The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

It's almost 2021, and that means one of two things: either you've already set your 2021 goals or New Year's resolutions, or you're in the process of doing so. And so I'd love to tell you a little bit about one of the books that's had the biggest impact on me over the last couple years, and that is *The Miracle Morning* by Hal Elrod. Bookending your day, meaning controlling the morning and controlling the evening with a solid morning routine and evening routine, has completely changed my productivity as well as my happiness and energy throughout the day. And no matter what I do, I always come back to the 6 components that this book teaches you in the importance of a morning routine. And I'm actually wearing a t-shirt that represents them right here. This acronym, SAVERS, will change your life. Now, Book Thinkers is launching a book club that starts on January 4th where we're going to do some virtual book club meetups. We're even going to do a fireside Q&A with the author, Hal Elrod. And there's a private Facebook group where we'll be doing daily activities and engagements stuff like that. But the point of this video is to teach you these 6 elements to the morning routine that will change your life, and I hope that you choose to implement them in 2021. So the acronym is SAVERS, and the S in SAVERS stands for silence. Each and every morning, it's important to stop what you're doing and get a little bit of silence. Now I'm choosing to use this new device that actually provides real-time brainwave feedback on your meditation called Muse. And I really enjoy this Muse device. I saw in Hal's— in the Miracle Morning movie that a few people were using the Muse device. I decided to give it a try and I love it. But prior to using Muse, I would meditate a couple different ways. I've tried the Headspace app, the Calm app, and I've also just done silent meditations. You can also search YouTube for meditation music. I've done sensory deprivation float tanks. Meditation in general has changed my life, but silence will change your mornings. So I highly recommend it. Next on the list is the A in SAVERS for affirmations. Now, Hal has a beautiful formula and strategy for constructing commitment-style affirmations in this book. It's much better than, you know, money flows to me easily and purely. It's more, I am committed to X no matter what, there is no other option, and here is why. And you state that to the world in sort of an alchemist Coelho fashion, and the universe will conspire to help you. So affirmations have been super important for my morning routine. Next up on the list is visualization. And for visualization, I really just try to picture my ideal day. I've previewed my calendar and I picture myself completing those tasks effortlessly and with happiness and fulfillment and joy. I picture the desired outcomes of each meeting, and that sets me up for a really cool day. Now today of all days, I'm actually going to build a vision board for the first time, kind of like that vision board with pictures cut out from magazines and glued to it for 2021. I'll document that on my stories and I'll kind of share with everybody the final product probably too. After that, you have exercise. So for me, I've done a lot of different exercise over the last couple years. I used to love being in the gym, but with COVID I was forced to change that up a little bit. I read a book called Weightlifting Is a Waste of Time this year and interviewed the author, John Jaquish, on our podcast. And he sells this product called the X3 Bar Elite. And that program is resistance band training, variable resistance throughout the workout. It's only 10 minutes a day. It fits into my morning routine really well, and I am loving it. I'm also getting really good results. So that's a definite book that I recommend, and I love getting that level of exercise in the morning. Plus, Robin Sharma says that the endorphins you get, the endorphin kick you get from exercise, can last up to 15 hours. So why would you exercise in the evening? You're leaving all of those additional benefits and energy on the table throughout your workday. So definitely try to get your exercise done in the morning. After that is my favorite, reading. Everybody knows that I love reading. I try to read for 15 or 20 minutes every single morning now. It's a combination of different books, whatever's on my plate. But I always try to get that reading done. And funny enough, something that I've really enjoyed doing is I have a daylight lamp set in front of my window. I read in front of the window with a couple plants and some good oxygen and everything like that, right after I finish these other things, right after the exercise. It's a good endorphin kick. And when I'm reading, I've got the daylight, so I just feel energized while I'm reading. It's such a positive experience. And the very last thing on the list is scribing. Journaling can happen in a lot of different forms. I used to journal behind a keyboard every single day, things that I was grateful for, or just a couple moments in my life. Maybe I tried some creative writing. And right now I'm using the Daily Stoic journal. So I read the Daily Stoic, it's a quick Stoic passage from a great philosopher like Marcus Aurelius or Seneca or Epictetus, and then there's a thought-provoking question and I just journal in the book for a minute or two. I'll be doing sort of a 5-minute journal thing for 2021. I'll share more about that soon, but kind of pivoting after I watched Hal's movie. And so that right there is the SAVERS acronym. Those are the 6 things that you should be doing in your morning routine. I also recommend checking out the book Own the Day, Own Your Life by Aubrey Marcus. Within that book, there's sort of a Miracle Morning cocktail, and that's what I do prior to all 6 of these steps. And it's a little bit of lemon, with some Himalayan sea salt that contains electrolytes as well as 84 different minerals and nutrients, and water. So you want to hydrate your body before you dump coffee into it. In that book, Aubrey kind of jokes around. He says, hey, listen, starting your day with a cup of coffee is like waking up with a fire alarm instead of a phone alarm. Like, you've got to prime your digestive system before you dump caffeine into it. And so that's been really important to me. And there are a couple other components to my morning routine that are sort of academic I do a little bit of other reading. I do some language learning lessons because I'm in the process of learning Spanish. Estoy aprendiendo español. And yeah, so that's kind of my morning routine in a wrap. I'll do some more in-depth videos throughout the year as I trial different things here and there. We just had Robin Sharma on the podcast to talk about the benefits of waking up at 5 AM. I am not there yet, but I will be trialing it soon. And so that's my morning routine. I would highly recommend you check out this book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, to get a little bit more of an in-depth look at everything that we discussed in today's video review. And of course, check out our book club. You can just go to the link in our bio, you can go to the website. Tickets are $30 US. Again, you get a daily engagement private Facebook group, you're going to get 3 book club meetings held by me and 1 book club meeting held by Hal Elrod. You'll get exclusive access to ask him questions and communicate with him. There will also be some fun downloadable worksheets. It's a Book Thinkers book club. You'll meet like-minded people. It'll be a really fun experience. We're definitely going to go all out for this one. And so if you have any questions for me about the Miracle Morning or any recommendations for my morning routine, drop them in the comments below. Thank you for watching today's video and go read something.