The Consequence of Our Beliefs with Jay Scherr

Hal, it is so great to see you. Thank you so much for being here today.

My pleasure. Jay, man, we met in person and you made this offer to have me on the show. I couldn't turn it down, man. I'm excited to chat with you.

As am I. Well, I am super excited about the conversation, so let's dive right in. There's so much to. To cover here. First, I would love to find out from you what your favorite trait is about yourself.

That's a new one. I love that question. Favorite trait about myself.

I'd say it's my positive energy. For me, I view every aspect of life through a positive lens, including the most difficult experiences we face, because I feel like those are our greatest opportunities for growth, to learn, to grow, to become better than we were before we encountered the challenge. And, you know, you mentioned the car accident when I was in the hospital, I came out of the coma and I was told I would never walk again. And the doctors called my parents in and they sat them down. They said, we want to give you an update on how physically he's stable, which because I had flatlined, I had technically died three times, lost my heartbeat three times. And so they just were concerned with me living. And they said, he should be with us a long time. And my parents breathed a sigh of relief. They said, but we're concerned with his mental state. They said, every time we interact with Hal, he's always smiling, laughing, joking, you know, he said, it's only been two weeks since he was found dead, one week since he came out of a coma. We're telling him he's never going to walk again. And we believe he's in a state of delusion that he cannot accept what has happened to him. And so he's just checked out. And we need you to talk to him because we can't help him heal until he faces reality. So my dad came in that night, expressed the doctor's concern, and I said, dad, I thought you knew me better than that. Because he said, the doctor said, you should be scared, depressed, angry, you know, And I said, I'm none of those things. I thought you knew me better than that. I said, I live my life by the five minute rule that I learned in my sales training. It says, it's okay to be negative, but not for more than five minutes. Set your timer on your phone. Give yourself five minutes to feel sorry for yourself, be angry, upset, whatever it is. But when the timer goes off, you say this mantra. Can't change it. You acknowledge, I can't change what happens. There's no point in feeling sorry for myself. There's no point in wishing that it were different than it is. The only logical choice I have is to accept reality, be at peace with it, no matter how difficult it might be, and make the best of it. And I said, dad, I might be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. The doctors are right. I promise you, though, from this day forward, I'll be the happiest person that you've ever met in a wheelchair or otherwise. And, you know, and so that was it. It's like I really learned that we can choose how we experience every moment of our lives, even when we're facing our greatest challenges.

What. What an incredible perspective and mindset to have. Did. Did you have the same conversation with your mother?

I mean, I'm sure my dad relayed it. And, you know, I've heard my mom and dad talk about when they tell their side of the story of, you know, finding, you know, getting the call that I was in the hospital in critical condition and had flatlined. And they always say that. They always say, you know, that Hal let us through it. You know, we were scared, we were nervous, we were depressed, we were angry with the drunk driver. And Hal was just smiling the whole time and saying, it's fine, mom and dad. I'm going to get through this. I'm going to learn from this. I'm going to, you know, so on and so forth. So, yeah, that was the mindset.

Yeah, Very, very powerful. So, you know, you have written about. Well, you've written that you lacked confidence and discipline and belief in yourself when you were growing up. And yet at the age of 19, you went to work for Cut Cutco Cutlery, which you're alluding to here in terms of the. The five minute rule. And I want to expand on that for just a moment because in a relatively short period of time, relatively short period of time, you became one of the top salespeople in the history of that company. So you come into it with a certain belief set, and yet you transform over a relatively short period of time. So share with us what changed about you.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. The. So, yeah, my whole life, I was pretty mediocre. You know, I didn't get good grades. I wasn't disciplined. My only strength was I was kind of funny. I was like the class clown in school. But that got me in trouble. I was always getting in trouble. My parents were always getting calls from my teachers. My mom always told the story how she was on the phone with my algebra teacher, Mrs. Aoki. And then she goes, hold on, I have another call on the other line. And it's my principal talking about a completely different topic that he's upset about. You know, so that was me growing up. And on my second day of my Cutco sales training, essentially we were presented with what's called the Cutco Fast start contest. And it's something that Cutco does for sales reps for their first 10 days. And it's basically a bunch of, it's a bunch of prizes. If you sell $1,000, you get this, you know, this prize. If you sell 3,000, you get this. And on and on and on and on and on. And the highest level was if you break the fast start record, if you sell more in 10 days than anyone in the. And it was the western region of the United States, you get a will take you skydiving, limo, night out to dinner, I forget all sorts, plus you get every prize below, right? So, so that was the initial, just motivation. I thought, oh, that's amazing, that would be so cool to win all of that. And, and then here's the belief though. This is the belief that shifted. And I think it's one of the most important beliefs for any human being to adopt to be able to be more successful than you've been up until this point and keep taking your success to the next level. The girl that had broken the fast start record, coincidentally had, had, had broken it like three weeks before I started. So this is a 50 year old, 49 year old company at that point. So the most anyone had ever sold in 49 years had just, that record had just been set or broken and set three weeks prior by a, by a girl who was my age. I was 19, she was roughly 19. She lived 45 minutes south of me in, I lived in Fresno, California, which if you know anything about Fresno, it's not known. It's not like Beverly Hills, it's like, you know, it's, it's central, the Central Valley. It's not known for like being a wealthy area. Right. She was in Bakersfield, which is like Fresno's cousin. So we're both in cities. So I'm just, I'm doing the math in my head and I'm going, and here's the belief. I went, if she could do it, why couldn't I do it? We both live in relatively similar demographic areas. We're both the same age, we both never sold kitchen knives before. I'm assuming she had never sold Kitchen knives before, you know, in college I thought if, if she could do it, why not me? And I think it's one of the most important beliefs for us to adopt that if another human being has done something, that's evidence of what's possible for us. And we tend to do the opposite. We tend to look for the differences and the reasons that they're better than us. Oh, they've got more experience than I do. Oh, they're, they're older and wiser than I am. Oh, they're younger and more energetic than I am. Oh, they're, you know, they're more charismatic than I am. Right. We, we look for separation and we need to flip that around and go, no, no, no, no, no. They're a human being and, and they have as more in common with you than different. Right? They deal with the same self doubt and insecurity and we all. And so I went, if she could do it, why not me? And I approached my manager after training and I, I told him, I said, hey, I want to break the, the fast start record. And I thought he was going to be jumping up and down for me. And he goes, okay. He said, hal, I'll tell you, I hear that every week in training somebody approaches me. At least every week one person says they're going to break the record. I've been a manager for, you know, X amount of years. Do you know, can you guess how many people have broken the fast start record that I've trained? I went, none, maybe, right? And he goes, yeah, none. He said, it's easy to say it, but to do it, you have to be committed at a level you've never been committed to anything before in your life. And Jay, remember, I'm a kid that's never been committed to anything in my life. Right? You know, except for being funny.

And, and he goes, if he goes, I believe in you, Hal. And I'm, I can, I can tell you exactly what to do, but you have to be prepared to work from morning until night. Literally morning until night, like 8am to 9pm for the next 10 days. Give it everything you have, regardless of your results along the way. And honestly, Jay, I was totally intimidated, totally scared. My, everything inside me was going, okay, never mind. But, but, but I was embarrassed to say anything other than, yeah, okay, I'm in, right? So literally out of embarrassment to say anything else, I said, I'll do it. And I made. He goes, you know, he put his hand out, he goes, are you, are you, are you commit? Are you 100 committed, because I'm going to tell you to do things. They're going to be out of your comfort zone. And I'm going. My hand shaking. Yeah, of course. And I shake his hand. And that was it. That was the shift. And you know, I'll say this, there's a quote from Tony Robbins that really describes what happened here. Tony Robbins says, it's in our moments of decision that our destiny is shaped. And it was the moment I shook his hand and decided I will do everything in my power. I will give it everything I have, even if I don't feel like it, for the next 10 days, regardless of my results along the way. And I'll tell you, I don't care who you are, if you set a goal and you commit to give it everything you have until the last possible moment, regardless of the results along the way, you are going to astound yourself with what's possible. You're either going to reach the goal, you're going to exceed the goal, or you're going to fall short. But you're falling short will be more than you've ever done before as a result of that decision and that commitment to give it your all until the end.

Well, how you, I mean, you've got my energy level up to a 15 by now, where 10 would have been my maximum. And it kind of, it goes to the trait that you said at the very beginning of yours, your favorite trait, that positive energy. And I just want to pause for a moment to, just to highlight a couple of things for our audience here. So I'm taking notes. I'm listening, right? Because for all of you that are watching and listening right now, you should be doing exactly the same thing, right? Listening, but active listening. So taking notes so you can apply the lessons that you're learning here. So I'm hearing about belief, I'm hearing about commitment, I'm hearing about discipline. And what's really interesting about what you said when you talked about belief, we and you, you said this. I'm just going to say it in a slightly different way. We will find the evidence. We will find the evidence to support whatever our belief system is. It could be a negative belief, it could be a positive belief. But one way or the other, depending on which way, what our belief system is, we will find that evidence to support that belief. So knowing that, knowing that, why don't we, and why shouldn't we go ahead and attach that belief to something positive that's actually going to move us forward. And you know, as you're Telling me this story, it reminds me of the Roger Banister story, Right? So no one had done this before, and in your case, no one had done this before, but the moment that someone breaks that record, the moment that someone achieves something, all of a sudden it becomes real. It becomes real. And to. To say what you were saying to yourself, if she can do it, why can't I? And for all of you, we should all be saying the same thing. There isn't. You can achieve anything that you set your mind to. You surround yourself with the right people, you follow what we're going to talk about here in the miracle morning, and you work on your belief system. There is nothing that you can't achieve. And how.

What.

What an incredible story and a great way of articulating that. And thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

Thanks for the invitation.

Absolutely. So I'm curious, speaking about belief, what is something that you believed about yourself early on in life that you later discovered wasn't true?

Ooh. Yeah. I love. I love the question, but I love the answer that just came up for me. And here's what it is. I. I believe. So my superpower, if you will, is to be able. It's that positivity, right? It's that even in the face of the, the most unimaginable adversity, you know, the car accident or, you know, you mentioned cancer years later, that I'm going to. I'm going. I'm not going to allow the outside uncontrollable forces that have happened to me, the things that happen that I can't change, that are out of my control. Right. Once I got in the car accident, I couldn't undo it. It would happen. But it's my positive response that I'm going to see the silver lining. I'm going to choose to be happy, choose to be grateful, choose to be proactive, even in the midst of these difficult circumstances, and never use anything that's out of my control as an excuse as to the one thing that's in my control, which is how I choose to experience every moment of my life and by what I focus on, by what I do. So the. I thought, I don't really experience negative emotions. At least I used to not. And I thought that was a superpower. And in many ways it was. However.

After I went through cancer and I did chemo for a few years, I stopped sleeping. I went through a really, really the most difficult time in my life. It was actually, November or December 2019. I slept for two hours. One night. And after two hours I woke up and my body was flooded with either cortisol or adrenaline. But it was like I woke up and I was wired and almost like a fear state of wired for no apparent reason. And it happened to be before I had to speak at an event. I'm like, this is the worst night to not sleep. I'm giving the keynote in the morning. Right Was what it was. But that set off a cascade of about five to six months of averaging two to four hours a night of sleep and waking up flooded with adrenaline or cortisol every single night. It got to the point after a few months, probably less than that, maybe a few weeks, where at dinner time, as I started to think about bedtimes, in a few hours my hand would start to shake because laying awake at night or waking up and either not being able to fall asleep or waking up and not being able to go back to sleep and just, it was just horrific. And I got to the point where I was. Because of the chronic sleep deprivation, I wasn't, I was hallucinating. I thought that my business partner's husband was going to kill me. I thought, I mean, I was a mess, I was a mess. I was depressed. I developed severe anxiety. I had to fire all of my employees because I couldn't lead them anymore. Like I was a mess. And my marriage was on the verge of falling apart because my wife was supportive and empathetic for as long as she could be. And then she finally goes, I don't know what to do with you. Like, I don't know what to do anymore. You're not my husband. This isn't who I married. Right? So she hung on as long as she could. So, you know, I'm sleeping in a separate room because any noise wakes me up. We haven't slept in the same bed for four or five months. I was a mess. And I started doing a lot of inner work. I tried everything I could, from plant medicines to therapy to, you know, you name it, I tried it all. And here's what I uncovered when my, when I was nine years old.

So when I was eight years old, I had a baby sister that was born. Her name was Amory. She was born when I was 8. When I was 9, I woke up in the morning to my mother screaming across the hallway from her bedroom. And I ran in and she was giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to my 18 month old sister. And I, I ran to the neighbor's house to get help. I called 91 1. I came back. The ambulance showed up. My dad came home from work. My mom, dad, and the. And my baby sister went in the ambulance. And I thought, okay, they're gonna be fine. Like, that's what ambulances do. They save people. So they're gonna save her. Well, she was already. She had already died, and. But I didn't know that. And.

My mom and dad had a family friend pick me up and take me to their house. They figured I didn't need to be at the hospital. And so I'm over there, I'm playing with my friends, thinking everything's gonna be fine, and I get a call from my dad. And he says the first time I think I'd ever heard him cry. And he says, he tells me that Amory is in heaven now. And I don't remember what I felt. I can't remember exactly what I thought. I just know what I said next. And I got off the phone with my dad, I'd imagine I was feeling a lot of weird, confusing emotions, right? Wait, she. My sister's dead. Like, what? So I'm never gonna see her, right? At eight years old, or eight or seven or eight years. Eight or nine years old, you know, imagine. That's hard to process. And I went out in the living room and I said, hey, everybody, in a really positive, upbeat voice. I go, guess where Amari is? And I remember the mom looking at me and furrowing her brow. I think she already knew my friends. You had no idea. And I said, she's in heaven. Isn't that great? Heaven's supposed to be like.

The best place, right?

And so I think that at that moment I developed this so called superpower, right, That I thought was a purely superpower, that I flipped the switch and I went, oh, if you're just positive, if you just focus on the positive, you find the. The lightness in the tragedy.

I don't have to feel all these. These weird feelings that are coming up that I don't like. And I went through my entire life never feeling. Not feeling much emotional pain. In fact, I don't recall. And I'm sure I probably did cry, but really, I don't recall crying for my entire life until I got cancer. I was 37. I didn't cry through. Anyway, I started crying through the cancer journey. But the point is, I thought that, that. That I was like, almost like almost an ego place of like, I'm. I'm superior to most people in that I don't feel emotional pain, right? It wasn't really. It wasn't so much, but that was a part of it. It was. But it was like, I. I've got this superpower. I don't feel emotional pain, right? I've. I've. I'm enlightened. I really. That was the ego p. I'm. I've. I've. I've figured it out. I'm enlightened. And while there's a lot of value to that superpower, I've. I've empowered a lot of people to overcome their emotional pain and learn how to transcend it and be at peace and so on and so forth with the five minute rule and can't change it, a lot of these things. However, upon a lot of deep investigative inner work, I realized, oh, I'm not superior. I'm actually. I'm weak when it comes to feeling emotional pain. I can't handle it.

And my wife, you know, she had pointed that out for years, and I go, you're wrong. You're wrong, you're wrong. Right? And then it took. You know, I think I was with a therapist or whatever, but we finally figured out, oh, I actually can't handle emotional pain. So I've got all these ninja tricks, you know, and. And. And this positive mindset toward everything. Not because I'm so strong. It's actually because I'm weak in the. In regards to handling the pain. And so I figured out how to never have to feel it. So it's the dark side of the superpower, if you will. And so I went into. I used plant medicine. I used meditation. I used a combination of techniques. I used some therapists, some coaches. And I finally got to the point where, I mean, I literally, like Jay, I couldn't cry. I used to always brag. I go, if my mom died, I would set my timer for five minutes. I would feel the pain, but there'd be no value in dwelling on it. So I would say, can't change it. I would accept it, and I would move on.

Wow.

And I literally couldn't cry. And so one day, with the help of plant medicine and deep meditation, I said, you know, God, let today be the day that I cry. And I'm trying to cry, and I'm trying to cry, and I'm trying to cry. And I go, God, my wife's right. I'm a freaking robot. I literally can't cry. And I go, what will it take? And I'm imagining my kids dying. I'm imagining my wife dying. Like, I'm. I'm trying to think of the most. The. The Worst things I could ever imagine happening. And finally the seal breaks and I start bawling. And I gotta tell you the funny part of the story, Jay. My wife has never seen me cry in our entire relationship at this point, right? And she goes, and she always says, like, if I left you, you wouldn't care. You wouldn't cry. You'd set your timer for five minutes, you'd say, can't change it. And I go, no. You know, and I. And I'm literally thinking, God, she's probably right. But I'm going, no, no, I'm sure I'd cry. So it's, I think it's, it's got to be, you know, I started this journey, I wake up at 3:30 in the morning every day. I started this journey at 4 in the morning. I'm probably crying by 4:30 or 5 and I am crying and I go, oh, I've got to tell. I've got. Ursula has to see this. My wife's got to see that I can cry. And it's over, the loss of her. So I go, she's never. So if you could imagine being her. I wake her up from a dead sleep. I'm bawling my eyes out. Her first thought is, the kids are dead or in trouble. Some, right? I'm going, sweet. She goes, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? I go, no, no, no, nothing's wrong. Look it, I'm crying, I'm crying.

And she wants to murder me. And, you know. Yeah, but, but what's interesting is that began probably 6 to 12 months of me crying almost every, every single day. Now, keep in mind I was in the middle of my sleep deprivation. So I was, I was in a bad spot already, you know, mentally, emotionally and physically. But Jay, every day when, you know, the most common question we ask, ask each other is, how's it going? Right, right. How's life? Well, when I'm sleeping two to four hours a night, I'm suffering from ptsd, you know, sleep deprivation. I'm on chemotherapy for the cancer. I'm in bad shape. And when you ask me, how's it going, nothing. But the truth is what comes out. And I just would start crying to stranger anybody, you know, I went from one extreme to the other. But the beauty of it is I became so depressed, I was suicidal. Through the sleep deprivation these six months, I literally was thinking of how I could end my life and not have it hurt my family, which, thank God, I never thought of a good solution to that inquiry but.

What I realized is as I'm meditating and I'm praying on why, why can't I sleep? Why am I so depressed? Why have I lost control of my mental and emotional well being then? That was my identity, that was the thing I always had total control over. And I went, you know, especially when the pandemic hit, I went, oh, I believe I'm enduring this horrific ordeal to the point of being suicidal so that I can develop a level of empathy that has escaped me my entire life because I never knew what it felt like to suffer this badly. And now as this mental health crisis is, is brewing in the world with this, the pandemic and the lockdowns and you know, and not seeing loved ones and all of these things, I now will be able to be a much more effective servant leader because I will now understand what it's like to be in such a dark place that the five minute rule, the can't change it mantra, they might be helpful, but they're not turning it around for me. And so, so I embraced, as difficult as it was, I embraced the pain because I knew that once again, my positivity, it was an opportunity to learn, to grow and to evolve to a place I had never been before that could help me be a more well rounded human being and help serve other people through their tragedies.

Wow. Well, I want to point out to everyone right now that you do when it comes to sleep. As an example for those that are challenged with sleeping, you put out an episode recently on your podcast, which we're going to link to the podcast itself. But you do a great job of walking everyone through what you did, the, the tools and strategies that you use. As a matter of fact, I'll just mention this, that as a result of listening to that episode, there was a product that you mentioned that I believe Dr. Michael Bruce had recommended to you that I went ahead and purchased as a result of listening to your episode because there's some challenges that I'm facing there as well. So I mentioned that because for all of you that are, obviously there's a lot of everyone's working very hard, right? There's a lot of things happening right now that are adding additional stressors and some anxiety in certain people's lives. Always know and you've heard right here in the past few minutes that help is available. You do not have to go through this alone. So no matter what it is you're facing, whether it is lack of sleep, whether it is challenges that you're facing, processing issues in your, in your life, whatever it happens to be. Find a resource because resources are available. And you talked about how the therapy that you went through, plant medicines, et cetera, was. Out of curiosity, was cognitive behavioral therapy part of the therapy that you were, that you were utilizing?

It was on my list. It was recommended. And I just, I, before I got there, I started to feel better. And by the way, the biggest thing was I got off chemotherapy against doctor's orders. I, you know, my doctor wanted me to take it indefinitely. My cancer was very rare and aggressive. It was a 20 to 30% survival rate. So in the first eight months, I did 650 hours of chemotherapy. I mean, I was in the hospital for five consecutive days every three weeks doing intravenous chemotherapy 24 hours a day for five days. And then they had me on this maintenance plan afterwards. And I was very anti chemo. But I reached out to some of the best holistic oncologists in America and they all wouldn't treat me. They said, your cancer is so rare and aggressive that no one's going to be able to cure it naturally. And I thought, well, if the best, you know, world famous on call holistic oncologists that have cured a lot of people naturally are saying, like, you got to go traditional because your cancer, my cancer kills people in usually one to three weeks. When I went in the hospital, my heart was failing, my kidneys were failing, and my lungs were failing. And the doctor told me, if you don't start chemo right away, you're going to die. And I went, I'm not going to listen to your, you know, scare tactics. And then I actually verified it with some people that, you know, that are, that are alternative. But, but anyway, so I emailed my doctor after this, you know, six months of sleep deprivation. I said, hey, what criteria are you using to determine when I get off the chemo? And he said, your cancer is so rare that we're just doing, we're making the best guesses that we can and I want you to stay on it as long as you can tolerate it. And I emailed him back, I said, I'm planning my suicide right now, okay? I'm, I can't tolerate it anymore, so I'm done. And I got off. And that was May of 2020. And, and I went 100% natural. I have not, I don't think I've taken a single pharmaceutical drug in the last two and a half years since I got off. And you know, and he really warned me, goes, well, you Know, I don't advise this. You're on your own. And I've never felt better. I've never felt healthier. Even the sleep deprivation I would not take. I refused to take pharmaceutical drugs because I believe they're all band aids. They're not curing the problem. Right? Yeah. You might sleep better for a few months and then you end up sleeping worse and now you got an addiction and on and on and on. I mean it's a whole nother. Whole nother topic. But. But yeah, but that was a big piece of. It was getting off of pharmaceuticals.

Wow, Jet. That is absolutely incredible. So I want to share with you, Hal, and to our listeners as well. You know, you talk about not feeling certain emotions. I've grown up that way as well. Not to the same level that you're describing, but I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I'm going to say it as. Anyway, before my wife and I were married, we met with the, the, the priest and the pastor. We had a. We had a very interesting wedding, but nonetheless we sat down with them and the one who knew me best mentioned to my soon to be wife, your soon to be husband. We, he's nicknamed Stonewall because I just don't show emotion and I can maintain, similar to what you were describing, that, that, that level of positivity. I can look at things a certain way and it's a defense mechanism. Right. I keep, I push the, the emotions down so often. So I've had to learn, similar to you, going within, doing the deep work to discover more about myself. Why do I do that? Right. What, what is causing that? What are the triggers and how can I feel more emotion? And I'm in a much better place today than I was. But it's a really interesting situation. And I think the fact that you had the, you, you finally got to a place of awareness. And once we have some awareness, right, because we've reached such a level of pain that we have to do something different. And the fact that you were aware of it and then took the appropriate actions and you. There were a lot of things that you did, obviously. But that really is, is remarkable. Remarkable because it shows that no matter what the situation is, you have the ability, we all have the ability to, to change. We have the ability to recognize an issue that we're facing and we can change if we're willing. And I'm going to go back to what you said before, right? If we're willing to, to be disciplined about it, to be committed to it, to doing the work and having the right mindset. So just an amazing, amazing story. So take us through to tie the thread to where the miracle morning finally comes to fruition. So there's seeds that are being planted here. Right. But then finally it comes to the surface and you create this incredible, this incredible piece of work. Walk us through that.

Yeah. So it started. Yeah. So obviously after the car accident, I left and I go, I want to be a speaker. I want to, I want to help people. Right. That was my, you know, going into the car accident, it was, I'm going to be a, I'm going to be the top Cutco manager in the history of Cutco. And then I was like, wait a minute, this car accident is telling me I'm meant to do something else. Right. So that's where that seed was planted. And then in 2006, I published my first book, which few people have heard of. It didn't sell a lot of copies. Taking Life Head on. That was about my head on collision with the car accident, you know, the drunk driver. And then I wasn't planning on writing another book. And in 2008, when the US economy crashed, I crashed with it. I lost over. I was a coach, so I was coaching business people. And when the economy crashed, all their businesses either went out of business or they suffered. And so they couldn't pay me my coaching fee because they weren't making enough money. So I lost over half of my income in a matter of months. I couldn't pay the mortgage. My first house that I had purchased about a year prior, it was foreclosed on by the bank because I wasn't paying my mortgage. I couldn't afford it. I started living on credit cards. I went from being a Dave Ramsey, debt free, you know, student, to living literally in six months, I had accumulated $50,000 in credit card, personal credit card debt. You know, moved back in with my dad and, and so I'm depressed, I'm broke, I'm struggling to find my way. My identity is, you know, again, because that time, identity is like, I can make anything happen. I'm successful, blah, blah, blah. And.

A series of events led me to hear a Jim Rohn quote. Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And in that moment, I realized that Everybody wants level 10 success on a scale of 1 to 10. And success, I don't just mean professionally, I mean level 10. And if you're measuring success in your health, your relationships, your energy level, your fitness, your, your business, your finance, you Name it. We want level 10 in every area. It's human nature, right? But my level of personal development at that time, where I was so desperate to try to make money that I wasn't reading books. I was waking up working until my eyes bled into the night, right? And I couldn't look at the computer anymore. And then I was going to bed, and it wasn't working. I was declining. And I went. My epiphany was, I need to create the most effective, extraordinary personal development routine so that I can become the level 10 person that I need to be to create the level 10 success I want in my life. That was my theory. And I went home and I studied. I just Googled, okay, what are the world's most successful people do for personal development? I was looking for, you know, one or two things I could incorporate into my daily routine. I ended up with a list of six practices. The first was meditation, or what I call silence. The second was affirmations. The third was visualization. The fourth was exercise. The fifth was reading. And the final. The sixth was journaling, or what I call scribing. That's an acronym now. Savers, Silence, Affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. It didn't start out that way, but that's eventually what it. What it came out as when I was writing the book. But I looked at those six practices and, you know, they had all come about where I read an article on Fortune 500 CEOs that swear by meditation. Like, I gotta meditate. If these Fortune 500 CEOs swear by it for their best ideas and clarity and, you know, peace of mind and all of that, I gotta give it a try. And then I saw a video where Will Smith. This was pre Chris Rock's slap, of course, back when, you know, all you saw him as was, you know, almost flawless, right? This guy is. He's nice and he's successful. And he was being interviewed on it. I think it was the Ellen DeGeneres Show. And she said, will, how are you so successful at everything you do? Music, you know, movies, tv, you name it, right? And he said, when I was 15 years old, I learned about affirmations. And I basically learned that you write out exactly what you want to accomplish, and then you articulate who you need to be in terms of the qualities and characteristics. And then the third step is you write down which specific actions you're going to take and when. And every day you read, this is what I'm committed to creating in my life. This is who I need to be, and this is what I'm going to do. And he said, I just. Those affirmations were my blueprint. I read them every day. I lived in alignment with them, and I became the person that I needed to be to create the success I wanted. I'm like, I gotta do affirmations. And. And. And the case for the other four of the Savers, right? Visualization exercise, reading, scribing, they were just as profound. So I'm looking at the list, and I go, well, which one of these is the best? And I couldn't decide. I got overwhelmed. I also, this is something to consider. If you're listening to this and having the thought I had, which is like, none of these are new. And we've been conditioned in our society to look for the new. If it's not new and I'm. And I've heard of it, it must not be important, because otherwise I'd already be doing it. It would be changing my life. And I'm going, none of these are new. I need something new. And then, thank God, I caught myself, and I went, wait a minute. These are the six practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries, and I'm not doing them, not consistently. And then the epiphany, Jay, was, what if I did all of these? What if I woke up tomorrow an hour earlier, even though I wasn't a morning person? And if you're not a morning person, if you don't think you are, stick with me. At one point, we surveyed hundreds of thousands of miracle morning practitioners and said, were you a morning person before you did the miracle morning, or was this your first introduction to, like you had to overcome the limiting belief of I'm not a morning person. I didn't know the answer, what it was going to be. 72% of Miracle Morning practitioners around the world said they had never in their life believed they could be a morning person until they read the miracle morning. 72%. And now it's their daily, you know, five, six, seven day week practice. So I woke up the next morning, I did all six of the Savers. I did them poorly. I didn't know how to meditate. Affirmations were goofy to me. I mean, right? I didn't know how to visualize. And even doing a, you know, a subpar morning routine. I mean, for the most part, I felt so much clarity and motivation and energy. And I was reading again. I was learning something new. And I went, if I start every day like this, it is only a matter of time before, as Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. I thought if I start every day like this, it is only a matter of time. It's inevitable that I will continue to become a better version of myself every single day and eventually become the person that I need to be the level 10 person, if you will, the level 10 version to create and sustain the level 10 success that I want. And Jay, the last thing I'll say on this is I was imagining it would take me a year, right? The compound effect. One percent better every day in less than two months. And an important distinction. This was in the, in the height of the recession. This was when the economy was getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And I want to highlight that because for anybody that right now is listening and you're concerned with the recession that we are in, that is arguably, I mean, it's almost. It's going to get a lot worse, right? I mean, that's, I think that's not an argument, right? We haven't even seen what's going to happen. But in 2008, when it got worse and worse and worse, I realized that, oh, if I get better and better and better. In less than two months, I more than doubled my income. I didn't change jobs, I didn't add an income stream. I was still a coach. But I bought a book called Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. I did my affirmations every day and my visualization and my meditation and my reading and my journaling. Right, all of it. And I implemented the strategies I learned. And in less than two months, I more than doubled my income. In the height of the recession, I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically had, to being never run. I hated running. So I thought, what better way to become a level 10 version in my fitness than to commit to run a 52 mile ultra marathon when I've never run more than the high school mile that they made you run once or twice a year. And so I committed to that. I started training for it and my depression went away. Not in two months. It started going away on day one. Not that it was gone, but one of the biggest causes of depression is hopelessness. Into that six months, nothing worked for me. The economy got worse and my financial situation got worse and I felt hopeless. Nothing was working. My very first miracle morning, a spark of hope was ignited. And again, I thought, if I do it every day, I'm going to change. It's going to change. And in Two months, everything changed. And I went to my wife. I said, sweetheart, I remember, I could picture it. I caught her in the hallway. I said, right outside our bedroom door. I said, sweetheart, I just signed on two more coaching clients. We've doubled our income in the last two months, all because of this morning ritual, literally. I go, it feels like a fricking miracle. And she goes, it's your miracle morning. I go, I love it. Miracle morning. I started writing in my schedule every day, my miracle morning. And I never thought it was going to be a book. I taught it to my coaching clients. There were 14 of them. Almost all of them, except for a few, said, I'm not a morning person, Hal. I don't know. And I go, I know you pay me money to challenge you to get out of your comfort zone. I said, I wasn't a morning person either. I. I gave him some logistical tricks. Move your alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. That makes it 10 times easier to stay awake, right? I drink a glass of water right away. Rehydrate, give your brain what it needs, on and on. And two weeks later, 13 out of 14 of them came to the call, said, I did the miracle morning five days a week. I am becoming a morning person, or I am a morning person, Hal. I'm having the best week in my career. I'm. I'm running again. I'm exercising, I'm reading, I'm, you know, and that's when the light bulb, you know, the next bulb went off and I went, if the miracle morning changed my life, I mean, in two months, and I was in the, in the recession, and I wasn't a morning person. If this is changing my coaching clients lives, in two weeks, 13 out of 14 of them, the 14th one didn't do it. So, you know, whatever they said, I tried. I couldn't get up. All right, I thought, I have a responsibility to share this with the world. I can't be selfish and not share it. What's the best way to do it? I guess I got to write another book, and I'm a slow writer, Jay. It took me three years, but I self published the Miracle morning book on 1212 12. December 12, 2012.

I was an unknown author, but I committed. I'm going to change 1 million lives 1 morning at a time. I tried to do it. Year one, I only sold 13,000 copies. I was 987,000 copies short of my goal. But I was like, oh, that sucks. I'm going to keep going. And it took six years to reach a million readers and now it's over. Somewhere upwards of 4 million Miracle Morning books have been sold and 100 countries and so on and so forth. And so yeah, my mission in life, I've never created anything. The can't change it philosophy, the five minute rule, they're a close second. That's empowered, that's helped a lot of people realize, oh, I can just, I, I'm in control of accepting reality, moving on. But nothing's ever made an impact as deep and as broad as the Miracle Morning. So my mission in life is to elevate human consciousness one morning at a time for the rest of my life and keep sharing the miracle Morning. And you know, now there's a Miracle Morning movie for people that, you know, aren't ready to read a book. They've never read a self help book maybe. So they go to Miracle Morning.com and watch the movie. That's easy, right? There's a free Miracle Morning app for people that are techie and they want to track their savers and you know, you know, journal on their phone and. Right. So I'm trying to just create resource after resource after resource, as many of them as I can that are free and some that are, you know, they're paid, of course, got to pay the bills, but, but that empower people that have never thought they could be a morning person to watch the movie, download the app, read the book and like, you know, millions of people realize, oh wow, if I make just a few shifts, first mentally and then logistically I can do this. I can wake up a little earlier, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, I can do these six practices and I can change my life faster than I ever thought possible.

So, so good, Hal. And I'm going to share this with all of you that are watching and listening right now. And Hal and I talked about this a bit before we started recording and that was about what, how we started our day and what, you know, what's making this such a great day for us, how and his writings and his story have absolutely changed my life. And matter of fact, the Miracle Morning is a book that I gift as well as some other books. But I actually delivered this book to a client of mine today. So it just, what it does is it creates a ripple effect. Now I want to make sure that everybody heard something here. That is an important aspect of this. And we talk about this on this show and that is taking action. So everything that Hal just talked about, right? The six steps There is action tied to all of that. So yes, go out and buy a copy of the book. Yes, go out and watch the movie, but do something with it, right? Do something with it, use the information and then apply it. That is where you'll start to see the changes happening. And it truly is, it's a miracle, right? I mean, there's certainly science, there's brain science behind it, Right. But at the end of the day, you have been able to how, simplify this in a way that it is applicable for all of us and it applies no matter what your business is, no matter what's going on in your personal or professional life, you can apply this. And I, I, I want to just express my gratitude for you, to you for bringing this book to life. And what's amazing and what I love to see is that you have created an entire ecosystem around this. Right. It becomes foundational to your keynotes, to the movie, to the, the coaching and app and all the work that you do today. It really is quite phenomenal. So we're going to link to all of that in the show notes. I want to ask you about one other thing and then I've got a final question for you. And you are also in the process of creating a documentary about your mom.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, so my mom's a rock star. She's, she, I mean, so she was a flight attendant for Horizon Air. She retired recently. No, no flight attendant on Horizon Air ever sang their announcements. She sang them so much so that the CEO had her sing, I think, Happy Birthday to him at the, at their company party, you know, their national convention or whatever. The news came on her flight. They put her on the news. I mean, right. And, but that's really not it. She's remarkable in terms of, she's the definition of one person changing the world in her little way. She, every week she believes in taking care of the planet and minimizing trash. So she's got one of those tiny little waste baskets in her kitchen and she, her commitment is to, for an entire week, Right. She won't put more than that amount of trash. And like she, what else does she do? She sits with people that are dying in hospice all the time. She gives blood and she has for decades, like she does, she fights for good. She volunteers at the Elks. She does everything in her power to live by her values and make a difference in as many people's lives as, as she can. And it's not a lot. I mean, it's a small amount. She just you know, she's got her little neck of the woods, but she's an exam. If every person on the planet lived like my mom, the world would be a radically different place. And so I thought. And she's got, you know, she's got a little ego. She likes to be the star. She's a karaoke singer. Right. And I thought, what's the greatest gift I could give to my mom? And you know my friend Nick Connadera, that he filmed the Miracle Morning movie, the documentary. And I, I reached out, I said, hey, what are you thinking about making like a mini documentary about my mom? And he, he's met her and he loves. Oh my God. He goes, your mom's, you know, amazing. That'd be great. And so, yeah, so we, we're probably gonna start filming here, I think, in a couple of months. So we're doing some of the pre work and the conversations right now. And. Yeah, I'm excited.

I love that. What, what a beautiful gift. By the way, were you gifted with a wonderful voice as well, just like your mom has?

No, not actually. Yeah, I can rap. So I have two songs on iTunes. They're both called the Miracle Morning. I did one with someone I didn't know well, but he was a rapper and I met him and he offered to do a song with me. And the Miracle Morning book was coming out, so we did a song. His name is Kosha Dills. He's a Jewish rapper. And, and then, and then my other friend who's a musician, brother James, said, hey, I want to do a new version of the Miracle Morning. So we did it a few, a few years, a couple years ago. But, but yeah, I've been rapping since I was in like fifth grade writing raps. When I was in high school, I'd rap at parties, so I can't sing at all. But, but, but, but I'm known to, to rap, possibly poorly, I don't know, but I really have fun with it.

Beautiful. Well, again, we're going to link to all of this, this great information, all of your social channels, and I would encourage everyone to definitely follow Hal. You will see some of those videos. I watched one of you rapping here.

Recently and.

Instagram posted that or posted that.

Yeah. And it's actually, it's good, it's good. So keep that up. Keep that up. So here, here's my final question to you. What is the most difficult question that or the most difficult decision that you've made in the pursuit of who you've become.

The most Difficult decision. Well, what comes to me is it was the decision to do chemotherapy.

And I know that's kind of an obscure answer, but again, it's what comes up for me where it was a life or death decision, right? And what's interesting is the survival rate with my cancer is 20 to 30%. That means the oncologist says, if you trust me with your life and do the chemotherapy that I'm telling you to do, I'm guaranteeing you'll have a 20 to 30% of being chance of being alive for your family. That's like a financial advisor that you're debating on hiring, saying there's only a 70 to 80% chance you're going to lose everything. If you trust me. Talk about a hard decision. But when I reach out to these holistic practitioners, these doctors, and they go, that's your best bet. I'm going, oh, my God. So I'll tell you what I did. And this is actually a. There's a. There's a very valuable lesson in this, in the, in the conclusion of this story that people can apply to business, to any area of life. I said, okay, if I have to do chemo, I guess I have to do chemo. I'm going to do. I'm going to research every holistic practice known to man, and I'm going to take 100 responsibility for my survival. I'm not leaving it up to the doctor.

I'm in charge. I'm in charge of my recovery. Nobody's going to care about me being alive more than me. And so, yes, I will do chemotherapy, but I'm going to do every holistic practice known to man. In addition, as if my life depended on me doing the holistic practices. And I told my wife the day that I was diagnosed, I said, sweetheart, I know the doctors are saying there's a 20 to 30% chance of. That's the survival rate. And I know you're terrified of that. I said, I'm telling you, sweetheart, in my mind, in every fiber of my being, I've decided there's a 100% chance that I will be among the 20 to 30% of those that beat this cancer. And I encourage you, if you're listening, you create your destiny. You create the statistics of you succeeding or failing in every area of life with your mindset, with your beliefs, as we opened up and talked about. And so it starts with taking 100% responsibility for every aspect of your life. You know, when the drunk driver hit me, somebody said, oh, man, that's you know that's not your fault. I go, no, no, no, no, no. But it is my responsibility. What I do from here on out is my responsibility. The victim mindset is, my life's ruined. It's not my fault. It's the drunk driver's fault. That's the victim mindset.

Right?

The Victor's mindset is, yeah, it's the drunk driver's fault that this happened. It's the economy's fault that this happened. Right, Whatever. Okay. But I'm not going to waste a lot of energy on whose fault it was, because that doesn't help me. It's my responsibility to, you know, walk again. It's my responsibility to turn my financial situation around in the, in the depression or the recession. It's my responsibility to stay alive for my wife and kids and myself. And I'm going to take 100% responsibility. And so that's the lesson. That was the hardest decision I made, but it was the, the, the ultimate decision was I'm taking total responsibility and doing everything in my power to heal. And I'm not, I'm not counting on anybody else to do it for me.

Incredible. My friends, go back and re listen to this episode multiple times. Review your notes. I am sharing with you right now that what laid out to you in this episode, this is a game changer. This will transform your life. You follow this, you take the appropriate actions, you will see the results. Take control. I love it. So much goodness here. Hal, I want to thank you so much. I'm grateful for you. Thank you for bringing your energy, your authenticity, your. Your emotional connection. I mean, man, I can, I can feel it, right? I can feel that energy in your body language and the conversation, your voice, your eyes. Thank you for bringing it today and for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge with all of us. I am truly grateful for you, Jay.

It is sincerely, it's an honor, it's a privilege. And I thank you for the gratitude. I receive it and I reciprocate it, brother.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. And for all of you, thank you so very much for watching and listening. And I've got a favor to ask. Would you please take a moment to subscribe rate and leave us a review on Apple podcast that helps this podcast grow and expand its reach. And as a matter of fact, if you have not checked out Hal's podcast, do exactly the same thing. Listen to the podcast and leave him a review as well. That helps all of us out and we appreciate that. And to listen and enjoy more episodes, all you need to do is visit jshearbusiness consulting.com, click the podcast button, and until next time, keep learning, keep growing. Pick up a copy of the Miracle Morning and we'll see you on the next Business Minds Coffee Chat. Take care, everybody.