Hal Elrod LIVE at DestinyFest Austin 2025 | Create Your Miracle Morning & Change Your Life

This is a guy who's first and foremost just that, a man of heart. He's a loyal husband, wife of 14 years, a dedicated father, two children. And what's amazing about him is that when you read his bio, it blows your mind on how insurmountable adversity, crisis and challenge can be until you read what he's endured. Check this out. I want to just reference it so.

I don't get it wrong.

He lived a life, as they would say, that would break Most people talk about being inspired after Lisa. Look at how Hal Elrod persevered. At 8 years old, his 18 month old baby sister died in front of him. Then at age 20, his car was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour. Then at age 20, what we saw was after that he had broke 11 bones and was found dead at the scene. Dead. Then at 37, he nearly died again when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. So yet in all of that, he's found a way to turn up all these adversities, perform his own personal alchemy and turn that into an advantage where now it fuels his perspective and practice in life, having now helped millions of people in theirs. His latest project currently that he's working on is a new book called the Miracle Morning, updated and expanded edition, to which he's added 70 new wonderful pages of new content that he's now come to include two brand new chapters, the Miracle Evening and the Miracle Life. Today, Hal is gonna share with you proven methods for overcoming any adversity you're facing and changing any aspect of your life simply by changing the way you start your day. So why don't we put our hands together and give our dear friend Hal Elrod a warm welcome.

Where do I begin? I'm excited to be here. And what I'm gonna talk about today is actually not what he told you I was gonna talk about. Because this morning, during my miracle morning, during prayer and meditation, I got a message. Tell him something different. There's something else folks need to hear. In fact, the way I prepare for messages is I don't have anything planned on what I'm gonna say in terms of scripted. It's literally a prayer. God, fill me with the words, the energy, the love, the humor that these people need to make the biggest impact in your life right now. I decided that I'm gonna share with you today what I call the Miracle equation. The miracle equation is the simplest way to create what I call Miracles in your life. Now, you might be wondering, what's a miracle, Hal? Like, am I gonna walk on water? What does that mean? I'm talking about tangible, measurable miracles. Results that are so beyond the realm of what you believe is possible for you that when you accomplish, feels surreal. It feels like a miracle. Stand up. If you believe anything is possible. I'm gonna invite you to stand up in your chair. If you believe. If you're an optimist and you believe anything is possible. Alright, stay standing for a minute. I'm gonna ask you a question. When was the last time you pursued something that was possible if you didn't believe it was probable? See, if you're an optimist, you've been taught that anything is possible. But we don't pursue that which is possible if you. In our lives, we pursue that which is probable. So it's. How do you take the infinite void of possibilities in your life and make them into probabilities? And that's what the miracle equation. Y' all can sit down. Thank you for standing. The miracle equation is made up of two really simple, in fact, deceptively simple decisions. But if you study the world's most successful people, everybody that's been on stage today, you find out that these are the two decisions that they make every single day, over and over and over again. And they have throughout their entire life or throughout the point in their life when they decided they were going to create results. Their dreams, their goals, and these two decisions are the determining factor. Now, the decisions I mentioned are deceptively simple in their explanation, but they're very rare in their execution. And today I'm gonna share with you what the miracle equation is, what these two decisions are. I'm gonna share with you some example of how I've used them in my life, and then how you can use them in your life if you still. I know we're at the end of the day, we're almost done, but if you still have some energy and you're ready to have some fun, say we're ready. All right. I have nothing fun planned for you. I apologize for that. So when I was 20 years old, I. I started selling Cutco cutlery. Anybody heard of Cutco before? Wow. There's always a lot of love for Cutco. So my whole life leading up to when I started selling Cutco, I was very mediocre. In fact, last night I flew back from my hometown of Oakhurst, California. You probably never heard of it. There were 13,000 people. AJ's heard of it. AJ lived right south of me, 13,000 people in this very small town. But when I went back there with my family, aunts, uncles, cousins, we were all there. Mom and dad, my sister. It reminded me of what you call humble beginnings. Like I was a mediocre kid. In fact, my mom and dad are telling stories about how much trouble I got into. The only extraordinary accomplishment I had as a kid was I set the record in high school for the most hours of detention that any student at Yosemite High School had ever gotten before. 180. 180 hours of detention, which couldn't be served. My parents had to donate money to the school so that I could graduate senior year. True story. So I started selling Cutco a year later. And I decided I wanted to do something I had never done before. I wanted to accomplish something I'd never accomplished before. I wanted to break the all time Cutco fast start record, which was $12,000 of kitchen knives that were sold in the first 10 days of someone's career. And so I go in, I'm actually 19 at the time. Not 20 yet. 19. And I told my manager, I want to break the record. And he said, hal, I appreciate that, but he said, I hear that every week. I run training every week. Every week, somebody wants to break the record. Guess how many people since I've been a manager have broken the cut go fast start record? I don't know. He said, none, Zero. He said, it's one thing to say you want to do something like everybody in this room has goals and dreams, things you want to accomplish. He said, you have to be committed at a level you've never been committed before. And at that point, I was nervous. I was insecure. I had never committed anything in my life, but I was embarrassed to say anything other than, okay, I'll commit. I'll give it everything I have. I went home that night, and I'm tossing and turning. I can't fall asleep. And then I pull out a journal, a piece of paper, and I reverse engineer. I go, okay, if I'm gonna break this record 10 days from now and sell more Cutco than Anyone sold in 49 years since the company started, how will that have happened? And I broke it down to two simple decisions. I thought, well, number one, I'm gonna doubt myself along the way. I'm sure I'm not gonna be on track, I'm gonna be failing. I'm gonna hit roadblocks. Things aren't gonna go according to plan. So I've gotta maintain unwavering Faith, meaning no matter what happens, no matter whether I'm on track or not, or I hit an obstacle or a failure, I have to maintain unwavering faith. And till the last possible moment. That was my first decision. Now think about that. Is that natural? When you're working toward a goal and you encounter a roadblock or you're not on track for the goal? For most people, 99% of people, does your faith stay strong or does it waver? It wavers. So I realized, okay, I've gotta maintain unwavering faith. And the second decision, I thought, I've gotta put forth extraordinary effort until the last possible moment. Because for most of us, we're working towards a goal, and then we get hit, we encounter a setback, Our faith wavers. And when our faith wavers, the effort flies right out the window behind it, Right? Cause as soon as you doubt yourself and you think, I don't know, it doesn't seem probable, think about it. When you go to an event like this, everything's possible. It's a void of infinite possibility. But we don't act on what's possible. We. We only act on what we believe is probable. And so those were the two decisions I committed. And I called my manager the next morning. I said, jesse, I'm giving you my word. I will maintain unwavering faith. Meaning I will just say to myself, when I'm feeling afraid and I'm scared and I'm doubtful, I will affirm, I am committed to give it everything I have until the last possible moment, regardless of my results. No. No matter what. There is no other option. That's unwavering faith in action. I am committed to give it everything I have until the last possible moment, no matter what. There's no other option, I said, and I will put forth extraordinary effort. I will do everything in my power. Now, my first day after training, I went out, and they have you in Cutco. They say, schedule appointments with the people you think are most likely to buy from you. Makes sense, right? So I scheduled my Nana and Papa. I'm like, nana and Papa will buy for me for sure. Like, they wouldn't. They wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't say no. And then our neighbors and then my parents. So I set the three most likely appointments. And my first day I go out, I'm all excited. I'm high fiving. Jesse, Jesse. I'm gonna break the fast start record. And I drive to my first appointment. Nana and Papa. I show them the Cutco kitchen knives. Best knives ever. I cut the penny, all the things. And I said, nana and Papa, would you like to buy a set of Cutco and get your set of super shears and kitchen tools for free and take advantage of the forever guarantee? And Pappa said, hal, we're too old for new knives. That forever guarantees maybe, I don't know, 10 years for us. And I'm going through my head, I'm like, wait, how do I handle this? Objection. They didn't teach me this in my Cutco training. I go to the next appointment. Go to the next appointment. Anyway, 0 for 3. My first day, I sell nothing. And I felt like giving up. Raise your hand if you ever feel like giving up or you don't even feel like trying. And so I called Jesse, ready to quit. Embarrassed, humiliated, I talked a big game. And Jesse said, hal, how do you feel right now? I said, I feel like quitting. I feel pretty bad. He. He said, okay, let me ask you a question. Do you wanna be successful in life? I said, of course. Yes, I wanna be successful. He said, what do you think a successful person would do right now in your shoes? I said, they'd probably get on the phone and make more calls and schedule more appointments. He said, what are you gonna do? And I went from wanting to give up. And then you reminded me, didn't you say you're gonna maintain unwavering faith until the last moment? And didn't you say you're gonna put forth extraordinary effort until the last moment? He said, this is your first day. You got nine more days. I got on the phone. I scheduled 10 appointments for the next day from 7am until 10pm and I sold $2,768, and I was back on track. Now you fast forward nine days later. I was going to my last day of Cutco sales. I was $2,000 away from breaking the record. And that morning, I'm committed to give it everything I have until the last possible moment, no matter what. There is no other option. And that day, I sold $4,000 and broke the cut Go fast start record. Thank you. And what's important is, again, you gotta understand, you weren't looking at the kid that was like, oh, yeah, I got great grades in high school and I was like a star athlete. Like, everything I touched turned to gold. And no, I was in trouble all the time. I didn't get good grades. In fact, my mom just gave me my report cards. When I saw her, she's like, I found all your old report cards. It was B, C, D, D, D, F, D. I Was like, it's pretty embarrassing. But that moment in my Cutco sales training, the day before, my first day in the field, it was those two decisions. I will maintain unwavering faith and, and I will put forth extraordinary effort into the last possible moment. And here's the thing. I doubted myself. My faith did waver. It was a commitment to stick with it. Fast forward a year and a half later. I'm driving home from giving a speech at a Cutco sales conference and my car was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 mph. Was sent into oncoming traffic, and another car broke crashing into my door at 70 miles an hour. And I broke 11 bones. My femur broke in half, my pelvis broke in three places, my arm broke in half, my elbow shattered, broke my eye socket and a lot more. And I was clinically dead for six minutes. My heart stopped for six minutes. I was rushed to the hospital and I came out of a coma six days later to be told I would never walk again and that I had permanent brain damage. Now, my wife and kids will vouch for the brain damage. It's a real thing. But I had applied that miracle equation for a year and a half and I told my dad, dad, I'm going to maintain unwavering faith that I will walk again no matter what. There is no other option. And I'm going to put forth extraordinary effort in therapy. I'm going to visualize it, I'm going to pray about it. I'm going to do everything in my power for that outcome. And I'm going to accept the worst case scenario as a possibility. If I never walk again and I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life. I said, I promise, dad, I'll be the happiest person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. Because those are my uncontrollable circumstances. But I'm not going to count on that. The doctors say I'm not gonna walk again. And they might be experts in medicine, but they're not experts in me. And I don't have a graph to show y' all how that unwavering faith and that commitment to putting forth extraordinary effort and going to therapy every day as they wheeled me into therapy. I don't have a graph that shows you how that healed my body. But I can tell you the doctors came in with routine X rays three weeks after I was found dead and broke all those bones. Two weeks after I came out of the coma and was told I would never walk again. And they said, we don't know how to explain this, Hal, but your body has healed so rapidly that we're going to let you take your first step today in therapy. And so that day, Bob, my therapist, wheeled me into the therapy room and I was scared. I thought, oh, man, what if, like, I've got a broken leg, that bone is just healing. I've got a metal rod in the leg, metal rod in the arm, two screws in the elbow, three plates in the eye. So I've got all this hardware to this day. But it was scary as it is to take your first step toward anything, it was the scariest first step I had ever taken. And I stood up, I took about three steps, I sat back down in the wheelchair, and that was the beginning of my healing journey. And I left the hospital four weeks after that first step with a walker, no wheelchair, no pain meds, and realized that if I could use the miracle equation, those two simple decisions, unwavering faith and. And extraordinary effort, to go out and break Cutco records, and then I could use unwavering faith and extraordinary effort, those two decisions to walk again, when the doctor said I never would, I realized that I could apply them to any aspect of my life. Now I want you to ask yourself, what in your life do you believe is possible, but. But you're not sure that it's probable, so you're not pursuing it right now. I'll say that again. What in your life, personally or professionally, do you know it's possible? You're an optimist. You know anything's possible, but you're not sure it's probable, at least not for you. Maybe you check the rear view mirror and you're like, I've never done that before. I don't know. I have no evidence that I could do this. Maybe it's a challenge that you're scared to overcome, or it's a goal or a dream that you're scared to pursue because you're not sure it's probable. And I'm here to tell you that the way you move your biggest goals from that void of possibility where everything exists but nothing happens, to probable and to ultimately inevitable, is to make the decision today that you will maintain unwavering faith that you can overcome or accomplish anything, that you commit fully to unwavering faith in your ability to overcome any challenge and to stay committed to your goals and dreams. And that you commit to maintaining unwavering faith and putting forth extraordinary effort. And that doesn't mean that you become a workaholic. It doesn't mean that you sacrifice your health or your family or what matters most for all of us. It means that you wake up every day and you do at least one thing. Every single day, you do one thing that moves you closer to your biggest goals and your biggest dreams and those tangible, measurable miracles in your life life that you deserve, that you are capable of. And if you make those two decisions every day, you put yourself in the top 1/10 of 1% of human beings on the planet that do that. You look at the Joe Polishes, you look at the Lisa Nichols, you look at the world's most successful people. They're insecure just like you. They suffer from self doubt just like you. They're not sure if they can accomplish their goals just like you. But at some point in their life, whether consciously or unconsciously, they started maintaining unwavering faith in themselves and their ability. And when they faced doubt, they just stayed committed to maintaining faith. Possible. And it then became probable. And putting forth that extraordinary effort one day at a time to move you closer. The beauty of this equation, unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort combined day after day after day after day for as long as it takes to create your tangible, measurable miracles. The beauty of it is that you can't fail. You can't fail. You can only learn, grow, evolve, and become a better version of yourself. And I will tell you, it will probably take you longer to get where you want to go than you thought it was going to. My biggest dream in the last 20 years was to change 1 million lives 1 morning at a time with the miracle morning. And my goal was to do it in one year. And that year I put forth extraordinary effort. I maintained unwavering faith. I did every. I was on 150 podcasts, I gave 36 speeches, I was on 12 TV talk shows, I was on social media every day to sell a million books and change a million lives. And at the end of the year, I was 987,000 copies short of my goal. But see, the way the miracle equation works is that you maintain unwavering faith and you put forth extraordinary effort for as long as it takes. And it took six years to reach a million people at the miracle morning. But it was those two decisions. So whatever challenges you're facing, whatever goals and dreams you have in your heart, you're only two decisions away from making them a reality. Unwavering faith and extraordinary effort until the last possible moment for the rest of your life. And there is nothing you can't overcome or accomplish. I love you all so much, and thank you.