Hal Elrod Keynote at Dave Asprey's Biohacking Conference: "The Miracle Morning for Biohackers"

Renewal of your energy sources, renewal of your hardware, it's kind of important if you want to live a long time, right? It's also important if you just want to be able to think. And having a practice that supports them that doesn't take a lot of work is critically important. That's why our next speaker is the reason millions of people around the world wake up before the sun, or at least with the sun. Because your mitochondria love that. The author of 12 books, including "The Miracle Morning," which has been in only 42 languages, millions of copies, and a global movement. The thing about Hal, we've been friends for a long time, it's not what you'll find on the bestseller list. It's that at 20, a drunk driver hit his car head-on at 70 miles an hour. And if you go back in time to when he was 20, cars were not as safe as they are now, let's just put it that way. He only broke 11 bones, was in a coma for days, and was told he'd never walk again. Okay, fine, there's lots of people who've been in car accidents, come on, Hal, like, okay. That wasn't enough, he also did what any biohacker would do, he healed himself completely, and well, then he got cancer. Which is a big thing. So he's beaten death 2 times, which is really, really incredible. And what you're gonna find is there's a mindset that he's gonna teach you. That's why I invited him to come be on our main stage on the first day of the conference, because you can activate your biology and then you master your mindset, and there's something else you do to take you beyond this limitless potential. And you can do all this before you have breakfast, if you even still have breakfast. That was an intermittent fasting joke, you guys. So please help me welcome the man who literally died and came back to life and is elevating all of us.

Good morning. This is quite the honor, and I want to thank you for being here, for being so attentive, because as a fellow biohacker, I know that it can be hard to sit still, right? Half y'all, you're hopped up on methylene blue and lion's mane, and you've had your third cup of Danger coffee for the day. And so I thank you for being so present and so attentive. Some of you are just dialed in. I see methylene blue in your eyes. I also have a confession. I am not a traditional biohacker, OK? First and foremost, I don't do cold plunges. In fact, I don't like cold plunges. In fact, I can't stand cold plunges, right? Thank you. It's not just me, right? Half of you are like, yeah, I don't— like, my friends make me do it, and I sit there, and I hate it. But I do start every day with 6 of the most timeless, scientifically proven effective biohacks in the history of humanity that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries, long before it was called biohacking. We're gonna talk about those today. I have a question for y'all, and this might be a layup. I think you might get this one. But what's the one part of your day that determines your hormone levels, your cognitive function, and your energy for the rest of the day? Anybody? Yeah, it's the morning. It is the first part of your day, and so my question for you is, how do you start your mornings? Show of hands, if you have a structured morning routine, raise your hand. Okay, yeah, thank you for lighting that up. Alright, awesome, and if you don't yet have a structured morning routine, but you're open, If you're open, raise your hand. I love it, we're about 50/50, this is great. So, there's a reactive way to start your mornings. So, when you start your morning by grabbing your phone off the bedside table, right, you put your body and your mind in a state of fight or flight. You spike your cortisol levels, you literally hijack your brain's ability to focus, and you rob time from your highest self, think about that. Every minute that you spend scrolling, which often turns into 5, into 10, into 20, you're taking that time away from the morning when you are at your best to develop new habits, to optimize your mental and emotional well-being, to lower your cortisol levels, to hack your nervous system. And so, the proactive way to start your day is with these timeless ancient practices that we're gonna talk about. Dave Asprey, in his new book, he says this, "These days, I wake up earlier around sunrise." Go Dave. "I have a cup of danger coffee." Big surprise. "Maybe do a cold plunge and stay outside for 20 minutes. It has improved my brain function and productivity significantly." And I started reading Heavily Meditated the other day on Kindle, waiting for the physical copy in the mail, and I do agree with Dave, it is his best work. But again, you look at, It's improved his brain function and productivity significantly. And so, I'm gonna share with y'all my unconventional biohacking journey. And it started in 1999, when according to Dave's LinkedIn profile, he was the director of strategic planning for Exodus Communications. I think he weighed 300 pounds at that time. It's a long, long time ago. And driving home from giving a speech at a Cutco sales conference, any Cutco people in the room? Right? So, I gave a speech at a Cutco sales call. We got 2 hands up. Let's go, Cutco. I gave a speech at a conference, and driving home that night, a drunk driver got on the freeway heading the wrong direction and hit my car head-on at 70 miles per hour. My car spun off the drunk driver, and the car behind me crashed into my driver's side door at 70 miles per hour, and I broke 11 bones on this side of my body. My femur broke in half. My pelvis broke in 3 places. My humerus bone broke in half. I shattered this elbow. I severed the radial nerve of my arm. I fractured all 3 bones around my eye and fractured my eye socket. My ear was almost completely severed. And this is a picture taken a few days later of what the car looked like from the front, by the way. It looks like it's missing half of the car because it was smashed into the left side of my body. And that's me in a coma. After I had flatlined 3 times and was clinically dead for 6 minutes fighting for my life. Now, biohacking wasn't a thing in 1999, but when I came out of the coma, I was faced with this unimaginable reality. Told I had permanent brain damage, which I do. In fact, if I forget what I'm talking about in the middle of my speech, somebody shout it out because that happens sometimes. I was told I would never walk again. And at 20 years old, I had a lot of goals that involved walking again, to be fair. And so, what did I do? I accepted my reality exactly as it was. I didn't wish I wasn't in a car accident. I didn't feel sorry for myself. And I didn't leave my healing up to chance. I didn't decide that the doctors knew my future. I told my mom and dad, I said, "They might be experts in medicine, but they're not experts in me, and I will maintain unwavering faith." that I can and will walk again. And so, I prayed every day. By the way, prayer, which we'll get into in a few minutes, one of the oldest timeless biohacks, believe it or not, is prayer, religious or not. I visualized walking every single day. I meditated in a state of complete healing, and 3 weeks after the crash, 3 weeks after I broke 11 bones and I was found dead at the scene and I came out of the coma 2 weeks later, the doctors came in with routine X-rays and they said, "Hal, we don't know how to explain this. I know we said you'd never walk again, but your body is healed so rapidly in the last 3 weeks that we're actually going to let you take your first step today in therapy." And this picture was taken that day. Now, I didn't have electrodes hooked to my head. I don't have a graph to show you how the visualization and the prayer and the meditation helped to heal my biology. My psychology healed my biology. My faith healed my biology, right? But the science has now proven that the mind-body connection, what we think, what we feel, what we focus on, does impact our biology. And so I don't have a graph that shows you the healing process. I just have this picture that shows you that what would have seemed impossible became possible through the oldest practices of biohacking. Now, fast forward, 2008, the financial crash. Anybody around in 2008? Not just me? So at that time, this was my rock bottom. My business failed. I lost over half of my income, I couldn't pay my mortgage, my house was foreclosed on, and I got deeply depressed for the first time in my life. I didn't know how to handle it. And a buddy of mine introduced me to Jim Rohn. Any Jim Rohn fans in the room? He sent me an audio. He said, listen to this audio, Hal. If you apply this, this can turn your life around. I said, I'll try it. And this quote from Jim Rohn changed my life. He said, your levels of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And when I heard that, I realized I need to dedicate time each day to my personal development so that I can become the person that I need to be to create the life that I want, who has the right mindset and the right habits and the right self-belief. I need to become the person who is capable of overcoming the challenges that I faced and creating the life that I want. And so, I went home and I Googled, what do the world's most successful people do every day for personal development? And I was looking for one practice, like, give me the number one thing that I can do to turn my life around as fast as humanly possible. 'Cause I don't know about you, but when you're struggling, whether it's financially or in your marriage or with your health or with your mental health, You just want it to stop. You just want to feel better. You just want to turn things around. And so, I'm looking for the number 1 personal development practice, and I come up with a list of 6 practices. That's when the SAVERS were born, which we'll get into today. It was meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, journaling. And I went, well, which one of these is the best? And then I had an epiphany, divine intervention. Thank God I got this message. Instead of choosing one, what if you just do all of them? What if you wake up tomorrow a little bit earlier and you do the 6 most timeless, proven personal development practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by and attributed their success to for centuries? I thought that would be the ultimate morning routine. That would be the ultimate way to start my day in a peak state so that I could become the person I needed to be to turn my life around. And I'll tell you, I thought, "If I do this every day for like a year, the compound effect, I'm only going to get better and better and more capable, and I can turn this around." It happened so fast. In less than 2 months of practicing the SAVERS, I more than doubled my income at the height of the Great Recession. The economy got worse. But I got better, and I created the results that I never imagined I could have, doubling my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically, where for 6 months in a downward spiral, I hadn't exercised at all. I canceled the gym membership, I couldn't afford it. I was eating cheap, unhealthy food, 'cause I couldn't afford anything else. And I committed 3 months into my Miracle Morning that I would run a 52-mile ultra marathon, because I hated running. And I was all about growth at that point. I thought, who would I have to become to run 52 consecutive miles when I hate running a mile? And I went to my wife, I remember the moment, I'm walking out of my living room, she's carrying a basket of laundry out of the bedroom. I said, sweetheart, I gotta talk to you. I just signed on 2 more coaching clients. She goes, congratulations, that's great. I said, "No, no, no, you don't understand. We've officially doubled our income since I started the morning routine in 2 months. The economy's gotten worse, but through everything I've done with the morning routine, the clarity I've gotten, the motivation I've generated, the knowledge that I've gained, and what I've affirmed and implemented has doubled our income in less than 2 months. It feels like a miracle." And without skipping a beat, she goes, "It's your Miracle Morning." I go, yeah, I like that, Miracle Morning. And I didn't know it'd be a book, but the rest is history, as they say. This picture was taken 9 years after my car accident, about a year after the Miracle Morning, when I went from being told I would never walk again to running 52 consecutive miles. Thank you. And it's just proof, one of the, hey, if I can do it, you can do it, right? What can't we do when we really when we really understand that our potential is limitless and there's nothing that we can't overcome, there's nothing we can't become, and there's nothing we can't accomplish. Thank you. Appreciate you. So, life's great, Miracle Morning's taken off, it's translated in 42 languages, I'm living the dream, I moved from California to Texas in 2016, life is great, and then one night I wake up struggling to breathe in the middle of the night. And I'm gasping for air. And my wife takes me to urgent care and they misdiagnose me with pneumonia. For the next 11 days, I'm in and out of the hospital every other day having 1 to 2 liters drained from my lung. And they can't figure out what's wrong. Well, they finally send me down to MD Anderson Cancer Hospital after suspicion that it might be this very rare, very aggressive cancer. It's very hard to diagnose because they don't see it. You don't see it very often. And this picture was taken the day that I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. That's my wife, Ursula. And I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. And that was the hardest time in my life because I was a dad and I had a 7-year-old daughter at the time and a 4-year-old son. And to be told there's a 70 to 80% chance that I'm going to die and not be around for them, was the hardest thing I had ever dealt with in my life. I will tell you this, Dave talked about the importance of mindset. The day that I was diagnosed, and my wife, all she sees is the survival rate, 20 to 30%, and she's thinking, "My husband is going to die." And I said, "Sweetheart, you don't understand. That's a statistic based on the entire population." I said, "I'm telling you right now, There's a 100% chance that I'll be among the 20% to 30% of the people that survive this cancer. I said, because I will do everything that the survivors did and more. And that is really where I combined the SAVERS with biohacking practices. I told the doctor on day 1, I said, "Hey, I don't wanna do chemotherapy." I just met this oncologist for the first time. He's supposedly the best in the world. No offense, sorry. And 'cause he prescribes more chemo than anybody, right? That's probably how you get the title. But anyway, he says, I said, "Doctor, I would like to cure this holistically." I had watched a documentary in 2007 '07 called Healing Cancer from the Inside Out about how to heal cancer naturally. I was like, well, if I ever get cancer, that's what I'll do. So I told him that's what I'm going to do, and he said, Hal, you don't have that luxury. You don't have a slow-growing tumor. If you don't start chemo immediately, he said, I would give you about 1 to 3 weeks to live. Your organs are shutting down. They discovered my heart was also failing and my kidneys were failing in addition to my lung. And I didn't trust it. I said, give me 24 hours, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna do a little research. And I called two of the best holistic oncologists in America, Dr. Brzezinski, who was in Houston, I forgot the other one. And they both told me, Hal, your oncologist wasn't exaggerating. He wasn't falsifying that claim. You have 1 to 3 weeks to live and there's nothing we can do naturally for you based on how aggressive this cancer is. And so, like many of you, as much as I'm like, I don't wanna poison my body with these poisonous chemicals, I wanna do this naturally and build my body and build my immune system, not to mention, because of my cancer, the chemo regimen was 700 hours of chemotherapy, 100 hours a month for 7, actually, for 8 months, but I would've died the 8th month, so they backed it off a month. But, I love that you guys think that's funny. So, I'm just kidding. So, here's what happened. Begrudgingly, I'm like, okay, I have to do chemo. If the best holistic oncologists in the country are telling me this is the best thing that I can do, I'm not gonna go rogue and be like, I'm smarter than them, I can figure it out. So I decided I would do chemo, and I decided that I would relentlessly research every holistic practice available And I would do all of them as if that's all I was doing to beat my cancer. So I combined the best of Western allopathic medicine and the best of holistic protocols to beat the cancer. Now, this is me before I got cancer, about a week or two before, and then that is me within 3 weeks. I had lost 25% of my body weight and every hair on my head, of course. And went through the most difficult time physically in my life. Using the SAVERS to save my life combined with biohacking practices. This is when I discovered biohacking. This is when I did red light therapy and ozone sauna and lymphatic massage and coffee enemas, which I— anybody else do coffee enemas, by the way? Let's go. Only someone that does coffee enemas would have that reaction, like— I still do coffee enemas. I did 3 days a week during chemo, and now I do 1 or 2 days a week, and it's like my zen. It's amazing. Highly recommended. I sun-gazed every morning. I earthed every morning. I took over 70 supplements every day. I combined nutrition. You name it, I hit it with the kitchen sink, everything I possibly could. And similar to the car accident, I was healing quicker than the doctors could imagine. And I believe the most fundamental aspect of my healing was utilizing my SAVERS, those 6 practices. In 2008, I focused all 6 of the SAVERS on doubling my income, and it happened in 2 months. Now, I focus all 6 of the SAVERS on beating cancer. And so, that's one thing to understand about the practice that we're about to walk through. Through is that you can do a Miracle Morning as a general personal development self-optimization practice every morning to put yourself in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state, or, and/or, you can focus your Miracle Morning on a very specific outcome, right? When you have cancer and you're facing death, the other goals don't matter at that point. There was only one goal that mattered. In 2008, the only goal that mattered was doubling my income because that's where I was struggling and suffering the most. So, these are the SAVERS, 6 scientifically proven, timeless, and free. That's also a nice part, right? They're free. Free biohacking practices. The first is silence. Of course, Dave's got the new book, Heavily Meditated, which I highly recommend. It's probably— if I know Dave, it's the latest, most cutting-edge research around silence. But originally, this was meditation, but the M would have made the acronym awkward, MAVERS. So, I got a thesaurus, and I'm glad I did because silence emerged. And now, it's prayer, or it's breathwork, or it's meditation, right? There are many forms. Of silence to start your day. But here's the idea, is that rather than grab your phone and start your day with internal chaos and reactivity, you're allowing yourself to calm and regulate your nervous system, to quiet your mind so that you can gain clarity. You can hear the wisdom of God or your highest self, whatever you want to call it. But you don't hear that wisdom when you're checking your phone. When you're looking at emails, right? You usually hear it in the shower. It's the unintended times of silence. When you're falling asleep at night. And this is about engineering every single day with intentional, peaceful, purposeful silence to gain the benefits every single morning. My favorite form of meditation is what I call emotional optimization meditation. Emotional optimization meditation, unlike most forms of meditation, This one has a very specific intention. It's not clearing your mind. Step 1, you're going to choose your optimal state. Step 2, you're going to affirm and embody that state. And step 3, you're going to meditate in your optimal state. I'm going to invite us to do this right now, and I'm going to choose the state for you. So, set down whatever you're holding in your hand. I'm going to invite you first and foremost to consider that this is the best moment of your life. It's not a competition between moments. Every moment is the best moment of your life if you choose to experience it as such. So, from that place, I invite you to close your eyes, and the state that I'm choosing for us is one of gratitude. So, I want you to put your hand on your heart. And find that place inside of you that is just grateful to be alive. Take a deep breath and find that place inside of you that is grateful for the breath that you just took and the one that you're about to take. And I want you to think of something or someone that makes you grateful. Have an object of gratitude for a moment. It could be this conference. It could be one of your children. It could be Dave Asprey. But just feel gratitude and affirm it. I am grateful. I feel grateful. "Gratitude is the state that I embody." And feel it as you breathe in and out. You can open your eyes. That is my favorite form of meditation. I identify what is the optimal mental and emotional state for me to be in today, and it varies. The average, by the way, my default is bliss. Bliss to me is love, gratitude, surrender, those all-encompassing where I just sit there and I just lay, I'm just smiling on my couch as I'm meditating in this blissful state. And what we're doing when we meditate in any state is we are creating neural pathways, we are reinforcing those grooves in our brain that make that state more readily available throughout our entire day or throughout our entire life. So, in the same way that you would train a specific muscle so that it was stronger when you needed it, emotional optimization meditation allows you to train a specific a specific mental or emotional state. And if you do it over and over and over again, like for me in the middle of the day when I'm stressed, I just take that hand right back on that heart, and it's a physical anchor for the state that I was in that morning, and I go right back into it. I mentioned prayer as a biohack. It's one of the most powerful and the original biohacks is prayer. Now, Harvard and Duke Universities, Over 1,600 studies on prayer discovered lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, faster recovery from surgeries, which I can relate to from that 1999 car wreck and how quickly I recovered praying every single day, and number 3, improved overall well-being, and number 4, occasional miracles. All right, I added that. There's no scientific proof from Harvard, but I have anecdotal evidence that it actually leads to miracles. So, thank you. All right, this next one is gonna be fun. This is my favorite of all of the SAVERS by far, and it's the most misunderstood by far, and that is affirmations. Anybody watch Saturday Night Live in the '90s and see Stuart Smalley? Right, for those that did, and I'll do my best impression, he would sit there, it was called, it was a show called Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley, and he would sit in front of those old-fashioned mirrors, the kind that like spin, right? And he would go, "I'm Stuart Smalley, and I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." And I think that gave affirmations a bad rap, as entertaining as it was. There are two major problems with affirmations the way they've been taught and why they don't work for most people. Here's the reason affirmations don't work and the reason most people roll their eyes when they hear affirmations. Because some well-meaning self-help guru taught us to just lie to yourself. If you're struggling financially, just affirm, "I am wealthy. I am wealthy." Right? Yeah, my bank account balance is negative, but I am wealthy. So, lying to yourself doesn't work. Number 2, passive language doesn't produce measurable results. What does that mean? You've also been taught this affirmation which has stood the test of time, something along the lines of, "I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance." Right? Now, the reason that affirmation has stood the test of time, I think, is because it puts people in a state of delusion that makes them feel better. It's like taking a shot of alcohol, right? If you're struggling financially and you're like, "Oh my gosh, my reality is so stressful," I need to do my affirmations. I am a money magnet. That feels better. Money flows to me effortlessly. Thank God, 'cause I have no motivation right now. Right? And so, it's deluding ourselves into thinking everything's gonna be okay, but that affirmation doesn't produce results. I'm gonna teach y'all, actually, first I'm gonna show you an example. When I had cancer, we filmed the Miracle Morning documentary. How many of you have seen the Miracle Morning documentary? I think Dave sent that out. What the hell, guys? Watch the Miracle Morning documentary, it's free on YouTube. Dave's even in it, right? So you know it's good. In the Miracle Morning movie, my good friend Nick, who's a filmmaker, he convinced me to make this film, and then I got cancer a year into making the film, and I called Nick and I said, hey, the film's on hold. I've got to fight for my life. And he said, Hal, this is the movie. I'm gonna come film you beating cancer and we're gonna capture that journey along with the Miracle Morning and it's gonna inspire millions of people to overcome their challenges. 'Cause he goes, I know how you'll approach this challenge. And I asked my wife, I said, sweetheart, are you okay with Nick filming our family going through the most difficult time in our life? She's like, sure, sweetie, whatever you want. That's a supportive wife of an entrepreneur, by the way. So, I'm gonna show y'all a video where Nick was at my apartment, meaning my dad and I, my dad was my caretaker during the cancer journey, and we rented an apartment right next to MD Anderson Cancer Hospital, 'cause I was so sick after chemo treatments that I couldn't make the 3-hour drive without throwing up back to Austin, Texas. So, I would spend a week or two at this apartment. And Nick was over one morning filming me make smoothies and take supplements and do all the things, all my biohacking practices, lay on my PEMF mat. And he said, Hal, hey, I want to film you doing your Miracle Morning. I said, OK, great. And I normally don't read my affirmations out loud. It's a very personal practice that I do by myself. And he said, read your affirmations. And if you bring up the next slide, the next video here, I wasn't expecting this that morning, but this is what happened. 2017 healing cancer affirmations. I will do whatever it takes, putting forth extraordinary effort to beat cancer and live a long, healthy life for my family. I will beat cancer for Ursula because I committed to her forever and a day, and I want to grow old and spend the rest of our long— spend the rest of our lives together. Together. I'll be cancer for Sophie because she needs her daddy. I'll be cancer for Halston because he needs my love, leadership, and guidance. I'll be I don't normally read these out loud. I read them to myself. I'll beat cancer for Dad because he gave up everything to heal me and save my life. I'll beat cancer for Mom because she doesn't deserve to lose another child. I'll beat cancer for me because I want and deserve to live a long life. And I'll beat cancer for the millions of people who are themselves battling cancer or some other disease and don't have the knowledge or resources that I do and desperately need my leadership and support. All right, those are my affirmations. Time to visualize. Thank you. I'm so glad he captured that moment. It was unexpected, but that is, I truly believe, you're seeing, affirmations, I believe, saved my life. Because when there were days when I didn't want to keep going and I felt like giving up and I was ready to die, which there were many of those days, I would read my affirmations and remind myself, oh no, I'm committed to beating cancer. There's no other option. And the reasons why are for my wife and for my kids and for my parents. And so, it's like, oh, giving up's not an option. And that's the power of affirmations. And I'm gonna give you a 3-step formula here in a minute. When you follow this 3-step formula, you're every day affirming what you're committed to, why it's a must for you, and which actions you're gonna take and when you're gonna take them. And when you do that day after day after day after day, you reinforce the commitment and giving up becomes not an option. And so, these 3 steps to create affirmations that produce results. Number 1, affirm what you're committed to. In life, you don't get what you want because you want it. You get what you want only if you are fully committed to doing whatever it takes. And when you affirm that commitment every day, you reinforce that commitment both subconsciously that affects your identity, and then it directs your conscious behavior. The second step is affirm why it's important to you. You just saw that. Why are you committed to this outcome? And then, by the way, I use this affirmation formula for every area of my life, for each goal. I've got a financial— these three steps for my finances, these three steps for my— as a husband, these three steps for my— as a dad. Every area of my life follows these three steps. And the third is which actions you'll take and when. When I was training for that 52-mile ultramarathon, every day I affirmed, "I'm committed to running 52 miles no matter what. There's no other option." Step 2, why it was a must for me, I'm committed to doing this because it'll require me to overcome my physical, mental, and emotional limitations so that I can achieve everything else I want for the rest of my life. And then number 3, what will I do and when? In order to follow through, I will read "The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer" and follow the training plan to a T whether I feel like it or not. I affirmed it every day. And then the next step is the V in SAVERS, which is for visualization. Then I visualized running that marathon. But that's not the most important part of visualization because visualization can be counterproductive if you do it wrong, if you only do half of the equation. And that is, if all you do is visualize your ideal outcome, The problem with that is you trick your brain into thinking it's a foregone conclusion independent of any effort by you. People that visualize or have a vision board and they're like, I know it's going to happen, I see it, I feel it. It's like, well, what are you doing each day to make sure it happens? Well, I mean, I've got the vision board, right? So, visualization is counterproductive if all you do is see the ideal outcome. Here are the 2 steps to to make visualization effective. Number 1, yes, see your ideal outcome. Picture it, imagine it, feel what it will feel like. I actually printed a picture of the Atlantic City Marathon where I was going to run my ultra marathon. I printed the finish line off. And so every morning, I looked at that finish line, and then I closed my eyes, and I spent maybe 60 seconds, sometimes 30, seeing myself cross the finish line. I usually heard Rocky, you know, Eye of the Tiger in the background, and it was like dramatic, and I was usually number 1 in my visualization, even though I think I was last when it actually happened. It doesn't matter. The second part of visualization is by far, by far the most important. After you spend 30 to 60 seconds seeing the ideal outcome so that you're compelled to make it a reality, now the most important part, spend another minute or 2 or maybe 3 visualizing yourself doing the thing today that will move you one step closer to your ideal outcome. So, for me, this is what that looked like. I would sit on my couch where I did my Miracle Morning in my living room. And my coffee table, my phone sat there. And I had an alarm set, I had a lot of alarms set to lead me through my SAVERS. One of them, one of the alarms, was at 7:00 AM, it was go for a run. And so, as I visualized, after I just affirmed that I was committed to running an ultramarathon, why it was a must for me, that I was going to follow the training plan whether I felt like it or not, now I'm visualizing the alarm going off on my phone. Eyes are closed and I hear beep beep, beep beep, beep beep. I pick it up. I shut it off. I set it down. I walk into my from my master bedroom into the closet, and I get dressed in my running clothes. I then visualize myself heading back out through the living room to the front door, and I see my hand reach out, grab the door. I can see it like it was yesterday, y'all. I did this 500 times. I opened the door, and I see my driveway, and I see the sidewalk. And one more time, as I'm visualizing, I bring back the affirmations. I am committed to running 52 miles on October 29th, 2009, no matter what. There is no other option. I am doing this to overcome my limiting beliefs and my limiting physical and mental limitations so that I can become the person that I need to be to achieve and overcome everything for the rest of my life. In order to follow through, I will go for this run whether I feel like it or not. Let's go. And by visualizing, mentally rehearsing, doing exactly what I needed to do, to achieve the outcome that I affirmed that I was committed to achieving, then when the alarm on my phone went off at 7:00 AM, guess what I didn't do? I didn't do human nature, which would have happened without the visualization, which is like, eh, I'll run tomorrow. Just run tomorrow. Nobody knows. No one's looking. No one sees, right? We all do that. We procrastinate. Nobody's looking. Whatever, I'll just do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow becomes the next day, and the next day becomes living a life of regret. But here's the thing, I didn't visualize procrastination. I didn't mentally rehearse hitting the snooze button and not doing the thing. So when that alarm went off at 7 AM, it was like I was a robot in the best possible way. I was like, get up, go in bedroom, get dressed in clothes, head out front door. As soon as I opened that front door and I saw the sidewalk, those affirmations flooded right back from my subconscious to my conscious mind, I am committed to running 52 miles on October 29th, 2009, no matter what. There is no other option. And then I went for the run. That's the power of visualization with these 2 steps, utilizing it as not just a fantasy tool, but a mental rehearsal tool where you rehearse peak performance every day. You can apply that to cold calling. When I was writing my book and I would procrastinate because I had writer's block, I'd visualize opening it up and typing. So whatever your goals are, whatever your outcomes are— when I had cancer, it was beating cancer and walking my daughter down the aisle and walking my son to his graduation, right? These are— this is the power of visualization when you use it as mental rehearsal. The E in SAVERS is for exercise. There's no rocket science here. I'll just tell you that you don't have to go to the gym in the morning. You don't have to do a full-blown workout. The idea is that you move your body just enough to get your blood and oxygen flowing to your brain to not only increase your energy, but enhance your cognitive function. This morning, I woke up and I had one of those kind of like I was hit by a truck moment. You know, you wake up some mornings and you wake up in a REM cycle or whatever, and you don't quite feel like your brain is on? So I take the E in SAVERS and I move it to the front. And I immediately go stand in front of that long mirror in the hotel, right? And I just start doing jumping jacks, and I get the blood and oxygen flowing and increase my energy, and now I'm ready to do my Miracle Morning. And that's just an example of how the SAVERS are customizable, by the way. You can do these in any order you want, any duration, any length, you name it. The R in SAVERS is for reading, and there is, again, not rocket science here. But consider the books that you read. Now, I have a self-imposed rule that I'll share with you in case this inspires anyone. I gravitate toward business books. That's what I gravitate toward. So, my self-imposed rule is I'm not allowed to read a business book or even a biohacking book until I've read a family book, a book on parenting, or a book on marriage. I have to earn the right to read a book on business by reading a book on marriage or a book on parenting, because family is number one. It's one thing to say it, it's another to align your schedule and your personal growth with what we think or we say is our top priority. Now, also on the approved reading list are these 8 books. Heavily Meditated, Game Changers, Bulletproof, right? Like, these books are approved. Reading. And then the S in SAVERS is for scribing. And again, in full transparency, this was originally journaling, but again, the J would have made the acronym awkward. And I want to give my wife credit because I was writing the book one day. Again, I remember the moment. I'm writing the book and I'm frustrated and I walk out and she goes, sweetie, how's it going? I go, I don't know. I've got these 6 practices. I didn't invent any of them. They're hundreds of years old, thousands of years old. And I need a way to organize them so people will remember them. Like Dave, not Dave Asprey, Robert Kiyosaki has the cash flow quadrant, right? Stephen Covey's got the 7 habits. Like, there's always a way to organize it. She goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and see if you can swap out some of the words of those 6 practices and find synonyms and make an acronym? So, meditation became silence. And journaling became scribing. Scribing or journaling is one of my favorite parts of the Miracle Morning, and I usually do it last, but occasionally, if I'm stressed out, I'll move it to the front. Here's why. This is the 3-step scribing practice that I do. Number 1 is release anything causing you stress. The first thing I write down, is there anything causing me stress that I need to accept and be at peace with or release and let go of? And so, sometimes scribing goes to the front of my SABERS because I'm like, "Ugh, this thing that's going on, I'm stressed over work or business or an argument that I had with my spouse," whatever it is. That's the first thing that I scribe. And sometimes, like, life's great and no stress, but more often than not, I write some things down, and the power of that is you create separation. Right now, instead of being bogged down with that thing that's causing you stress and feeling like you have to hold it, in your consciousness at all times because it's important and you got to solve it. It's on paper now. And you've created separation and a release where you go, ah, OK, there it is. It's not part of me. I can deal with it now. I could deal with it later because now it's captured in writing. I don't have to hold it in my consciousness anymore. The second thing is cultivate gratitude. I write down what I'm grateful for. And kind of like the meditation that we did, My hand goes to my heart, and I take deep breaths, and I feel the gratitude. There's a difference between intellectual gratitude, which is what you write down, right? If somebody said, what are you grateful for? You'd almost always go to intellectual gratitude. You're like, my family, check, and I have a roof over my head, check, right? Heartfelt gratitude, soulful gratitude, is what we want. That's where we penetrate our being. And then number 3 is the third step in the scribing process is simply to prioritize your goals and to-do lists. That's where I look at my to-do list, I look at my schedule for the day, and it's my transition out of the savers where I go, okay, I just did my personal development, I'm in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state ready to take on the day, and now looking at my schedule, I don't want to be busy today, I want to be productive. What's my number 1 needle-moving priority that I will commit to do before I move on to the others? And then what's number 2 and what's number 3? So, scribing helps me let go of stress, cultivate gratitude, and optimize productivity. And this is how you stack the SAVERS. All 6 of these practices can be done and are done by millions of people around the world every single day. Single morning. Now, there is a Miracle Morning app that can guide you through the practices. Of course, you can read the book. There's a new updated and expanded edition of the book that came out last year. I'm going to share with you what Robert Kiyosaki shared with me. I got it— anybody read Rich Dad Poor Dad, by the way? Yeah, it's like sold 30 million copies. I know a lot of people read it. So Robert Kiyosaki's assistant reached out to me years ago and said, hey, Robert has read the Miracle Morning 3 times. And my jaw dropped, right? I'm like, wait, I'm a fan of Robert and he read my book 3 times? They said, he does the Miracle Morning every day with his wife. It's transforming his marriage, his business, and his health, and he wants to interview you on Rich Dad Radio. And I was so excited, I went and told my wife all about it, and she's like, who's Robert Kiyosaki? I was like, ah, you don't know who these people are. But this is what he said toward the end of the interview. He said, what Hal did with the SAVERS is combine 6 of the most ancient, proven practices into 1 ritual, a ritual that is now part of my day. And that's the thing, any one of the miracle or the SAVERS will change your life, but when you do all 6, I truly believe and have experienced and seen so many people experience miracles in their life. And Mel Robbins says, the Miracle Morning is a proven system that will help you fulfill your potential and create the life you've always wanted. And so, I'm gonna wrap up with the Miracle Morning 30-day challenge because hearing this doesn't change your life. It's only changing your behavior, of course, that changes your life, and so to keep it as simple as possible, here's your Miracle Morning 30-day challenge. Wake up 30 minutes earlier. Now, for some of you that you're like, I'm already waking up at 4:00 a.m., okay, great, integrate the SAVERS into your practice, but for those of you that don't have the structured morning routine, wake up 30 minutes earlier. Maybe you go to bed 30 minutes earlier, but this is to start every day in the way you need to become the best version of yourself. The second is to do one or more of the SAVERS. You don't have to do all 6. In fact, in the beginning, I recommend that you start with less to make it easier to ease in. So, for example, if someone's never read the Miracle Morning, they'll just do the R in SAVERS to start their Miracle Morning. They'll do reading. And then as you're reading every morning, you're waking up just a little bit earlier, brushing your teeth, drinking some water, and you're reading the Miracle Morning, and then we get to the chapter on silence, you add silence into your Miracle Morning. Now you're doing reading in silence. Then you get to the chapter on affirmations, right, and so you build your Miracle Morning gradually over time. If you have your phone and you want to do a QR code, this is the Miracle Morning app for Android and iPhone. It has over 5,000 reviews, 4.9 out of 5 stars. And it's got all sorts of features to facilitate your Miracle Morning from a journal with prompts, over 500 affirmation prompts, over 500 visualization prompts. It's got guided SAVERS audio practice to lead you through the whole routine and a lot more. And I'll wrap with this. This is a picture of my family. My daughter Sophia is now 15, going on 25. My son is 12. My daughter's, or my wife's age is unknown. And when I started the Miracle Morning, it was a very selfish practice. I mean, it still is in one regard, but meaning I didn't have kids. I was trying to turn my financial situation around and turn my life around, and it worked. I was asked a year ago when I was doing an interview, Hal, why do you still do the Miracle Morning? You're not at rock bottom anymore, like you've created the life that you wanted. Why do you still do it 17 years later? And I'd never been asked that. My answer was because human potential is limitless, and I believe the greatest gift we can give to those we love and those we lead is to wake up every day and fulfill our potential so that we can help them fulfill theirs. So whether you do the Miracle Morning for you or your family or all of the above, thank you for the time. I appreciate you. Thank you. And make it a great day. Thank you.