HAL ELROD: Daily Essentials for Aging Well

25:08So I have not used an alarm clock in about a year, but earthing as well. We are electrical beings. In fact, I got my son, my son is 13. And for Christmas, I was actually at an event a few months ago, and they were doing this exercise. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's this cylinder, and it has metal tips on each side. Have you seen that? It's got a light in the middle. And you touch each side of it, and it shows the electrical current of you as a human being is enough to power this light and it turns on. Or if you hold one side and then you let someone else hold the other side and then you hold that person's hand, it turns the light on again.

25:52It shows that human beings, we literally, we're made of energy. We're batteries. We can conduct electricity. We're batteries, right? And so the earth, it's the Tesla charger, right? It's the source of energy. And most of us are not putting our bare feet on the ground at all. And so in the book, again, Dwayne goes deep into the non-woo-woo science of how this works and the studies that have been done with both gaining light in the morning as well as earthing. And by the way, these are two practices. When I had cancer, that's actually when I started sun gazing. I started getting first light in the morning.

26:29I started standing on the earth to try to align my biology with the rhythms of planet earth that again, we've been a part of, you know, humans have for millennia. I don't know how many, how long, but yeah. So that's an example of the things in the book. We talk about red light therapy. We talk about, you know, PEMF machine, like those are mentioned, but Dwayne is very wealthy. That's worth mentioning. I was very clear to, Hey, Dwayne, not everybody's got enough money to go buy a thousand dollar red light therapy machine and a PMF machine. I said, so yes, let's mention those, but let's really focus on the practices that cost nothing.

27:11That's the beauty of the Miracle Morning is all six of the Miracle Morning practices have been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Some of the world's healthiest, happiest, most successful and fulfilled people have sworn by meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing or journaling. And none of them cost anything, right? They're all free. And so I wanted to carry that theme into the new book, which is like, let's give people the science and the research of the practices that they can connect to by walking outside in the morning without their shoes on, letting the sunlight see their face.

27:48And again, it doesn't cost a nickel. I love this because I think if you read books on longevity or health span, all of that, you quickly realize that if I'm going to optimize my health, it's going to be very expensive. And I think that Megan and I have both come to the conclusion in probably the last six months that that really doesn't have to be the case. Until we're availing of ourselves of these God-given natural things like earthing or getting that first light, we don't really have to supplement until we get that stuff nailed. Yeah. It's amazing how much, I don't know, maybe this is just the two of us.

28:22I have a feeling it's also a lot of our listeners, the propensity to overcomplicate things and do more than is necessary. It's like, we think we need to add all this complicated stuff to our life. It's complicated, it's expensive. It stresses us out because now we're trying to manage, you know, we're taking 40 supplements and peptides and this and that and whatever else. And in reality, it's like, I have come to the conclusion, the most important thing I can do for my health is get outside in the morning and look at the sun. If I do nothing else, even more than exercise, Like that is so critically important.

28:54I do exercise, you know, all that stuff. But it's like the thing that is absolutely free and deceptively simple is critically important. And I would say furthermore, the older I get, the more I feel like nature, I need to get out of built environments and artificial light and be with human beings in nature. That is like everything, you know? Okay, I have a question for you. I'm going to just like how you and I will now pretend to be in the seats and we'll ask my dad a question together. We're interviewing you, Mike. We're interviewing you. Prepare your heart. It's going to be great. Oh, man. Okay.

29:24I want to know as our resident senior, as our resident over 50, because Hal and I are not over 50 yet. Yeah. You made that abundantly clear. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. What have you noticed has changed about you since you've, as someone who's aging and what practices do you feel like you've adjusted in your life to sort of meet this season well? Well, I think, and I was going to ask you about this, Hal, and you can comment on this in a minute. But since I'm in the hot seat, I think my sense of purpose has dramatically changed in the last 10 years. I used to think it was about, you know, building a big successful company and obviously having an impact on other people's lives.

30:06That was, you know, the whole reason behind that. But now I'm more and more seeing that I'm measuring my success. Ian Cron has said this to me one time, is that my job is to grow fruit on other people's trees. trees. So that's how I'm measuring my success. Am I growing fruit on other people's trees? So it's much more other focused than self-focused. I think that's one thing. Like not ego driven. Not ego driven. And I'm sure there's some ego in it, but even in my exercise routine, back when I was much younger, I thought it was all about strength training because I wanted my body to look stronger or maybe have more endurance.

30:44So I did a lot of aerobic stuff, I've ran a lot of half marathons and so forth. Now I'm working on things like probably 25 % of my workout time with my trainer is things like balance and like stretching and stuff that I thought I used to think was a waste of time. And now I feel like it's essential to my survival. Michael, I love that you said that because that is one of like similarly, right? You know, strength training and all of that. And then as we're getting older, Dwayne in the book, he talks about the importance of balance and flexibility as you age more important than anything. Now he does say strength training is important, right?

31:19And there is a lot of science behind that. But like one of the things that he teaches is he does ankle rolls and wrist rolls in bed every morning when he wakes up. So he wakes up naturally. And the first thing he does is he warms up his body under the covers before he even gets out of bed. Then he stands on one leg while he brushes his teeth. And then he switches halfway through brushing his teeth and stands on the other leg. And he talks about how that improves your balance. By the way, he does a competition. Dwayne used to be like a power, I mean, big time into weightlifting. He just texted me the other day and he was with all of his grandkids.

31:54And every year at Christmas, they do a fitness competition. And I think he's got like, don't quote me, but he's got seven or nine grandkids and he came in third. Wow. And, uh, and one of the things he did was he did a plank for two minutes and 50, he's 67 years old. He did a plank for two minutes and 53 seconds. I do a plank every day, 90 seconds. I'm barely making it. So this guy is 67 years old. He can go twice as long as I do. You mentioned also that there's all this expensive stuff, right? You got to spend all the money. That's one thing we really talk about in the book. I go, here's the red light therapy.

32:36Here's the PMF machine. Here's these things. Don't even think about getting those until you're doing all the free stuff, right? Earn the right. If you're maximizing all the free stuff, but I think we have this part of our culture is like, hey, if I spend the money, if I hit buy now, I give myself a dopamine rush that's related to thinking I'm doing something for my health. Look at me go. oh, I'm doing something for my health. When in reality, you'd be better off to walk outside and stand in the sun and put your bare feet on the ground and then feel that sense of accomplishment, not because you clicked buy now.

33:13On the workout machine, that's going to become a clothing rack, right? Yeah. Well, true confession here, I bought a very expensive red light system and I've had it now for six months and I'm embarrassed to admit this. I've used it three times. Can I tell you that I also bought a very expensive red light system and I had it all of last year. And last year I used it twice. This year, I've already used it three times and we're only six days into the year. I finally, this year going into the new year, after reading one of my favorite books, Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyde. I mean, I'm not joking.

33:47I'm at, this is what I told you. This is one of my favorite books. Thank you. I implementing this. So you need to go back and read this book. There is this guy that wrote a book. Your red light system and you'll get your money. You know, I have a red light system also, and I actually use it almost every day. And I love it. There's always an overachiever in the crowd. No, I don't actually feel like it's overachieving at all. It feels like something I want to do because I really enjoy it. I have a heater on my massage table, like a little heating pad thing. And so it's all cozy, you know, in there.

34:20And I love that. I love a sauna. But still, in my mind, I'm always like, if I'm doing this and I haven't been outside yet this morning, this is secondary. This is like eating McDonald's every day and thinking you can take fish oil pills and compensate for the whole thing. This is good. I do have a question about purpose. How do you think, for the average person, purpose changes after 50? What's the role of purpose in longevity, health span, all that? Dwayne, we did a live event when the Miracle Morning After 50 book came out. It was a bonus for anyone that pre-ordered the book. And Dwayne really addressed this.

34:56So I want to kind of address it from his perspective and then I'll bring in my own. But he gave statistics on the amount of people that retire and then how quickly they die after they retire. Their work was their purpose. And then if they don't actually consciously, proactively decide on a new purpose in their life, right? They just, they fade away. They're not living for anything. So that was, that was kind of eyeopening to look at that statistic that he shared. And my belief on purpose is that it's something that we get to make up as we go along. We can have more than one purpose because I think people put a lot of pressure on purpose.

35:33Like, I don't know what's my purpose in this life. And they're waiting for someone else to tell them what their purpose is. right? And I can tell you my own journey. When I was, it was 2004. I read the book, Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. Love that book. And he talked about the kind of the secret of success is adding value for other people. The more value that you add, the more valuable you become. And I was like early mid twenties. And I go, Oh, I love that. I really resonate with that. And it goes back to the Zig Ziglar quote. You can have everything you want in life. if you help enough other people get what they want.

36:08And so my first ever purpose of my life that I put in writing is my purpose is to selflessly add value to the lives of as many people as I possibly can for the rest of my life. And every day it was like, I don't wanna talk to that person. Then I went, wait a minute, that's not my purpose. It's not about what I want. Can I add value to their life? Oh, yes, I can. So I started just doing, I got out of my own way and I did things whether I felt like it or not, if it served other people. Now that led to my mission in life became to change 1 million lives one morning at a time when I wrote the Miracle Morning.

36:48Because again, I wanted to selflessly add value to as many lives as I could by sharing this morning practice that had changed my life and I was gonna share it with the world. After I got cancer and I nearly died, I was very close to death. I had a wife, of course, still do. My son was four years old and my daughter was seven years old when I got cancer. And Michael and Megan, if you would have asked me, what's the most important thing in your life? I would have said, my family without hesitation. They're most important no matter what. If you would have said, let me see your schedule. I wanna make sure that your schedule reflects that.

37:22And if anybody's listening or watching this, I want you to think about that. If somebody took a peek at your schedule, does it really reflect what you say is most important in your life? whether that's health or family or happiness or whatever it is. And for me, I would have been going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't look at my schedule. It tells a different story because I've got a new book coming out and I'm trying to launch my speaking career and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm trying to change millions of lives. And the breakthrough that I had was, oh, I've been living a lie. I say that family's number one and I even tell myself I believe it, but I'm not actually living in alignment with what really matters to me.

38:00And so coming off of cancer, it was the switch from realizing that I was valuing the quantity of my purpose and the impact I can make over the quality of the three people that meant more to me than anything in the world. And so in my affirmations, in writing, I got really clear that my mission is no longer to impact millions of lives. My mission is to make the most profound, deep, sustainable, loving, nurturing impact for my wife and our two kids. And then in my spare time, I will strive to impact millions or whatever other lives out there. And so I think that's the lesson is that purpose, you get to make it up.

38:44One of my favorite purposes is just to become the best version of myself and help others do the same. That's one of my simplest favorite foundational purposes. But yeah, it's not about a grandiose purpose. Your purpose can be just wake up every day and be the best version of myself and give that to every person that I meet. So you get to make it up. That's the best part about purpose. And you can try it on for a week and you're like, you know what? I want to try a different purpose or I want to have two or three. It's fluid. It's fun. It's joyful. That's how purpose should feel. And in this book, we do go very, very deep in how to identify your purpose.

39:28I think the thing I'm taking away from that is number one, your purpose can change over time. Number two, you've got to have a purpose as you get older, especially if you end up retiring, because contribution and meaning matter no matter what age you are, what stage you're in. Like that's mission critical for human flourishing, for thriving. And, you know, one of the things that is cool about getting older is that I think you care less what other people think. You know yourself better and you care less what other people think. And that's a real gift because there may be things that like you were saying, you know, earlier in your life, you were more driven by ego or you cared more what people think or whatever.

40:09But the older you get, you're like, yeah, I mean, I just kind of see the futility of that. It doesn't really do it for me anymore. You know, I really want to maybe do this thing over here, which maybe doesn't come along with as much status or public recognition or whatever, but man, it just lights you up. And so you're going to do it. And I think, so in other words, I think there's a real freedom of purpose as you get older, that is sort of like the reward of, you know, making it through all those decades. You know, one of the things we have a coaching program, how called double win coaching. We obviously help leaders try to get the double win, which is when it work and succeed at life.

40:45But one of the things that we started doing, and I just taught this lesson yesterday, as we're recording this is on making these quarterly commitments or goals. and I said, one of the things that's important is to frame this as contribution. Because I think that a lot of times we think only if we have a job are we making a contribution, but a job is one way to make a contribution, but it's not the only way. That mom that's, you know, tending to kids full-time and that's for now, she's in a season where that's her full-time focus. That's a massive contribution. She's living with purpose. A person that's retired that's volunteering somewhere, that's a massive contribution.

41:24When I hear retirement, I think about people not having any purpose. And I know I've done the research myself. You live on average about five years after you retire from purpose. But if you can keep the purpose going, it doesn't matter if you're retired or not retired or working for a nonprofit or working for a for-profit. It doesn't matter as long as you're making a contribution. It's like my neighbor who you know, Rod, is probably in his mid to late 80s. And every day he goes on a walk and passes my house every day. Like it doesn't matter what the weather is. He does this walk. He always talks on the phone to his brother or his adult children.

42:00And he is an avid art collector. He collects rare art that's been exhibited in the National Gallery. He's an author of a couple of books. He serves on several boards. I mean, like he's just blowing and going Like he's doing all, he's probably, I think he would say he's doing the most important work of his life in a very late season of his life, which is really cool to me. It's very inspiring. I bet he has a miracle morning. I bet he does. I want to find out now how I need to go ask him. We should get him a copy of the book for sure. You guys real quick, I want to share, you inspired me to think about my mom.

42:36You know, I don't know how she defines her purpose, but I can just tell you what I observe how she lives her life. So A, she's been volunteering and donating blood and being part of different service organizations for her entire, you know, since she was in high school, right? She's donated more blood than I don't even know and all the things. She sits with hospice patients, people that are dying. So she does all of that charity work. But if I actually look at her primary purpose is to bring joy to the lives of other people. She's 67 years old. She does karaoke minimum one day a week, usually two or three nights a week.

43:12She goes out for karaoke, but she brings people. So most of her friends are older. They're in their seventies and eighties. She's bringing them to do karaoke. She's hosting game nights and parties at her house and inviting everybody over. She is the life of the party and what she's doing. She is pure joy. People that would probably otherwise sit at home and whether feel sorry for themselves or watch television or whatever, like she gets them out of their shell. She gets them on the dance floor. She gets them singing. She gets them playing games. So I just realized that, that, you know, I don't know if she would think of herself as better purpose, but like that is what she does.

43:53And I can't think of much more of a joyous, joyful, beautiful purpose than to just be a source of joy and it bring all these other people into it so that they get to experience a part of themselves that may be lying dormant in their older age. Man, beautiful. I like your challenge. So issue that again. What's the challenge for people that have never done it that you give at the end of your keynote speech? Yep. If you've never done the miracle morning, wake up 10 minutes earlier and you can do 15, 20, 30. I mean, you know, these are the numbers are not exact, but I say whatever is easy for you.

44:25If you're thinking, oh, 10 is a stretch. All right, go for 10, brush your teeth and go read the Miracle Morning book for five minutes. The audio book, you can do the audio book, of course. And again, the Miracle Morning After 50 is the new book. You know, there's the original, of course, but the Miracle Morning After 50 is the one we've been talking about. It's on audio book, it's on Kindle, and it's, you know, paperback. But just wake up and start reading for those five minutes and let the book do all the work. Like that's, your only job is, all right, I'm gonna set my alarm if you have an alarm, or I'm gonna get up 10 minutes earlier.

44:56Or let's say you don't set an alarm. Let's say you're retired and you're in your 70s, 80s, whatever. When you wake up, just grab the book off your shelf and spend the first five or 10 minutes reading it and let the book do the work. It will guide your mindset. It will get you excited and motivated. And then when you get to the chapter on silence, add one, two, three, four, five minutes of silence into your next day because the book will guide you through that. And then affirmations and so on and so forth. And so if all you do is wake up a little bit earlier and read the miracle morning after 50, the book will take care of the rest.

45:31Okay. Common mistakes. Like you've seen thousands and thousands of people start a miracle morning. What are the mistakes they can make that might derail them that you could speak to now so they don't? Yeah. I mean, the first mistake is the limiting belief that we adhere to that says, this might work for some people, but I'm not a morning person. Right. Okay. And that's why we serve every time we survey the Miracle Morning global audience, that's almost always a question before Miracle Morning, right? And it's like they get to choose. I was a morning person. I was not a morning person. I was not a morning person.

46:05And I never thought I could become one. 72 % say either they were not a morning person or they were not a morning person and never thought they could become one. So that's the first thing is like, you got to let that limiting belief go, right? You got to go, hey, if this worked for millions and millions of people that weren't morning people, it can work for you too. So I think that's the biggest hang up is someone thinking, I've had people tell me, they go, man, I knew about your book. People recommended your book, but I just thought it's not going to work for me. And it took me three years. Then I finally read it and I go, man, I wish I would have got it three years ago because I do the miracle morning every day now.

46:42So that's the biggest hurdle. What else? Like what happens if I miss a morning and maybe I think like, oh man, you know i want to give up and you can apply this to missing anything in your life like we are so hard on ourselves and momentum works both ways right if you if you do something good and you feel good you have momentum is moving forward but if you fall short and then you have this negative self-talk and you beat yourself up with the miracle morning specifically i have a mantra and it's never let one missed day turn into two so if you miss the day you don't go oh man i slacked off. I knew I couldn't stick with it.

47:18You go, Hey, I missed a day, but I'm not going to miss two, right? I'm going to use the miss as fuel, make the next day count. And again, you can apply that to missing a workout or eating something that you, you know, falling off your diet or whatever. And if you miss, you know, let's say you go, well, okay, but I, I went on vacation for four days, by the way, miracle mornings on vacation are my favorite. I do them a little later. They're a little more lax, but it's like, I don't have the pressures that I have at home with, okay, I got my kids are waking up work starting debt to debt. It's like, it's like a vacation miracle morning, right?

47:52But let's say you go on vacation, you go, man, I went on vacation for four days, and I didn't do the miracle morning. And now I'm struggling to get back into it. I always tell folks in that case, make a commitment to do another 30 day challenge and make it public. Yeah. Accountability is crucial. And so the Miracle Morning community is that Facebook group that, Megan, you mentioned, 360 ,000 people go in there and say, hey, y 'all, I fell off my Miracle Morning, but I'm making a commitment. I'm leveraging my integrity here and now. And you can even ask for an accountability partner. People always pair up in the group and become accountability partners.

48:30But either way, you just say, hey, I'm committing for today. I'll check in every day and let that group serve as your accountability and your support. And it's, there's some of those positive people on the planet are in that Miracle Morning community Facebook group. Okay. I'm thinking of one other possible mistake. Can you tell me if this is true or not? And that's over-engineering the Miracle Morning so that it's definitely something you can do when you're super motivated, but you're going to fail if you try to maintain that over a long period of time. Yeah. I think that's a big thing is, is being really flexible in your Miracle Morning where, I mean, I don't do all six savers every day.

49:07In fact, in full transparency, visualization is something I only do as needed. I do most of the other savers or maybe even all of them most days. Visualization is just one that I just don't use it every day. I use it when I feel like I need it. And when I need it, I mean, I'll give you some examples. Let's say if you ever have an argument with your spouse the night before, right? And let's say you don't make up before bed. You're supposed to make up before bed, but we don't always do that, right? And let's say you both go to bed and you're frustrated with each other. And I use my miracle morning to, I use my affirmations, which are written statements reminding me what I'm committed to as a husband, why it's a must for me and which specific actions I'm going to take to be that husband for my wife.

49:47I'm reminded of that. And I go, oh yeah, that's right. It doesn't matter that we had a little conflict last night. I'm committed to this. I'm in it for the long run. I love her. Awesome. Then I will use visualization to mentally rehearse. I will literally sit there. I'll often meditate and I'll pray, God, fill my heart with love for Ursula, fill my heart with joy and gratitude and, you know, forgiveness if that's needed. And then I'll get into visualization where I'll literally visualize her walking out of the bedroom. And sometimes I'll visualize her with a scowl on her face like you were a jerk last night.

50:21Right. And and I'll just get into a state of empathy and love and how I'm going to receive her. And again, it's called visualization, but I actually like the words mental rehearsal to really explain what visualization is. You're mentally rehearsing yourself, showing up in the way you need to in the moment that you need to. So now when my wife comes out of the bedroom, I've already meditated, recited affirmations, and I visualize being the loving, caring, forgiving, nurturing, apologetic, whatever, husband to greet her the way that I need to. The other side of that coin is sometimes if she's not quick to match my energy, I'm like, I wish you would do the freaking miracle morning so that we can both be in positive states when we saw each other instead of you being grumpy.

51:11So don't tell her I said that. I'm guessing that might not make it better if you say that. I just think that. I don't say that. Okay, good, good, good. I didn't learn my lesson. That's awesome. Well, hell, this has been awesome. And guys, the book is The Miracle Morning After 50. So if you've read The Miracle Morning, you've got to read The Miracle Morning after 50. If you've not read The Miracle Morning and you're approaching 50 or older than 50, just start there. Yeah, that's great. Right? Well, thank you for really showing us practical things we can do and giving us kind of a plug and play method to start our days off in a way that's going to set us up for success.

51:48I think that's so critical, especially as people who care about meaning and purpose and contribution. this has to be part of the mix. So thanks for making it easy for us. My pleasure. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate you all so much. You bet. And if people want to find you or follow your work outside of your books, where should they go? HowElrod.com is really my site for keynote speaking. But I always tell people, go to MiracleMorning.com. That is the hub for, you can find the movie there. You can find the Miracle Morning app there, which is 4.9 out of five stars. That's a really easy tool where you can kind of click play and it guides you through the Miracle Morning.

52:24and then all of the books are available there as well. So miraclemorning.com is really the hub for everything. Fantastic. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it.

52:42Hal is like an energy source all by himself. He is. I feel like if I had exposure to him every day, I would be twice as energetic. I know, he has a lot of energy. He has a lot of energy, But it's not that kind of annoying a lot of energy. It's just that he's genuinely joyful and enthusiastic and it's contagious. And really passionate. Yeah, I love that. First of all, I thought this take on the miracle morning was so helpful. You know, just the idea that there are different things that we need to be focused on or like a slightly shifted take on a practice that I think most of us have in our lives or know that we need to have in our lives, but that it does need to shift as we get older and the season of life changes and probably changes again.

53:27And that really resonates with me. It did me too. And I've been committed to a morning ritual, which I teach in Free to Focus. We talk a lot about at Full Focus, but I am really inspired to completely re-engineer mine. Like I'm going to read this book and I'm going to do exactly what he said. And that is I'm going to to read for five minutes or 10 minutes the book, and then I'm going to add those practices to it. I love that. I, you know, one of the things that I appreciate about you is that you never rest on your laurels. You're never like, I got this figured out. I'm never going to think about it again.

54:00You're always willing to reinvent yourself. And I think this is, it's great. And I appreciated kind of what you shared about how some of your practices that you include currently in your morning ritual have shifted. Even things like, you know, the category of exercise, for example, It's still a part of your morning ritual, but it looks different than it did 20 years ago or, you know, whatever. And I think that's a good reminder to us because I've been asked so many times by people who are young parents or they just had to move or they've had some major life transition. You know, it's like, I'm just not being consistent with my morning ritual, or I'm just having a really hard time getting up in the morning or something like that.

54:41And oftentimes we think the problem is our own discipline. And sometimes it's that the things that we're doing or the way that we're doing them just don't fit our season of life anymore. And we need to adjust accordingly and give ourselves that permission. Well, I kind of mentioned this toward the end of our conversation with Hal, but I think it's easy to over-engineer it. Yeah. And I think I've been guilty of that. I kind of tend to be a maximalist. No secret to you. But I think, well, okay, I've read through the Bible for years, every year using the one-year Bible. And I decided a couple of years ago that that was just too aggressive.

55:12you know that I wasn't enjoying it I felt like I was kind of on a death march every day had to read it seems like it misses the point a little bit yeah like you said you don't care what people think anymore I don't care what people think so I decided and I created a two-year Bible reading plan and I think I'm about to take it down another notch to where if I can just read a chapter or a passage and like even praying like my thing for years was like 25 minute plan That's too much time. I just literally want to have something that I can do when life is hectic and I'm super busy and I'm on the road.

55:49And so I never miss as opposed to something that all the stars have to align and everything has to be perfect. I think increasingly the older I get, that's what I'm solving for. I don't really care about cooking something up that sounds great or that, you know, just kind of gives me the dopamine hit having made it. And it's like, I can imagine what my life would be like if, you know, I could just do this all the time because I I've lived long enough now to know that's probably not going to happen. Things are not going to go according to plan. So then what, like what, what practices do you want in your life?

56:19Allowing for things aren't going to go according to plan and the stars are not going to align a lot of the time. Cause I think that's really when we can make progress. Totally. You know, and I, I like that approach better. I also like the approach of slow. And I think you just brought that up with your Bible reading. I've done that with walking. I used to walk fast and I was like, listen to real intense music and like, let's go. I walk like I'm 90 now. I just love to walk slow. I loved it because for me, it's like, I love to just take in nature. I love to connect with my body. I love to talk to people.

56:53And I'm just, I feel like I'm discovering the joy of going slowly at things. Yeah. The important thing is movement. Yeah. It's not that you have to move fast. Right now, you know, cardiovascular, that's a, that's a different things, but that's not really why I'm walking. To quote Jonah, I think he said a version of this. That's a young people's game. Yeah. Jonah is my now 15 year old son who is famously funny and always has been since he was a little, a little guy, but yeah, I just, I love this that, you know, we know a lot of folks in our audience are either at that, you know, midlife mark or they're within 10 years of it, or perhaps well beyond it.

57:28And so I think this is a relevant topic to just say, we need to have enough flexibility in how we think about doing our life, that we're not just trying to do this thing that we used to do in the same old way. Like we're willing to adjust because then it can continue to be relevant as time goes on. The thing about that SAVERS acronym, it's like an accordion. So you can expand it or compress it. The important thing is that you do it or some version of it. Yes. So that you don't just go into the day without intentionality, but that you really set yourself up for success. And that often doesn't take a lot of work, but it takes some work and you've got to account for that and hence the miracle morning.

58:05So I feel like I'm even more committed. I'm going to do the 30 day challenge, but I'm going to get back to the basics and just start with reading. Love it. That's great. Well, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Hope that you're inspired to implement a morning ritual, perhaps using the miracle morning methodology, if that makes it easier for you. It's a great way to jumpstart your year and the things that matter most to you. If you would, we would love for you to leave us a five-star review and a rating on the podcast because that makes us more visible to others who are interested in winning at work and succeeding at life, which is a big part of our mission here at Full Focus.

58:43So thanks for being with us and we'll see you again soon.

58:56Thank you.