Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 33. Hal Elrod: Author of The Miracle Equation

Hal, thank you so much for coming back for a second episode of the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How you doing, man?

Dude, Nick, it's great to be— it's much better to be in person with you than virtual.

I totally agree. With COVID it's been a little bit difficult, but I'm very happy that you were receptive to coming to our office space and meeting with us. And so today's conversation is on The Miracle Equation. Last time we talked about The Miracle Morning, but for those that didn't get a chance to speak with you the first time, who is Hal Elrod?

Yeah, I always, I always lead with I'm a dad and a husband, you know, reminding me that that is my highest priority. Professionally, and I guess personally, I— so I'm primarily an author and a speaker. And it's interesting, I wrote my first book, a lot of people don't even know this, in 2006 I published Taking Life Head On about my car accident. And I— but I never felt like an author. I'm like, yeah, like I wrote a book, but I'm not really a writer. And I don't have, you know, more than one book. And then Once I wrote The Miracle Morning and that started selling a lot of copies, I was like, I feel like I can authentically say I'm an author now, you know? So, and then I'm a speaker. But my backstory that led me into this work, when I was 20 years old, I was one of the top salespeople for Cutco Cutlery. And I gave a speech at a Cutco event. And driving home that night in a brand new Ford Mustang, I just bought my first new car with my own money, you know? And driving home that night, I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 80 miles an hour. And my car spun off the drunk driver. The car behind me crashed in my door at 80 miles an hour, and I was found dead at the scene. And I bled to death. I was clinically dead when they pulled me out of the car, which took them an hour using the jaws of life to cut the top off. And when they pulled me out, I had bled to death and my heart stopped. I was clinically dead for approximately 6 minutes. They put me onto a helicopter, medevac helicopter, rushed me to the hospital. I was revived on the helicopter, and then I spent 6 days in a coma. And flatlined twice more while I was in that coma. And when I came out of the coma, I had to face a pretty unimaginable reality. It's like, you know, wait, where am I? Why am I in this hospital? And then, and then the prognosis was that I would never walk again and that I had permanent brain damage. And I always kind of joke that my wife and kids will vouch for the brain damage. That's a very real thing. In fact, I'll probably forget what I'm talking about mid-sentence a few times during the interview. But the walking again, right? That was— it's unimaginable for any age, right?

Yeah.

But, you know, 20, it's like, hey, you're never going to walk again. And so, for me, I decided I'll accept that worst-case scenario and be at peace with it so that it has no power over my emotional well-being. I'm not going to fear it. And I actually told my dad, I said, Dad, if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I'll be the happiest person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. I'm in a wheelchair either way. I won't let— and this is, I think, for all of us, especially during COVID during— the world right now has been hit by a car, so to speak, right? That I said, Dad, I will not let my unchangeable circumstances define my emotional well-being.

Mm-hmm.

And think about that. Most of us think that if bad things are happening, we have to feel bad, or if good things happen, then we get to feel good. And what I learned is I choose how I feel, and it will never be dependent on things that are out of my control. So, I said, Dad, if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I'll be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair, like, because that's My life at that point. I said, but I'm not accepting that as the only possibility. I said, I'm envisioning walking again. I'm praying about it. I'm visualizing it. I'm thinking about it. I'm talking about it. I said, and so simultaneously, I'm expecting the best and I've accepted the rest.

Mm-hmm.

And for all of us, right, it's accept all things that we can't change and put all of our energy and attention and emotional energy into the things in our life that we can control, that we have to be grateful for. And I think that at the end of the day, there's only one thing we have control over, and it's us. It's ourselves. It's how we think, how we feel, what we focus on, what we do. And you can choose to be at peace, happy, grateful, or you can choose to be angry, scared, depressed. Life's going to happen either way, right?

Yeah.

And that lesson really came back about 3 years ago. I was diagnosed with a very rare— by the way, I did take my first step again. Put a loop, close that loop.

You walked in here.

Yeah, I walked in here.

You actually ran up the stairs.

Yeah, I did run up the 9 flights of stairs. But 3 and a half years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't breathe, and I was gasping for air, and ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung. Didn't know why. And over the next week, I had my lung collapse 4 times. They drained 11 liters of fluid. My heart was on the verge of failing, and my kidneys were on the verge of failing when I was hospitalized. And it turned out I was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive form of cancer. It's called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It's a blood cancer. It has a 20 to 30% survival rate. So, you know, that's— at that age, I'm 37. I've got a 7-year-old daughter, a 4-year-old son, 2 kids, and I'm being told there's a 70 to 80% chance that I'm going to die in a matter of weeks or months.

Hmm.

And the solution from the doctors was chemo. It was to do the most intensive chemotherapy regimen that there is, which is 650 hours of chemotherapy in 8 months.

Wow.

And so, I'm looking at the doctor, I'm going, okay, wait, so you're telling me if I do 650 hours of chemotherapy, I've got a 20% to 30% chance of surviving? Right? You know, and you think about that, like, you know, if you flip that to like finances, if you went to a financial advisor and they're like, all right, give me all your money, right? Put it all on the line, and you got a 20% to 30% chance of getting a return, right? Yeah, I'm going somewhere else.

Yeah.

But this is your life. This is my life. And so, anyway, long story short, I didn't want to do the chemo. It turned out that that was really the only option. I reached out to some of the best holistic doctors in the world, and they said, your cancer is not one that any natural holistic doctor has any success rate with, because it kills you in weeks. So, we don't have time to try different things. It's not like a slow-growing tumor. So, they said— the best holistic doctors said, go do chemo. Go do the chemo. That's your best chance.

Yeah.

I'm like, geez. So, I went into the chemo, but then the decision I made— anybody listening right now that has cancer or any illness or knows somebody with cancer, I think this was one of the best decisions that I could have ever made. And the decision was, I will do everything in my power— I'm sorry, I will do everything holistically as if I weren't doing chemo and that were my only option. So, I took 70 supplements a day. I did acupuncture. I did ozone therapy. I did my Miracle Morning every day. I did coffee enemas, which It's another story for another episode. But I did everything holistically, and the doctors, kind of like back when I walked after they said I wouldn't walk, once again, the doctors were blown away by how quickly I was in remission from the cancer. And it was the hardest 8 months of my life, but I'm now cancer-free and on a mission to change the world kind of one morning at a time and help people to wake up to the unlimited potential that is within them. And yeah, that brings us here today.

Well, it's an amazing introduction. It's a very powerful story. You went through 2 miracles that you intentionally cultivated, which is something that we're going to talk a little bit about in a couple of minutes. But I thought very interesting, in the first couple of pages of this book, you sort of apologize for the Miracle Morning. You say, hey, I messed up. And so what's that all about? This is such a successful book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so the Miracle Morning, Yeah, it's just surpassed 2 million copies sold, self-published, never imagined that.

Yeah.

I still pinch myself every day, and the impact it's making for people is beyond what I, honestly, what I imagined when I wrote it. We hear things like, it saved my marriage, it cured my depression, I'm now living the life of my dreams, I lost, one guy lost 90 pounds, he's actually in the Miracle Morning movie, he lost 90 pounds after he discovered the Miracle Morning.

And so all these amazing results.

And when I said in The Miracle Equation that, you know, I messed up with my first book, here's what I meant is the Miracle Morning is a practice for daily personal development. And it's based on the philosophy that I learned from Jim Rohn, which is your level of success in every area of your life will seldom exceed your level of personal development.

Right?

In other words, it's who you become that determines your ability to create the life that you want. So through daily personal development, you can become a better version of yourself, right? More— gain more knowledge, improve your beliefs, overcome limiting beliefs, right? Create the habits, the mindset, all the things that you need to become the person to create the success you want. What I realized is that that's only half the equation, so to speak, right? Because— and a lot of people are guilty. I was guilty of this for a long time, what I call being a personal development junkie, right? Which is where you are like addicted to personal development.

That's the term I use all the time.

Say again? Oh, do you really?

That's a term that I like to use a lot, yeah.

Nice, yeah, and the idea is that you can wake up every day, you can do your Miracle Morning, you could meditate every day and be at peace, you could read, you could be the most knowledgeable, you know, you could know more on any subject than anybody on the planet, yet you could still be human. And you could give in to your fears and your self-doubt, you know, your lazy tendencies or procrastination, right? So we could be the most personally developed person on the planet, but then that doesn't actually translate into tangible measurable outcomes, right? For example, you read 5 books on money, you know more than anybody, but you're still afraid to get out there and hustle and work and, you know, and do the things to create the wealth that you know how to create. So what I realized is that in addition to the Miracle Morning, in addition to your, your daily practice for personal development, we need a process for goal achievement.

Mm-hmm.

We need— okay, you've got the formula, you've got the practice, you've got the ritual and the routine to become the best version of yourself every day. But now what's, what's the other half of the equation to get out of your comfort zone, to overcome your fears and your self-doubt and your limiting beliefs, to go out there and set ridiculous goals or goals that inspire you that are beyond what you currently may believe are even possible, and then actually go out there and achieve them. And so that's, that's where the miracle equation came in.

Well, I think that the miracle equation is a great complement It is a great second book to read after The Miracle Morning, but I also think it's a great second book to read after any book.

Sure.

Because we have the problem in our community, we have a network of 100,000 personal development book readers.

Yeah.

Now, some of those people are driving real behavior change in their lives. Some people are not. And so this equation that you're talking about, how does it actually get you to take this information and take the next step in your life? What is the Miracle Equation?

So it's the subtitle of the book sets it up really well. It's the 2 decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable, right? And inevitable, of course, is where we want to be, where, hey, the goals we're set, they're inevitably going to come true. And in some ways, this removes the possibility of failure. And I'll get to that in a second. But first, I want to address— so the 2 decisions that move our biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable. Possible is not where goals are achieved, right? The old adage, if you're, if you're an optimist, right, we all abide by the adage, anything is possible.

You say in the book that doesn't get you out of bed in the morning.

Yeah, because when was the last time that we pursued a goal that was possible but we didn't believe it was probable, right? Yeah, because most of us, we value certainty, and most people won't pursue a goal that they don't believe has a likelihood of happening, which is why most people, if they even set goals, you know, they're just, it's like incremental improvements. I'm gonna get a little bit better, a little bit better than I did last year, you know, 10% better, whatever it is.

I struggled with it, yeah.

Yeah, and so, but if you look at the world's most prolific achievers in any walk of life, they didn't set goals that were probable. They set goals that were borderline impossible, right? You know, or had never even been accomplished before, that they didn't have any sense of proof or certainty that they could do it, but by committing to a goal— and, and let me back up a little bit. The way that I would define a miracle, you know, the Miracle Morning, the Miracle Equation— to me, a miracle is any meaningful, measurable, tangible outcome that is beyond the realm of what you currently believe is probable for you. Therefore, when you achieve it, it feels like a miracle, right? But you look at like an Elon Musk You know, that set out to, you know, invent the first electric car, right? And then create a line of cars that were like commonplace and all that. And before Elon, the technology didn't even exist to make them quick enough to actually, you know, function on a highway and so on and so forth, right? But Elon set this goal that was nearly impossible, right? That there was no necessarily probability. And then the 2 decisions that make— that move you along that spectrum from possible to probable to inevitable Number 1 is unwavering faith, and number 2 is extraordinary effort. And at first glance or first blush, those seem a little too simple. Like, okay, Hal, so you're saying I need to believe in myself and I need to work hard. Like, check, check, got it. You didn't teach me anything.

Yeah.

It's more nuanced than that. And, and, and let's examine both those decisions. So unwavering faith. Most of us live at some level of fear. It often shows up as self-doubt, but we often either— we, we don't actually have faith that we can even achieve a meaningful, measurable goal, so we don't even try. The majority of people, they wake up and they live the same life that they've always lived. They go to work, they go home, they watch TV, they go to— and they just rinse and repeat every single day. And then, you know, Robin Sharma, I love his quote on this, which is One of the saddest things in life is to wake up one day and realize you could have been, done, and had so much more. And sadly, I think it's the majority of society is, you know, you wait, you know, you leave high school or college and you're like, I can conquer the world. I'm going to be a millionaire. I'm going to do it all, you know? And then you wake up at 30 and you're like, you look back, what? Oh, where did my 20s go?

Sure.

But we never actually draw our line in the sand and decide, like, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to become the person that I need to be to create the life that I want. And then another 10 years goes by and you look back and you're like, whoa, what happened to my 30s, right? And then, you know, people go through life that way. And so the idea is if you want to create an extraordinary life, however you define that, right? And that might just be a life of freedom to be with your family, whatever you, however you define that, it starts with establishing the faith that you can create that life. And then you've got to maintain that faith so that it's therefore unwavering For as long as it possibly takes. And then the second piece, extraordinary effort, isn't— it doesn't mean working hard. It's more about, in one word, if I were to define it, it's consistency.

Right.

So it's doing— imagine this, if you do one thing every day that moves you a little bit closer to your vision for what you want for your life, your success is inevitable. It's really the only variable is timing. You'll eventually get there. And so those 2 decisions, and we can dive into some stories on, you know, examples of those. But if you study the world's most successful people, you find that they have established and maintained the faith. They've maintained unwavering faith that they can overcome any challenges that come their way and achieve anything and everything they want for as long as it takes to get there. And it usually takes longer than they initially imagined. And they put forth extraordinary effort. They do things consistently, day in and day out, week in and week out. And the word that I think is operative is until. Maintaining unwavering faith and putting forth extraordinary effort until you get to the point in your life that you've been working so hard for so long. And most people, if they're not, you know, if it's not going according to plan, if they hit setbacks and roadblocks, they think, well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. And then they give up and they shift gears, they try something else. The problem is they keep the same mindset of wavering faith.

Yeah.

Right? And, and And mediocre effort. And then they try that on a new venture and they go, I'm gonna give it my all, I'm excited, I'm gonna do it. Oh, uh, it's not going the way I thought, not— it's not looking good, I thought I'd be here faster, I guess I'll do something else. And they go through their entire life with wavering faith, right, and mediocre effort, and then that, that becomes the determining factors in, in the results that we create.

I, uh, I have a tattoo right here actually that I that says faith in action.

Nice.

And so when I was younger, my mom talked to me sometimes after Mass and things like that about the fact that hope, you know, that's, that's not followed by action, which is basically just hope, you know, it's not going to move the needle. You need to apply action consistently, and that is more representative of what I would consider faith. It's unwavering as compared to wavering. And so I love that story, and I love that principle in the book. It It matters a lot to me. So, you mentioned fear, and I'd like to unpack that a little bit. You said it represents itself as self-doubt a lot of times. Why do, why do we live in a world that cultivates so much fear? I think society puts a lot of pressure on us, and we feel like we can't take action on maybe some of those goals.

Yeah, well, part of it is, is the way our prehistoric ancestors, right? We are hardwired with fear, and that's— and because back in the day, the threats were, you know, the, the mountain lion that's going to eat you, right? You know, or, or running out of food or, right, things that we don't typically have to deal with today, yet the fear is still there. So now the fear is a fear of failure, fear of rejection. There's all these human aspects that show up in different forms of fear. Here's the thing about faith. It feels very intangible, right? So if somebody goes, yeah, maintain unwavering faith, like, great.

I don't—

like, how do you do that?

Yeah.

And, and I want to give a simple strategy. It's so simple, don't miss this. It's simply putting it in writing. And I'll give you an example. When I was diagnosed with cancer and I was going through chemo, I lost 25% of my body weight. I lost all my hair, of course. I became very sick, of course. Chemo's poison. And especially in the beginning, very often I would think about, what if I die? Like, you know, if you're a parent and you have kids, there's— that's the most— there's nothing to me, at least for me, and I think it's true for most parents, that's scarier than like leaving your small children without one of their parents, you know? And not even just from a selfish point of view, but from a selfless point of view, like my kids need me, you know?

Yeah.

And so, in order to combat the fear, right, so this is not being fear-driven. fearless, where you're not going to have fear. This is when the fear starts to show up for you, when you feel it, how do you replace it with faith? And if you do that actively and consistently, you eventually shift your default way of being from one of fear and self-doubt to one of faith and confidence, right? So, I created an affirmation, and part of the Miracle Morning is the affirmations is one of the pieces, one of the 6 practices. And so, I call this the Miracle Equation Affirmation. And the simple formula, if you're listening, you want to write this down: I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. And the blank is your outcome, your tangible, measurable miracle. I am committed to blank, no matter what, there's no other option. So, when I had cancer, and I'll actually give you a 3-step formula right now to apply this. So, there's 3 steps. Step 1 is affirm what you're committed to. I am committed to blank, no matter what, there's no other option.

Mm-hmm.

For me, it was, I am committed to beating cancer and living to be 100+ years old alongside Ursula, Sophie, and Halston, my wife and kids, no matter what. There is no other option.

Mm-hmm.

And that was in my phone. It was also printed out on my bedside table. And whenever I felt fear, I didn't— see, most of us, the fear is like a seed that gets planted in our mind, right, just from a thought, and then we start going down that rabbit hole of fear. And we start expanding it, and it starts to, you know, become, embody us completely. And you start to really go down the rabbit hole and go, well, what if, and what if, and we keep just, the fear, we dwell on it, we go deeper in it, and it consumes us.

Mm-hmm.

And here's the strategy, is that as soon as you start to feel that fear, you pull out your affirmation. So for me, when I felt the fear of, oh my gosh, what if I do die? 'Cause I remember Wayne Dyer, who's somebody, a mentor of mine, Wayne Dyer died of leukemia, right? I have leukemia. Wayne Dyer, I would say, was as brilliant, spiritual, enlightened, personally developed as anyone on the planet. I'm like, dude, if Wayne died and he knows everything I know and more about the mind-body connection and all that, who am I to beat this, right? And I thought, I could think as positively as I want and still die. So, there were all these fears. And but every time I started to feel that fear, I wouldn't dwell on it for longer than a minute or two. I'd pull up my affirmation and I'd go, I am committed to beating cancer and living to be 100+ years old alongside Ursula and the kids no matter what. There is no other option. And I would read it as many times as I needed to. I would feel it. I would pound my chest. I would embody that. And I quickly replaced fear with faith. And that faith became my unwavering state that lasted throughout the entire cancer journey. And, and so that's the first step is affirm what you are committed to no matter what, no other option. Number 2, affirm why it is deeply meaningful to you. Why is it crucial? Why are you committed? What, what are the reasons that you're willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that outcome? And here's mine. I had bullet points of reasons. So I'm committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 alongside Ursula and the kids no matter what. There's no other option. Because I'm committed to beating cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day. I'm committed to beating cancer for my son Halston because he needs his dad's love and leadership and guidance. I'm committed to beating cancer for my daughter Sophie because she needs her daddy's love, leadership, and guidance as well. I'm committed to beating cancer for my dad because he gave up everything to save my life. I'm committed to beating cancer for my mom Because she does not deserve to lose another child. I'm committed to beating cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, healthy, and happy life. And I am committed to beating cancer for the millions of people around the world who are themselves suffering from cancer or some other disease and don't have the knowledge or resources that I do and desperately need my love, leadership, and support. So those whys fueled me. To do whatever it took to beat cancer. And the third step— and so again, apply those, right? What are your bullet points? What are the reasons that you're willing to do whatever it takes to create financial freedom, or to write that book that's going to change the world, or write whatever, whatever your miracle is? And then the third step to creating affirmation is what are the specific things you will do and why— I'm sorry, and when? What are the specific actions you will take and when that will enable you to ensure that that becomes— that miracle becomes inevitable, right? And so, that's your extraordinary effort, by the way, right? That third piece is your extraordinary effort. And for me, I was committed to do every holistic practice that I possibly could in addition to my chemotherapy. I just constantly read books on beating cancer. I've got probably, you know, 7, 8 books on how to beat cancer naturally, right? I watched documentaries on how to beat cancer naturally. I did everything I possibly could. And so again, those 3 steps. Number 1, affirm what you're committed to. Number 2, affirm why it is meaningful and absolutely crucial for you to follow through with that commitment. And number 3, affirm specifically what actions you'll take and when you'll take them. And I'm going to close this out with a concept I talk about in the book called the faith-effort-feedback loop. When you first establish faith that you can do something that you've never done before, that's so far out of your comfort zone that the faith doesn't feel real, it feels like you're faking it, right? That's okay. That's normal. Faith is a strategy. And the faith doesn't typically become unwavering until you've repeated it over and over and over and over to where you've literally conditioned yourself to believe that. You've programmed your subconscious mind with that faith.

Mm-hmm.

So When you establish the faith you can do something, that gives you the courage to put forth that extraordinary effort, to start doing the things you're committed to doing. And then when you do those things, when you put forth that effort, that reinforces the faith because you go— like when I was sitting there, I'll just touch on this, doing a coffee enema. If you've never done a coffee enema, right, it's you make 32 ounces of coffee and you put a tube in your butt and and you hold it in there for 12 minutes, right? It's not comfortable, and it's awkward, and you're like— I don't know anyone that enjoyed their first coffee enema. But when I was— every coffee enema that I did, which by the way, I still do 2 a week, my friends do them, I've sold everybody in my life on doing coffee enemas.

You have to try this.

You have to try it. It's one of the best ways to detox your body, and yeah, just Google it. Ben Greenfield has a great article on his blog, BenGreenfieldFitness. Anyway, the point is, I remember the first time I did a coffee enema. I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is so uncomfortable. And I thought to myself, I'm going to beat cancer. I'm doing the things, right? And not just the coffee enema, but I just remember that wasn't the first time where I go, I deserve to beat cancer.

Yeah.

See, that's the faith-effort-feedback loop, is when you establish faith that you can, it gets you into action. When you put forth the action, it then makes you feel deserving of the outcome because you're doing the things. That then fuels your faith, which then fuels the effort, which fuels the faith, and round and round you go, the faith-effort feedback loop. And it gets easier and easier to maintain unwavering faith, and it gets easier and easier to put forth extraordinary effort, and you start to see your biggest goals and dreams move from impossible to probable to inevitable.

Yeah, well, I will have to try what you just mentioned, and I'll report back to everybody. So, there were a couple things that you touched on that I wanted to touch on, and I'm happy that you did. The faith-effort feedback loop is something that I thought was extremely valuable, and I can see how it works. So, I'm happy that you addressed that. I wanted you to go through the affirmations and how to structure them again, so I'm very happy that you did that. For people who aren't facing an extremely life-threatening situation, Or maybe they're not chasing a unicorn goal that's going to feel like a miracle. They might need to adjust their goal setting. And so in the book, you talk about this middle of the night epiphany that you had, and it had to do with goal setting. You need to become somebody who embodies the result that you're looking for. And so I'd love to have you talk a little bit about goal setting and maybe how we can adjust our existing lens of the world.

Yeah, there's so, so I personally like to keep things as simple as possible. I don't consider myself like— my area of genius is not details. It's, you know, I want it to be like, okay, tell me like the one thing I need to do every day that I could do that'll get me where I want to go. Um, so a couple thoughts on goal setting. The first one is the paradigm of removing the fear of failure is— and I learned this, it goes back to Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn, I'll paraphrase the lesson as I have understood it. When he talked about goal setting, he said the purpose of a goal is not to hit the goal, right? It's not the specific result that you're after. The purpose of a goal is to become the person that you need to be who is capable of achieving that result and similar results or greater results, right? Now, most of us have been conditioned to think that the purpose of the goal is to hit it. Why would I even set a goal if I'm not going to hit it, right? And so, that's what causes us to set these small incremental goals. that we feel like we can hit. But if you realize that the purpose of a goal is to develop the qualities and the characteristics of the type of person who can achieve great things in your life. So for example, let's say you set a goal and let's say you work towards it. You set the goal and then you identify who do I need to become to achieve this goal? Meaning what limiting beliefs do I need to overcome that might be holding me back? If you're taking notes, literally write this down. Number 1, you know, so who do you need to become to achieve the goal? And to figure that out, what limiting beliefs do you need to overcome? What empowering, you know, success-seeking beliefs do you need to establish? So limiting belief might be like, I'm not good enough to do this, or I've never done this before, or who am I? When I wrote The Miracle Morning, I thought, who am I to teach people to wake up early? Like, I'm nobody. I'm not a writer. I'm not, you know, how am I going to convince people to do this, right? To overcome that, just that imposter syndrome is that I think universal limiting belief we all suffer from. And then what beliefs do I have to you know do I have to embody? One of my favorite beliefs that helps overcome that imposter syndrome is, and it's an affirmation I created when I first did the Miracle Morning: I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of achieving everything I want in my life as any other person on earth.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And it's true. We tend to look at other people that are successful and create separation, like, oh, well, they're smarter, younger, older, more experienced, better looking, whatever, right? No, they're a human being that were born as a baby with no experience. They became the person that they needed to be to create what they wanted in their life, and we all have that same opportunity. So figure out who do you need to become, limiting beliefs you have to overcome, beliefs that you need to embody, What are the habits that you need to put into place? What are the rituals and routines that will help you develop those habits, right? So who do you need to become? And the real purpose of a goal is to become that person. And again, let's say you set the goal. Let's say the goal is I want to get in better shape. I want to lose, I want to lose 20 pounds in the next 3 months. Let's say that's the goal, right? And you're out, you're hell-bent. That's that. I gotta lose 20 pounds in 3 months. And let's say you go, okay, well, Who do I need to become? Okay, I need to believe that I can lose 20 pounds in 3 months, and I need to develop some habits. So, I need to start— I'm going to start exercising 30 minutes a day. I'm going to cut out sugar or soda or whatever. I'm going to start eating these types of foods, right? I'm going to eat a healthier diet. And then you start living as that person. Who cares how many pounds have fallen off in 3 months? You follow that, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's not the purpose of the goal. It's who you become. And so, let's say 3 months from now you go, I only lost 15 pounds. Gosh dang it, right? Or I only lost 10 pounds, right? Maybe you put on some muscle. Who knows? It doesn't matter. You've now become the type of person that can live a healthy lifestyle, that can get to whatever weight you want to be at, right? We're playing the long game.

Mm-hmm.

And so, whatever your goals are, or whatever your goals you haven't even set yet, but you have to really, all of us, I think If you're listening and you're already a goal setter, these are some nuances that will enhance your practice. If you have— if you don't set goals, right, it is time to start. It's time to sit down and look at, you know, I did a podcast yesterday on creating your 10-year vision, like, right? Start there. Dream. Where do you want your life to be in 10 years? What do you want? Where do you want your health to be? Your relationships, your career? What do you want your lifestyle to be like? That's where I love to start. Like, what do you want to do every day? When you wake up, do you want to go to a job?

No.

Do you want to have nothing on your schedule? Like, what do you want your life like? 10 years is a long time to be able to do anything. And then work it back to, okay, what are the 5-year goals? What are the 1-year goals, right? What are the monthly goals? And more importantly, what are the— who do I need to be now? Who do I need to become, start becoming immediately, so that I put myself on the trajectory to create that vision? And then who knows, the vision can change 100 times between now and then. But who you become, you can't fail to achieve the goal when you understand that the real goal isn't the goal. It's not the result. It's who you're becoming. And nothing can stop you from enforcing— or I'm sorry, to start putting those practices in place that enable you to become that person that moves toward that goal, that vision, you know, and whatever you end up— wherever you end up in the end, you know, that's up to you.

Well, everybody needs to go back and listen to that again. I know I'm going to write that down. I probably need to adjust my goal setting and that foundational belief of we are all limitless. It's something that I see with you. It's something I see with a lot of the high-energy, high-impact authors that we interview. And so, I love to see that consistency throughout your work as well. And so, I want to pivot away from The Miracle Equation and into a project that you've been working on for a little while. I want to be conscious of your time. We only have about 10 minutes left.

Yeah.

And so, tell everybody about the movie.

Oh man, this is, uh, I'm like speechless about this. So, uh, in 2014, what are we, 6 years ago, one of my good friends, and by the way, let me say what this is first, then I'll get into the story.

Yeah.

This is the Miracle Morning Movie. We are doing a live online world premiere that comes with a training, a live Q&A, a new 30-day challenge. You're gonna get the digital download of the movie to own it forever. Go to miraclemorningmovie.com. MiracleMorningMovie.com, you can get your ticket to the world premiere. You can watch the trailer too, which is a good start, and use the code MIRACLE2020 to get 20% off of the movie, right? So, all right, I want to get all that out up front in case I forget.

Link in the show notes, everybody.

Awesome, thank you. So, in 2014, my good friend Nick Cannadaro came over to the house, and keep in mind, Miracle Morning published on 12/12/12, so 2012. So, I've been out for about 2 years, and he was at my house, and he was asking me for advice on his next film. He had just made his first full-length feature film, which was like a comedy for millennials, and it was a great movie called Sharp. And he said, how did you get the Miracle Morning to go so viral? At that point, I think we'd sold like 100,000 copies. It was growing. It was creating this movement. Our Facebook group had tens of thousands of people in it. And he's like, how did you do this? I want to apply this to my next film. And I said, well, Nick, you need to do a— I would do a documentary. The reason the Miracle Morning is going viral is because it changes people's lives so they tell their friends about it. I go, no, I mean, I love Sharp, I love your movie, but it's just kind of entertaining and your life's not different a week later, right?

Yeah.

I said, so I think you need to— if you're going to model what worked for the Miracle Morning, you need to create a movie that opens people's eyes to a different way of thinking and more importantly, gives them a specific practice that will change their behavior in a meaningful way. And he's like, okay. He's like, what, you know, what are your thoughts? And so we start brainstorming. I'm like, well, what are you passionate about? And he's like, well, I want to help millennials be financially free and I want to help artists make money. I want to help. And so we're brainstorming for like half an hour and then it's quiet. He goes, wait a minute, why don't we do it on the Miracle Morning? He goes, everything you said the Miracle Morning is, right? We could teach people the Miracle Morning. We could show them the morning routines of some of the world's most prolific achievers and successful visionaries and leaders and entrepreneurs. And I go, yeah. I go, scratch all those other ideas. Like, how did— what a blind spot that I'm literally coaching him on creating a movie that's just like the Miracle Morning book. And so, I told him, I said, Nick, it's such a big project. I don't even— I can't wrap my head around it. I'm really busy just getting the book out there. Call me next year. You know, like let's revisit this in the future. And Nick is a pleasantly persistent guy, and he's he's texting me like daily. Like hey, when are we gonna start the movie? And he's texting me ideas and screenshots of different stuff, and and I'm just kind of blowing him off. And I'm like yeah, you know, not not someday someday. And he he calls me, and he figured out how to get through to me, to my like to my thinking. He said, Hal, what is your mission in life? And at that point, it was to elevate it to it is today. It's too, but. to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. And he said, what percentage of humanity reads personal development books? And I said, like 3%, I think, maybe 2%. I mean, it's pretty bad. He said, how are you going to reach, you know, a billion-plus people with a medium in the form of a book that only, that only 3% of society is reading? He said, what percentage of society watches movies? And I go, well, in developed countries, like the other 97%, right? And I like it, and it clicked for me. And I go, dude, we have to make a movie, right? He's like, if you— if we want to— if we want to reach the masses, we have to put this in a medium that when they recommend to their friend watch a movie, the 90-minute commitment's a lot easier than the month it's going to take to read the book, you know, for someone that doesn't read. So we start filming the movie, and 2 years into the— into production, We filmed the morning routines of, I mean, some of my heroes, you know, Robert Kiyosaki, Mel Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Lewis Howes, Robin Sharma, Laila Ali, who's, you know, Muhammad Ali's daughter, and she's an 18-time undefeated world champion boxer, like, all, you know, and dozens more. And the movie's everything we initially intended it to be, it was, and then I get a phone, or, and then I get cancer. And I called Nick and I said, Nick, you'll never believe this. I'm in the hospital. And I said, I have a really aggressive form of cancer. It's not like— the odds are really grim, man. I've got a 20 to 30% survival rate. The movie is on hold. I've got to focus all my energy on healing and living for my family, staying alive. And he was really— he's a friend and he was there for me. And then he called me back a little bit later and he said, Hal, hey, I know this might sound crazy. But number one, you are going to beat this cancer. I have no— and he, by the way, he knows the Miracle Equation. Like, I've been living the Miracle Equation for 20 years.

Yeah.

I used to teach it at conferences. Like, he knows, you know, he goes, you live the Miracle Equation, like, you're going to beat this cancer. He said, I would love to film your journey on this cancer journey. And like, it was a total out of left field for me. I'm like, I don't— you know, let me talk to my wife. Let me think about this. Again, he was persistent, and I ended up saying yes. I'm pretty open kimono, like I'm not afraid to share who I am. So, he filmed the entire cancer journey, and now the movie became something that, A, I never imagined. You can't plan for, hey, well, maybe I'll get cancer 2 years in. Couldn't have planned for that. But when you're watching the movie now, the first hour is the original intention for the movie. It delivers. It shows you me traveling the world. I'm in Paris. sharing the Miracle Morning, you know, and on TV and all this. It shows the stories of people in the Community. You know, one gal, she's in Kenya, she's blind, her husband left her, she's a single mom, lost her eyesight suddenly, Googled how to get out of depression and discovered the Miracle Morning, she overcame her depression. This guy Mike Eaton, he's obese his entire life, discovers the Miracle Morning, loses 90 pounds. We have all these incredible stories of people in the film These inspiring stories of people achieving amazing results from Miracle Morning, and then we interview the world's most successful, or highly successful individuals and their morning rituals. So, you get all that, and then all of a sudden at the 1-hour mark, I'm in the hospital with my cell phone doing a self-video saying they don't know what's wrong. And the last 30 minutes of the film is this intimate journey where you're with me in my darkest hour, you're with me in horrific pain, bawling my eyes out in the hospital, and— And, you know, I know it's a spoiler alert, I live. But when you're watching the movie, it doesn't— like, it doesn't look good. I mean, I almost died multiple times during those 8 months. And I think that what it's going to do for people, which is what matters right now, we are struggling. I mean, a lot of people feel out of control in their lives. And when you see this film, you see that even in the midst of your most challenging times, you can take control of your life. This gives you The practice in the miracle morning, but it more importantly, it gives you the how do I even put this? It's it's the it'll it'll immediately create a shift in your mindset. And we you know we've screened the movie now to hundreds of people, and the the response from them is like this is beyond the book. Like the book was great; it got me to change my mornings. But this movie changed the way that I think about life, and and I now realize that. I'm in control of how I feel, how I think, what I focus on, and my outer world will never again dictate my inner world. And I think that this movie is coming out on 12/12/2020, and tickets are available now for the world premiere to join us on 12/12/2020. But I think this movie's coming out at a time in our society, in our culture, when it's needed more than ever, and I think it's going to help a lot of people.

Well, thank you for making the movie. I'm happy that you did it. Thank you for talking about it. I think it, you know, I love the book and I think it's perfect for our audience, but it sounds like the movie is going to be perfect for everybody. So, there will be links in the show notes for everybody that's watching. Thank you for coming on the show for a second time. I really appreciate it. Do you have any final words before we jump off today?

Yeah, I'll just, just a message for everybody. If you are struggling right now, and I think most of us, I think just you're struggling collectively if you know what's going on in the world, right? So whatever struggles you're facing right now, know that they're temporary. You know, I think that when we're in the midst of our adversity, of challenge, it's hard to see, you know, the sun shining on the other side of the clouds, metaphorically speaking. And just know this, that wherever you are in your life right now, keep moving forward. And when you finally get to the point in your life that you've been working so hard for, for so long, the timing will be perfect. You almost never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead, you look back at— you look at your journey, you look at the hard times, and you go, oh, I had to go through that to get where I am now. I had to go through that to become the person that I became that got me to the point in my life that I always wanted to be. And so be at peace with where you are. Maintain unwavering faith that you can get where you want to go and put forth extraordinary effort every day. Do at least one thing that moves you toward your miracle. And, you know, in my experience, you can't fail.