Hal Elrod: What My Near Death Experiences Taught Me About Money, Business and Freedom

See, that's the thing, is we can be the happiest, most grateful we've ever been going through the most difficult time in our life. That's our choice, it's our power, it's our opportunity. And it's an everyday thing. Don't wait for this major event to happen in your life. The next time you have a customer cancel an order, apply the five minute rule, apply the can't change a philosophy and accept it and be at peace with it.

You're listening to Freedom Fast lane presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms.

How many of you are familiar with Robert Kiyosaki? So Robert Kiyosaki's favorite book is called the Miracle Morning and he talks about it in all of his keynotes around the world. He gives it out to all of his staff. Staff. He gives it out to his partners. He discovered it three years ago and he says that it's completely changed his life. Well, the author of that book has a fascinating story. Beyond just the fact that he wrote a pretty killer book. Part of his story is that he was dead when he was 20.

But he's still here. He also was given a 10% chance of living just over a year ago. So he has basically cheated death twice and is a celebrated entrepreneur and best selling author. And I asked him to come back and say, all right, we're going to spend our lives dedicated to business and growth, but at the end of this, we can't take any of it with us.

And he has faced that twice. How does life change? How does work change? How does business meaning and purpose adjust when you get really, really close to losing your life? Because I think that when you get clear on the fact that you are going to die, everything else is a bonus. Everything else is a win.

All this other time is bonus time. So if we can operate with that idea of we're in bonus time, bonus years and we can enjoy every ounce of everything that we experience in this life, how much richer and fuller could our lives be? This is why I've asked Hel Elrod to end today. So would you please join me in welcoming the author of Miracle Morning, Hel Elrod.

So December 3, 1999, we went home that night and about 11:30 at night we got a call from Hal's good friend Jeremy and he had indicated that Hal had been in a car accident.

So the night of Hal's accident, we were at a Kaiku conference and we were Coming back from it, he gets in the car. I get in my car and we head out. He got ahead of me, and I caught a red light.

Hal was driving about 65 miles hour.

The drunk driver was going 80 miles an hour.

Someone crossed the median and hit them head on.

His Ford Mustang spun around and the oncoming driver t boned him.

There was like, all this debris in the middle of the freeway. And my buddy looks out the window and says, I think there was a Mustang on the side of the road. I was like, dude, I couldn't even tell. And as I kind of started driving, he's like, no, ma'. Am. I think that was Hal's Mother's Day.

When I talked to Jeremy, I told him to tell Hal that we loved him and, you know, that he had to hang in there and that, you know, we were all coming.

The fire department showed up. They had to cut through the car to have to pull him out.

His heart had stopped for about six to seven minutes.

I remember walking through the door, and it was like they'd been waiting for us. And, you know, there was whispers, and it was like, the l rods are here. And then we were rushed into a room.

The damage that was done to his body was horrific. They did not expect him to live through the weekend.

He's probably not going to be able to hear because of the damage to his ear. He might not be able to see because he had shattered bones around his eye. He'll never walk.

There was so much brain trauma. And they told us that, you know.

He would be a vegetable.

I think he was in a coma for about a week.

He just defied everything the doctors said.

When Hal woke up, his short term memory was completely impacted. So it was like groundhog's day every day. I remember one time he's like, did I get in a plane crash? And I think we went with that.

Story for a while.

I was like, tomorrow he'll just. We'll retell the real story again, you.

Know, and we laughed through all of it. It was just, you know, you always kind of found humor, and I think that helped him survive.

When Hal got out of the hospital four months later, his high school principal called and he said, I know this is crazy, but he goes, do you think Hal would speak to the student body? And so that was the start, really, of Hal's speaking career.

I just feel like Hal had another purpose. He wasn't done yet. I still believe that now. It was a miracle.

Hey.

That's the first time that video has ever been Shown from stage. So this was actually a first for you and a first for me. I was like, how's this going to go? I don't know.

So the dominant question, today's presentation, if we can show the slide here.

What matters most? And this is the question that over the last year of my life, well, really, the last 20 years of my life, but I really. The last year I've become really present to this question and asking this all the time in every scenario. Scenario. From what matters most in life to what matters most in my business to what matters most today. What matters most to me being the best father that I can be to my two kids? What matters most when it comes to me creating the marriage that I want with my wife and that she wants with me? What matters most? It's a question that I don't know that we're prompted to ask. And so that's why I'm prompting you to ask it. And this, you'll see it ends in a question mark. The presentation was originally called what matters most without a question mark. But I want that to be the question that we go through the rest of the event with. And when you go through your notes, when you get home, what matters most? Right. Going through and going. Because you're going to go home with. You're probably going home with 10 pages of notes. You can't implement it. All right? We can't implement everything. So we really have to get clear on what matters most. Jeff Woods, I spent some time with you, probably saw his breakout. If you were here, you know, he is working with the company, the one thing. And really that's what that's about. It's what's the one thing that matters more than anything else at any given moment? The first rock bottom. I'm actually gonna share with you three rock bottoms today. How many rock bottoms? Three. All right, we're going for three.

Knock on wood. I don't need a fourth. I've had. I've had plenty of them. The first rock bottom, though, you saw the story and these pictures were taken. I was 20 years old. It was December 3, 1999, driving home from a Cutco sales conference after I'd given a speech. And the last thing I ever expected to happen is what happened. And six days after I. This picture was taken, I woke from a coma. And a week after that, my mom and dad were called in by my doctors. So when I came out of the coma, I was scared, I was confused. I didn't understand where I was. I didn't understand why I was in so much pain. I had really significant brain damage that caused me to literally forget. Like every minute at a time I would forget what happened. So my poor parents, I would, you know, coming out of the crash, having all these broken bones, I was tired a lot. I'd fall asleep, I'd wake back up and my mom and dad would have to tell me. I would, I wouldn't understand how I got there. So my poor parent, it was like Groundhog's Day. My poor parents would have to tell me over and over and over again that I was in this car accident. And about a week after I came out of the coma, I'm being told I'm never going to walk again. I've got horrible brain damage. I broke 11 bones. So my femur had broken in half. I've got a 14 inch titanium rod in here. My pelvis was crushed between the center console. It broke three separate times. My humerus bone behind my biceps snapped in half. My elbow was shattered. I severed the nerve in my arm. My eye socket was crushed. This is all made of titanium as well. My ear was almost completely severed, hanging on by about a half of an inch. And the ceiling of the Mustang buckled and it sliced a big in the top of my head. And so I had all these injuries that I was dealing with. I had all these surgeries that I had undergone. And my mom and dad were called into the doctor's office for kind of an update, if you will. And the doctors sat my parents down and they said.

Physically, Hal's made it through the worst, he's stable and that's a good thing. You know, at that point, me walking again was literally the last of their concerns. It was just. Is how we want him to live. Because I actually flatlined two more times during that, those six days in the coma. I technically died three times during that period of time. And so the doctor said, physically, Hal's made it through the worst. He's stable, he's going to be with us for a long time. They said, but mentally and emotionally we're a little bit concerned. We believe that Hal is suffering from something relatively common with accident victims, especially as young as hal is at 20 and that have gone through something as horrific as Hal has gone through and the future looks potentially grim that he may never walk again. We believe that Hal is in denial, even that he's a little bit delusional. And they said the reason we think this is every time we interact with Hal, he's always smiling and laughing and joking. And you know two weeks removed from this horrific car accident. That's not normal, frankly, they said. So we want you to talk to him and find out how he's really feeling. Get him to admit that he's scared, that he's depressed, angry. I don't know what emotions he's. He's covering up, they said. But he's gotta. He's gotta face them because we're in a safe environment. He's got his therapist here, his psychologist. We can help him work through the grieving process, but we want to do it here when he's in a safe place, not when he's out there in the real world. And he could turn to drugs or alcohol or suicide even. So please, find out how he's feeling. So my dad comes in my hospital room. I'm in my hospital bed, and, you know, I'm all bandaged up, and my dad sits next to me. And I look at him and he asked me to turn the TV off. I turned the TV off. And I look over, and he had just been crying. His face is red, his eyes are welled up. And he's trying. You know, he's trying to hold it together. And I knew he had just met with the doctor. So I get a little concerned. I'm thinking, oh, God, he just got really bad news. What is it? I go, dad, what's. What's wrong? What's going on? He said, everything's okay. We just met with the doctors, and physically, you're. They actually say you're in really good shape, and they're really happy with how you're progressing. I said, oh, okay, good. What. What's up then? And he expressed the doctor's concerns. And he said, hal, it's okay to be sad. I know you like to be positive, but it's okay to be scared or angry or sad or depressed. He goes, God knows your mom and I are feeling all those things, and we didn't even go through this. I can't imagine what you're feeling, but it's important, the doctor say, for you to feel the feelings that you're feeling. Don't cover them up, don't hide them, talk about them. How are you really feeling? How?

And, you know, looking at my dad, I mean, the pain in his face and the concern, I could tell he was very concerned. And I really went inside and I thought, am I covering this up? Am I hiding it? Am I depressed? Am I angry? Am I sad? Am I scared? And I looked at him, I said, dad, I thought you knew me better. Than that. He said, what do you mean? I said, remember, I live by the five minute rule that I learned in my Cutco sales training.

He said, remind me, what is that again? I said, I told you and mom this so many times. You guys would be so much happier if you would just listen to me. It's okay to be negative when things go wrong, but not for more than five minutes. You had five minutes to bitch, moan, complain, punch a wall, whatever you gotta do. And after five minutes, we were taught in our sales training, when you have a canceled order, a no show, or you don't hit a goal, or any kind of disappointment, you set your timer on your phone, you get five minutes. And then after the five minutes is up, you say three powerful words. Can't change it. Can't change it. And it reminds you that intellectually, as an intelligent human being, there's no value in dwelling on something that's out of our control. And guess what? Everything that's ever happened is out of our control. Unless you're Marty McFly with a DeLorean, you can't go back and change it, right? You can change everything else, but you can't go back. So whether it happened five minutes ago or five years ago or five days ago, but you think about it, every negative emotion that we ever feel is self created. This is something that one of the greatest lessons I learned is every negative emotion is self created by our level of resistance to our reality. So think about that. To the degree that when something bad happens, to the degree that we wish and want it were different is the degree that we create emotional pain for ourselves. So if something's kind of annoying, like traffic, and you're like, nah, son of a. And we resist the traffic, resist the pace of the cars in front of us. Does that ever work, by the way? Like, you get frustrated enough, like, son of a. No. I'm gonna be late. Come on. Do they move? No, but we do it.

Whether it's something small like that, a minor resistance, or whether it's being told you're never gonna walk again, or losing a loved one or anything in between, to the degree of resistance that we create is the emotional pain that we create for ourselves. And I learned that with the five minute rule. And so I said, dad, the car accident was two weeks ago. My five minutes is long up. I said, I can't change that I was hit by a drunk driver. I can't change that my bones are broken. I don't know if I'll ever walk again. I said, but There are really only two possibilities, and you and mom don't need to worry about me. I said, possibility number one is the doctors are right and I will never walk again.

And I've accepted that as a possibility. I said, meaning if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I promise you, I will be the happiest person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. Because I'm in a wheelchair. Either way, why be miserable living in a wheelchair the rest of my life when I could be the most grateful human being on the planet living in a wheelchair the rest of my life? And I want to pause and ask you, what's your wheelchair? What is your wheelchair? What's that experience in your life, either recent happening now or from your childhood or anywhere in between that causes emotional pain for you? Because it wasn't fair and it wasn't right and it wasn't just and you didn't deserve it, so now you're not going to accept it. See, we think that accepting things, especially if someone else did it to us, we think that accepting. We mistakenly think that accepting it lets them off the hook. Like I'm not going to accept it. That was wrong. They shouldn't have done that. I'll never accept it. But see, it doesn't let them off the hook. They're already off the hook. It lets us off the hook. It frees us from emotional pain. We accept the things we can't change. It frees us from emotional pain. And so I said, dad, possibility number one is I will be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. And that's okay. Possibly number two. I said, dad, and I'm shooting for this one because I have a lot of goals that involve walking. So I'm hoping that I'll walk again. But I said possibility number two is I will walk again. And I don't know if it's possible, but guess what? I've accepted the worst case scenario and I'm at peace with it. So it will never cause me pain, even if it comes true While I focus 100% or 99.9% of my energy, emotions, intention, attention on what I want. I said, dad, I visualize walking every day. I pray about it every day. I'm moving in the direction of what I want, but I'm not afraid of what I don't want because I've accepted everything out of my life or in my life that I can't change. And.

He went back to the doctors. She. I don't think they believed him. I don't think. I think they still thought I was in denial or delusional. But.

A few days later, actually a week later, the doctors came in with routine X rays and they said, we don't know how to explain this, but how your body is healing so quickly that we're going from you may never walk again to, you can actually take your first step today in therapy, which was, I was thinking maybe in a year. I wasn't thinking a week. And this picture was taken the next, or that, that morning or the next day. And I took my first step. And it revealed to me the first thing I want to share with you that matters most if you want to live a life free from emotional pain. It's what I call emotional invincibility. It's simply a conscious decision, and it takes practice of acceptance. It's deciding I will accept everything that I can't change. And the evolution of that is what I call accepting life before it happens. Meaning when something happens, you can set your timer for five minutes. That's why I encourage you to start with this. Set your time for five minutes. You need five minutes to bitch, moan, kick, something, like whatever you gotta do, right? And the timer goes off. You'll probably still feel some emotion. In fact, I'm sure you will. But you simply say those three words, can't change it, and you're reminding yourself that I can't change it. So there's no value, there's no point. I'm not going to wish that I could or put energy into wishing I could. I'm not going to create emotional pain for myself because that's a choice that we most often unconsciously make. But now you have the key to unlock the door to emotional freedom because you can consciously make that choice, to accept all things you can't change. And the evolution, as I mentioned, accepting life and before it happens means that for me, I've already accepted everything that will ever happen. And we'll get to the story in a few minutes about the last year of my life. And you'll hear that when I had a cancer diagnosis, it was the same decision. Well, I have a 10% chance of living in my mind. That's 100%. Of course, I had fear and I had doubt. I didn't know. I had no idea it was a new. It was scary. But I decided that I'm going to be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen going through cancer.

Right.

See, that's the thing, is we can be the happiest, most grateful We've ever been going through the most difficult time in our life. That's our choice, it's our power, it's our opportunity and it's an everyday thing. Don't wait for this major event to happen in your life. The next time you have a customer cancel an order, apply the five minute rule, apply the can't change it philosophy and accept it and be at peace with it.

Hey guys, this is Ryan.

We're going to take a quick break.

And we'll return to the show in a second. Second.

Hey fastlaners. Ryan here and I wanted to take a second and brag on one of our backroom members. Our backroom is our mastermind, really. We're focused on getting to $10 million in top line revenue. And I wanted to brag on athletic greens. They're in the back room and they have just absolutely killed it. Not only with expanding their sales but really by making incredible frickin products. So the products were made out of need by the founders and as a result they've been featured on Tim Ferriss, they were featured in the four Hour Body and you've probably seen them all over the web. The reason why I'm telling you about them today is because I want to support them by encouraging you to go over to athleticgreens.com Amazon obviously you know that I am really big on maximizing your Amazon presence and I also just really believe in the product. For example, I like to wake up in the morning, put my greens in a water bottle, add in some creatine, sometimes I add in a fat burner. If I'm on a cut, shake it up. And that's sometimes my morning pick me up if you've ever heard me talk about my tribe. 5. I have five habits that I practice on a daily basis. My B point every day is getting to the gym and having my greens. And when I don't have time for a big salad or making a smoothie, I supplement with athletic greens. So I'd highly encourage you to support them. Head over to athleticgreens.com Amazon and give their 30 day packs a try. All right, let's head into the episode.

So I started speaking at high schools as you saw in that video with my dad. And I was speaking at a high school in Canada and this girl, 19 years old, she sent me an email and she said, hal, you, you radically changed my life. Your speech changed my life. Last week I learned about the can't change a philosophy from you. And I realized that I get upset every day and everything I'm upset over is always something I can't change because guess what? It's something that already what happened? She goes, and I used to sell these little can't change it wristbands at call high schools for five bucks. She goes, I wore your little can't change it wristband. And it's every day, like 30 times a day, I would go, oh, I'm upset. I don't have to be. I can't change it. Wow. And she goes, it was the most freeing three words that I've ever implemented in my life. And she goes, so I wanted a permanent reminder. So I went and got a permanent tattoo of can't change it. And I had some mixed emotions. Number one, I was inspired. Wow. My message inspired you to get a permanent tattoo on your wrist that you're gonna have for the rest of your life. That's amazing. Number two, your parents must hate me.

You go to some motivational conference and you come home with the tattoo. They must not be fans of mine. That can't be good. And I thought this was kind of a one off. I thought, wow, this girl's kind of eccentric. And then a few months later, after I spoke at another high school, I got another email with a similar tattoo of her on her wrist. But this one put me in tears. And I'll summarize what she said. Essentially, she said, hal, I saw you speak at this, at our school. And your. Those words, that five minute rule, that, that philosophy of acceptance really impacted me because I've spent the last 10 years of my life deeply depressed. My father died when I was 9 years old, and now I'm 19. And I've spent the last 10 years in and out of therapy on every prescription medication available to man.

I have been suicidal. I've tried to kill myself multiple times. Nothing has worked. And anytime I shared my pain with another person, they always patted me on the back and they validated my pain. They go, of course you deserve to feel that way. You deserve to be depressed. Your father died. I can't imagine what you're going through. You poor girl. She said, I thought my dad died. And that's why I was depressed for the last 10 years. But I now realize it's because I hadn't accepted that he died. I didn't know that I could. I didn't know that was an option. I didn't know that I had. I actually had the power or the choice to accept it and be at peace with it. She said, for the last 10 days.

It'S the first time in 10 years that I've been happy.

And I wanted a permanent reminder that the memory of my father would never again cause me pain, depression, thoughts of suicide.

It would only cause me gratitude and joy that I was his daughter, that I was alive because of him, and nothing could ever change that. And he'd always be with me.

And.

In that moment, I decided that any message I ever give, I will share this message. I will share. Those three words I will share because I truly believe it's one of, if not the most powerful philosophies and mindsets that just imagine going through life where you're free from emotional pain.

Second, rock bottom financial crisis. Anybody around in 2008? Anybody else? Anybody else go through a financial crisis in 2008? Around that time, wasn't it? Just me. So at that time, I was an entrepreneur. I just launched my first business. I was a sales coach and I was keynote speaker and I had written my first book. So that was kind of my. I had started into my, my dream job, if you will, with those, those three hats that I was wearing. And.

When the economy crashed, my business crashed and I lost over half of my clients. And then I lost my house. I couldn't afford to pay my mortgage. I canceled my gym membership. Very quickly. I went from being in the best shape of my life to tripling my body fat percentage in six months. It was like a six month downward spiral. And for the first time in my life, I got deeply depressed. Now you go, well, how could you be depressed? You had the five minute rule and the can't change it philosophy. I don't understand. I had never experienced applying the five minute rule or the can't change it philosophy with a downward spiral into worsening and worsening and worsening circumstances. When I lost my first client, I took it a little personally. I thought, wow, I've never. I can't believe I lost a coaching client. Can't change it. And I moved on. No big deal, right? Practicing what I preach. And then the next week, I lost two clients that stung a little bit and I went, okay, can't change it. And within six months, again, losing everything. Not everything, but feeling like everything. And just in this quicksand where it got worse and worse and worse. I just can't change it. So many times. I finally was like, I need to fricking change it. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. And a good friend of mine, my now business Partner John Berghoff suggested. I finally confessed I hadn't told anybody because I was a success coach. So you imagine the identity crisis when you're a success coach and you're failing miserably. It's hard to authentically tell clients you can help them succeed. So it was really an identity crisis for me. I finally confessed to my good friend John Berghoff. I called John and he said, hal, if I were you, he said, I would go for a walk, jog, or run every morning. I said, I hate running. What else could I do? He said, what do you hate worse, running or your circumstances that you just described to me? I said, okay, screw you. I'll go for a run. And the next morning, I went for a run. He said, while you're on that run, listen to personal development. He said, hal, you should listen to some either a business audiobook, a Jim Rohn audio. And he actually had me listen to a Jim Rohn audio. And on that run, he heard a quote that changed my entire life.

Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. That was it. And what I realized is this. If you look at the screen, who you're becoming is far more important than what you're doing, and yet it's what you're doing that's determining who you're becoming. See, when Jim said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, I realized I'm not dedicating time every day to my personal development. Like, yeah, I read here and there, and I kind of. I kind of. I'm a personal development dabbler, right? But I don't have a serious, committed, daily personal development practice that will enable me to become the person that I need to be with the qualities, the skills, the confidence, the characteristics, the knowledge to create the success that I want in my life. Here's a way to quantify that. If we're measuring success on a scale of 1 to 10, what level do we all want? 10, right? Nobody's like, I don't want too much money. I don't want people coming out of the woodworks, family members and. Right. No, we all want level 10, right? I don't want to be too happy, like one of those annoying people that are so happy. I want, like, a six. No, we want level 10. Health, happiness, success, wealth, marriage, you name it, we want level 10 in every area. But here's what I realized with Jim's quote is if my level of personal development is at a 2, which at that time I would say it was. That's a big disconnect. And I believe this is the problem plaguing our society is we all want level 10 success, success. But very few people are becoming a level 2, 10 person every single day. Right? We go to a conference. I think people go to conferences. You know, I think often we want that quick fix. We want. We want to. We want. You know, I'm at a level two, but I'm gonna go to Capitalism Conference and become a level 10. Just doesn't work that way right now. You might go to Capitalism conference, go from a 2 to a 4, right, and be on your way. And if you start implementing what you're learning, it is that gradual, compound effect, daily, consistent practice that makes all the difference. And so the second thing that I learned that matters most is personal development. You'll see. There's Jim Rohn's quote. So any Miracle Morning practitioners in the room, raise your hand if you do the Miracle Morning on a consistent basis. All right? There's a huge opportunity in here. Great.

So Robert Kiyosaki says, you should do it, by the way. All right, so there are. The Miracle Morning is essentially the ultimate morning ritual. And I'm not gonna go in a lot of detail about it, but it's made up of six practices. And thanks to my brilliant wife, who one day when I was writing the Miracle Morning book and I was frustrated, I go, sweetie, I go. And I literally said this to her. I said. She said, what's wrong? I said, well, I've got these six practices, but they're just random practices. I said, robert Kiyosaki's got the cash flow quote quadrant. Stephen Covey's got the seven habits of highly effective people. I've just got these random hodgepodge practices that have no rhyme or reason or connection. She goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and see if there's words that are similar to all the words that are the six practices and see if you can make an acronym.

She's amazing. Um, if it wasn't for the acronym, I don't know that. That the impact the Miracle Morning has had would be being had, because these are the six practices. Meditation became silent, by the way. It's actually the. The. The S's are where it was meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. So the acronym was maverja, and it just didn't work. So it became the savers. Right? Silence or silence or meditation became silence. Journaling became scribing, which is a fancy word for writing. I guess it wasn't in my vocabulary, but I'm going to focus in on one of these now. I'm going to tell you what Robert Kiyosaki said when he interviewed me. He said, hal, before the miracle morning, every successful person on the planet swore by at least one of the savers. He said, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that succeeds at a high level consistently over time that doesn't practice at least one of the savers consistently, right? So some swear just by meditation. That's their. You know, Russell Simmons is a great example. Um, Will Smith said affirmations. He told Ellen, affirmations is the reason he is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, because he's been affirming it since he was 15 years old. And now he simply lives what he affirmed. And that's what I want to dive in for you. I want to dive in on affirmations. Affirmations, I believe, are the most powerful form of personal development, in my opinion. People ask me when they interview me, you know, do you have a favorite saver? Without question, it's affirmations. Affirmations have a bad rap for a few reasons. One is Stuart Smalley. Any Stuart Smalley fans, right? If you're really young, you don't know who that is. But back in like the 90s, I think Saturday Night Live, there was this guy, Stuart Smalley, he did this funny show called like Positive Affirmations. He'd look in the mirror and go, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. So.

Affirmations have been thought of as, I think, kind of silly for that reason and others here are why affirmations have failed you. Number one, lying to yourself doesn't work the way that affirmations have been perpetuated and taught for decades, maybe, I don't know how long, centuries. I haven't been around that long. But for a long time, by a lot of self help gurus, if you will, is if you want to be a millionaire, you just have to put the words I am in front of whatever you want to be and then you'll become it. You ever heard that way of affirmations before? I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. But guess what? We're pretty smart and we know if that's not true, right? If you're not even a thousandaire yet, you're gonna be like, your subconscious is gonna go, no, you're not. No, you're not. No, you're not. So lying to Yourself will never be the optimum strategy. The second reason affirmations don't work is that passive language doesn't produce measurable results. What I mean is, another form of affirmation is money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. Anybody heard that one before or some variation of that, right? No. No, it doesn't. It actually takes effort. Ryan Moran will be the first to tell you. Capitalism takes a little effort, right? Doesn't flow to you effortlessly. So those are the two reasons affirmations are ineffective. You can't lie to yourself, and you can't use this passive, flowery language. So in order to create affirmations that get you real results, I'm gonna redefine affirmations for you and I'm gonna simplify. Very simple all. An affirmation is a reminder of what matters most to you in the simplest form. That's all. An affirmation is a reminder why it matters to you and what you're committed to doing and when.

So I'll give you an example. One of my affirmations is to make my wife's life amazing. I decided about a year, right before I got cancer. But a little over a year ago, I said this realization that I was keeping score unconsciously with my wife. I think we all do that in relationships sometimes. You know, it's like, you know, oh, you're being rude to me. Well, I'm gonna be rude to you, right? Oh, you did this nice thing for me. I feel like I should do something nice for you, right? It's human nature. But I thought, you know what? That's not what I want to be about. I don't want my marriage to be about that. Keeping score and playing the game. I am gonna commit, and I made an affirmation. I'm gonna commit every day to do something, at least one thing, every single day to make my wife's life amazing. One day that might be just taking out the trash. One day it might be putting the kids to bed when I know she's exhausted and I can tell that maybe I'm exhausted, too. But I'm gonna make her life amazing. Maybe it's a big thing, like taking her on a vacation or something. Here's the point. If it wasn't an affirmation that I read every single day, guess what I'd forget to do every day? Make my wife's life. What? Amazing. You ever do that? You ever set a goal, but you don't review it every day? Like, you write it down, and then maybe you don't Even see it until the next year when you go to set your goals and you find the goals from the last year that you set and you realize, I haven't looked at these in 12 months. Right? That's all an affirmation is. It's a reminder of what matters most to you. And then beyond that, you get clear on why it matters to remind you why it's so important. And then you got to get clear on the action. What are you gonna do each day? So I have affirmations for every single area of my life. And affirmations were one of the biggest parts of getting through the last year of my life, the cancer journey, if you will. So here's what I would encourage you to do when you go home, or if you do it here, whenever you are going through all of your notes from Capitalism conference, the question that I encourage you to ask is, what matters most? And what matters most also depends on timing, right? What matters most right now? And then I would, in fact, I'd have a list. What matters most? What am I gonna implement this between now and the end of the year? And less is more, right? Don't have 15 things you're trying to implement. Less is more. What matters most? And then what matters most for me to implement next year, you know, and get really. And then what matters? What doesn't matter in the next two years? But I'm going to put on my someday list. It's really important to have a someday list because you can't cloud that with the Today list. Otherwise you get overwhelmed. Anybody ever feel overwhelmed? Because you've got so many things on your list, Some of them could happen in three years. Doesn't matter. But our brain does not automatically categorize things based on the appropriate timing. Just doesn't do that when it sees something goes, I need to do that shit, I need to do that and I need to do that and I need to do that and I need to do that guy. There's so much I have to do. But if you go, wait, what matters most now? And then, the rest can be put off until after the first of the year. And beyond that.

My third rock bottom.

Just over a year ago, right before Halloween, my wife and I booked a trip to go visit my grandma. We had not taken the kids yet to see my grandma. My daughter Sophie is 8, my son is 5. And it's been on my list to take the kid to see my grandmother. And I finally went, you know, she's not going around forever. Gotta do it. So we booked A flight. Well, a few days before we were supposed to leave for that trip to go Colorado, I woke up in the middle of the night.

Just gasping for air. I didn't know what was wrong. I sat up in bed. I couldn't breathe. I woke up my wife. I said, sweetie, having trouble breathing. And she propped me up on pillows, and I ended up kind of falling back asleep. And I kept waking up unable to breathe. Well, went to the urgent care next day, and they misdiagnosed me with pneumonia. And I.

It was funny. The urgent care doctor, he. He's like, it looks like you, based on the X rays on your lung. There's like a mask that looks like you have pneumonia. But he wasn't very. There was not a certainty in his voice, but there was a lot of certainty in his next statement, which was, if it doesn't get better in a few days, go get a second opinion. Go see your real doctor. Like, okay. So it didn't get better in a few days. So I went to my real doctor. I was. I mean, I spent those few days in bed just sitting up, breathing, trying to breathe. And I went and saw my regular doctor, and my wife and kids went to Colorado without me because I couldn't breathe. Something was wrong. And so they went without me, and I left the doctor's office. And I got a call that afternoon from the nurse, and she said, hey, he'd like to you to come in in the morning to go over the results from your test, The CAT scan, CT scan. And I said, okay. And I really didn't think too much of it. That's weird. And went in the next morning. And it's funny, I could tell the doc was really stressed to tell me what was going on. And so I said, doc, let me ease whatever you're about to tell me. I don't know what it is. I said, but just so you know, I accept all things I can't change without any pain. So lay it on. It's fine. I'll be okay. I can handle it, whatever it is. And he said, well, Hal, it looks like you got something. Something's going on, and it could be an infection that I really can't explain. But he said, worst case scenario, you might have some sort of lymphoma, some sort of cancer, because your lymph nodes above your lung are enlarged and it's causing this fluid to excrete, and it's collapsing your lung. If you look at the X ray, you'll see the white mass on the left side that's my full lung. And on the right side, that little white mass is what was left of that lung to breathe. So it was like one eighth of the size that it should be. So it's basically working off of one lung. And I. He said, you might have cancer. We need to do some more testing. And I live an anti cancer lifestyle. I'm like, you know, no chemicals in our house, only organic plant based diet. So I'm like, there's. There's no way it's cancer. It's got to be some weird infection. I fell in the. I had fallen in the lane, got a lake and got a concussion a few weeks before. Swallowed some lake water at Lake Travis and they were having some, some problems with like sewage in it. So I told him that. He goes, yeah, it could be from that. Maybe you got something in your system. And I'm like, probably what it is. Get on some antibiotics, whatever, that'll take care of it. And I got in the car and I called my wife and.

I was at peace with it. But having to imagine how she was going to receive this news that worst case scenario, I could have a deadly disease that could kill me. I knew my wife's mind would go there. And so I called her and started crying, just trying to tell her what happened or what was going on. And I was of course, reassuring her, it's going to be fine, sweetie. I'm sure it's nothing. And even if it is, it's fine. We'll beat it. No big deal. And then I called John Vroman, who's sitting in the front row right here. My good friend John Vroman, founder of the Front Row foundation and author of Front Row Factor. Just little plug, get that book. But. But I called John and I said, hey, buddy, I said, what I'm about to tell you, you're probably gonna. You might, you know, might. It's gonna be hard, maybe hard to hear, I don't know. I said, just know that I'm at peace with it. It's fine. And I told him all about it, told him what was going on and you know, he's very concerned. And I said, I said, look, I said, obviously if it is cancer, there's another book I'm supposed to ride or something I'm supposed to do. I don't know what it is, but there's something. And by the way, as a little. Again, pause. That I believe anytime we go through anything, it's an opportunity for us to learn and grow and become better than we've ever been. Before. And the greater the adversity, the greater the opportunity to learn, grow, and become even better. And that's true for all of us. Right? There is always an advantage that comes with every adversity. So I went to St. David's here in Austin, I live here in Austin, and had some more tests and they confirmed you have, it looks like you have cancer, but we'd like you to go to MD Anderson in Houston, which is one of the top cancer hospitals in the world, for another opinion. My father flew out immediately. My father in law flew out and we went out to that hospital. Now.

The fluid that was in my lung, this was them draining that fluid out. So they stuck me with this thick needle and they drained the lung. Over the next 11 days, they did this six times. And they drained a liter of fluid. Picture, you know, the big Fiji bottles. A liter and a half of fluid every other day for 11 days. It was painful, it was scary. I've got all sorts of different needle stabbing scars in my back.

Then I went to MD Anderson and this is me going in for my first test to find out from them if I had cancer.

When I went in, they found out that not only did I have cancer, and not only was my lung collapsed, but my kidneys were on the verge of failing. And my heart was surrounded by a sack of fluid that was about an eighth of an inch thick. And they said if it got to be another eighth of an inch thick, if it increased by just 1/8 of an inch, my heart would not be able to beat and it would stop and I would die from heart failure. So my kidneys were failing, my lungs were failing, and my heart was failing. And so you see me here hooked up, they're draining fluid out of my heart, they're draining fluid out of my, out of my lungs.

And this is me going in for a scary. My first operation, MD Anderson, which was immediately that day, they said, we've got to take immediate action. We need to drain the fluid around your heart. And I had to sign a consent that said we're going to be sticking a needle in a 18 inch sack and if your heart beats, it will puncture your heart and you will go into cardiac arrest. And we'll have to open up your chest and we'll have to perform emergency heart surgery. And I was awake for the whole procedure. So it's super freaky.

And then I started chemo the next day. I went to the doctor, I said, I believe in holistic medicine. I do not want to do chemotherapy. I Feel like it's kind of a poison. I don't want to put that in my body. And he said, hal, you don't have a cancer that you can play with or you don't have time. He said, a week ago, you were healthy. This week, your kidneys hard and lungs are failing. You have between a few days and maybe a week tops before you are going to be dead if we do not start chemotherapy. I thought it was a scare tactic. So I said, give me. I'm going to go home. I need to consult Dr. Google before we make any major decisions.

Doctors love that, by the way, when you come in, you're like. So I was googling. And they're like. They just roll. They're like, Jesus.

So I basically found out the doctor was not. It wasn't a scare tactic. The cancer that I had, which was extraordinarily rare. Out of 1.5 million cancer patients, there are less than 100 that have what I have.

And many of them I don't. Of the hundred roughly that had it a year ago, I don't know how many of them are still alive, sadly. And I started chemo the next day. Immediately, all my symptoms went away, which was awesome. And my hair started to fall out, and I was like, wow, it happened this fast, okay. And so that was the day I shaved my head, which I always kind of wondered what I look like with a shaved head. So that was kind of fun. It was kind of cool.

They installed a. What's that called? A PICC line in my arm. So this is kind of interesting.

I have a line so when they do chemotherapy, they can't put it. I had the most intensive chemotherapy in the world. I believe it's called hypercvad, where normally, folks, every. Everybody's different. Every cancer is different. But when people go in for chemo, they'll usually go in for like one hour a month. Like, they'll get an infusion for an eye through an IV for one hour a month. I got five chemo drugs, 12 hours each, for five consecutive days, round the clock in the hospital every three weeks for eight months.

So I. It was one of the hardest chemos that I guess you can go through. And so they have to put in this. It's called a PICC line, where it's a tube. You see it in my arm there. And the tube runs through my vein right into where my heart is because the chemos are so strong that I was getting that it will burn through your vein and melt your skin. And I thought that's going in my body. So there was a lot of resistance to this whole thing. But that PICC line was a blast.

And this became my life. I lived at the hospital for the last year. My dad became my caretaker. We got an apartment a mile from the hospital because we had to be in and out so often. And you'd go home, you'd be sick, and then you'd have these crazy, unexpected emergencies that would come up. And, you know, it'd be midnight, we'd have to go to the er. And this was just. This was the last year of my life. It was crazy and mostly positive. I got to exercise. This is me. That's my IV tower. That becomes. They call it your walking buddy or whatever. Like, I just walked around with that all, all the time. And that's what I was hooked to for those five days that I was in the hospital doing push ups with my IV tower. And then it got really, really difficult. It got really difficult and really painful physically, mentally, and emotionally for me and for my family. The last year of my life, I lived in that apartment over half of the year or the hospital. So my poor kids didn't have a dad at home. My mom. Sorry, my wife, she loves when I call her mom.

My wife was a single mom, essentially for over half of the last year.

I had to get chemotherapy injected into my spine eight times over that period, basically once a month. Because the cancer that I have, it tended to hide in your spinal cord and then travel up and then turn into brain cancer. And we actually have a family. Or my wife has a friend who. Cause I was like, I'm not doing chemo in my spine. That's. No, no, no. Enough of this chemo. And my wife's friend.

She chimed in and said, my husband had a similar cancer to your husband. Not the same thing, but it was similar. We beat it, got rid of it, we celebrated. And then he died of brain cancer. And I went, okay, put chemo in my spine.

This was the first of a couple of eye infections. And it started out relatively harmless, just kind of itchy. And then I looked like a chipmunk. And my entire face swelled up, and the amount of pain was unbearable. I don't know how I'm pulling that smile off. And then that's how bad it got. And this happened twice. And one of kind of many complications, if you will. This was life. That PICC line. Every single day. Every single day for the last 300 and, you know, almost 65 days. My father or my wife had to Clear the picc line every night. We just had to clear it so that it didn't clot with blood. That's my dad doing his job, my wife doing hers.

Now this picture makes me happy because I've never, like Russell Brunson. I can't grow facial hair very well. Never been able to grow facial hair. I got this little goatee thing. That's it. All of a sudden, in between chemos, I grow the most epic mustache I've ever seen in my life. I'm like, this is incredible. And I took pictures. I sent it to all my friends. I'm like, check out this mustache. And one of my friends in particular is Joe Polish. And I said, joe, we are twinsies, buddy. I now look like Joe Polish. I said, grow a little more hair. So you don't know if you thought I looked at Mike and. But this is me and Christmas last year. This was last Christmas. So last Christmas I was in the hospital.

I still managed to maintain as much normalcy for my kids as I could. This is my five minute journal entry. Daddy daughter date with my daughter Sophie, playing with my son Halston. We had the opposite hair. I thought, son, I might need to borrow your hair someday. So just keep it growing.

Doing cosmic kids yoga with my boy.

Out on the boat on Lake Travis with my son.

I lost 40 pounds and I didn't have 40 pounds to lose, you know, but I lost 40 pounds and I lost 40 pounds in three weeks, maybe two weeks.

That's my kids. And I do tell you, anybody ever get insecure about their appearance.

When you lose £40 and you're suddenly bald? I was. At least I got. I mean, for the most part I couldn't change it. I was accepted it, but I really thought there was one celebrity. Even though I was bit a little insecure about my appearance, there was one celebrity I didn't feel like real attracted to my wife. You can understand that, right? I'm thinking she doesn't want it. She would tell me I was so sexy and I'm like, sweetie, come on. But there was one celebrity that I felt like I looked like anybody. Guess who you think? Any celebrity you can guess. Pitbull. Close. Anybody else?

Anybody else? Any what celebrity you think I look like?

So that's. It's not the one.

It'S not the one that you'd want to look like. But I was like, I look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. This is terrible.

So we're gonna close by talking about the third aspect of life that I believe is one of the most important. And again, this is my opinion. I'm not telling you what's most important or what matters most. I'm telling you what I've identified matters most. To me.

This is the first time I announced or well, I guess the first time. But in the Miracle Morning Community, which is the Facebook group that I created to follow up with a book. And we have 127,000 members in there and the support of that community was incredible. In fact, it was in that post. You'll see there, there's a thousand comments and the comments were. Every single one was like this. Hal, thanks for staying strong. You have so many fans and followers who care about you and your well being and we all wish you the healthiest recovery. Keep staying strong. We love you. You're already on the right track. And I cannot tell you how much my community lifted me up during that time. It also made me realize this, this comment, she said, you are so fortunate to have so much love, family support, you should ask for prayers for those who are alone and going through suffering. God bless. And that was powerful because it really turned my attention to not just receiving, but giving. And I started recording video blogs and I started a nonprofit called Support the Unsupported because there were so many people I realized that don't have a community, that don't have the support, the financial resources, all of that. So we have a 501C3 that is in process or whatever, but just supporting those that don't have the support and it leads to community. And that's our Miracle Morning Community at our recent live event a couple weeks ago. But Michael Reese says community is the new currency. And community, both on a personal level and on a professional level, community is the new currency, is the professional component. And I would encourage all of you, when you're identifying what matters most, I would look at your communities right there. You know the expression there are levels to this, right? Well, your family or your loved ones, right? That's the most important community I would imagine. At least for me it is. And then there's your friends, right? That's another level of community. And then there's your clients and there's your colleagues and so on and so forth. But making the importance of community in your world, in your life, in how you live each day and how you show up, maybe the biggest game changer for you in terms of your personal happiness and emotional well being and also your bottom line and your finances.

So I'm going to close with an acronym. So we've got the savers for personal development and we've got the SAVE acronym for community development. When I say save your community, I want to read this quote before I explain the acronym. Tim Sanders said, those of us who use love as a point of differentiation in business will separate ourselves from our competitors. Do you use love as a point of differentiation in your business? Do you love your customers? And I don't mean just inside. Think about how you treat people that you love. Do you treat your prospects like you love them? Do you express love and gratitude? If you're on my email list, you'll notice every email I sign is with love and gratitude. And that felt weird at first, but it was authentic. I just had to do it. I just had to, like, this is how I feel. I want everything I'm sending these people is with love and gratitude and a bunch of other, you know, adjectives that I can't fit into a salutation or whatever. But loving your community, and here's the way to do it, here's an actionable strategy to love your community, both personal and professional. And it's simply selflessly add value every day. That's it. And I would go as far as to say that you could e to the third power. Selflessly add value every day, everywhere, with everyone.

And here's it matters for a lot of reasons, but one is this. The more value that you add to the lives of others, the more valuable you become to others.

And it's true. Professionally, it's true. Personally. I adopted this philosophy when I was in 2004, the last year I was with the company Cutco. And since then, this is my driving force. It's my purpose in life every single day, is to selflessly add value everywhere with everyone, as much as I possibly can. And when you do that, here's the cool thing. Opportunities become abundant, but maybe more importantly, you become fulfilled. So opportunities become abundant, but you find fulfillment not by trying to achieve, not by trying to get more or achieve more or even create more, but by striving to add more value to the world and the lives of people around you.

One year can change everything. This is our family picture from one year ago. And the family pictures that we took two weeks ago.

Radically different.

What will this year bring for you? Identifying what matters most today.

When you leave here, and then living in alignment every day with what matters most. And I encourage you to create affirmations that remind you what matters most, remind you why it matters most, and remind you and reinforce what you're committed to doing. And when to live in alignment with what matters most to you. Thank you for your time. I love you. Have a great one.