646: What You Want Is Inside of You with Hal Elrod

Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world-class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves, and we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go. What if everything you need to be the happiest, most at peace, and most fulfilled you've ever been is already inside of you, available right now in this exact moment and every moment of your life? Not after the promotion, not once the relationship improves or the debt disappears or the problems are solved or the kids finally listen. Not when the world calms down or the news gets better, because spoiler, it won't. But right now, as you are, with everything in your life exactly as it is. Now, I know you might be thinking, yeah, that sounds nice, Hal, but you don't know what my life is like. You don't know what I'm going through or what I've been through. That's fair. And you're right. I don't know what your life is like, and I would probably be skeptical if I were you listening to this too. And we live in an age that I think has made skepticism almost mandatory. Between the economic uncertainty, the AI revolution, which we talked about last week with Jeff Woods, all of that quietly dismantling entire industries and a social media feed that seems specifically engineered to make you feel behind, anxious, and vaguely inadequate by 8:00 AM or whenever you check your feed. It takes a certain audacity to suggest that what you've been searching for isn't somewhere out there, that it is in here. And when I say it in here, I'm pointing at my chest right now. But that's exactly what I'm telling you. And I'm not saying it because it sounds good and it's fluffy feel-good motivational stuff. I'm saying it because I've lived the alternative and I'd argue it nearly killed me. Literally. There's a period of my life where I had built everything that I thought I needed to be happy. The career was working beyond where I'd imagined. The family was beautiful. By most measures, I was winning. And then within the span of a few years, You probably know my story. Cancer showed up uninvited. My body stopped cooperating, and I found myself lying in a hospital bed wondering what really mattered. And the external circumstances that I had worked so hard to arrange into something resembling a good life had been rearranged without my permission and in a way I had never expected. And what I discovered in that hospital bed and the painful clarifying years that followed is that the one thing no circumstance can touch, that no diagnosis can take, and no economy can crash, is who you are on the inside. Think about that. The peace, the joy, the love, the sense of purpose that we spend our entire lives chasing in the external world. Those things were never out there to begin with. They were always inside of us. We just forgot. Life got hard. People hurt us in school and relationships and on and on and on. And we failed and we got rejected and we got embarrassed and we got scared. And over time, we literally were born as these innocent beings, these human/spiritual beings. And then life kind of beat us up along the way. And most of us have been running a search in the wrong location for a long time. And this episode is about finding your way back to that place inside of you. And you probably are tired of hearing this. I've been working on a book for many, many years, like 6 years. And I've got 190 pages written of a book that I still don't fully, like there's, anyway, I don't wanna burden you with my challenges. Actually, you, you probably would relate. You're like, yeah, I, I'm not sure the exact direction to go sometimes in my life, whatever. But anyway, that's another story for another time. The point is, one of the working titles for the book is The Miracle Within. Another one is The Miracle Life, and then there's some that don't have the word miracle at all. Part of what I'm struggling with here is finalizing that, but the point is The Miracle Within is about finding that place inside of you that I just described, right? That place that you were born in a state of pure consciousness, peace, love, joy, limitless possibilities. That place exists inside of us always, and the problem is that we have been conditioned to believe that everything that we're searching for is outside of us. And one of my favorite authors, arguably my favorite author in the entire world, Kyle Cease, who has become a good friend. He lives like 20 minutes away, but Kyle, it was one of his books or maybe it was one of his talks. I think it was an audiobook of his, but he said, imagine that you got a phone call today, right? Just imagine this. Okay. So let's say you're having a bad day, average day, whatever. You get a phone call and you find out that you won $10 million in the lottery. Okay. Imagine that you won $10 million in the lottery, right? Imagine, and they say, hey, it'll be in your account next month. And imagine hanging up the phone. Imagine the emotions that you would feel, the state that you would be in, right? Just excitement. Pure possibility, imagine you'd be on top of the world. You'd be so excited. I want you to think about something for a second. All of the emotions and the feelings, the state that would be generated would not be from any money actually changing hands. Like, think about that. No money's in your account. You haven't bought things with said money. All that's happened is you've given yourself permission now unconsciously, albeit you probably don't say out loud, oh, now I can feel good. Unconsciously, you've given yourself permission to feel the way that you aspire to feel. Like all of us, we just want to feel good. We just want to be happy. And so now you got this news that you won all this money, and now you unconsciously give yourself permission to feel all of the feelings that you want to feel. Like you probably couldn't feel any better than you feel in the moments following that phone call. Again, nothing's actually happened. You just got new information that shifted your perspective that allowed you to feel a certain way. Now then imagine, I know this is gonna be rough, but you get a phone call back and they go, oh, we made a mistake. You actually didn't win it. We called the wrong person. Right? We're so sorry. You don't get any money. Talk to you later. Now I want you to think about the new set of emotions that you would experience, probably a level of disappointment that you've maybe never experienced in your life, or maybe you have, you probably have, you've been disappointed before, but imagine the way that you would feel just, no, no, I can't believe this. You'd be just crushed at this news that you didn't win the $10 million that you had just thought you'd won. Now you'd be even lower than you were before you got the first phone call. You'd be a wreck. You'd be ruminating it over in your head and wishing it— no, how could this be? How could they have made that mistake? And you'd be hoping that the second phone call was also a mistake and that they would call you back and that they would say, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, actually you did win the money, right? The point of that is what happened is this external illusion that you allowed yourself to feel all of the emotions that you want to feel. Hey, it's Hal. If you are a dad or you know a dad, I have something really important to share share with you. It's Front Row Dads. I've been a member of Front Row Dads for over 10 years since the very beginning, and it has transformed my life as a husband, as a father, and as a family man. And so if you are a dad, if you're a father struggling to balance work and family, feeling like you're not showing up at your best and you really want to be the best you can be for the people that you love the most, I highly recommend checking out Front Row Dads. Head over to frontrowdads.com. /hal to let them know you came from this show. Again, frontrowdads.com/hal. And the theme of the group is to be a family man with a business, not a businessman with a family. If that's you, check out frontrowdads.com/hal and I'll see you there. And I would argue, in fact, referencing another one of my favorite authors, Michael Singer, in his book, The Untethered Soul, I think it might've been Living Untethered, but one of Michael Singer's books might've been The Surrender Experiment. Hal Elrod. No, I think it was, anyway, it doesn't matter. One of Michael Singer's books, and I'll paraphrase what he said, but it was essentially that if all we want is to feel good, like we just want to feel at peace and we want to feel happy, we want to feel loved, we want to feel excited about life and optimistic. Like those are the things that we want to feel. And he said, if you can figure out how to feel those things all the time, and you don't base them on external circumstances or forces, you essentially win in life. Like, you win, you win, you win life, you win life, right? You figured it out because that's all we really want. Everything that we're doing is an attempt to do something or create something or accomplish something or achieve something that we believe will give us those feelings. Those emotions, that state that we desire. So The Miracle Within, the secret to success, like, is how do you rewire your brain and your nervous system so that you can feel good and feel up and feel excited whenever you want? Not all the time.. And that the old me would've said all the time, but there's value in feeling sad. There's value in every emotional state. Every emotional state serves a purpose. Feeling sad, grieving, those are all very natural processes. In fact, I think I might have given myself cancer. One of my theories, nobody knows why, doctors didn't know what caused it, but I've examined what are all the things that I did to my body, my body essentially, that could have caused cancer. And one of them is when you suppress your emotions. Which I did. I think I started at 8 years old when my sister passed away. I didn't like the way I felt having to think about her dying. And so I immediately made it positive and I was like, hey guys, Amery's in heaven. Isn't that great? Heaven's a great place. And in that moment I was like, oh wow, when you focus on the positive, you don't have to feel the pain. I don't know that that was healthy. There's a book called The Body Keeps the Score. Which breaks down the science. There's another one. I'm drawing a blank, but there's another similar one. But anyway, the point is The Body Keeps the Score, which is like your emotions are literal physical energy in the body. Like there's a physical reaction, which is why when you're angry, your palms get sweaty and your face turns red. And like there's a physical reaction in the body from our emotions. And when you sustain painful emotions for an extended period of time, It has a negative impact on the body. Like, this is one of many reasons to learn how to control your emotional state, to learn what I believe is the ultimate superpower, which is being able to consciously dictate your mental and emotional state at will in any given set of circumstances. That's part of what we're talking about today. And so it's learning how to be at peace with the things that you can't change so that they have no control over you. It's cultivating the optimal mental and emotional states every day so that they become your norm. And if you read the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition, well, two things in there. One is the emotional optimization meditation, which is a very simple technique where you essentially, you're consciously identifying what would be the optimal mental and emotional state that would best serve me in this moment and today. And in my life right now, then you are accessing that state through either your memories or, right, meaning you're going, okay, when have I last felt in that state? You're closing your eyes, you're putting your hand maybe on your chest, you're resting them on your legs, and you're picturing yourself in an optimal state. Maybe you're affirming that I am capable of getting into that state right now. I've been there before. My mental and emotional state, that's my choice. It is not dictated by my circumstances. See, a lot of this is— it starts with a paradigm shift. Like, you have to believe and like understand to know that you get to choose your state. That is your choice. Most of us were never taught that. In fact, most of us were taught by adults modeling the exact opposite of that, which is when things go good, that's when you feel good. And when things don't go good, when they don't go well, when they don't go your way, well, then you get upset. Then you get sad. Then you get angry. Then you get like, right? That's what we were taught. That's what every adult in our life modeled. And if you've ever studied enlightenment, which I, I'm trying to think, I don't know the first book, but it was in my twenties, mid-twenties, I think. When I think the first book I probably read on the subject of enlightenment was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And then I started going into some more like esoteric, deeper, kind of harder reads, which were, oh, Andrew, I'm drawing a blank on his name. He wrote Living Enlightenment, I believe was the book. And then his partner in crime, his buddy Ken Wilber, who's a really hard read. You maybe get like, you understand 50% of what you're reading and you just kind of have to gloss over the other 50% or get out a dictionary and a thesaurus and be like, what is he saying? But you get the gist of it. But the point is, when you study enlightenment, that's essentially how I would define enlightenment is it's like freedom. This is freedom. When you embrace enlightenment, a state of enlightenment, you're embracing a state of freedom. Like I am choosing to be free from unnecessary suffering because I'm not going to put any energy into wishing I could change things that are out of my control. And you've heard me maybe talk about this before, and this actually, I'm rereading The Power of Now right now. I read it 22 years ago and I'm rereading it right now. And it's so funny how, and this is a really, here's a little bonus lesson for you. When we've read a book, we assume that we remember, like if somebody mentioned a book like, oh yeah, I'm reading this great book, The Power of Now, or if someone's like, yeah, Miracle Morning, whatever. I'd be like, oh yeah, Power Now. Yeah, I've read that. Yeah. Read that. I would totally dismiss. The value of that book because I read it 22 years ago. And I'm reminded of that as I'm, I'm almost done with the book now for reading it again. And I'm reminded like, I don't remember like 90% of this, right? There's what, 300 pages in this book or 250 pages. Maybe I could summarize a page worth of content. But so the point is make sure you reread books that changed your life. Like if you read a book and it impacted your life in a profound way, Go back and reread it. Don't think that just 'cause you read it once, you got it, 'cause you probably don't. 'Cause I know I don't. If you struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep, I have a supplement that I take that I've taken for about 3 years now, ev— virtually every single night. I highly recommend it. It's called Nightcaps by Cured Nutrition. It is a CBN and CBD oil supplement, and CBN supports your body's natural sleep rhythms throughout the night for deep restorative sleep that leaves you feeling refreshed and ready to rise in the morning. Highly recommended. I book in my days with Cured Nutrition. I take their Flow gummies in the morning. I take Night Caps at night, and you can get 20% off of both of those products as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. Head over to curednutrition.com/hal. That's curednutrition.com/hal and use the discount code HAL for 20% off. Your entire order. And if you do a subscription, which I do a monthly subscription for both of those products, you get an additional 20% off that stacks on top of the 20% as a listener. So you can save a bunch of money and it'll help you fall asleep and stay asleep. Again, Cured Nutrition Nightcaps in the evening, and I start my day with Flow Gummies every single morning. And I hope these products will help you and enhance your life as they have for mine. Enjoy the rest of the episode. The lesson that I got from The Power of Now, which really wasn't the, like, surface primary lesson, meaning the surface primary lesson was live in the moment. Like, the only thing that is real is now. In fact, I'll mention this right now and then I'll go into the other lesson that I think is even more profound and more valuable for you and for me. But if you haven't read The Power of Now, the premise of the book is that The only thing that's real is this moment. And I want you to think about that in this context of wherever you are right now in the world. Like I right now am in Dripping Springs, Texas. Okay. I'm at home. Well, this moment is the only thing that's actually happening and it's happening across the entire world and arguably the universe. I don't know about the space-time continuum and all of that, but right, meaning in Japan right now. This exact moment is happening in Japan for every person in Japan. It's happening in South America and North America and Europe and Russia, and you name it, right? I'm heading to Estonia tomorrow to speak at Mindvalley University. This moment right now is happening in Estonia. When I'm in Estonia, the moment that I'll be experiencing in each moment will be the same moment that's happening in the US at home here with my family. The point is that most of us live our lives in the illusion of time. Where we're reminiscing over the past or ruminating over the past or feeling stressed over things that we wish we would have done differently. We're living with regret or we're worried about the future. We're living in fear and we're missing life. Like the reality is the only thing that is real is this moment right now that we are experiencing. Ah, and most of our problems are created in our mind, but there's actually like right now, like if I were to say, what are your problems? You'd have to think about them and go, well, this one, and then you'd feel stress again. Your emotional state would change based on you thinking about this stressful thing. Oh, and I got this other thing going on and my bank account's not where I need it to be, and I've got conflict in my relationship. But in this moment, is there really a problem? Like in this moment when you're living in the now, you actually allow yourself to feel fulfilled. So anyway, I don't wanna go too far into this. This is a premise of that book, but I'm getting off track from the main focus of the message. The other lesson, the primary lesson that I learned that changed my life, and that's relevant to being able to choose your optimal mental and emotional state in any given set of circumstances, including the circumstances that you're struggling with right now in your life, in any area of your life, whatever those are. The lesson I learned from Eckhart Tolle, and it's funny, I didn't know I learned it from him until I went back and read the book. I'm like, oh, I teach this lesson. I learned it from Eckhart. I need to start giving him credit. It's this. The source of all emotional pain is, in one word, resistance. In two words, resisting reality. In the simplest way to explain that is it's our wishing and wanting that something that happened or is happening now, or is a circumstance we're enduring, or is we're perceiving to occur in the future, like death. It's our resistance to reality, our wishing and wanting that reality were different. That causes our pain. It's not reality itself. And the way you can kind of prove that is that two people can be enduring the same reality. Let's say two people lost someone they love, or two people got fired from the same company, or two, you pick it, or two people are getting a divorce, or two people have cancer, and one is suffering mentally and emotionally, and one is not. And when you talk to them, you find out why the one that is suffering is resisting reality. You say, hey, how's it going? They go, oh my gosh, this isn't fair. I don't deserve this. I, life wasn't supposed to be this way. I wish I didn't have cancer. I wish I didn't lose my job. I wish my spouse didn't leave me. I wish I resist the reality of what's happening. And listen closely to this part, to the degree that we resist reality. Determines the degree of emotional pain that we create for ourselves. So every painful emotion is caused by resistance to reality, and therefore it is self-created because we are resisting reality. Now, if you talk to the other person that's going through the same challenge, but they're at peace, you go, wait, you're going through the exact same adversity right now. You lost the same loved one, or you also have the same cancer, or you are bankrupt or whatever. Why is the first person, they're so emotionally distraught, like maybe they're suicidal. They can't handle it, but you're totally at peace. What's the difference? And they go, well, I've accepted my reality exactly as it is. And an important distinction is it doesn't mean I'm happy with that reality. It means I'm at peace with it. When you accept reality exactly as it is, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're fired up about the thing that's difficult and challenging, and maybe it's causing you physical pain, right? It's far more powerful than that. It's meaning being happy. Happiness is an emotion that's fleeting. We already gave the example from Kyle Cease's book, The Illusion of Money. That's his book that I was referring to, which is the lottery winner, right? They win the lottery. They were having a bad day. Now they heard they win the lottery. They're super happy because their circumstances changed, because their happiness and their emotional state is dependent on their external circumstances. Then they find out they didn't win the lottery. Now they're depressed and they're sad and they even feel worse than they've got the first phone call, right? So most of us, our internal state is dependent on our external circumstances. So. The cause of that is resistance. The solution to that is acceptance. And if you ever heard me share the 5-minute rule, it's where you set your timer. I learned that in my Cutco sales training when I was 20 years old, 19 years old. You set your timer for 5 minutes, give yourself 5 minutes to get upset, process your emotions, kind of alchemize them, if you will. And when the timer goes off after 5 minutes, you say, ah, 3 very liberating words. Can't change it. It's an acknowledgement. I can't change it. So I'm not going to waste another minute of my life. Wishing that I could, because that resistance, that wishing and wanting you could change the unchangeable, which is often from the past, whether it was 5 minutes ago or 5 decades ago when you were much younger, 5 years ago, whatever the timeframe is irrelevant. Resistance is the cause of pain and it puts you in a state of delusion. Wishing you could change something you can't change is delusional, which by the way, is where most of the pain in our relationships comes from. Wishing we could change another person, wishing they hadn't said it, wishing they hadn't done it. Think about when you're upset at your significant other or a friend, a coworker, anybody, any human being in your life. You're upset over something that they did because you're not willing to accept it. You're wishing they didn't do it. They shouldn't have done it. You've deemed it as wrong. You've judged it as unacceptable, right? I mean, think about that word. That is unacceptable. If you are saying that or thinking that, let that be a red flag that, oh, wait a minute. Nothing's unacceptable. It might mean that it doesn't meet your standard. And so you're going to cut that person out of your life. Like, that's fair. That's a choice. But if you are deeming something unacceptable, that's a red flag. That's a sign that, oh, wait a minute. I am right now not accepting, thus resisting the reality of whatever just happened. Therefore, I am creating emotional pain for myself. All right, let me ask you a question. How many apps are you using for your personal development? Maybe a meditation app like Calm or Headspace, an affirmation app like I Am or ThinkUp, a book summary app like Blinkist, a journaling app like Five Minute Journal, a visualization app like Envision, an exercise app like 7 Minute Workout, and maybe even a habit tracking app to keep it all together. That is a lot to manage and a lot to pay for. What if you could replace all of them with just one app? App. Yes, it is called the Miracle Morning app, and it is essentially 7 apps in 1. Hundreds of guided meditations and breathwork tracks, a full library of affirmations, plus tools to create your own visualization prompts for 10 key areas of your life, guided workouts from 2 to 10 minutes long, book and audiobook summaries of top personal and professional development books, and a journaling tool with guided prompts, the Wheel of Life, or a blank page to write freely. It simplifies your morning, saves you money, and helps you start every day with clarity, purpose, and energy. And it's one of the only apps in this space with a 4.9 out of 5-star rating. Try it free for 7 days. Just search Miracle Morning in your app store or go to MiracleMorningApp.com to get started. All right, back to the show. Emotional pain. Can be created in varying degrees. If you're in traffic and you're frustrated, right? You're wishing the cars would go faster and you're kind of running late. Like, here's a good example. Let's use traffic. I love traffic. It's one of the best analogies or metaphors. I don't know which one would be the right appropriate term here, but imagine you're in traffic. Now imagine you're in traffic, you're running late and you're running late to meet a friend at a coffee shop. Who doesn't really care if you're late, but ideally you wanna be on time, but you're running a little bit late. So your resistance to the traffic is relatively low because the consequence that you perceive is relatively insignificant. So you're in traffic going, ah, gosh dang it, man. Ah, traffic's so annoying, right? Like the pain that you're creating, you might define it by the word annoying, which is a very relatively low level form of point— pain, right? It's like, eh, it's kind of annoying, kind of whatever. You're lightly resisting reality, wishing the traffic were faster. Now imagine you're in traffic. So same circumstance, you are sitting in traffic, but this is a different scenario. But you are running late to a job interview. You are unemployed in this scenario, and this job means everything to you. And your alarm didn't go off. Now you're running late and you are perceiving that you are going to lose this huge opportunity that came along. Let's say like, it's like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now you're running late to it. So you're in traffic just like in the other scenario, but you are resisting reality to a degree. No, no, no. How could this happen? How could my alarm not go off? And here's the thing. You can't control that your alarm didn't go off and you can't control that you are in that traffic and you can't control that you are now going to be late. You also can't control what the person that's interviewing you for the job decides to do. But this is very, very important. Please listen closely. If you're not already, you might've tuned me out. I don't know, but here's the point. When you get to that job interview. What is going to be more effective? For you to show up emotionally distraught because you spent the entire car ride resisting reality and wishing things that were out of your control were different. The alarm, wish it would have gone off, wish there wasn't traffic, wish you had left earlier, right? Resisting, fearing the things that are out of your control, such as what the interviewer decides to do or not do. So what's more effective, arriving at the job interview emotionally distraught, ah, or completely at peace and clear-headed? This is a metaphor for life. Of course, the answer is to arrive at the job interview completely at peace and clear-headed. And when I say it's a metaphor for life, here's what I mean. What's the best way to do anything in life? What's the best way to show up to conflict with another person? What's the best way to show up to a cancer diagnosis? What's the best way to show up to, uh, job loss or financial challenges? At peace and clear-headed. At peace and clear-headed. Acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to an optimal inner state. Before we go on any further, I want to address something directly, because if I don't, part of your brain is going to resist everything that follows. When I say that everything you need is already within you, I am not telling you to stop what you're doing. I'm not saying you lower your standards or abandon your goals or trade your ambition for a meditation cushion and a vague sense of calm. Like, this is not about wanting less. It's about operating from a place of peace. So it doesn't mean that when something doesn't go your way, you just resign yourself. I'm just going to accept that life is the way that it is. And there's nothing I can do about it. This is not resignation. It's about accepting the things you cannot change so that you operate from a place of perpetual inner peace, calm, and clear-headedness. And then you free up all of your emotional energy to focus on what you want. The most effective version of you is the one who is at peace, not complacent, not passive, not indifferent to outcomes, at peace. And again, there's a profound difference. And that difference is what we are talking about. You think about the decisions that you've made from a place of panic and overwhelm and stress and fear versus the ones you've made from a place of clarity. Think about the conversations you've had when you were emotionally reactive, saying things you regret. Versus when you were genuinely grounded. Think about the work you've produced when you were running on stress and the work you've produced when you were fully present and focused. You already know which version of you performs better. You've experienced it. What I'm offering you is not an escape from ambition. It's the foundation that makes your ambition sustainable. Scalable, and actually enjoyable to live inside of. Because I think there's like a quiet tragedy that most high achievers never confront. You can build everything you've set out to build and still feel empty when you get there. If you haven't found that place inside of you, that's at peace with reality, that's grateful for what you have. And inner peace is the goal. It's not happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of inner peace. And what prevents us from inner peace is resistance, resisting reality, wishing and wanting that things were different than they are. It doesn't mean that you don't want your life to be different or want to achieve goals, or, right, you understand it's not about not wanting to improve things. It's about being at peace with where you are while you take the next step toward where you desire to go. So acceptance and desire and ambition, they work together and they work together more effectively than resistance and stress and fear. Work underneath desire and ambition. And so many of us are striving in the wrong way, right? We're striving for what we want from a place of scarcity and fear and not enough, not enoughness, if that's an expression, right? So today is just a reminder, and maybe there's some things you've never heard before, but like me rereading The Power of Now, I was reminded of a lot of things that I've known, but I've kind of forgotten, or even if I know them intellectually, I'm not embodying some of the stuff that I've known. And that's for most of us. I was talking with somebody the other day and they're like, my Miracle Morning is like, I know that I am better when I'm on it, but I've kind of fallen off and like, I'm not reading my affirmations anymore. And it's like, we lie to ourselves and think that if we know something, that's enough, right? Like, I already know that. And it's really important to go, no, am I living that? So I would encourage you to use this, this conversation, this one-way conversation we just had, and turn it into a two-way conversation where you actually spend some time talking to yourself, ideally in writing, through reflection, and ask yourself, are you resisting reality? Are you wishing and wanting to change things that are out of your control? And is that draining your energy, causing you to live in stress and fear and overwhelm and maybe anxiety and depression and a lot of different states that we find ourselves perpetually in. And stress is the most common. That's an all-encompassing word. And most of us are living our life in a low level, some a high level. I can jostle between the two for sure, but a degree of stress that is preventing us from enjoying this one life. That we have been blessed to live. And I'm going to close with where I started. What if everything you need to be the happiest, most at peace, and most fulfilled you've ever been is already inside of you, available right now in this exact moment and this next moment and this moment and this moment. And I'll close with one more thing. I was just, when I was speaking, to this group of international leaders in Utah, doTERRA. It was, they brought in all their international leaders. It was last week. And I was asked what the ultimate superpower is for a leader. And I said, and really is what we've talked about this entire episode. I said, it's their ability to choose their optimal state so that they can be the best leader they can be in any moment, any economy, any given set of circumstances. And the one thing I invited everyone to consider is that this is the best moment of your life. And you're going to hear me say this over the next 5 years. In fact, it might be the title of my next book. I don't know, but every moment of our lives is the best moment of our lives. And the only way that that cannot be true is if you choose to make moments a competition with other moments. But you think about the quality of a moment is the quality of your consciousness in that moment. Same thing can happen to two different people. One person's at a low level of consciousness, living in fear and resistance and stress, and they don't enjoy the moment. And the other person is totally at peace and they're in a state of love and gratitude and joy, and they love the moment. And for me, every morning, I always start by saying, God, thank you for this moment. This is the best. Moment of my life. And I try to get present to that statement and that reality as often as I possibly can. Every moment of our lives is the best moment of our lives, and it has nothing to do with what's going on outside of us and everything to do with our state of consciousness that we are generating, that we are sustaining, that we are choosing from the inside out. Goal achievers, I love you so much. Hope this was helpful for you, and I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. To learn more about the Achieve Your Goals podcast and to get access to today's show notes, transcript, and exclusive content from Hal Elrod, visit hal-elrod.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.