18. Hal Elrod: Author of The Miracle Morning

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 18 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Hal Elrod. He is a big inspiration of mine, and Hal changed my life. Hal is on a mission to elevate the consciousness of humanity One morning at a time. And as one of the highest-rated keynote speakers in America, creator of one of the fastest-growing and most engaged online communities in existence, and as the author of one of the highest-rated bestselling books in the world, The Miracle Morning, which, by the way, it's been translated into 27 different languages. It's practiced by over 500,000 people in 70+ countries every single morning. He is doing exactly that and achieving his life's mission. Our conversation touches on a wide range of topics that will help you live a better life. So without further ado, please enjoy my amazing conversation with Hal Elrod. Hal, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I just read The Miracle Morning for the second time and I absolutely love the book. And so I'd love to have you introduce yourself to everybody, but also tell them about the 2 near-death experiences that you had. And why it kind of kicked off the Miracle Morning for you.

Yeah, Nick, thank you. Thanks for having me. The, you know, in life you think that you're going to die once and it's at the end, right? And I never imagined some of the things I had gone through. But when I was 19 years old, I was in sales. I was a sales rep for Cutco Cutlery. I sold Cutco kitchen knives. And my first year of college behind me, I was a radio DJ at the time. And I gave a speech at this conference. And after the speech, driving home in my first new car, I just bought a brand new Ford Mustang a few weeks before, and I was hit head-on. My car was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles per hour. My car spun off the drunk driver and the car behind me crashed into my door at 70 miles per hour. And instantaneously, the left side of the car smashed into the left side of my body and I broke 11 bones. My leg literally broke in half at the femur. I broke my pelvis in 3 places, broke my arm in half behind the bicep, shattered my elbow, almost completely severed my ear, fractured my skull, tons of internal injuries. And it took about an hour for the jaws of life, the fire department to use the jaws of life and pull me out. And I died. I was clinically dead. My heart stopped beating, wasn't breathing, clinically dead for 6 minutes while they revived me. Wow. You know, performing CPR, and they got my heart beating again, and they put me on a helicopter, flew me to the hospital. I spent six days in a coma, flatlined twice more. When I came out of the coma, they told me I would never walk again. And you know, I say this in jest, kind of, but seriously, right? Like at any age, that's hard news to take. And at twenty, I had a lot of goals that involved walking again. Like that was you know just. Mind-blowing to me. And I just decided at that time, I said, you know what, if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, like I was assessing the situation, right? For anybody, you're in this, we all face adversity. And the one thing we have in common is we have to decide how we're going to deal with it. You know, either it breaks us, you know? And so I decided, okay, if I never walk again, what will that look like? And I go, I'd be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. And I thought, what would that be like? What would that feel like? And I made a conscious decision and I told this to my parents. I told my doctors, I said, I've decided If I never walk again, I will be the happiest, most grateful person that you've ever seen in a wheelchair because I'm in a wheelchair either way. So I'm not going to let that define my emotional wellbeing. And then the second decision is I said, I will walk, or the second option, I said, I might walk again. Like I am, so I'm going to accept the worst-case scenario and make the best of that before it even happens so that it doesn't ever ruin my life. Like if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, okay. I'm happy, I'm grateful, and I'm in a wheelchair. No big deal. I thought, but, but I'm not accepting that as my fate. I'm going to maintain unwavering faith that I can and will walk again. And I said, so I visualized it every day. I prayed about it. I imagined it. It was my, all my energy. Once I accepted that I might not walk again and that I could be at peace with that, all my energy went into not what I was afraid of, but into what I wanted and what I was committed to. And I would say every day, I would affirm, I am committed to walking again no matter what. There's no other option. And while there was another option in my mind, like I was living and putting my energy and intention toward the only option I wanted, which was to walk again. And 2 weeks after I came out of the coma, 3 weeks after I was found dead and, you know, broke all those bones, the doctors came in with routine x-rays and they told my parents, they said, we don't know how to explain this, but Hal's body is healing so quickly.

Wow.

We're actually going to let him take his first step tomorrow in therapy. So it went from never walking again to 3 weeks later, I took my first step. And even in my mind, optimistic, I'm like, you know, I'm like probably 6 months to a year off from walking again, if that's possible. So to have it happen 3 weeks later, and I so believe in the power of the mind-body connection, and there's a lot of science that supports this now, that it's not just woo-woo, it's not hocus-pocus, it's not delusional. Right? That when you— and I'll explain this in layman's terms. I'm no scientist, but whatever we think, right, especially about our physical body, we've got 40 trillion cells that kind of do our bidding, right? So if you, if you tell your body through your thoughts and your energy and your emotion, I'm afraid I'm going to die, or I'm afraid I'm not going to walk, your cells don't— they're, they're impartial. They're like, okay, I guess we're not going to walk then. But for me, I went, I'm going to walk. There's no other option. And, and, you know, the layman's term of how that works is your cells are like, oh, okay, I guess we better repair your body so that you can walk again, you know. And so that was the first time. And then 3 years ago, I was diagnosed with this rare aggressive form of cancer and told I would never walk again. I'm sorry, told that I had a 30% chance of living. And I made the same decision. I said, okay, number one, I'm going to be the happiest and the most grateful I've ever been while I go through the most difficult time in my life. And I am 100% committed that I will be in the 30% of people that survive this cancer, no matter what. There is no other option. And once again, the doctors were blown away by within a month I was in remission. And they still kept me on chemo for a year and it was horrible. In fact, I just finished chemo completely like a month ago after 3 and a half years. Um, but once again, it was kind of that mindset and all of that. And then the last thing I'll share Because it leads into the Miracle Morning is in between those two experiences in 2008 when the United States economy crashed, I kind of crashed with it. You know, I lost— I was an entrepreneur, lost over half my clients, lost over half my income. My house was foreclosed on. My body fat percentage tripled. I got in really bad shape. I got depressed, all these things. And a series of events led me to a conclusion that if I wanted to change my life and improve my life and improve my— at that time, my finances, that was the big concern. I had to improve myself. And to the degree that we improve ourselves determines the degree that we, the ability that we have to improve any area of our life. And so I created this morning ritual. I combined the best personal development practices in the history of humanity to create the ultimate morning ritual. And I started practicing it. There's 6 parts. We can talk, of course, we can go into all the detail. But within 2 months of doing this morning ritual, and by the way, I wasn't a morning person by a long shot. I just realized if I want to improve my life, I've got to improve myself and I've got to get out of my comfort zone and just do this. And so I started doing this morning ritual and within 2 months, I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to committing to run a 52-mile ultramarathon when I had never run a single, you know, I hadn't run since high school PE class. I hated running. And my depression went away. And I went to my wife. It was this, this This right around the 2-month mark. I signed up 2 new clients that day and I went to her. I said, sweetheart, her name is Ursula. I said, sweetheart, sweetheart, I can't believe this. I just signed on 2 more clients. We are officially, we've more than doubled our income from 2 months ago. And by the way, Nick, the economy, this was 2008. The economy was getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse while I doubled my income. And I believe it again, if you get better, no matter what's going on in the economy, if you get better, you have more ability to make change in your life. And so I said, sweetheart, we've doubled our income. I, I'm— I've never run in my life. I'm running like 2 miles a day, you know, for this ultra marathon. And I was depressed 2 months ago, and now I'm like, I'm on fire. I'm like, this is amazing. It feels like a miracle how fast it's happened. And she goes, it's your Miracle Morning. And I like, I go, yeah, I love that, my Miracle Morning. And I wrote it down in my schedule, Miracle Morning. But it was never intended to be a book. Like it was just my morning routine. And what led to the book is my— I had, you know, I don't know, over a dozen coaching clients and they all went, well, I'm not a morning person, Hal, but it's pretty convincing. Like I'll give it a try. And every single one of them gave it a try. Every single one of them came back to their coaching call except for one and said, Hal, I'm selling more. I'm reading, I'm running. Like I'm having my best results ever. And I was not a morning person. This is crazy. And that's when the light bulb went off and I went, well, wait a minute. If this changed my life and I wasn't a morning person, if the Miracle Morning is changing all my clients' lives and none of them, almost none of them were morning people, like this could change the world. This could change anybody's life. And I started writing and then 3 years later, I self-published the book with almost no audience. I wasn't nothing. I wasn't an author, speaker, nothing. And, um, and then as you— I don't know if you mentioned this, but, you know, now we've sold over 2 million copies. We just surpassed 2 million copies. The book's translated into 37 languages, and it's practiced daily by over a million people in over 100 countries. And like, you know, and, and, and to me, like, I don't really take credit for it because I, I felt like I just shared what worked for me that I had learned from other people. And then the people that are doing the Miracle Morning are the ones that are telling They're friends and family, you know, like I'm not some master marketer. And so anyway, so my mission though is to elevate consciousness one morning at a time through the Miracle Morning. And so the last thing I want to say is that thank you, man. This is an honor for me to be able to share with your audience because this is my mission in life. This is, you know, sharing this message is really important to me. So thank you.

Well, you're very welcome. And you have such a fantastic story. And it's hard for people to believe that you went through what you went through and you walked out on the other side, never mind have become this successful doing so. Through morning routines and through the structure that you've put into your life deliberately. And so, you know, every time that I share The Miracle Morning on Instagram, whether it's on my story or an actual feed post, I have a flood of people that send me DMs that say one of two things, either, hey, I read that book and it had a big impact on my life, or what is this book? I want to learn more about it because I think a properly structured morning routine could probably change my life. I've heard that from so many people. And so, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's fantastic to see the community that you've built. And one of the things that I do think is interesting about the beginning of the book is that you say we all have a baseline where we are, whether that's really bad or kind of okay, but we all have an opportunity to get better. And so you read this statistic that says the average American is 20 pounds overweight, they're $10,000 in debt, they're slightly depressed. they dislike their job, and they might only have one close friend. And even if a fraction of that statistic is true, we need some serious waking up.

Yeah.

As a country, which is where most of our listeners are from, but as a world, like, we need to elevate our mindset. And so kind of two-part question here. How do you define miracle? And how do we start to get better? Like, what is the process to get rid of all of the stuff that I just mentioned?

Yeah, um, and I do want to mention that that statistic that you read was from the Social Security Administration, right? So that wasn't just me pulling it out of thin air. I just want to throw that out there. Um, but, uh, oh, I just blanked. What was your— the first part of your question?

So, I mean, given that that is the baseline for where Americans are today, like, what is the first step in the right direction? Is it a mindset change or is it jumping directly into the morning routine?

Well, I think that they go hand in hand. Um, so the Miracle Morning, uh, the part of the story that I didn't share is where the idea was born. I, I, I called my close friend who I had— see, when I was depressed and, and in debt, I didn't tell anybody because it was this identity crisis. I was a success coach and I was failing miserably, right? So, so it's like you don't want to broadcast that. And I almost felt— it really— I felt inauthentic because I go, who the hell am I to tell people how to be successful when I am— I'm, I'm a mess right now, you know? But I'm like, but I still need my clients and I think I can help them. But, you know, it was just— it was this identity crisis. And so My wife said one day, she goes, Hal, this is before the Miracle Morning. She said, why don't you call John Burgoff? You say he's one of the smartest people that you know. I'm sure, and he loves you. He's not going to judge you. I'm sure he can help you. And I go, yeah, you're right. I should have called him 6 months ago. And I called John and he encouraged me to go. He said, Hal, are you exercising every day? I said, no, man. I'm, I'm just, I just go in my office, close the door, you know, stare at the computer. I try to, I call clients. I try to, you know, call prospects. I just do the same thing every day. He said, hell, if you're just staring at your computer all day, you're not putting yourself in a peak physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual state, and therefore you're not elevating yourself so you can elevate your results and elevate your life. He said, if I were you, I would go for a run every morning. And I said, John, I'll stop you right there. I hate running. What else could I do? And he said, without skipping a beat, he goes, what do you hate worse, running or your circumstances? And I go, all right, okay, touché. Okay, okay, keep going. He said, every morning, he goes, I don't care, go for a walk, go for a jog. You got to get your blood and oxygen to your brain. And he said, and while you're in that kind of, you know, elevated physical state and the blood and oxygen is going to your brain, he said, just bring your iPod with you and listen to an audiobook. Listen to an audiobook directly focused on something that you want to improve in your life. Right now you need to get clients. Go find out what the most popular audiobook is on getting clients. And actually, I got Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. And he said, um, and by the way, I think back then I don't even know if Audible was a thing. I think I ordered the CD. Um, but, uh, but I did— he did tell me that he gave me this link to download this Jim Rohn audio. And he said, start with this Jim Rohn audio. He said, it's gonna, it's gonna help you understand that to improve your life, you have to improve yourself. I'm like, all right. So I go on a run the next morning. I got the Jim Rohn audio. And it's this quote from Jim Rohn that really I credit to the Miracle Morning. I credit to my transformation. Jim Rohn said, your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person that you become. And when I heard that, I rewound it and I stopped running and I listened to it again. The first part, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. The way immediately I had this quantification in my mind, I went, okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, if we're measuring success in any area of our life, I'm talking about not just like professional success or financial, but our health, our relationships, you know, whatever. On a scale of 1 to 10, we all want— well, I can ask you, Nick, what level do we all want between 1 and a 10?

10.

10, right? I mean, like, that's one thing human beings have in common is I believe that we all have this innate drive and desire to fulfill our potential, but society squashes that, right? And We may or may not go into down that rabbit hole, but but the point is very few people live to their full potential because human nature is to work as little as possible to achieve a survival result. Right? Get food, get water, put food, and then do nothing. Right? It's it's survive, rest, survive, rest. And if you look at our ancestors, well, why is that? Back in the day when there wasn't you know a corporate ladder to climb or you know competition or You know, or whatever. It was, oh, I need, we need food. Okay, I'm gonna go forage or I'm gonna go hunt the buffalo. But then once they caught the buffalo, I'm assuming, I don't know all the details, but right, you just sit back and you eat the buffalo and you just chill for a month or whatever it takes. And you're like, okay, now we're up. So that is wired in our DNA is to do the minimum possible to survive. And so for me, I realized on a scale of 1 to 10, we all want level 10 success. But according to Jim Rohn, your level of success will never exceed your level of personal development. And I went, my level of personal development at the time is like at a 2, right? Maybe a 3 or a 4 on a good day. And I think that's the disconnect. If we want level 10 success but we're not a level 10 person. And by the way, when I say level 10 person and your level of personal development, I'm talking about as you learn and grow and evolve and develop more qualities and characteristics that you need to succeed, such as discipline and consistency and the mindset and the habits, right? To me, that all falls under the category of your personal development. And so I had the epiphany. I went, I need to create a personal development ritual that will enable me to get a little bit better every single day so that I can become a level 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, eventually a level 10 person so that I can be capable and qualified and deserving of achieving and sustaining level 10 success in every area of my life. And I ran home and that's— I went online and I Googled best personal development practices of, you know, millionaires and billionaires, of professional athletes, of, you know, the best in the world. And I had a list of 6 practices and the— I was a little bit conflicted. I go, well, which one of these is the best? And I couldn't figure out which was the best. It was just dependent on who you asked. For example, I saw a clip of Will Smith on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. And he— she asked him how he became one of the most successful actors in Hollywood. And he said, and I'll paraphrase, of course, I don't remember word for word, but it was— he said affirmations. I wrote statements and not just like the pump you up affirmations where you're like, I'm amazing, I'm smart, I'm awesome, but actual specific affirmations that simply articulated what he was committed to achieving in his life, right? His goals, his dreams, and then who he needed to be and what he needed to do to achieve those things. And he said he read those affirmations every day, and he literally programmed his subconscious mind and directed his conscious behavior to become the person and do the things that would get him there. And he said eventually he literally could look back at those affirmations and realize he was— that was his life eventually, right? And then I saw an article about how Fortune 500 CEOs that swear by meditation, and they talked about how it was meditation was the number one practice that attributed to their clarity where they could think bigger, have, you know, gain wisdom from higher intelligence, whatever it was, but just get that clarity to make the decisions that move their company forward, right? And so I just— each of these 6 practices, there was a compelling case for each of them. And the epiphany was I'm trying to figure it out and I go, wait a minute, what if I did all of these? What if I woke up an hour earlier tomorrow, even though I'm not a morning person, And I did the 6 most timeless, proven personal development practices in the history of humanity. Like, you know, what I was seeing is most people did 1 or 2 of these, but nobody did all 6. And I woke up the next morning. I sucked at all of them. Like, I didn't know how to meditate. Affirmations still felt goofy. Like, I didn't know what I was doing. But even after an hour, and keep in mind, this was 2008. I was still $52,000 in credit card debt. I was still, my bank was being foreclosed on by, or house foreclosed on by the bank. Right? I was still a mess, you know, but after an hour I felt incredible and I went, it's only a matter of time if I start every day like this that I will become the person that I need to be to create the success I want in not just one but in every area of my life. And I, you know, I told the story, 2 months later, right, it happened. And, you know, in those 2 months I was on fire, getting better, getting better, learning, growing, evolving, feeling motivated, feeling energized, you know, everything about me was improving, and as a result, my outer world started to reflect my inner world and improve as well.

It's amazing. And I just know from personal experience that I've lived the same story. Like, I started to adopt all of these different things, and they came from books, not online research, but I started to read about the world's most elite humans and performers in every discipline, and they all had certain characteristics that I thought, like, I'm gonna pick this and I'm gonna pick that and I'm gonna implement this and I'm gonna implement that. And so I've had a morning routine for the last few years now, and in big part because of your book. Now I've read a dozen routine-based books. And so the framework that you have, the acronym SAVERS, can you tell everybody what that stands for?

Yeah, so the acronym wasn't from day one. So I had the 6 practices, and when I was writing the book, it just— I gotta tell this kind of quick funny story, but I was writing the book and I had these 6 practices that again, none of them were new. Meditation. So here's before the acronym was meditation, affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. And I'm writing the book and I'm trying to piece this together and I'm frustrated. And I go out to get some fresh air and my wife sees me and she goes, what's wrong? You look, you look frustrated. I said, well, the Miracle Mornings, it's changing people's lives, but in order to put it in a book, it's got to be memorable. It's got to be organized. It's got to make sense. And I said, I don't know how to organize these 6 practices. And she goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and type each practice in? And see if there's another word for each that you could form into an acronym. And I'm like, oh, interesting idea. And I go in the office and meditation becomes silence, affirmations, state affirmations, visualization, right? These are the SAVERS: silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading. And then journaling became scribing, which is, you know, fancy word for writing or journaling. And those became the SAVERS. And what I love about the acronym first and foremost is that it's aptly named. Like, these were the 6 practices that saved me from, you know, just self-destruction, right? These save people from missing out on the life that we all deserve to live, that we're all meant to live. And so I'll run through these, um, and I'll give some tips on, on a few of them, the ones that are most important. First and foremost is silence. So that's your meditation or your prayer time. Now, there are over 1,400 scientific studies last time I checked. It's probably more now. that prove the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits of meditation. Remember I mentioned I got turned on meditation by an article from Fortune 500 CEOs, right? This wasn't just a spiritual practice. It was a peak performance practice. So instead of starting the day by looking at your phone or watching the news or checking email or getting, you know, stressed out or distracted, right? Um, you start your day in peaceful, Purposeful silence. It lowers your cortisol. It allows the wisdom of higher intelligence or God or whatever you believe in, right? Or even your own inner wisdom to come to the surface and you have your best ideas. You gain heightened clarity. So silence is how to start the Miracle Morning. The A is for affirmations, and I really want to dive into this one. I'll give you guys some advanced kind of training, if you will, here, because affirmations have a really bad rap. The way that we've been taught to do affirmations are goofy and cheesy and self, like counterintuitive. So we're usually taught to either lie to ourselves, right? By like, if you want to be a millionaire, just tell yourself, I am a millionaire over and over until you believe it. But if you ever tried that, if you say I am, and it's followed by something that you don't believe, well, the truth will always prevail. If you go, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, and your subconscious is like, dude, you're not even a thousandaire. Like, I don't know, what are you talking about? You're like, I'm doing my affirmations. Like you're fighting with truth. You're fighting reality. The second problem with affirmations is we're taught to do these flowery passive affirmations that promise a magical result. Here's an example of a financial affirmation like that you've probably heard of, something along these lines. I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. Like that's no, that's not how money works, right? Like maybe, maybe you're a magician and like I don't know. But if you ask most people, right, go interview 1,000 millionaires, and I'd imagine— or 100 millionaires— I imagine 99 of them are like, yeah, I actually had to work and create value for the world, and then I was compensated. I wasn't a magnet. It didn't flow through my door because I made a vision board and stared at it all the time, right? So affirmations, if you do them that way, yeah, they're goofy. I'm going to give you guys 3 steps right now, guys and gals, 3 steps to create affirmations that are results-oriented, practical, and actionable. Because I don't want to just feel good because I delude myself into thinking I'm a magnet for money or for success or for the person of my dreams. I want to see results for the things that I'm affirming. Here's how you do that. Number 1, affirm what you're committed to. So going back to the example of instead of saying I am a millionaire, if you're not, say I am committed to becoming a millionaire, or I am committed to earning blank dollars this year, or I am committed, right? What are you committed to? Because you don't get what you want just because you want it, and you definitely don't get something that you tell you you already have if you don't have it. We get in life what we're committed to. So I usually phrase the first part of the affirmation, and I do one of these for each of my— these 3 steps apply to every area of my life. All of my goals, I follow this formula. So number one, I am committed to blank no matter what. There is no other option. And in reading that every day, you're programming your subconscious mind the way that Will Smith talked about in that Ellen DeGeneres interview. You're programming your subconscious mind and reinforcing what you have to have, which is a commitment to generating that ideal outcome. Step number 2 for affirmations, to write these out. Why is that outcome that you're committed to? Why is that crucial to you? Why is it crucial? Why is it deeply meaningful? Why is it a must? That why, that reason is where you get the leverage to do whatever it takes to, you know, for me, it's my family. Like being here to support my family is usually the, the one of my main driving forces and I'm willing to overcome my inner resistance, my procrastination, the, you know, the laziness, unmotivation. I'll do whatever it takes because of not just the outcome but reminding myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, why I'm doing the work I'm doing. And then number 3, which specific actions will you take and when? Which specific actions will you take and when? So if you look at these 3 steps, number 1, what are you committed to? No matter what, there's no other option. Again, you're reinforcing the commitment and you're, you're literally programming your subconscious mind to commit to that thing. Number 2, you're reminding yourself why is that deeply meaningful? Why is it crucial? Why is it— it doesn't matter if I'm tired, I'm gonna do it because it means more to me than the excuses that I have. And then number 3 is where the rubber meets the road, as my former coach used to say, which is okay, great, you know what you're committed to, you know why it's important. But you got to dial it down. What exactly will you do and at what time each day? So when I was training for an ultramarathon, or let me go back to this. When I was writing the Miracle Morning, I'm committed to writing the Miracle Morning and publishing it no matter what. There's no other option. Why is it crucial? I'm committed to that because I know this morning ritual transforms people's lives, everyone that I've shared it with, and I'm committed to trans— it was back then, it was changing millions of lives one morning at a time through this practice. And then number 3, I will write every day from 6 AM to 7 AM no matter what. There is no other option, right? And I affirm that every day. And here's the deal. If you value your integrity, meaning doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it, game over. Your success is inevitable with just those affirmations because you've clarified exactly what why and how you're going to get there. And now it's a matter of waking up, reading it, and then doing what it says. Um, and then I'll go through the rest. Anything to say on that? Then I can just run through the rest real quick. I don't want to go as deep in each one, but I wanted to share, uh, some practical knowledge on that one.

Sure. Well, let, let me just take a step back and share with everybody my experience with the first 2. So with silence, I've been a big fan of guided meditation for the last couple years, and there's guided and unguided meditation as the easiest way to look at it. And so I've implemented guided meditation. I've done hundreds of days in a row. I've, you know, varied length and things like that, guided versus unguided. I did float tanks, sensory deprivation for a while. Like, I'm super into it. I also have prayer as part of my daily routine, and I also have the gratitude piece as part of my daily routine. So silence is very important to me, and I think a great resource for learning more about silence is Stillness Is the Key, Ryan Holiday's newest book.

Yep.

And I'm a big fan of Stoicism. And I think that that lines up with everything that you believe in as well. And then so affirmations. I also read Think and Grow Rich very early in my reading career. And so I implemented a lot of what they've talked about. And I've had different forms of affirmations for the last couple of years. I started with the funny ones, and I've worked my way to more practical ones. And so when I commit to things on a daily basis, it's to make progress in my health, to make progress in my wealth, and to make progress in my love, communication with friends, family, etc. And so, I'm a big fan of both of those. And I think that they've had a tremendously positive impact on my life. And so, those are the 2 pieces that I actually talk about the most with other people. And then, once you bang out the rest of them, I'll probably have some other follow-up. But yeah, those are big for me.

Awesome. Yeah, 2 of my favorites as well. Um, so I'll dive— so the V is for visualization, and I want to share what I think is the most misunderstood aspect of visualization and the most important implementation that you can immediately apply, right, to get results. We are taught to visualize the end result. You know, The Secret, the movie 10 years ago, made the vision boards really popular. I'll have a vision board, right? And we're taught to just visualize the end result. Well, there's value in that, but there's also potentially risk in that, or danger, if you will. The danger is that if you visualize the end result over and over and over again, you trick your brain into thinking that it's as good as done, and that can actually diminish your drive to make it happen. Give you an example. When I was training for an ultramarathon, I visualized the finish line over and over and over again. Well, if that's all I would have done, I literally would have been like, yeah, man, I got this. I'm going to do this. I believe it. And that, by the way, is the value in visualizing the outcome. The end result is it does increase both your belief that it's possible, because once you've seen it over and over again, you start to go, yeah, that's my reality, like that's going to happen. It also increases your desire because you go, yeah, that feels good. I can't wait for that to be a reality. But you can't leave it at that. In fact, I believe that's the least important part if I were weighing the two of visualization. The most important part is to create an optimum emotional experience around the ideal action you're committed to take today. Explain what that means. When I was training for that ultramarathon, I'd visualize the finish line and that got me excited. It got me to believe like, yeah, I've never been a runner, but man, I can do this. I can see what it's going to look like. That was literally 30 seconds of my visualization, maybe 60 seconds. The majority of time for visualization went into the activity that I would take today. So back then I was running at 7 AM. I would visualize my alarm going off at 7 AM on my phone. to trigger, okay, it's time to go train. And then I would visualize with my eyes closed, sitting on my couch, getting up off my couch like a movie, walking into my bedroom closet, putting on my running clothes. And I'd imagine myself feeling excited to go on this run. I'd actually feel those emotions. I'd rehearse them while I visualize. Then I visualize myself heading through my living room, out the front door. And I'd always visualize— visualize when I open the front door, I would smile. And as I was sitting on the couch visualizing this, I would smile and I would say something to myself as I pictured the sidewalk in front of my house. I'm excited to go for a run. This is good. I'd even pull in some affirmations like, this is going to be good for me. This is going to be great. And here's what happened. That was my mental rehearsal and the world's best athletes do the exact same thing. When the alarm on my phone went off at 7:00 AM, I didn't even have to think about it. It was like clockwork. I stood up, went into my closet, got dressed. Headed out the front door. Right when I opened the front door, Nick, what do you think happened?

I think you're going to go start running.

Yeah. Well, and I smiled, right? It was that rehearsal. I would literally every day, it was every day like clockwork, right? I would smile and then I would feel like those emotions of excitement would come up. And here's the thing. For most of us, whatever we need to do, the actions that we need to take for the biggest goals we have in our life are those that we tend to procrastinate on the most because there's resistance, there's hesitation, there's a lack of clarity. There's, you know, maybe we don't even— there's something we don't like doing. Whatever the reason is, we resist the things that will give us the biggest results in our life. And so using visualization this way allows you to rehearse. Again, it's creating the optimum emotional experience while engaging in the ideal activity Today, you see it in the morning, you rehearse it in the morning, and then when it's time to get on the phone and cold call, go for that run, you know, dig that ditch, whatever it is, you actually feel the emotions that you initiated and you intended first thing in the morning. Yeah, I love it.

Visualization, I think, is a hard one for a lot of people to understand. So I think the way that you just framed that is very important. And before you go to sleep, you need to understand that your first thought in the morning is going to be the last thought before you go to bed.

Yeah.

And so by visualizing that positive experience, every single step for yourself, you're going to wake up feeling happy and you're going to exit the door smiling like you talked about. And so for me, I like to practice visualization in a lot of different ways. I was a salesperson for 5 years, just like you were in sales. And so I visualized what I wanted a conversation to go like, or how a negotiation was going to happen on a pricing call. I visualize what the next dial might feel like, and I would always smile before I dial, and that was part of the visualization process. So very relevant, very important. I'm a big fan of it as well.

Nice. All right, well, I'm gonna go through these real quick. Exercise. The E in SAVERS is for exercise. Not much to say on that, right? You do whatever exercise you want. I'll just— a couple quick tips. Number one is the importance of morning exercise. The benefits of exercise, as one of my mentors Robin Sharma teaches, It can last for up to 15 hours after the exercise. So when you exercise in the morning, you get that blood and oxygen to your brain. Remember, that's when I thought of the Miracle Morning was on a run, right? Hearing that quote. You also release endorphins. You feel better. You think clearer. You have more sustained energy throughout the day. So even if you go to the gym in the afternoon or the evening, make sure you get at least 5 to 10 minutes of exercise in the morning. For me, I go for a bike ride through my neighborhood at 7 AM every single day. That's what I do now. If my kids are awake, like this morning, my son who's 7 years old, he went with me, right? But we're in nature, we're getting fresh air, and we're getting that blood and oxygen to flow through our body. The R in SAVERS is for reading, and obviously not rocket science. Pick up a book on any area of your life you want to improve. I will say this though, if you quantify, if you read just 10 pages a day, that's 3,650 pages a year. Or the equivalent of 18 200-page self-help books. Most people don't read like 2 self-help books in their life. If you're reading 18 self-help books in a year, you're a different person. You can even do— cut that in half, read 5 pages a day. That's 9 books a year on your marriage, on finances, on your health, on productivity, on time management, whatever. You're going to be a different person every month than you were when you started. And the final S in SAVERS is for scribing, which is a fancy word for writing or journaling. And 2 things. Number one, I use the 5-Minute Journal app. I use that to write down what I'm grateful for and what my highest priorities are for the day. That takes me less than 5 minutes. Then I pull out a blank-lined journal and I do what I call free writing. And it's where I don't put too much thought into it before I start writing. I just start writing. It always starts with, I woke up today at blank and I got out of bed today at blank, which is usually the same time. Sometimes it's not. And that's just kind of my trigger because that's just starting with an easy fact that just happened, you know, 20 minutes ago. And then I just see where it goes. And sometimes it'll go, you know what, I've been feeling really stressed about the Miracle Morning movie right now. This was the other day we're filming it where we're putting the finishing touches on a documentary called The Miracle Morning. And the other day I was just free writing and I realized how stressed I was. And then I wrote, why am I stressed? I go, I'm afraid the movie's not as good as we thought. I'm afraid we might not be able to market it to enough people. I'm afraid our theater release got canceled because of COVID I'm right. And then I worked through my fears. And the point is, by the end of that practice, I usually work through it all and I feel a sense of release or a new sense of clarity. I have a breakthrough. And so those 6 practices Any one of those will change your life. But when you do all 6, you literally create these tangible, measurable miracles. And I realize you asked me how I define a miracle. I'll share that now. A miracle is an outcome that is so, so beautiful, so perfect, so wonderful, so beyond what you even believe is possible for yourself, but you create it. It's so beyond what you believe is possible that you— it feels like a miracle. And so for me, it's not this parting of the Red Sea. It's simply you living to your full potential by getting a little bit better each and every single day. And to where you look back a month and you go, oh my gosh, I'm a different person. And if you do that every day, there is no ceiling to your potential, and therefore there is no ceiling to your success, however you define that.

I'm just looking at the time. Do you have a hard stop in 1 minute?

No, I've got like 5 more minutes.

Let's go. Okay, perfect. Well, that, that's amazing, Hal. Thank you for sharing the rest of those. I mean, it's funny, when I picked up your book again, I realized that the only piece of the equation that I had let slip for myself was the exercise. And so for the last week or so since I picked up the book again, I've been running every morning and I feel the energy like that. I was exercising in the afternoon. You convinced me it needed to happen in the beginning of the day, just like Robin said. It can— those effects, they last for 15 hours. And so I felt so much better. My legs are a little full of lactic acid, but I'm doing it and I'm feeling very good. And I've had a couple friends join me on morning runs. Like, everybody's getting up earlier. It's a great— it's a great outcome.

Reading.

Everybody here is a big reader. They're here because they're a big reader. But if they're not a big reader, you, you know, you've convinced them that 5 pages a day equals 9 books, 10 pages a day equals 18 books.

Yeah.

And so that's brilliant. And the last piece, scribing. I journaled. I mean, I still journal all the time. I actually use the Daily Stoic journal that Ryan Holiday puts out that accompanies his daily reads.

Nice.

But I also, using Evernote, I'll journal about things I'm grateful for every single day. And that was a practice that I did for over 2 years. And that just instilled like the positivity into my brain kicking off every day. So I love everything that you talked about. And Sort of wrapping up here, I know that you've talked about the importance of routines, the importance of making sure that this happens every day and some of the common questions that you get. So for people that are now going to implement this into their life, is it important to do it every single day? Can they skip weekends? What's your take on that?

Yeah, great question. So it's completely customizable, but I'm going to give you kind of the consensus because this question gets asked a lot in the Miracle Morning community. The Miracle Morning community, by the way, that's a Facebook group with 265,000 people that wake up every day. They do the Miracle Morning. Some have done it for a decade, you know, so it's a cool place to kind of, if you want to get support and ask questions, that's a great place to go. Usually if you ask a question, you'll get dozens if not hundreds of responses. But when it comes to Miracle Morning, there's a chapter in the book called Customizing the Miracle Morning to Fit Your Lifestyle. So the SAVERS can be done in any order. Some people exercise first because otherwise they say they fall asleep, like they got to get the heart rate going, right? They meditate, they fall asleep. Which, by the way, a little bonus tip, I encourage you do not do the Miracle Morning in your bed. It's, it's way too tempting to fall asleep, right?

Yeah.

Um, so I do mine, I go out and I have on my coffee table, there's like a, it's like a 2-level coffee table. I've got my journal, my affirmations, a book, everything's underneath there, right? It's all set up. Um, so they can be done in any order. The duration, they can be done in any duration, meaning you could do 10 minutes each like I first started. For me, I typically do five minutes of affirmations, five minutes of silence, five minutes of visualization, five minutes of journaling, and then I do twenty minutes of or sorry, it changes all the time. Fifteen minutes of journaling now, and then I do ten minutes of exercise and twenty minutes of reading. So that that's kind. But again, it changes. So that's today. Tomorrow, I might decide you know what? I actually want to incorporate more meditation. You know so, and my miracle morning now is ninety minutes. I do one third of it. myself. So my affirmations, my books, all the practices are about me. My second part of it, the second 30 minutes are for my family. So all the books, all the affirmations are for family. And the third part of it for me is for my mission. So it's for what I'm— the work I'm doing in the world. And then I want to say this other piece. It's so important. Some questions people will ask is, can I do the Miracle Morning like these? The SAVERS make sense, but couldn't I just do them in the afternoon or the evening? The answer is absolutely you could and they'd impact your life in a positive way. But it's kind of like the exercise piece. The benefits of every practice in the Miracle Morning benefit you immediately and for hours to follow. Why would you want to wait for those benefits until— like why would you want to go the first half of your day and not have that calm peace of mind, lower your cortisol levels, increase your clarity, increase your energy, right? So that's why the morning is the peak time is you're putting yourself in that peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state, benefiting from all of the SAVERS, and then your morning's great, your afternoon's great, your evening's great, right? That whole thing. And then you also asked, does it have to be done every day? Of course, no, not at all. But here's a question that gets asked a lot in the Miracle Morning community. Do— hey, Miracle Morning practitioners that have been doing this a long time, do you do it on the weekends or do you take the weekends off? The answer is almost always the same. I mean, you'll see, you know, again, 100 answers and 90% of them will be this: I started out doing it Monday through Friday and I took Saturday and Sunday off. And what I would find is Monday through Friday, my morning Miracle Morning would end and I would feel so energized and so clear and so good. Saturday, I'd sleep in an extra hour or 2 and I'd wake up feeling like I was missing that. And what I started to weigh is the benefit of being unconscious for another hour doesn't really outweigh it. So most people go from 5 days a week to either 6 or 7 days a week. For me, for the same reason as I just described, I do it in general, it's 7 days a week. Um, but I should say I average 6, meaning I do it every day unless I stay up late for a specific purpose, like my wife and I are up late for a date night. Or the other night we had friends over to play board games. We were up till 11 PM or midnight or whatever, right? So, but my foundation is like, as long as I go to bed, you know, at usually 10 PM and I wake up at 5 AM. So it's nothing crazy, you know, um, gives me time to spend time with my family and do everything. And I wake up at 5. I do a Miracle Morning from 5:30 to 7. The first 30 minutes is making tea and, um, you know, brushing my teeth and washing my face and just kind of getting ready. And then I do 90 minutes, 30 minutes for myself, 30 minutes for my family, 30 minutes for my mission. Yeah, and that's it. Did I miss anything on the customization?

No, you did a great job. And you've given everybody in the Book Thinkers community something to aim for and a good framework to accomplish it. And I, in my community all the time, I tell people you need to bookend your days. You need to control the beginning of your day. You need to control the end of your day and that your morning routine really starts the night before. If you're prepping it the right way, where you have your double table and everything. And so routines have changed my life. Routines have the opportunity to change everybody's lives. And Hal, thank you so much for coming on the show today. For people that want to learn a little bit more, where is the best place to find you outside of the Facebook group in the community?

Yeah, go to miraclemorning.com. In fact, we just have our new website just launched, so I'm excited to show it off here. But miraclemorning.com, you can download some free Free bonuses. You can, you know, the links to the books are there. Amazon's the best place to get the books. But you can join the community there. There's a bunch of different resources. But yeah, that's the best kind of hub for all the things.

Thank you so much. I look forward to our next conversation about The Miracle Equation.

I'd be honored, Nick. Thanks. Thank you so much for this. And if you listen to this, thank you so much for your time. I hope you start the Miracle Morning and, you know, set your alarm clock back a little bit tonight. Wake up, do one of the SAVERS. Just give it a shot. And join the community. I think you'll be glad you did.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Hal Elrod. He is a true legend in this space. And as with every valuable book I read, I organize my biggest takeaways with the Book Thinkers Smart Retention mobile app. Once my notes are in the system, I can revisit them whenever I want. And that's great. But with my favorite books like The Miracle Morning, I turn on my systematic reminders so that the system, BookThinkers, can optimize my retention. See, it's not enough to just read your favorite books and then move on. You should extend your experience using spaced repetition to make sure that you're flexing those neural pathways more often. To learn more about the app and how it can help you retain and implement more from the books you love, check out www.bookthinkers.com or go subscribe on either Android or iOS. So as always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. It's my favorite line to tell people. And with that, I'm signing off. I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books.