Hal Elrod | Winning the Day Starts in the Morning A Conversation

My manager, my mentor, Jesse Levine, essentially said, most of us believe that when bad things happen, I have to feel bad. And as long as that bad thing is in my mind, Many of us are suffering over things that happened not just five minutes ago, but five days, weeks, months, or decades ago. And we're still suffering because we're conditioned to believe that it's outside forces that determine how we feel inside. And what he taught us is that you set your timer on your phone for five minutes whenever you start to get upset over something, right? You get some bad news, you hit traffic, you get in a car accident, you set your timer for five minutes. And he said, you give yourself five minutes to fully experience and express your emotional state.

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Mahl, and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness, and life optimization. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you are always meant to be. Let's get started.

Good morning. Hal Elrod, author of the Miracle Morning, is joining us today, and you can't miss this. Hal's journey is extraordinary. Surviving a fatal car crash, conquering cancer, and transforming his own life to inspire millions around the world. His why? To elevate the consciousness of humanity by empowering each of us to unlock our full potential. In this episode, we'll explore his transformative savers framework, silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing, and how these simple morning practices can create lasting change. Whether you're seeking something simple, like a better way to start your day, or as complex as finding your life's purpose and ways to cultivate resilience, this conversation will not disappoint. Let's dive in. Al, you are like the poster guy, the poster human for post traumatic growth. So I've really been looking forward to this conversation. You know, I realize you've been through a lot and you can't tell that whole story here, and I really encourage people to get your book and read your book. It's phenomenal. But maybe you could, you know, give us a little bit of the story. I know you've had some really traumatic events in your life, beginning with losing your sister at an early age, the car crash that we just referenced, facing terminal cancer. And as we were talking before we got started here, you went through about a severe insomnia that when I Read about it just sounded incredibly challenging. So I wonder if you can a little bit about this journey and what is it that's allowed you or given you the resilience to overcome these challenges and actually grow from these challenges.

Yeah, you know, it looking back, it almost feels like it happened to somebody else. It's kind of surreal, but. When I was eight years old, I woke up on a Saturday morning to my mother screaming across the hall. My baby sister Amari had stopped breathing and her heart had stopped beating. And so I ran across the hall. My mother was giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation, but she wasn't able to revive her. And I watched my 18 month old sister die that morning. And at 8 years old, I didn't know how to process it. And so the trauma that I experienced was really unconscious. I really suppressed my emotions. I acted as if everything was okay because I just, at 8 years old, I wasn't emotionally intelligent enough to process all of that. You fast forward my car accident was 12 years later at 20 years old, I was head on by a drunk driver. I was clinically dead for six minutes. My heart stopped for six minutes, in a coma for six days. And when I came out of the coma, I was told I would never walk again. And I ended up kind of defying the logic of doctors and taking my first step a couple of months later. But it was a long, painful, you know, difficult road to recovery. And then you fast forward actually 2008, I lost over half of my income and went deep into debt and lost my home. And that was a really traumatic experience. Very consciously traumatic, not unconsciously. It was very depressing and very scary time in my life. And that's when the miracle morning was actually born. It became the solution to my financial problems and it changed my life so fast I felt like a miracle. Why? I called it the miracle morning. And then you Fast forward to 2016. I was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. They discovered the cancer because my heart was on the verge of failing, my lung was failing and my kidneys were failing. And this cancer attacks your organs. And I was given one to three weeks to live if I didn't start chemotherapy immediately. And if I did start chemotherapy, it was a 70 to 80% chance I was still going to die and only 20 to 30% chance I was going to survive. Grateful to say that I survived. But after three years of chemotherapy in 2020, one night I just slept for two hours and I woke up a wreck. The next day and my brain felt like it had broken. And. And that went on for six months. I slept two to four hours a night. I experienced psychosis. I was hallucinating, I was suicidal. I thought every day about killing myself. And now it's, you know, three and a half years since that time and I'm in my post traumatic growth still trying to get through that. And to answer your question, how have I managed all of this? I really give my mom and dad credit. When my sister died when I was 8 years old, my mom was 29, my dad was 30.

Yeah.

So they were still relatively young when they lost their first child. And within six months, my father was leading a fundraiser to raise money for the hospital that cared for my sister. And my mother was leading a support group for other bereaved parents. So what I learned from my parents at a young age is that you take your pain and you find purpose within it for yourself, but also to help other people. And so when I came out of the coma, one of the first things I said to my dad, the doctors thought I was in denial because I was so positive and upbeat and happy. They thought I was faking it. And my dad asked me how I was really feeling and I said, dad, I've always wanted to be a professional speaker, you know, motivational speaker. I said, but I didn't have much to talk about. Maybe that's why I went through this. I'm supposed to endure this difficult time in my life so that I can help other people. And looking back, I realized that I learned that from how my mom and dad responded to losing my sister.

Well, that is such a common thread of people who've leveraged really difficult circumstances and gone on to do incredible things that have helped millions of people. That seems to be a real commentary to how people have overcome some of the most challenging circumstances. So you had that modeled to you by your parents from early on. And one thing I remember, when you were recovering from the car crash, I do remember the story, how the doctors were concerned that you were in denial and that later on you were going to end up in worse trouble because you were in denial. But part of that was also you referenced the training you'd gotten as a Cutco knife salesman. And we have some Cutco knives here. My son in law was a cutcoat knife, failed since a while. And the way you were trained to deal with adversity and difficult emotion. I want to warn people this is pretty radical because most of us are conditioned that you know that this is not possible. But Certainly, you know, the context I come from with our work at heart, mind, and our radical responsibility approach, it is that we have a lot more agency than we think we do. So I wonder if you could share that, because it seems so powerful and can be so empowering to think that we can actually be masters of our own emotional life.

Yeah, it's one of the most practical strategies that I've ever learned. And I learned it on day two of my CutCo sales training. And my manager, my mentor, Jesse Levine, essentially said. He said sales is a microcosm for life's adversity, but it's accelerated and it's amplified. He said the average person, for example, occasionally faces rejection. He said, you're going to face it every single day, Every day on the phone. You're going to call 20 people, you're going to get a hold of 10, and five are going to tell you, don't ever call here again. Right? And he said, that's hard for a human being to get rejected. He said the average person occasionally fails, maybe once a year when they don't reach your New Year's resolutions. He said you're going to fail multiple times a month. You're going to fail to reach goals for the week, for the day, on and on. So he said you need a strategy to quickly overcome your adversity and to move through it so you could just keep moving forward and staying productive. And he taught us what he called the five minute rule. And the five minute rule simply said it's okay to be negative when something goes wrong. It doesn't go your way. You face rejection, adversity, whatever it is, he said, but not for more than five minutes. And essentially the time is arbitrary. It could be five minutes or 10 minutes or an hour or whatever. But the point is, most of us believe that when bad things happen, I have to feel bad. And as long as that bad thing is in my mind, many of us are suffering over things that happened not just five minutes ago, but five days, weeks, months, or decades ago. And we're still suffering because we're conditioned to believe that it's outside forces that determine how we feel inside. And what he taught us is that he literally taught us, you set your timer on your phone for five minutes whenever you start to get upset over something, right? You. You get some bad news, you hit traffic, you get in a car accident, you set your timer for five minutes. And he said, you give yourself five minutes to fully experience and express your emotional state. Don't suppress it, which we've Been taught to do. We've been taught. Well, I don't have time. I can't express these emotions. You know, boys, don't cry or, you know, I've got to keep working or keep a positive outlook for my kids or whatever it is. No, he said, give yourself five minutes to fully experience and express your emotions. Get angry, get sad, get upset, get scared, feel it fully. But when the timer goes off after five minutes, he taught us three very empowering words. Can't change it. It's a simple acknowledgment. Can't change it. I can't change what happened five minutes ago. So I have a choice right now. I can continue to resist reality, wish it didn't happen, and suffer for as long as I choose, or I unconsciously don't choose to do anything different, he said. So choice one is you can suffer, or choice two is you can accept your reality exactly as it is and be at peace with it. It doesn't mean you're happy about what happened. But peace is not an emotional state. It's a state of consciousness. It's a conscious choice that I can't change it. So the only logical choice I have is to accept it, be at peace with it, not wish it were any different. Because I can't go back in time and make it different. It is what it is. How do I want to feel? I want to feel at peace so that I can move forward. And for anybody listening fleet, they might be thinking, five minutes. You gotta be kidding me. I'm not gonna get over it in five minutes. And that's what I thought at first. But after I practiced this for a week or so, five minutes became too long. And I'd set my timer for five minutes. I'd get upset. No, I'm so mad. And then I'd look at the timer. I got four and a half more minutes. And I go, well, wait. Why don't I just say, can't change it now. Why don't I just accept it and move forward? There's no other logical, intelligent choice if I wanna be happy and I want to live a good life, right? And so when I came out of the coma, granted, the adversity I was facing was far greater than, you know, rejection or failure. But I realized, wait. The same strategy applies here. I can't change that I was in a car accident. I can't change that I broke 11 bones and that I have permanent brain damage according to the doctors. And I don't know what the future holds. But if the Doctors are right and I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, well then I can't change that. That'll be my reality. So there's no point in me being upset over being in a car accident or afraid of being in a wheelchair. Instead, I chose to be at peace with being in a car accident. And I chose that if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I can't change it, I will be the happiest, most grateful human being that anyone has ever seen in a wheelchair. Because I might not be able to change my circumstances that are at that point are fixed and out of my control, but I get to choose my mental and emotional well being. And for all of us, we can apply that five minute rule and apply those three empowering words, can't change it, and choose to accept our life, the things that are out of our control, exactly as they are and focus 100% of our mental energy, our emotional energy and our physical energy 100% into only the things that are within our control.

That is so powerful. And I mean, your story brings it home, makes it so real. And I was enthralled with your story as I was reading that and talking about how, you know, you decided not to buy the story, that you weren't going to walk again, you committed to walking again and at the same time, if the doctors were right, you are going to embrace that reality and just as you described. And you know, I just want to pause here for a moment because you know, we're so conditioned to do just the opposite of that and to hang on to negative emotions and to really believe that our internal emotional life is controlled by people in situations outside of us.

Yeah.

And when people hear that story at first they might go, who is this guy? Is he like an alien or something, you know, that could just flip the switch and do that? And as you said, it's not about suppressing anything, but it also comes with practice. And you know, you embrace that as a cuckoo nice salesman and became, I think the youngest person enter their hall of fame. You just had extraordinary success in sales at that company. But through practice, it really became something that was a real skill for you. And you know, when you think about logically, it makes absolute total sense. But for many of us, when we think about it more emotionally, it almost seems impossible.

And the only reason is because of how we've lived our lives. And again, it's how we've seen other people live their lives. So most people, right. If you saw your dad get Mad every time he was in traffic and he got angry, right? Or your mom, or you saw them respond to different challenges in their lives by getting stressed and fearful, then you think that's normal and that's our collective consciousness. The majority of human beings allow outside forces to dictate their internal state. And then their kids watch that and, and then, you know, they keep repeating that pattern. And if you ask anybody that's upset, why are you upset? We almost always have someone that we blame or something that we blame. We point our finger and go, of course I'm angry. Didn't you hear what she said to me? You know, or of course I'm sad. Look at what I lost. Or of course I'm afraid. Look at the direction of the economy and where we're headed, right? And we're always blaming somebody else instead of saying, well yeah, I can't change that, I lost that. But I'm not going to allow that loss to determine my mental and emotional well being. And it's this idea that we have to take a 100% responsibility for our mental and emotional well being and we have to consciously choose, we have to elevate our consciousness to realize I'm no longer going to let outside forces dictate my internal state. I'm going to consciously choose my optimal mental and emotional state and I'm going to set it like the temperature dial on the thermostat and I'm going to return to it as quickly as possible. When something happens externally that upsets me, I'm going to set my timer for five minutes. And by the way, again, the numbers arbitrary. When I came out of the coma fleet, I think I took about five days. Honestly, I was like, what's my life going to be like? What does this mean? I'm never going to run again. It was so much to process of what do the next 80 years of my life look like based on these circumstances? I mean, I never going to sell Cutco again. I mean, I had all of these what ifs, I don't know. So it wasn't a five minute thing. It took five days. But I'll tell you, I've known people that have been in car accidents that are suffering decades later and blaming it on their drunk driver that hit their car. And five days is a heck of a lot better than, you know, than five decades.

And not only did you walk again, obviously, and with a body with a lot of metal in it, you went on to run marathons, which is quite extraordinary. Why don't you talk A bit now about the miracle morning. And as you said, that arose in response to your. You had developed a coaching business and you were a very successful salesperson. You were probably training and coaching other people to be successful. And then the market crashed, the housing crash in 2008, and your business fell apart and you lost your home and you were in really rough shape. That one was really emotionally tough on you. You had a family, you had, you were supporting and so forth. So somehow that the miracle morning was birthed, that has now helped people all around the world. So tell us a little bit of that story.

Yeah, absolutely. In 2005 was my last year at Cutco. And then I moved on. I wanted to start my own business, be an entrepreneur. And I wanted to write a book to share my story of the car accident. And so I started a coaching business and as you mentioned, and I grew it, you know, pretty quickly. And in a year and a half it was very successful. And in 2008, when the US economy crashed, I lost over half of my clients and half of my income. I could not afford my bills. I started living on credit cards. I went from being a Dave Ramsey student who, you know, paid off the credit card every month to be debt free to having $52,000 in personal credit card debt in a six month period. I couldn't pay the mortgage, my house is foreclosed on and you know, taken by the bank. I canceled my gym membership. I went my first depression in my life where I was deeply depressed. My body fat percentage had tripled. It was literally physically, mentally, emotionally and financially. I was in the worst shape of my life. I mean, it was far more difficult than the car accident because in the car accident I woke up from a coma and things could only kind of get better from there. But in 2008, it was the opposite. It was like I went from good to bad to worse, to, you know, I'm just in this downward spiral. And one day after this six month downward spiral, I got advice from a friend. He told me to listen to a Jim Rohn audio. And I thought, this is stupid advice, man. I need advice on how to fit turn my business around. He said, trust me, listen to this audio and apply what you learn. And in that audio, Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And if you're listening to this or watching this, you might write that one down because that quote became the catalyst. And I'll say it again here in a second, but it became the catalyst for me to turn My life around Fleet so fast that it felt like a miracle, which is why we got the miracle morning. But the quote again was, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And when I heard that Fleet, I quantified it, and I thought, okay, my level of success. What level of success do I want on a scale of 1 to 10? And I think for almost anyone watching, it's, we all want level 10 in every area of life. I want to be as happy and healthy and financially secure and abundant as I possibly can be. I want level 10 success in every area of my life. And then I thought, okay, well, then if my level of success won't exceed my level of personal development, what's my level of personal development? And the way I would define that is like, what are the rituals and routines that you have in place to develop yourself from, you know, wherever you're at, To a Level 10 person, the Level 10 version of you in terms of your knowledge and your habits and your mindset and your skills and your capabilities, so that you are the level 10 person that can create and sustain the level 10 success you want in your life. And at that time in my life, I wanted level 10 success. But my level of personal development was like, at a 2, maybe a 3 or 4. On a good day, I was in desperation mode. I wasn't growing or evolving at all. And so that was my light bulb moment, my epiphany. I thought, I've got to go figure out what the world's most successful people do for personal development and create the ultimate personal development ritual routine with not just one or two, but the best practices all synergistically combined. That was my aha. And I ran home and I went online for an hour, and I just did some research on what are the most effective personal development practices that the world's most successful people have attributed their success to for centuries. Not anything. I wasn't looking for new. I wasn't for the new program. I wanted the timeless practices. And I almost got a little bit. I don't know if you'd say discouraged because they were nothing new. It was like, wait, okay, meditation, which became silence for me because it's prayer, breath, work, meditation, and this acronym, savers, if you're following along. It's silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading. And then the final S in savage is for scribing, which is a fancy word for writing. But I need a S for the acronym, but the journaling, if you will. I realized that any one of those practices will Change your life. But when you do all six, you're harnessing the six most timeless, proven practices to take yourself to the next level and beyond so you can create the success you want. And I thought if I did this every day, I gave myself one year. I thought in one year from now, if I get a little bit better and more capable and more knowledgeable and more disciplined, then a year from now, I can turn my life around. And Fleet, this was at the height of the Great Recession in 2008, when the collective consciousness was one of fear and overwhelm and scarcity and the economy was continuing to tank. And in two months, my very first two months of doing the miracle morning, it wasn't even called that, didn't have a name at the time. But in two months of doing this morning practice, these six practices, known as the Sabers, I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life, having not exercised in six months, to committing to train for and run a 52 mile ultramarathon I had never run before in my life outside of high school PE class. And my depression didn't take two months to go away. It started fading on day one, being replaced with optimism and confidence and resilience. And my life changed so fast. I went to my wife. I remember, I can picture the moment in the hallway of our home. I said, sweetheart, I signed on two more coaching clients today. She said, that's great. Congratulations. I said, no, you don't understand. This is monumental. I said, we have officially doubled our income, more than double our income, since I started that morning routine two months ago. It feels like a miracle. And without skipping a beat, Fleet, she said, it's your miracle morning. I said, I like that miracle morning. And then I started teaching it on my coaching clients. Most of them resisted, said, I'm not a morning person. I said, no, let me teach you how to beat the snooze button. I wasn't a morning person either. Here's how you do it. And two weeks later, they came back to their coaching call. And 13 out of 14 said, oh, my gosh, the miracle morning works. I'm having the best week in my sales career. I'm running, I'm meditating, I'm journaling, I'm, you know, all the practices. And that's when the second light bulb went off for me and I went, if the miracle morning changed their life in a matter of weeks and mine in a matter of months, and none of us or most of us weren't morning people, I have a responsibility to write a book so I can share this with the world and that is how it all came to be.

So why the morning? I mean, logically, getting your day off to a good start, that makes sense. But I'm wondering if you could talk more about the power of the morning. And you know, a lot of people probably don't think of them. I certainly never thought of myself as a morning person. I never knight out my whole life and I followed Robin Sharma's work and Tony Robb, many others for a long time and they all talk about getting up early. Robin Sharma has the five, the 5am 5am Club.

Tony's got the hour power.

Yeah, I've had a morning ritual for a long time. I've been doing this kind of work for a long time and I have a very solid and I've enhanced it since reading your book. I've added to it. I haven't got to 5am yet. I get up between 6 and 7. I'd like to be more consistent. It generally has to do with how late my wife and I stay up the night before. But sure, the morning thing, what is it about the morning?

The University of Nottingham did a study and determined that productivity is increased by 30% if you have a morning routine. And I don't remember the details of how they measured that, but they did it, you know, a wide study to find that statistic. And I'll just, I'm just going to talk in common sense terms for everybody. That's how I like to teach. Right. Is if I could quote studies all day, but I'll just share what makes a lot of sense, which is how you start your day sets the tone, the context and the direction for the rest of your day. The miracle morning though, is not about waking up at 5am or even waking up necessarily early. It's just starting your day with these practices, with intention, with productivity, with purpose, by being proactive. If you think about it, let's say not having a morning routine, what does that look like? Well, if you wake up at the last possible minute and then you check your phone or you check email first thing, you're literally starting your day in a state of reactivity. You're spiking your cortisol levels, you're moving from parasympathetic, which is, you know, the first moment when you wake up to the fight or flight. You are now in fight or flight. And that's why we're living overstressed lives. You cannot show up at your best if you don't start your day with a period of getting yourself into a peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state. So again, I love the 5am Club in Robin Sharma. But miracle morning can be done in as little as six minutes. In fact, there's a chapter in the new updated edition of the book called the six Minute Miracle Morning. And that's not hyperbole. It's literally how you can do a six minute miracle morning where you do all six of the sabers. One minute of silence where you take a few deep breaths. In fact, do it with me now. Everybody listening, everybody watching, take a deep breath, slow down your breathing and notice how in a matter of seconds you can completely shift your state. So 60 seconds of silence can put you in a calm, centered focus state. And then affirmations is the A in savors. You can pull out your affirmations. And the way that I teach them in the book is very different than the goofy style of affirmations where you're affirming something that's not even true. Like I'm a multimillionaire or I'm whatever. No, you've got to affirm reality. Affirm what you're committed to, why it's a must for you, and which specific actions you will take to follow through and do that with your most important goals in your life and your most important roles in your life. You can do it in as little as 60 seconds. And then the V and sabers for visualization. You visualize yourself doing the thing you need to do today that will move you in the direction of the commitment that you just affirmed. And you're mentally rehearsing yourself doing the thing in a peak mental and emotional state so that when it's time to actually do the thing that maybe is out of your comfort zone, maybe it's not enjoyable, maybe it's stressful, maybe it's scary. You've mentally rehearsed doing it in that peak state. So when it's game time, when it's time to go, you've been there and done that in your nervous system, you can do it in real time. The E in savers is exercise. You can literally exercise 60 seconds of jumping jacks. Your heart rate up, you're getting blood and oxygen to your brain, you have more physical energy and mental clarity. The R and savers is reading. You can pull out a book and read one page, get one idea that you can apply to your life or business. It only takes one idea to change your life. You don't need to read a whole chapter. You're going to forget half it by the end anyway. And then the final S in Sabers is scribing. Hold out your journal and take 60 seconds to write down one thing that you're grateful for and put your hand on your heart and feel it for a few seconds. And then look at your schedule. You got 10 things on your to do list. Ask yourself, what's the number one thing that I need to do that I'm committed to doing today that will move the needle in my life or business more than any other? Write that down in the form of a commitment. Six minutes, and you've already gotten clarity. You've calmed your nervous system. You've affirmed your commitment to do the things that will move you in the direction of your goals. You've mentally rehearsed showing up. You've increased your energy through exercise. You journal to what you're grateful for. Right? And so I don't recommend that everybody limits themselves to six minutes, but it just takes away the excuse of I don't have time. Everybody could set their alarm for 10 minutes earlier, go brush your teeth, drink a glass of water, and do a six minute miracle morning. And now there's, you know, the miracle morning app. You can literally click play, and it will guide you through the entire miracle morning. So there really is no excuse. And the biggest excuse of I'm not a morning person. 72% of miracle morning practitioners say that they had never in their life been a morning person or believed they could become one before they read the book.

So, and I love the adaptability. And I think that's why this model is at such a global response. And there's so many people passionately following it. You have a Facebook community, I think, of over 300,000 people all supporting each other with their savers and miracle morning routines and so forth. And because of adaptability, because parents, for example, you know, often have so many challenges around time and space to do things. But, you know, like you said, anybody can get up 10 minutes earlier and find that six minutes to do this. And if you do a six minute routine consistently for a while, it's probably going to go to 12 minutes and 18 minutes because you're going to be having an impact on your life and it'll probably naturally grow. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, you know, setting ourselves up for success with this in certain ways. There are certain ways in which, you know, having that phone right by your bed. So you're going to jump on email the first time. I mean, there's some obvious things you can do to set yourself up for success, but also has a lot to do with what you do the night before. And I know in your new book There's a Miracle Evening, and I remember reading when you were really struggling with insomnia, you had a real breakthrough in terms of how to change your mindset and put yourself in a space before you went to sleep so you would be able to sleep and then set yourself to wake up. And, you know, that was one thing around the chronic insomnia. But you also have some ideas about how much sleep we need and how mindset impacts that and how we can set ourselves up even the night before for success the next day.

Yeah, there's two things in the Miracle Morning, the new edition that are to help with someone who has this challenge of waking up in the morning, right, where, you know, like, oh, I just, I can't, man, I keep hitting the snooze button. I'm only half awake when I'm even doing it. There's what I call the five steps news proof wake up strategy, which is five logistical steps to beat that snooze button. And I'll go through a couple of those. And then there's you mentioned the new chapter in the book called the Miracle Evening, which is a very intentional evening ritual to allow you to fall asleep. I call it your strategy for blissful bedtime and better sleep so that you go to sleep not feeling stressed. You know, not tossing and turning, but literally falling asleep with almost a smile on your face as you're focusing on the things that you're grateful for that bring you joy, that make you feel a sense of calm as you're drifting off. So starting with the snooze proof wake up strategy, I'll share two of the most important steps. Number one is to set your intention before bed. I always say a miracle morning starts the night before with your intention. And here's what I mean. Think of it this way. Your last thought before bed is almost always the first thought you have when you wake up. Imagine when you went to bed if you had an early flight to catch. Or like for me, when I was a kid on, I always think about clothes. Christmas morning and Christmas Eve, I went to bed thinking about, oh my gosh, I can't wait to wake up tomorrow, it's Christmas, I'm going to run and see the presents under the tree, right? I can't wait. And I would go to sleep. And no matter how many hours of sleep I got, as soon as I Opened my eyes, I was flooded. I first thought was, it's Christmas. And I was flooded with the emotions that I went to sleep with. Because not only is your last thought before bed the first thought you have in the morning, but the emotional state that you dwell in before bed is the emotional state that you wake up in. And so as a kid on Christmas, I went to bed thinking about Christmas, feeling excited. I woke up thinking about Christmas and feeling excited. And what I realized when I was experimenting with the miracle morning back in 2008 is, oh, I basically reverse engineered that Christmas morning experience. And I went, I can create this every day. And I looked at what are the components. I went, well, before I go to bed, I am positively anticipating the morning. I am essentially telling myself consciously or unconsciously, that as soon as I open my eyes, I'm going to jump out of bed. I'm excited, I'm going to wake up with energy and enthusiasm and purpose for the day. And so I created bedtime affirmations. I essentially scripted out what would I need to tell myself. And these are in the book, what I didn't tell myself before I go to bed so that I can program my subconscious mind to wake up and actually feel energized and excited to jump out of bed. So that is step one. Set your intention before bed. And again, for me, it's a written bedtime affirmation that sits on my bedside table so that I never forget, right? I always. I walk into bed, I go, oh, yeah, I gotta read that, right? And now it's memorized. I mean, now I don't even. I look at it, I go, oh, yeah. And I get into it. The second step is move your alarm clock across the room as far as possible. Mine is in my bathroom. And here's why we can all relate to this. When the alarm goes off, usually it's our phone and it's on our bedside table. You reach over, you might not even open your eyes, and you turn it off or you hit the snooze button. And you think about this when you wake up in the morning, what I call your morning motivation level. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's at a 1. That first second where you're, you know, alarm goes off, you're at like a one. And so to try to rely on the level of discipline you have when you open your eyes and you have between the moment that your eyes are open and. Or not even open, but you become aware that if the alarm is going off and reaching over to turn it off, there's almost no space in there to do the right thing or the thing that you committed to. However, if you have to actually get out from under the covers, stand upright, walk into the bathroom, right? Well, now you're awake. Now you're fully upright. Now your eyes are open, and your morning motivation level, instead of a one, it's at like a maybe between a four to six. It takes far less discipline to stay awake and follow through with your miracle morning. When you are upright, out of bed, standing at your sink with your toothbrush and toothpaste right there, and you go, all right, I'm up. I'm just going to brush my teeth, wash my face, and then drink a glass of water to rehydrate and go do your miracle morning. So that's how you beat the snooze button. And if you want to go to the miracle evening at all, I'm happy to touch on a couple of those as well, if we have time.

And your book is just full of this kind of really practical, pragmatic advice and really addressing almost any challenge or resistance or confusion or objection anybody could have about this. And it really, I think it's because you've experienced it all and found solutions, and now you have this big community there encountering every kind of challenge imaginable and finding solutions to overcome them. So your book is. It's just full of that. And, you know, I've been a life coach, a business coach for a long time and teaching this kind of work. And, you know, often people resist this idea of programming themselves so that we can program our subconscious. And first of all, some people just don't believe it's possible. And others say, well, that just seems kind of weird. But what I think most people don't realize is we're all being programmed just the opposite way, constantly. We've been programmed our whole lives. We're being programmed by the media constantly. And if we don't start programming ourselves. In fact, in Silicon Valley, there was an expression among either learn to program or be programmed, Right? And so we don't realize this is happening all the time. And I'm sure there's a lot of people in the audience that have the habit of being on their phone, doom. Scrolling on the news right before they go to sleep and getting up in the morning and checking in again, well, what are we setting ourselves up for? If we do that? We're programming stress and anxiety and fear into our subconscious and into our brain. So, I mean, this stuff just really works. So, yeah, if you could touch on. You have a chapter on the Miracle Life. And for me, the Miracle Life is when I read it, I just loved it. And it's somewhat of an extrapolation of that notion of taking radical ownership for our own emotional state and our own choices and how we think and what we do with our thoughts and so forth. And it really, it's about our own life, but then it really about, you know, you have this aspiration to transform the world, transform society in positive ways, one miracle Morning, one human being at a time. And so I think that Miracle Life is very much about that. I wonder if you could talk about that because it seems like the full flowering of your work in some way.

Yeah, it's the next book that I want to write. And so when I was doing the updated edition of the Miracle Morning, I thought, I don't want to make people wait to get this content for another year or two. Like, let's get it in there now. And so the Miracle Life, it's the subtitle is your path to inner freedom. And it really, you know, encapsulates a lot of what we talked about already, right, which is like that five minute rule and not allowing outside forces to dictate your mental and emotional state. And one of the things that I talk about is the difference between emotions and states of consciousness. So emotional states and states of consciousness. Most of us are chasing emotional states. We all want to be happy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I want to be happy. But we're going about it the wrong way. Meaning we are trying to control outside forces and circumstances in a way that we feel good about, that we can be happy. And again, nothing wrong with that unless you're allowing your happiness to be dependent on those outside forces. So if things are going well in your life, you feel good. If they're not going well, you feel bad. And we go through life on this emotional roller coaster. And what I'm offering or what the miracle life paradigm is, how about instead of when good things happen, I feel good and bad things happen, I feel bad. How about no matter what happens, we choose? You get to choose how you experience every moment of this one life you've been blessed to live. To me, that is the ultimate superpower. It's what we're all after. It's like if a genie came to us and said, I can grant you one wish, but I can't. It's a special kind of wish. I can't give you a pile of money. I can't change anybody in Your life that's maybe difficult to get along with. I can just give you the ability to choose how you feel, how you experience every moment of your life. That's the wish I can grant. It's like that's the ultimate wish. And so practices like the miracle morning elevate your consciousness. And here's what I mean by that. So you have emotional states which are fleeting. You can be happy one minute and then you get a phone call with bad news. An external force has come through that phone and said things aren't the way you wanted them to be, and now you're upset. States of consciousness, on the other hand, are unwavering. It's the underlying state by which you experience all of life. And to me, the ultimate state of consciousness is inner freedom. And so for me, I cultivate it using what I call my emotional optimization meditation. So which ironically I call it the emotional optimization meditation. But it's really optimizing your state of consciousness. So there's that. But here's what I do every morning I ask myself what state would serve me today. And the state most often is bliss. I want to be in a state of bliss which is just, I'm happy, I'm grateful, I'm at peace, no matter what's going on on the news or in my life or in my bank account. I know that I can be the most effective at dealing with it if I'm in an optimal mental and emotional state. And so I use this meditation where I identify the optimal state and then I go through a few steps to get myself into that state. And then I set my timer on my phone for 10 minutes, or some mornings five, or some mornings 20. And I meditate. But I almost like the word marinate, if you will, in that state of consciousness. And what I'm doing is from a neuroscience perspective, right? I'm hardwiring it into my nervous system. You think about it. You mentioned doom scrolling. I was guilty of that from 2020 to 2023. I just finally was like, what am I doing? I am. Because, right, you get addicted to it. You think you need to know or you're going to miss out on the information. And then. But I realized, look, if the world's collapsing, somebody's going to let me know about it, right? One of my friends. I'll find out within 24 hours if there's something I really need to know about. And so if you think about it, if you are viewing, if you're doom scrolling, if you're watching the news, why hardwiring your nervous system with stressful, fearful emotions. What my miracle morning allows me to do is. And before I was combating it with my miracle morning, I'd have stressful emotions by doom scrolling during the day. And then I'd have to try to, you know, I'd fix them. But I was like, I was kind of at odds. Now I stopped doom scrolling. And every day I go to bed during my miracle evening thinking about things that I'm grateful for, things that make me feel happy, that make me feel at peace. And I drift off to sleep in a blissful state. I wake up in a blissful state. I do my miracle morning, my emotional optimization meditation. And so the point of all of this is that, number one, realize that you, as you said, you have far more agency than you think. You actually have control over 95% of your mental and emotional well being. You can't always control the initial programmed response that you have, but you can reprogram your subconscious mind to think and feel and experience every moment of this one life that you've been blessed to live, even though it's challenging and it's difficult. And we all have our cross to bear. We're all going through adversity in our own way, but we might as well be at peace with the things that we can't change and choose to enjoy every moment that we have of this gift called life.

What an amazing message. And I read that you're starting to get this message and the Savers practice in the schools. That to me, that's really exciting. I just can't imagine if I could have had access to this kind of information when I was just a kid in school.

Yeah, somebody on my team, Brianna Greenspan, who she was actually fleet. It's so cool of a story. She was my coaching client in 2009 when I had just started teaching the miracle morning to people. And now what do we have? Fifteen years later, she is the Director of education. She has personally brought the miracle morning into hundreds of schools, starting in New York and now spreading across the country. And now we have teachers and students and faculty that are starting every day with the miracle morning with the Savers. And they're reporting better mental health for the teachers and the students. They're reporting measurable decreases in their detention across the board. And more focus, more. I mean, just, it's amazing. And that was a vision I had in 2016 and, and now we're seeing it come to fruition.

And this is so needed because actually our education system's been in kind of deep trouble in many ways. And a whole digital thing with kids on their phones all the time. A friend of my wife has been substitute teaching at a school in the south and goes in and they're all on their phone and she tries to get them to do something else. They look at her like she's crazy, you know, so what a different thing to get kids focused on something like this instead of staring at that screen all the time.

Yeah, yeah. I think that if you. To imagine, like you said, if, you know, most of us learn these practices in our 20s or 30s or 40s or beyond, to learn them when you're in elementary school, middle school, high school, and then have those practices to carry with you for the rest of your life, I think it can be a game changer. And if we're going to elevate the consciousness of humanity, we. We've got to start with people when they're really young.

The Miracle Morning and the Miracle Morning community become a worldwide phenomena. And I'm sure it has its own momentum now. It's going to go on without you. What's next to you? What are you inspired? What are you passionate about now to bring into the world?

So it is the Miracle Morning. I mean, that has become my life's work fleet. And the way that I look at it, I've never created or shared something with someone that is made as profound of an impact as the Miracle Morning. Right. And the impact was profound in my life. And I just went, well, if it worked for me, it'd probably work for others. And then the coaching clients and, you know, and now the world. And it's universal, all ages, all nationalities, all demographics. It's in over a hundred countries now. It's the number one bestselling book in Korea. I mean, it really has shown that it impacts folks. And so the way that I look at it is that, you know, 3 million people have read the Miracle Morning and that means that I have the rest of my life to reach the other 8 billion people. And so the way that I'm doing that is, you know, you can see on the wall, there's a variety of books for different demographics. And the Miracle Morning for Seniors is the book that I am literally in the process of finishing right now, will come out probably next year. But that's a community that, you know, it needs to wake up every day with purpose. And I co authored it with the founder and CEO of Aegis Living, which is one of the largest senior living communities in America. It was his idea. He reached out to me, the Miracle Morning changed his life. And he said, seniors need these practices. And then there's also the Miracle Morning movie, which is a documentary that we made. You can watch it free@miraclemorning.com and that's a movie that enables people to see how the Miracle Morning is transforming lives. And it's for those of us that maybe won't read a self help book, but they'll watch a movie and then from there they might see, wow, maybe I'll give this a shot. And then last but not least is the Miracle Morning app. And that is, again, it's a way where people can immediately download the app, click, play, and complete an entire miracle morning in 11 minutes or 13 minutes without ever having ever even read the book, watched the movie, or done the practice. So I'm always thinking, you know, from the school program to the movie, to the app, to the series, if I'm going to elevate humanity's consciousness or play my little part, I've got to reach people in every possible way.

So I haven't seen the movie. I really want to, but my understanding is that that big project began before you received that terminal cancer diagnosis and you kept the cameras rolling. So your experience of applying everything you're talking about to that journey with cancer is part of that film.

It is. I, two years into the filming, I called my director and said, hey, the movie's off. It's gotta be on hold. I have to fight for my life. And he said, hal, I love you. We're friends. And he said, I love you. You're gonna beat cancer. But this is the movie now. I'd love to come down and film you beating cancer. And I went, it wasn't part of the plan, but I'm grateful that we did because, yeah, when you watch the movie, it's an extraordinary movie of interviewing famous people around the world on their morning routines and members of our community and how it's changing their life. And then the last 30 minutes are me fighting for my life. And, yeah, you see me doing my affirmations in real time. Bald, 40 pounds lighter, not a hair on my body, you know, sick. But I'm living my miracle morning. And at that point, I just focused all six of my sabers on one singular objective, and it was to beat cancer, live a long life with my family. And, you know, it definitely played a huge role in that.

And you mentioned you made the distinction around the kind of affirmations you teach and offer before, which I think is a really important one. And I know in your book and on your website and so forth you offer a lot of affirmations, but you also help people on how to create their own that are reality based affirmations, not this kind of far fetched magical thinking kind of aspirations. And I think that's a really important distinction. You must sit back sometimes, just wonder, how did all this happen? Right? I mean, there's a million self help books out there and somehow yours took off in this way and you created this miracle morning to solve your own issues and come out of an economic crisis. And then, you know, you wrote the book and now you've got another edition and it's just taken off. You must feel really blessed. And I know that you really focus on gratitude in your life, but I wonder if you have any thoughts that come to mind for you of like what you've tapped into or how something that, you know, there seems like there's some grace or something involved, then this is meant to happen in a certain way.

Yeah, I really take very little credit for any of this. I believe that I channeled the miracle morning and that I'm just a servant leader that is doing my part to elevate consciousness. And I think there are a lot of us, you know, you are one of them as well, Fleet. And through some really deep meditations and vision questing, I have gotten the message from God that, you know, how the car accident, the cancer, all of these experiences are part of your growth and evolution and if you hadn't gone through them, you wouldn't be making the healing. You had to go through these things. And I think that for anybody that's going through a difficult time right now, that's such an important perspective that again I learned from my mom and dad, which is whatever you're going through right now, two things to consider. Number one, if you can take whatever you're going, take it head on with the most positive, empowered, proactive perspective and approach that you can that will create a better version of you on the other side of the adversity that you are facing or the trauma that you are enduring, you know, that you've experienced. So number one is to understand that for you personally, there's a better version of you on the other side of this and be grateful. When I was in the hospital, in fact, there's a scene in the movie where I'm bawling my eyes out because they accidentally injected chemo into one of my nerves instead of my spine. And it was the most horrific pain I had ever experienced. 11 days of migraines around the clock. And I told my dad, I gave my dad my cell phone. I said, dad, hit record. And I didn't even know what I was going to say. And I was just bawling. And I said, I want everyone to see this because this is the most pain I've ever experienced in my life. I'm in horrific pain. I have been for days now. It doesn't change that I'm grateful for every single moment because this is enabling me to become the person that I need to be to make the impact that I'm supposed to make in this world. And as much as I excited for this pain to go away, I'm looking forward to that as soon as possible. It doesn't change that I'm grateful. And I think that if we can view our trauma through a lens of gratitude, then all of a sudden, the trauma is not a bad thing. It's an asset that serves our growth and our highest potential. And so whatever you're going through right now, my heart goes out to you. But I encourage you and I encourage you to really be grateful for the trauma, grateful for the adversity, and then transform it, transmute it, Turn your pain into purpose for yourself and to serve the people in your life who you love and who you lead.

That's such an incredible, powerful message and I think it's a great place to close our conversation. I wouldn't want to add anything or take anything away from that. That's this perfect and so powerful. Thank you so much, Al. But mostly thank you for who you are and the wonderful example you brought into the world. And you're just indefatigable energy to get this message out all over the world. So I support you in reaching the other 7.9 billion or whatever it being bullying of us out there. So thank you, Fleet.

I appreciate you. Like I said, I hope it helps a lot of people. I know, I know it'll help a lot of people.

Thank you for joining me on the radical responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay, stay present, and stay true to you. Take care.

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