The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin lifestyle show where I talk health, beauty and personal development with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus I give you tips that you can put into fast action to up level your health and your life. Now today's show is actually all about something I used when my son was in the hospital to keep me sane, keep me focused. It really provided the framework for me to be able to do everything that I was doing. And I have an awesome, awesome guest. I met him on a panel a couple years ago. His name is Hal Elrod. He is the author of the number one international best selling book the Miracle Morning. The not so obvious secret gift guaranteed to transform your life. We totally bonded when we met because I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I used when, when Grant was in the hospital. It's actually how I've lived my life my entire life. So let me tell you a little bit about Hal and you'll see why we bonded so much. Hal actually died for six minutes at age 20. He's going to tell you all about that pretty crazy story and he was told like he wouldn't walk and he walked within a couple weeks and then went and ran a 52 ultra mile, 52 mile ult marathon. I guess he showed them, didn't he? So he bounced back after that to become a hall of fame business achiever, an international keynote speaker, and again the author of the Miracle Morning. So today's guest is Hal Elrod. All right, so let's do it. Hal Elrod, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today, jj.

I am as glad, if not more glad. I'm pumped for this.

I don't know, I'm more glad than you are.

So don't get into me and my kids have this argument. I'm like, I love you more. No, I love you more.

It is interesting though because your, you know, your story is of course one that I can totally relate to with what happened with you. So before we dive into you having Created the miracle morning, which is something that helped me get through what I went through with my son and his accent. Let's just dive into, like you dying. I mean, you, you died for six minutes. Like, what, what happened there?

Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things you think, you know, death is at the end of your life is only going to happen once. My motto became, you only live twice. I was 20. I was driving home after giving a speech at a sales conference for my own company. I used to sell Cutco kitchen knives. When I was 19, I started in sales. And a year and a half later, after the speech, I was driving home and I was in a brand new Ford Mustang. It was, you know, back then, that was like the Ferrari for a 20 year old that I could afford.

Yeah, I had one too, just so you know.

Yes, I did. That was like my, you know, my dream car in the budget, and I just bought it a few weeks prior. And driving home that night, a man I had never met before got on the freeway in a full size Chevy truck. Problem was, after he had two beers, he was a little inebriated. He got on the freeway going the wrong way and he was traveling 70 to 80 miles an hour. I was traveling 70 miles an hour. We hit head on in a head on collision. And the worst was yet to come. My car spun off. The drunk driver and the car that was just three car lengths behind me, they didn't even have time to break. According to the driver, you know, later interviewed by police, he crashed into my driver's side door, like right into my left arm at 70 miles an hour and instantly broke 11 bones on the left side of my body. Broke my leg in two pieces, my pelvis in three places, my eye socket was destroyed, my ear was almost taken off, and I bled to death. I was dead for six minutes, in a coma for six days, and came out of the coma to be told I would never walk again, had permanent brain damage, suffered all these internal injuries, and just staged a miraculous comeback three weeks later. Took my first step and the rest is history, as they say. But I basically got back to life as normal with just a new sense of purpose. Like I have a responsibility to share this story and what I learned. Overcoming the adversity with, you know, with as many people as I can.

Gosh, I sit and listen to that and I think back to, you know, my son who had 13 fractures and multiple brain bleeds in the coma and the aneurysms, and was told he would never, like, never wake up, never Walk, never talk. You know, it's like. And you just. I'm glad. You're stubborn and you don't listen. That's awesome. It's like, what's the number one trait here? Be stubborn. Don't listen.

As a parent now, like, I think what you went through and what my. Like, when I share them my message, I just say what my parents went through is, in my. In my opinion, more difficult than what I went through.

Oh, yeah, no question.

I mean, you can. You can attest to that. Yeah.

And I would have traded places with my son.

Yeah.

Of course, you know, any minute along the way, it's like. It's just now as a parent, you know, it's like, oh. So what's interesting is, as I was going through this with my son, and as you know, I was, like, launching a book. I was all in financially, had to make it work, and I'm financial support for my family, and I'm sitting, you know, bedside with my son in a coma. But what saved me was this routine this morning routine that I dialed in. So I saw the miracle morning. You and I were actually sitting on a panel together, and that's how I learned about it. So I was like, oh, my gosh. So, you know, what is the miracle morning? And like, how did this. How did this come up?

Yeah, the miracle morning is, you know, I've gone many different ways of. How do I define or describe this in as simple as a way as possible. And one way to say it is it's the ultimate morning ritual. Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote the book Rich Dad, Poor dad, reached out to me, and I was blown away. And I still have trouble, like, saying this. It's just. It's hard to believe. But he reached out and said, hal, I've read the Miracle Morning three times. I do the ritual every single day, and it's completely changed my life. And he said, before the miracle morning. And I'm paraphrasing, of course, because before the miracle morning, every successful person on the planet did at least one of the six practices that you teach in the book, he said, but I had never heard of any human being on the planet that did all six of these ancient, timeless, kind of the most powerful personal development practices in all of humanity. No one was doing all of them, even two or three, let alone all six. He said, but that's what I do every day, and that's why it's been such a game changer. When I wrote the book, I wasn't like Robert Kiyosaki I wasn't a best selling author and worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. It was 2008 when the economy crashed. I was at the lowest point in my life, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and it was very organic. This wasn't a book ide. This was when I was at my rock bottom. I just went online and I started googling, what do the world's most successful people do every day that I'm not doing? And I kept coming across early rising morning rituals. But I went, yeah, I'm not a morning person.

Like what else do they do?

There's no way I'm not getting up any earlier. I get up at 6am because I have to. I'm not getting up earlier. And after enough time, you know, about an hour or so online and researching this and then starting to read articles and I went, you know what? I've got to overcome my limiting belief that I'm not. And I believe it's the limiting belief that I'm not a morning person. I got to wake up an hour earlier tomorrow and I'm going to figure out what the world's most successful people do every day that I'm not doing during that time. And that's where instead of one practice for that hour, like meditating for an hour or reading for an hour or journaling for an hour or visualizing or exercising or, you know, I thought, what if I did all of it? What if I did it all? And within two months I doubled my income, committed to run a 52 mile ultramarathon when I had never run a single mile in my life, and went from being depressed because of my economic crash to just fired up. And that is the essence of the miracle morning is waking up every morning, not when you have to, but dedicating time to your personal development so that you can become the person that you need to be to create the success that you want in every area of your life. And whether you're at rock bottom like I was, or you're a best selling author worth $80 million like Robert Kiyosaki was when he discovered the miracle morning, you know, or anywhere in between, it really is the universally applicable foundation, I believe, for taking our lives to the next level.

So I think back because this is parallel how like I have people, I put on the virgin diet and they go, oh, but I can't give up my cheese, right? And so I'm listening to this going, now I'm a morning person. I've always been a morning person. And morning's My favorite time of day. And I guard it. Like, don't get into my morning. Don't get the crappy email. Do not, do not come in until I've like framed my day. I totally get that. But I've worked with some like literally rock stars and a lot of Broadway stars and they're like late night people. So what do you say to the person who's like, oh no, I'm not a morning person. Like, can I do that at 4 in the afternoon? Like, what do you say to them?

Yeah. So there are a couple responses to it, and the first is that I was, I'll actually share. I was asked this question or a similar question last year on an interview. They said, what percentage of. You know, because now there's literally hundreds of thousands of people do the miracle morning every day. They said, what percentage of that community of your miracle morning community were already morning people like JJ Virgin. Right. So like this was easy. They just were like, oh cool, I'll do something different, you know. And what percentage of them had never in their lives been a morning person, They're a night owl, et cetera, et cetera. And I didn't know the answer to the question. So I surveyed tens of thousands of our members and the of the community and 72% said they had never been a morning person.

Wow. That is. Yeah.

And I was blown away. I mean, so it's a total, total game change. And I thought it was going to be like a small percentage. It was 72%. And so what I would say is if it worked for them, it would work for you. And probably the most important chapter in the book is called the five Steps Newsproof Wake up strategy. And it's these five simple steps that you can do when you're half asleep, because that's what happens when the alarm goes off and that you do the night before to prepare. But it makes waking up in the morning just easier than it's ever been before. And it's funny, but that, that little chapter almost didn't. It was like a last minute, didn't go. Almost didn't go in the book. And then one of my advanced readers says, well, you're not teaching people like, what if they can't wake up? What if they can't? Don't believe they can. And so I just made this little chapter like, here's how to hack your ritual move. The alarm clock across the room is probably the big one. Because if your alarm clock is within arm's reach, I don't care who you are your discipline is at a minimum. When the alarm goes off, you're going to reach over and hit the snooze button every time. But if you have to get up out of bed, walk across the room, you're already starting the day with purpose. You're out of bed. Walk over, brush your teeth, wash your face, now it's much easier to stay awake. So there's a couple kind of tips out of those five steps, but that's. It is that if any other human being can do something, I believe one of the most important beliefs that we have to adopt in our life, in every area, is that if another human being has done it, that's evidence that we can do it, too.

And don't you think part of it, too, is because you hear this resistance in anything, you know, whether it's. It's changing your diet or starting exercise or getting up earlier, and they're like, ah, you know, I can't, you know, all this, all these walls come up.

Yeah.

And then you think, all right, why are you doing this? And you said like, you did this. And within what. What did you say? Two months, you doubled your income. I mean, like, like, you know, I think if you tie it back to. All right, I'm doing this because. So that these things can happen and anchor it in and give yourself a time frame. I know. Honestly, had I not had a morning routine where I got up and one of my big things every morning is get up, you know, see, my alarm clock is coffee. It's like little bulletproof, and I'm a happy girl, but get up and then, you know, sit there and, boy, when you're, you know, when your son's in the hospital, it's like, what am I grateful for? I'm like, okay, well, he's alive today, you know, so, you know, it just. It helps so much to have that routine. And once you get into it, you're fine. It's just like once you get gluten out of your diet, you're fine, but you have to go through it, so you have to have that anchor. Now, what about. You said something about night? Cause my next thing is, okay, you got the miracle morning. Is there. Is there anything that you find that you do at night that supports the next morning?

Yeah, so there's. I don't have a really elaborate evening ritual. Some, you know, a woman. There you go. All right, that's fair. So, yeah, so my. My evening ritual, I play with the kids, and then I wind down and go to bed, you know, But What? I know.

Eye cream and all that nonsense for you.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm starting to. People are starting to notice. They're like you. You don't look so young anymore.

I know. Guys look sexier as they get older. It's just not fair anyway, but that's a whole nother conversation.

So for me, I always say that a miracle morning starts the night before, because if you're making that commitment, that decision in those first few seconds, the alarm's going off. Like I said, our willpower is at the lowest at that time. So there's something that I created. I call these the bedtime affirmations. And I. It's. It's a one page affirmation that I wrote when I was doing my own miracle morning. And it's basically kind of before you go to bed, you're setting your intention for how you're going to wake up. And here's the way that I like to think about it. Did you celebrate Christmas as a kid growing up?

Yes.

Okay. So. And if someone's listening and they're like, well, my, you know, we didn't celebrate Christmas. Okay. Think of like, you know, a vacation or the first day of summer or the first day of school if you were still young enough to be excited to go to school, you know, was it hard, jj, to wake up Christmas morning?

Never.

I know. And this is what I realized, is that it wasn't. Like I deconstructed what are the mornings when it's not hard to wake up. The mornings when it's not hard to wake up is when we have something we're looking forward to. We have clarity over what we're going to do the moment we wake up. As a kid, you're going to run into the other room and check under the tree. Right? We have clarity over what we're going to do, and we're excited about what we're going to do when the day starts. And I realized that I could create that intention, recreate that energy and excitement every single day of my life, rather than let it be determined on, well, if I have something exciting in my schedule tomorrow, then I'll be excited. I go, well, why don't I go to sleep every day and realize that when the alarm goes off in the morning, that is the greatest gift. Like, what greater gift? And for us to sit there and hit the snooze button and say, nah. I know. I say, I want to create extraordinary life, but I'd rather lay here for nine more minutes unconscious and nine more minutes unconscious and nine more minutes unconscious. So that really is the part for me is the night before setting the intentions so that when the alarm goes off, you've already visualized, you've thought about, you've decided how you're going to feel when the alarm, you know when it goes off. So when it goes off, your first thought in the morning is almost always your last thought before you went to bed. So those affirmations for me set the tone.

So it's crazy what has happened with this book. I mean it's not a book now. It's like this whole movement and like I'm sure, like I look at it and I go, gosh, this is so cool. Of course I have envy now. I wanted like, I'm so going, I should have created Miracle Morning. Darn it.

It's like I was doing it.

Yeah. You know, it's so, but it's so awesome because it's such a positive thing and such a simple thing to get people to do. So what's, what's next? Like what's the big future of the Miracle Morning movement as it is now?

Yeah, it's, it's. I mean there's so many things, but we, I'll say this, we this summer we came together a few months ago and we had the first ever Miracle Morning co creation summit. And it was interesting in that it wasn't an event where we were, people were paying to come and learn a bunch of stuff. They were actually coming. It was 200 people, I think 180 that had had their lives so profoundly impacted by the Miracle Morning. They were coming to co create the future of the movement. So meaning rather than just ask myself which most entrepreneurs we go, well let me, let me set my 10 year vision. I thought, why not tap into the collective wisdom of these 200 practitioners and say, what do you think the future could be? And what they came up with was, I mean, ending bullying, ending the divorce. Like, like how the Miracle Morning could literally the tagline or the mission statement that came out of the event was elevating the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. Let's get it in every.

Oh my gosh, that's so good.

Yeah. So that's it. So that's the future. And we're doing it through Miracle Morning movie and books and events and everything that we can.

And I'm totally behind this. I love what you're doing and I'm going to ask you one more question, but you can only pick one thing. It can't be a thing. Like my morning routine. Okay. So you have to get specific if you. The one thing, the one thing you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life. And I ask you this because it's so you could have an easy answer here, but don't take the easy route.

Yeah, no, I'll share with you. The one thing is doing something every day that brings me joy. And it's something that as an entrepreneur, it's like there's not enough hours in the day. So we work, work, work, work, work. And for me, I take a two hour break in the middle of the day and I go wakeboarding or I go play basketball. Those are two activities that bring me a ton of joy. I'm completely present in the moment, not thinking about anything else while I'm doing those activities. And so for me, I think we should do something every day that we don't have to do, but that we give ourselves the gift that brings us joy, that allows us to be present and disconnect from work. That's been the biggest game changer for me.

Awesome.

I'm always concerned when I ask people what they do for fun and they look at you like, like what to find fun?

Yeah, they're like, I work. My work is fun.

I was terrible.

Me too. All right, so thank you so much for joining me today. Now someone wants to learn more. Hal, where should they go?

MiracleMorning.com is the hub. That's the best place to go.

Oh, doesn't that make sense? Miraclemorning.com Go there. Join the movement. Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question is about fitness. And it comes from Jenny in Syracuse. And Jenny asks jj. I get up every morning and I do a workout, a quick workout. Some days I do burst training. Some days I do a little Yoga. Some days I do resistance training. My big question is food. Do I do my shake before or.

After I work out?

All right, this is kind of one of those age old debates in the fitness world and there's, you know, there's never really any one simple answer. So here's what I would tell you. It really depends on how quickly you're going to work out and how your energy is when you work out. If you find that without a little food you can't work out hard because it's all about intensity. When you're doing burst training and resistance training. If you find that your workouts are suffering because you need a little bit of food, then what I would do is make the shake and have half before and half after. But if you feel great, you can have a cup of coffee. I do my straight bulletproof actually without the butter, maybe a little MCT oil and go into a workout. If you're great doing that. Because a little bit of coffee with a little MCT oil could be amazing for energy during the workout and then you eat afterwards. That's preferred in my book, but but only if you can still get that same level intensity during the workout. And again, the best way to follow a workout is to use one of my shakes. And I would highly recommend the paleo inspired shake because it's concentrated bone broth and so you're getting great bioavailable protein and collagen. It's the perfect workout recovery shake. Now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to live courageously. Show up, step up. You're stronger than you think.

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