How to Change the World One Miracle Morning at a Time with Hal Elrod: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Billion Dollar Moves. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how to change the world one miracle morning at a time. To drop these value bombs, I am brought Hal Elrod into EO Fire Studios. Hal is the executive producer of The Miracle Morning Movie, based on the best-selling book that has sold over 2 million copies and enabled millions of people to transform their lives.

0:40And today, Fire Nation will talk about how to elevate humanity's consciousness one morning at a time, how to choose to be the happiest and most grateful while enduring the most challenging time in your life, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Hal and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kutcher, is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more.

1:11One of my favorite recent episodes is titled How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Hal, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

1:51First of all, John, thanks for having me, man. And Fire Air Nation, it is good to be back. It's been a long time. Something interesting about me that most people don't know is that I do coffee enemas. And this is something, if you're not familiar with a coffee enema, it's where you heat up 32 ounces of water, you boil some coffee in it, and then and you use a tube, and you stick it in an area, right? And then you hold the coffee inside for 12 minutes, and then you go release it. So that's something I do every Saturday and every Sunday morning, and it's one of my favorite rituals that I do every week.

2:33So there you go. I don't share that too often. No, that's cool that you shared that, because for obvious reasons, a lot of people maybe keep that a little close to the vest. But my kind of question is, because I've tried this before is does it actually get easier to, I mean, that 12 minutes seems like an eternity to me. And like, I wasn't able to last like more than a minute, but I've only done it one. I mean, like, can you just like build up some kind of tolerance to this? So I'm very strategic about it. I take a product, um, before like the few days before, two days before called, um, intestinal formula number one, and you can get it on herb doc.com.

3:07But it's basically, here's the point, John, is you've got to strategically plan your eating. Like I eat a very light meal the day before that's always vegetarian. So I don't have anything heavy because the idea is that that morning you need to clear everything out. Because otherwise, even for me that's done this for ever since I had cancer, like three years, it's difficult if I'm not completely clear. So, yeah. Wow. Well, Fire Nation always learning something new every single day when I talk to this guy. No doubt. And I mean, there's a bold title to this episode, which is how to change the world one miracle morning at a time and how this is not your first rodeo on entrepreneurs on fire.

3:46So a certain number of people who are listening have heard this part of your story before, but not everybody because I'm getting new listeners every single day. And it's been a while since you have been on last. So for people that don't know, you've had multiple near death experiences and you actually died at one point for six minutes. I mean, that may not be as difficult as holding a coffee enema for 12 minutes, but I'm sure it's comparable. But what happened during that time and how did that impact your life? And I haven't been on since the most recent near-death experience, if you will. The first one, I was 20 years old and I was hit head on by my car.

4:21I was driving home on the freeway after I gave a speech at a sales meeting at one of our conferences for the company that I worked for. and I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles per hour on the freeway. Both of us going 70 to 80 miles per hour full speed and he was in the wrong lane. We hit head on. My car spun off the drunk driver and the car behind me crashed into my driver's side door at 70 miles per hour and instantaneously I broke 11 bones on the left side of my body. My eye socket broke. The top of my skull was fractured. My ear was almost completely severed. I broke my arm.

4:56I shattered my elbow. I severed the radial nerve in my left forearm. I broke my pelvis in three places, crushed between this door and the center console. And my femur, the biggest bone in the human body, broke in half. And instantaneously, I started losing a lot of blood. And I, an hour later, after the fire department had used the jaws of life to pull me out of the car, I died. I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes, rushed to the hospital, spent six days in a coma, flatlined twice more and came out of the coma to be told I would never walk again and that I had permanent brain damage.

5:30And I always kind of joke, my wife will vouch for the brain damage. My kids will vouch for the brain damage. But miraculously, if you will, I had this really positive attitude, this unwavering faith that I was going to walk again to the point where the doctors thought I was delusional and in denial. And three weeks later, I took my first step and, you know, Kind of the rest is history, so to speak. And so that was my first, you know, I guess near death. It was an actual death experience. And then the second was three and a half years ago. One night I woke up and I had trouble breathing. I was gasping for air.

6:07And over the course of the next 11 days, I was in and out of the emergency room almost every other day. I had my lung drained. I think it was seven times, 11 liters of fluid from my lung to ultimately find out that I had a very rare and aggressive form of cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which has a 20 to 30 % survival rate. And, you know, if you're, if you're a pessimist, that's at 70 to 80%, you're, you're going to die rate. And, you know, I'm a dad. I've got a, at the time, my daughter was seven, my son's four, uh, my wife, I won't tell you her age, but, um, you know, that, that was obviously the most difficult news to hear.

6:46And I made similar decisions that I made around the car accident where I decided I can't change. And here's this. I'll transition into the impact. I decided I realized that I can't change what's happened to me. It's already happened. I can't change that I was in a car accident. I can't change that I have cancer. And so during the car accident, I decided the only logical, intelligent choice I have is to completely, unconditionally accept my life exactly as it is and put no energy into resisting my reality. And in doing so, I was at peace. I was happy. I was grateful. And I decided if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, and I can't change it, I will accept it unconditionally.

7:30And I will be the happiest, most grateful person that you've ever seen in a wheelchair. And the day I was diagnosed with cancer and told I had a 20 to 30 % chance of surviving, I made the exact same decision. I can't change that I have cancer. So there's no value in wishing it were different and wishing it didn't happen and resisting my reality. The only intelligent choice I have is to accept the fact that I have cancer unconditionally. And I chose to be the happiest, most grateful I had ever been and learn from my challenges, my adversity, while I endured the most difficult time in my life. And in both circumstances, I was able to, you know, like I mentioned, walk three weeks later.

8:14And then I beat cancer in the way the doctors kind of were dumbfounded in both these circumstances. And to me, the lesson, the biggest lesson for you listening to this right now, that there's really two of them. There's two that kind of work together. And one is unconditional acceptance and the other is unwavering faith. The idea that all of our emotional pain is self-created by our resistance to our reality. It wasn't the fact that I was in a car accident that caused emotional pain. It would have been if I would have resisted it, wished it didn't happen, thought it wasn't fair, and dreaded the possibility of never walking again.

8:47Instead, I made that conscious decision to unconditionally accept all of my life exactly as it was. And then it had no power over me. And by the way, you don't need to go through a major adversity to go through this. You can apply this in everyday traffic, right? Don't get frustrated in traffic. You can't change the traffic. You can accept it, be at peace with it and choose to be the happiest and most grateful that you've ever been while you endure the most difficult time in your life. And right now with what's going on in the world, you know, for a lot of us, a lot of people that are, you know, there's so much fear and uncertainty.

9:19There's a lot of unprecedented and unpredictable and unexpected circumstances that we can either resist and feel upset about or we can be at peace with and move through gracefully. And the second decision or the second lesson is this unwavering faith. You've got to focus on, visualize, imagine, and move toward what you want for your life. For me in the hospital at age 20, I visualized walking again every day. I didn't speak of what I was afraid of. I spoke into faith, into what it was that I wanted. And when I had cancer and I felt that fear, I replaced it with faith. And I would affirm I am committed to do everything in my power to beat cancer and live to be 100 plus years old alongside my wife and our two kids, no matter what, there is no other option.

10:07And now I affirmed those exact words every single day over and over and over affirming what I was committed to and then living in alignment with who I needed to be and what I needed to do to create that reality. And if you're listening to this right now, you can apply those to every area of your life. You have to unconditionally accept who you are and where you are at this moment so you can be at peace with it. And then you've got to put energy into maintaining unwavering faith in what it is that you want to create for your life and then simply live in alignment with who you need to be and what you need to do every day to move in that direction.

10:45And if you do those two things, to me, that's kind of the key that unlocks the door to the life that we're meant to live. Fire Nation, there's nothing of value that I can add to what Hal just shared, but I do just want to repeat, unconditional acceptance and unwavering faith. Think about that. Now, Hal, thanks to you, I actually got a book agent and signed with HarperCollins Leadership, and I'm actually going to be publishing my first book in the spring of 2021. So, I'm very grateful to you for that introduction. I'm fired up about that. But, you know, to backtrack a little bit, I mean, you self-published a book that went on to sell millions of copies.

11:26I mean, over 2 million to date. And it's been translated into over 37 languages. I mean, you know, if we do a fraction of that with the whole HarperCollins machine behind it and everything that, you know, we can do, it'll be a massive success. So how the heck did you accomplish success on that level? First of all, congratulations on your book deal. Thank you. Yeah, super exciting. I'm so glad that all worked out. I had faith that it would, but so, so to me, there's two things when I wrote the miracle morning. Well, first I just want to say that I did not expect it to sell millions of copies. Now in my heart, I knew it could impact millions of lives if it were to reach those people, but I had no platform.

12:05I had no podcast. I didn't have a blog. Like people didn't know who I was. You know, I had a few dozen emails of addresses of my coaching clients, but so I ended up, um, I self-published it because I was willing to do whatever it took for as long as it took to get the book in the hands of, you know, millions of people. So that was the first thing is I started out though with really nothing and, you know, really from scratch. And then two things that are really important. If you have a book, if you're writing a book, there are two things that are crucial. And number one is the way that you structure your book.

12:36And I'm going to, you know, we could do a masterclass on this topic alone, which may be in the future, but here's the basic most books. If you think about it, all they do is they shift your thinking and it's a very temporary shift. What happens when you're reading a book, imagine you read something and you're like, whoa, mind blown, you know, and that creates an emotional response inside of you that you might want to share with other people. Dude, have you read this book? It's amazing. But here's the problem. Most books, when they shift our thinking, they're often temporary shifts in thinking because once we get onto the next book, now we've got all these new shifts in thinking and we're starting to forget the old ones.

13:11And so the problem is most people don't talk about books they've read in the past consistently because they're now focused on the next book they're reading. So here's the number one secret, in my opinion, to create a book that creates a worldwide movement, becomes a word of mouth phenomenon. It is to shift people's behavior in a meaningful way that lasts indefinitely. So the book you're talking about, The Miracle Morning, The Miracle Morning is a daily ritual that millions of people do every day around the world, even though the book was read maybe months or years ago. There are people that read the book in 2012 when it came out that are still doing their Miracle Morning eight years later.

13:51So they're still talking about the book because they're still benefiting from what it teaches. So if you are writing a book or if you have a book that you can go update, you've got to create measurable, meaningful, consistent, repetitive behavior change for people, ideally in the form of rituals or routines that they can do so that they continue to talk about the book long after they read it. And then the second tip, which it's not really rocket science, but I find with most authors, this is not something that they do, which is a commitment to continue promoting and sharing that one book until it reaches the amount of people that you want it to reach.

14:30I still do podcast interviews every week for the Miracle Morning book that I published eight years ago. I've done hundreds, over 400, 500 podcast interviews, TV shows, you know, on and on and on. And so the secret is the word until, right? Circle that, underline it. It's putting forth that extraordinary effort to reach. And this is, it doesn't matter if it's a book, it could be a program, a course, a company, a product, right? But it's focusing on that one thing until it reaches the masses, until it hits, you know, the tipping point, critical mass, whatever you want to call it. So that's really it.

15:04It's just, it's creating a book that changed people's behavior and then being committed to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get that book in front of, you know, now it's, we're shooting for over a billion people and, you know, we're at two and a half million. So we have, you know, a long way to go. Shift people's behavior in a meaningful way that lasts forever. Such a powerful phrase, Fire Nation. And beyond this book, I think another great example is how to win friends and influence people. Like that was a book that was coming to my mind when Hal I was talking because I'm just like, man, that book has shifted people's behavior in a meaningful way that lasts forever.

15:41And that's why Dale Carnegie crushed it with that book because he taught people how to win friends and influence people and shifted their behavior in an incredibly meaningful way that again, was easy to talk about. Like, oh wow. Like I kind of feel like you're bringing a different energy and confidence into the room. Like what's happening? Well, of course you want to talk about, and that's powerful. So Fire Nation, we have so much more value to talk about as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. I'm all about lifestyle freedom. I want to be able to do what I want, when I want, and there's no better time to kick your feet up poolside than the summertime.

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17:57Knowledge will not attract money unless it is organized and directed through practical plans of action. Become the next success story. Schedule your free 13-point assessment today at thrivetimeshow.com. So, Hal, we've kind of brushed upon this a little bit at the beginning, But the reality is this, you were in the middle of filming the Miracle Morning movie when you were diagnosed with cancer and you were given only that 30 % chance of surviving. So talk to us about what that was like. Like, how did you find the strength to finish this movie with all of that going around in your life? The thanks goes to our director, Nick Conadera.

18:35And Nick, the reason this whole thing was born, Nick reached out to me about doing a movie about the Miracle Morning. He's a member of the he does the Miracle Morning. We're friends. He's in the Facebook group and he would see these stories of people that were like, I lost, you know, 80 pounds on the Miracle Morning, doing the Miracle Morning. I overcame my depression. I started a business like he would see all these amazing results. And he goes, how we should do a movie about this mission of changing millions of lives one morning at a time. And then we can feature your story of doing it. But all these stories of the people who are being impacted.

19:06And I said, that's wow, I love that idea, but I can't wrap my head around it, you know, like maybe someday. and he kept pinging me about it. And then one day he reached out. He said, what's your mission, Hallie? I heard it's evolved. And I said, yes, now it is. We've reached a million people. It is now to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time, one person at a time. And he said, what percentage of humanity reads self-help books? And I kind of got where he was going with this, but I go, ah, like 1%. And he said, and what percentage watch television? And I said, probably the other 99%.

19:39You know, I don't exactly know, But I go, gosh, I guess we're making a movie. And so we started out on this path to make a film that kind of duplicated what the Miracle Morning did for people by teaching them it and how to do it. But it was then revealing the morning routines of some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, visionaries, leaders, right? JLD, you're in the film. Brendan Burchard, Mel Robbins, Layla Ali, Robin Sharma, Robert Kiyosaki, on and on and on, Lewis Howes. we we filmed the morning routines of all these people so we could bring more than just the book go beyond the book and go well how do some other people start their day what are their morning rituals and then as you mentioned halfway into filming I was diagnosed with cancer and given a 20 to 30 chance of surviving and I called Nick I called our um my director our director and I said hey man I've got some crazy news uh I have this really rare aggressive form of cancer and um And like the odds of me living for more than the next few weeks or months are not very good.

20:41And I've got to focus all my energy on this. So the movie is on hold until further notice. You know, I just I can't think about anything right now because I've got one focus, you know. And he said, you know, he was there as a friend. And then he ended up reaching either on that call or calling me back. I don't remember. But he said, Hal, hey, I would love to come. Can I come film you in the hospital? And I was kind of taken aback. I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? And he said, Hal, he said, look, he said, number one, you're going to beat this. He said, if anybody's going to beat this, I have no doubt that you're going to beat the cancer.

21:14He's like, so I'm not worried about that. I'm like, okay, well, I have the same mindset, but okay, keep going. He said, look, he said, we were, we were, I've been filming a movie about you on this journey to change millions of lives with the miracle morning. He said, this is, this is part of your journey. He said, we've got to capture this. And he said, and then when you beat the cancer, we'll have that, we'll have it all filmed. And so I, you know, I said, okay, I trust you, you know, come down. And so anyway, long story short, the first hour of the film is the original vision and it's, it's, it's powerful.

21:45It's fascinating. But then all of a sudden, you know, I come, thank goodness I did these selfie video blogs without even knowing it was going to be part of the movie, but I was just sharing it with my community and my friends and my family, like keeping them in, in on the journey that I was on. and then all of a sudden the last 30 minutes of the movie is I mean honestly it's it's it's it's it's incredible like it's this really powerful journey of people or I mean of you know of my fight for my life and you see me at like my darkest moments in the ER like you know I'm on chemo I have no hair I'm skinny I'm bawling my eyes out because I'm in so much pain and yet talking about how grateful I am for all of the pain all of the struggle all of the cancer because it is making me a better version of myself.

22:28And I really believe that it's the whole that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And for me, I look at it as every challenge is an opportunity for us to learn, to grow and to become better than we've ever been before. And I feel like this movie at this time, it couldn't be happening, you know, coming out at a better time than with the state of the world right now. And it really empowers people to change themselves first internally so that they are in the right state of mind and have the right, you know, physical energy and all of those things to be able to create the circumstances they want in their life, even in the midst of, you know, the, the outer world feeling a little bit out of control.

23:09And so it was really my team. I'm so grateful for while I was in the hospital, they continued going out and filming influencers and you know and making this film and then as i mentioned to you uh we spent about a month ago we spent an entire month re-editing the entire thing uh and uh you got more face time which i think yeah yeah probably yeah it's probably gonna be the key to the movie you know doing so well oh do go on love it all fire nation and you know one thing i just want to pull out that hal said and it's just it's one of these things we've all heard but how often have we put this into practice?

23:45You know, what doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. And the fact that Hal could have that mindset threw out everything with his kids there, with his wife, family, and all this stuff going on, like that is just a testament to the strength of that quote. Now, Hal, for those people who have read the book, how is this movie different? Great question. And I think that the original intention of the movie was to make it as close to the book as possible because the book kind of, if it's not broken, don't fix it, right? I'm like, hey, look, the book is really impacting people's lives. They're telling their friends and family about it.

24:18I thought, let's keep it close. And then what's interesting in my director, Nick Conadera, warned me up front. He said, look, he said, this is a documentary. It was almost foreshadowing the cancer. He's like, this is going to play out. We don't know how it's going to play out. It's not like a feature film where you script it, right? It's unscripted. He said, so this is going to be a journey that you're on. And we filmed me going to Paris and doing this media tour in Paris for the Miracle Morning. But I think that if I look at the components of what makes it different, it is really, you know, that you see the morning routines of some of the world's most successful individuals.