, 80 miles an hour. And I was in my brand new Ford Mustang at age 20. It was a very private. I bought that car with my own money and it was literally three weeks old and I was driving home when a drunk driver got on the freeway. We're both doing 70 miles an hour. Problem is he's going the wrong way on my side of the road and he hits me head on at 70 miles an hour. The front of my car was destroyed, the engine smashes, the airbags exploded. The worst was yet to come. As I spun off the drunk driver, the car behind me, according to the driver didn't have time to even hit his brakes. He just crashed into my driver's side door at 70 miles an hour. And anybody listening, like imagine that look over your left shoulder and imagine there's a car coming at your door of your car at 70 miles an hour and just hits you full force.

Yeah, that's the stuff you see in movies there to shock you. But you actually live through that.

Yeah, barely. Oh yeah.

You actually didn't live through that.

I didn't live through it. And then I relived the whole left side of my car, crushed. I broke 11 bones instantly. An hour later, I bled to death. I was dead for six minutes on the side of the freeway. I was in a coma. Rushed to the hospital, I flat lined two more times during my coma, which was a six day coma, came out of the coma to the news that I would never walk again and I had permanent brain damage. And to keep a really long story short, defying the logic of doctors and really the temptations to be a victim, three weeks after the crash, two weeks after I woke from the coma, I went and took my first step and kind of the rest is history, as they say, went onto the road to recovery. And I learned the lessons, a lot of lessons from that accident. But the main one was that it's not what happens to you, but it is really your attitude and accepting the things that are out of your control and focusing your energy on what you can control that are really crucial to our success and our happiness and. And moving in the direction that we want to go in our lives.

Yeah. And you used. And your book explains this, how you used one of the most foundational things. Well, what can you control? You can control what you do in the morning, and you built a morning ritual to give you that foundation for success. And as I mentioned, I've heard so many people talk about not only your book, but the importance of a morning routine. And what really put it over the edge for me was Dan Martell, who's the founder of Clarity, previous guest on the show. I asked him who's, you know, he just sold his company for millions of dollars.

Yeah.

Awesome guy. Like, what is your number one thing that's driven you to success? He goes, honestly, it's my morning routine. It is unbreakable. This is what I do, et cetera, et cetera. So I said, all right, look, that pushed me over the tipping point. And what I liked about your book is it didn't just say, hey, go do a morning routine. And here's a few things you can do, because I've seen that, I've heard that those things don't inspire me. You said several things in your book that really inspired me. That the phrasing, I remember it. It stuck in my head, which is really great. I want to bring those up in a second. But explain to me, or explain to the listeners real briefly what the lifesavers routine looks like. What the miracle morning routine looks like as you describe it in the book.

Yeah. So the premise of the Miracle Morning is it was based on a couple things. The first was I heard this quote from Jim Rohn, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And in that moment, by the way, when I heard that, I was at, like, my lowest point in my life, 2008. The economy crashed. I went from being relatively successful, just bought my first new house, bought a brand new car, and very quickly lost everything. I lost my house. I lived on credit cards. I got deeply depressed. I stopped exercising for six months. I mean, I was really at a low point. And I heard that quote from Jim Rohn, I'll say it again, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And I realized I'm not dedicating time, at least not at the level that I need to be, to my personal development. Each day so that I can become the person that I need to be to create the success I want in my life. And I had an epiphany. I thought, I'm going to go home and I'm going to study what are the world's most successful people do every day for personal development. And I thought, I'm going to pick the one or top one or two personal development practices of the world's most successful people. I'll do those every day. And I should see great results. After about an hour searching online, I couldn't narrow it down to one or two. There was really this list of six that none of them were new to me. People had been practicing this for centuries, all six of these. But here was the thing. Nobody that I found and to this day that I found, does people would do one of these six practices, maybe two. There are a few people you'd see that might do three, but none more than three out of the six. And so what hit me is I thought, what if I did instead of picking one or two, what if I did all of these? What if I did all of the six most proven, powerful, effective personal development practices known to man? And I started every day with all six. And I woke up the next morning and I did an hour ritual. I wasn't a morning person at that time, but I went through these six practices that are known, as you mentioned, as the lifesavers. And an hour later I felt incredible. And it was within two months of doing those six practices, I had more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically, having not exercised in six months, to committing to running 52 mile ultramarathon which I completed five months later. And I had never run more than a mile in my life. And I hated running. And that's why I thought, wow, I what would be a huge physical challenge to really grow. And then maybe most importantly, I went from being deeply depressed because of my economic situation, my financial situation. That was gone the first day because I realized that if I start every day like this, it's only a matter of time before my outer world reflects my inner world. And these six practices, I'll run through these. And again. Well, I say that there's nothing here that's new in terms of the practices. But I will tell you that the way that they're taught in the Miracle Morning book for most of them is radically different, more practical and results oriented than the way they've been taught for centuries. And I'll give a couple examples. I'M going through this.

And by the way, I couldn't agree more with that statement. That's one of the things that pushed me over the edge to say, no, not only can I do this, I totally want to.

Nice. I appreciate that. These are the savers. That's the acronym S A V E R S. The first S is for silence. Rather than starting your day with chaos rush trying to get out the door, you start your day with peaceful, purposeful silence. That could be meditation, it could be prayer, it could be a combination of both. It only takes one Google search to search something like why successful people meditate. And you'll find millionaires, billionaires, celebrities that swear by meditation. In fact, Ray Dalio or Dalio Dalio, he is a hedge fund manager of the. It was the largest hedge fund in the world. I don't know if it still is, but he is a billionaire and he says that meditation is the number one key to his financial success. So not spiritual success is what you would typically think. Financial, financial. Right. Yeah. So the A in Saviors is for affirmations. And these are written statements that articulate what you want, why you want it, what you're committed to doing to achieve it. So the way affirmations have been taught, and here's. This is a great example of how all the savers are. They're taught in the way that I think, which is very results oriented and very practical. The way affirmations have been taught for decades. One of two ways. One of two problems. Number one, lie to yourself. Right? So if you want to be something that you're not, just tell yourself you are it. Affirm it over and over and over and trick yourself into believing it. Right? So you go, I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. And your subconscious, you're intelligent. It's like, no, you're not. You're lying, you're lying. Right. And the truth will always prevail. So lying to yourself is never the optimum strategy. The second problem. So that's the first problem, the way affirmations have been perpetuated for decades. The second is that using passive language. So here's an example of a, you know, kind of paraphrasing a popular financial or money affirmation. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance.

Yep.

Like, what the crap is that? Right. Money doesn't flow to you effortlessly in abundance. You have to add value to the marketplace or to your employer, to the world, and then you get money. Right. And so people that sit there in a firm like, I'm going To sit here on the couch and just say, money magically flows into my life effortlessly. Those people are broke. Yeah.

There's a quote from a book that I read that I loved about that Millionaire Fast Lane by M.J. deMarco. I don't know.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite books.

And so in there, in the beginning, he says, a lot of people say that the get Rich Quick doesn't exist. Well, it exists. Get Rich Quick exists. You kind of have to change your time frame. If you bust your ass for five years and start and sell a company for millions of dollars, that's pretty quick. So Get Rich Quick exists. Get Rich Easy doesn't exist. That was one of the big shifts. So exactly on point, but continue on. So you've got your affirmations.

So affirmations. And so the way that the miracle morning affirmations are taught is it breaks down these steps of essentially, what do you want? So your affirmation should start by articulating an ideal, a goal, an outcome. Then why do you want it? You should be reinforcing the what with the why. The benefits that are so compelling, they'll drive you to get up when you don't feel like getting up, take action when you don't feel like taking action, etc. The third component is what specifically must you do? What are the actions or activities that you need to take? And then even further, when will you take those actions? What's the frequency? What's the duration? So the affirmations aren't designed to program you. The fantasy of life is perfect and money's coming to me. It's here's what I want, why I want it, and what I'm committed to doing and when I'm committed to doing it. So you're programming your subconscious mind not with a lie, but with exactly what it needs to be programmed with to develop the beliefs and the mindset to achieve exactly what you want to achieve in life. So that's, that's how most of the savers, all of them, they have that type of practicality and that type of results orientation. The V in savers is for visualization. And very much like affirmations. Over the decades, gurus teach you to visualize this perfect outcome. Well, science shows, research shows that you trick yourself when you do that over and over again. You trick your subconscious into thinking that the outcome is as good as done with or without your effort. Literally, you're playing a trick on your mind that hurts your effort and your results. So in the miracle morning, I Teach you how to visualize daily activity, not just the down the road goal. Right?

Don't just visualize getting the goal. Visualize doing what it takes to the goal. And that's huge.

If you hate running, visualize yourself lacing up your running shoes and running on the sidewalk with a smile on your face. And visualize yourself looking at the clock as you're lacing your running shoes. So you're programming your subconscious for what time you will lace up those running shoes. Right. Very action oriented.

Let me give you a quick example there from my own life at the time when I was doing this, I was starting a new or working on another project that required a lot of my effort in some Facebook advertising. Now, I've generated millions of dollars online in Facebook advertising, but the way I've done that is by planning out a strategy and hiring somebody to do all the work. So by nature, I'm just. I don't know my way around to buy ads and do all that. And I don't want to become an expert, but I kind of felt like I need to get a handle on this. But when I'd sit down to do it every day, I would just get frustrated and hate every single second of it. So during my visualization time during the morning, I would visualize not only being adept at it, but sitting down, like at the computer, doing the ads, targeting the interest. And I. I visualize myself pushing through the resistance and through the frustration. And that helped immensely because when I went to do it, I was like, nah, I got this.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. That's similar to, like, I don't consider myself a writer, which is. I know I have a bunch of books. It's kind of weird, but I just, it's not easy for me, you know, like speaking, I can go on stage and I can talk, no problem. You know, writing, it's challenging. And so for me, it took, you know, there were three years where the miracle morning was one of my top goals, if not my top goal every year. And I failed. I failed and I failed again. And then I finally, it like, hit me, wait a minute. I'm not applying the savers to writing the miracle morning. What am I doing? And then I started visualizing myself at the computer writing with a smile on my face, enjoying. I felt the feelings of, hey, if I were to enjoy writing, what would that feel like? What would that look like? And then by seeing it in your mind, it's easy to go there in your body. That's why professional athletes use Visualization for the same, you know, the same reason. So the E in savers is for exercise. And I'm not saying that you give up your evening workout or your afternoon workout or whatever. In fact, don't take my word for it. I was interviewed by Robert Kiyosaki, author, Rich Dad, Poor dad, recently on Rich Dad Radio. And as you might imagine, I was very huge fan of Robert Kiyosaki. I was blown away when he opens up the interview by saying, hal, I've read the miracle morning three times. Today was day 60 or 60 something he said about missing a certain a single day. And it's completely changed my life.

That's amazing to change like a mentor's life.

Yeah, mentors and somebody who's multimillionaire. 65 read like a thousand books. I'm going, you know, I gave him my book because we spoke at an event together, but I thought the odds of him reading it aren't very good, let alone, you know, doing anything. Yeah. So anyway, the point is though, when Robert was interviewing me, we were going over the sabers. He said, hal, he goes, just so you know, I still go to the gym in the afternoon. But to your point in the book, the importance of exercise first thing in the morning, or at least early in the morning, even if it's only a few minutes, it gets your heart rate up, it gets your blood flowing, it gets your releases endorphins, you think clearer, you feel better, you have more energy throughout the day. He said, so I do three minutes of exercise during my sabers, do some.

Burpees, do some jumping jacks, get that blood flowing.

Dr. Jumping jacks. There's a great app on the phone called 7 Minute Workout that I love it. Dr. Yeah, so the R in savers is for reading and you know, reading self help books that are in alignment with your goals. Right. Again, very results oriented.

Gotta admit, that's my favorite. That's my favorite one, by the way. I look forward to that one because I can sit down in the morning before I do anything. I can grab a book I've gotten through. I'm a fast reader as it is, but I savor that. Like, so I haven't checked email, I haven't done anything else and I just sit there and I read. I'll usually read for about 20 minutes and it's probably my favorite part of the day.

No, yeah, it's one of my favorites as well. And it's, I think there's a truth to the fact that you and I, everybody listening, we're only one book away from everything we need to know to achieve any result we want in our life. Right. That's it. That's it. So the final S is for scribing, which, you know, honestly, I owe my wife and the thesaurus for that. I didn't even know what that word meant when I wrote the book. But, yeah, the word journal didn't fit at the end of the word savor. And so scribing. Journaling is the most effective way to articulate your thoughts. Get them out of your head, get them onto paper, get some, you know, kind of heighten your clarity. And many, you know, many, many, many successful people swear by journaling. And I will tell everybody listening, if you're looking for a good journal, my favorite journal is called 5 Minute Journal. And it's both an app if you want the app on the phone or the iPad. And then it's also a. You can get the physical hardcover journal at. What is it? 5F I V E. 5 Minute Journal.

Yep, I got it. I love it.

Oh, you do?

Yeah, yeah, I think I got it based on your recommendation or I heard about it somewhere else. I don't remember. But yeah, it's been awesome because it just. You don't have to journal page after page after page. I actually have a journal for that one. I just want to flow. But that's a good one. It's just like, fill this in. Everybody can fill out one page. Answer these questions. Great one.

Those are the savers. And here I'll wrap up this part by saying this. If you study successful people, and I mean the world's most successful people, you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't do at least one of the savers. But I will again, I will echo the words of Robert Kiyosaki. He wrote me this amazing. What now? It'll be an endorsement in the book. But I said, hey, can I use.

This and a frame on your wall?

Yeah, exactly. And he basically said that. He said, to paraphrase, he said what HAL did with the acronym SABERS is he took the six best of the best practices developed over, and he literally said, centuries of human conscious development, and he synthesized it into one ritual. And he said before the miracle morning, every successful person was doing one or two of these, maybe three at the most. But no one, he said, in his 30 years of personal development, no one was doing all six. And that's what makes the miracle morning so special, is you're not just doing one or two things to change your Life. You're doing the six most proven, powerful things you can do to change your life. And from what I found, nothing accelerates people's progress or their results faster than that.

I can't agree with you more. It has made a huge difference on me. In just the past six weeks, I have not been. There have been a few days that I've missed, but because of either traveling or hangovers, that being said, to some degree, I've done actually a few of them every single day. But I try to stick to them. All five of them is funny. My fiance, she and I both started getting up. I normally I can wake up when I want. My dog wakes me up at 7:30 normally. But immediately after reading the book, I said, no, I'm setting my alarm for six o'. Clock. It's kind of amazing how when you set that intention. You mentioned this in the book as well. You set that intention to do it. You wake up, you feel good. The hardest part, I gotta say still is if I'm doing silence, first thing, like meditation, I'll wake up, I'll splash some water on my face, brush my teeth, drink a glass of water, go sit down on my couch or somewhere comfortable, close my eyes. And then if I'm not fully awake yet, I start to drift off, back to sleep. It's not pure meditation, but you know what I'm saying? Anyway.

No, no, no, definitely. And I encourage anybody when that's the case, do exercise first and you can even break it up. You could do 60 seconds of jumping jacks, then meditate, right? And then go back. In fact, you and I were talking before the broadcast. I did a mastermind last week and it was cool. We have one of the members of our mastermind is like a world renowned mindfulness, you know, meditation trainer. And the other we had our DJ that was there is like a world renowned get people fired up dancing, jumping, right? So it was, it was cool. We had him do that and we, you know, we were probably three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, we're all dancing, jumping, you know, we're sweating, our heart rate is up. And then as soon as the song ended, we had this all prepared. Juliana, the mindfulness trainer, she came to the front of the room and led everyone through mindfulness. When their heart was racing, they were breathing heavy. And it was an exercise to show that even if you're in this heightened state, how to go from there to mindfulness in 60 seconds.

That's really cool. I love that. I want to bring up a couple of the quotes you said in the book that meant a lot to me. I went back through my Kindle highlights, which. That's what I love about Kindle is you can highlight the big things.

Go to the highlights.

Yep. Right. So a couple of the ones that I thought were really great. You don't have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. Yeah, I love that because it's true. If you're not happy, you're probably doing a lot of stuff mediocre or sub mediocre in your life. You don't have time for both. Another thing which was, and this is the one that I. It stuck with me, and it's helped propel me when I don't feel like doing it. But you said every time you choose the easy thing instead of the right thing thing, you're shaping your identity, becoming the type of person who does what's easy rather than right. And I know when I'm able to make it about something bigger, not about how I feel, but about who I'm being and who I'm becoming, it makes it easier for me to just do what's right. And you follow that up, saying, when you do the right thing and follow through on your commitments, especially when you don't feel like it, you're developing extraordinary discipline, which most people never do. And so I remind myself of that. Like, no, I don't feel like getting up right now. But by doing this, I'm immediately installing discipline in my life. So these are a few of the things in addition to you said when the alarm goes off, ask yourself, do I want to be the kind of person who doesn't even have the discipline enough to get out of bed in the morning? That's huge. And I think about that as I'm looking at that snooze, and it looks so sexy. I just want to push it. I just want to push it. So the hardest parts for me or the most challenging. And I think it's because, as you re spoke about, what they were, the affirmations and the visualizations, those are the ones that I would find myself taking shortcuts on, although those are two of the most important things. But I love what you said, how you actually have a formula with there, with what you want, why you want it, what you're committed to do to get there. So I'm going to kind of go back to mine and revisit those. So are you still doing the miracle morning and the exact same stuff for yourself? I mean, you've obviously probably been doing this for years. Do you mix it up?

It's evolved. But no. I mean, I still stick to all of the savers. There's not one that I skip. And I'll be very transparent in terms of visualization is the one that doesn't resonate as much with me. Me. So my visualization can. There's some days where I skip it or where it's kind of mediocre. And that's the thing about the miracle morning is it's not an all or nothing thing. It's something that as long as you give it a valiant effort. Like I always tell people in the Miracle morning book, one of the things that's made it so effective for people is I coach you in the book on the psychology of habits and why most of us fail to change our habits and how you can be one of the few that is able to change any habit in 30 days. And that of course leads into the Miracle Morning 30 day challenge. I tell people, do all six of the savers for 30 days. Then after that customize it. There's a whole chapter on customizing Miracle morning to fit your lifestyle and your needs.

Talk about doing a six minute miracle morning. Hey, if you only have time, just do one minute.

One minute for each of the savers. Yeah. What's amazing is I teach you in the book how to get 70 to 80% of the benefit of the full doing an hour of the savers in six minutes for those days when you're short on time or you're traveling or whatever.

Hal, I know we've got to go. We've got kind of a hard stop on this. You've got a coaching client you've got to jump on it with.

I think it's actually the world renowned mindfulness instructor, Juliana Ray.

Hey, there you go.

I think about it and actually have a call with her in five minutes.

That's awesome. So otherwise I would love to sit here and pick your brain for hours on this stuff because we could talk for a while. But I want to encourage everybody to go to is the best place to pick up your book on your website or on Amazon.

Amazon is the best place to grab the book. Sure.

Great. So it's Hal Elrod and it's the miracle Morning, the not so obvious secret to transform your life before 8. Guaranteed to transform your life before 8am and you can visit hal@halelrod.com. you do a lot of speaking. You even coach people if they really want to take their game to the next level. Is that right?

Yeah, I do a lot Less coaching actually because of the millionaire fast lane and getting clear on. I want everything I put my time into to be scalable and be able to create kind of automated passive income. So I love coaching and I love my clients, but it's not something I'm trying to grow. So I haven't tried to get a coaching client in probably two years or something.

They just seek you out and say, take my money, help me.

Yeah. In fact, almost all of it's from all my speaking engagements, all my coaching clients. They read the Miracle Morning and then either a CEO says oh my, people have to hear this, they have to learn this, they got to do this. Or somebody reached out for the coaching. But nice.

Well, you're out in Temecula. I'm here in San Diego. I love going out to Temecula. Maybe next time I'm out there if you're in town, I'd love to grab a glass of wine with you as Temecula is known for wine.

Yeah.

Hit me up and meet up and I'd love to connect with you after this. If there's any ways I can help you out, introduce you and help spread your message and your mission, I would love to do that. But Hal, thank you very much for your time today, buddy.

Brad, appreciate you man. And everybody listening, thank you so much for your time. I hope you got some value and I hope I see you actually in the Miracle Morning community, which is the Facebook group. You guys are all welcome to come join 18,000 people that are super positive, pumped up about waking up early in the Miracle Morning community on Facebook and that includes YouTube.

Brad, thanks a lot, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah, send me a link for that. I'd love to join.

Right on. Take care, guys.

Alright. Okay. You just heard Hal Elrod from the Miracle Morning and I hope you enjoyed this. I really can't recommend this book highly enough and I would love that if you read it. Let me know and let me know if it's impacted you and let Hal know. Comment on the post. Send me a message to askbradaconratbusiness.com I love hearing the feedback and I love hearing if my guests or anything I've said or shared with you has helped change your life. There's really nothing more important that you can do than work on yourself and the best time to do that is really before anything else happens in your day. And that's the morning time. If you have any questions, ask bradakenrightbusiness.com if you want to join my golden rolodex go to baconwrapbusiness.com whoare you tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do, and maybe I can help you out. Maybe we can meet. Maybe I can even have you on the show someday. Thank you very much for listening. And until next time, this is Brad Costanzo wishing you a bacon wrapped morning. Bye Bye.