The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life | Hal Elrod

26:53And so I will go to my affirmations on Microsoft Word and I will type in that exact quote from that author into the proper part of the affirmations where it is definitely in alignment. So yeah, it's a really good point, that Honda effect of, yeah, once you have your affirmations in place, then you start to notice what are other ideas or concepts or beliefs that are in alignment with what I'm affirming that improve or enhance my current affirmations. Yeah, because like, let's say you make this information and you're very firm and you're loud and you say it out loud. By the way, there's a lot of research that says when you say things out loud like that, it has more of an effect on your mind and body and so on.

27:36AJ Jacobs actually researched that. And when you do this, you're probably noticing throughout the day, oh yes, this will help me achieve my affirmation, but this won't. And so it's probably easier for you to have the Honda effect regarding the activities during the day that are actually helping you. Yeah, well, that's the thing is you mentioned doing this every day, right? It's very much like exercising. If you work out one time, you're going to have very minimal benefit, right? If you read an affirmation one time. You can tell I'm jacked. You're jacked from that one workout you did three years ago.

28:12Yeah, during COVID. Yeah, during COVID. But the affirmations, when you read them every day, it literally, you're reprogramming your mindset. You're reprogramming your subconscious mind and your conscious thoughts. And so that's what I mentioned with the cancer example is I went from being afraid that I might die, that I could die, what if, what if, what if, that I completely moved, like pushed that fear out because the affirmations became my reality because I read them every single day. That became my internal dialogue. Well, I'm glad you got through that incident. and I'm really sorry you had to go through it.

28:51I mean, it was just, it was shocking even just reading about it because you obviously were posting your story online. And so, you know, you mentioned with, you had this story in the book about Roger Bannister, who's the first guy to succeed with the four minute mile. He ran a mile faster than four minutes. He broke a world record. And since then, everybody's done it, but like he somehow broke this mental barrier that people thought that was like a floor you couldn't break through. And, uh, and you mentioned how he visualized, he would visualize every day the process of becoming the sort of person who can run a four minute mile.

29:31And I think, I think that's part of it too. Like you can't just visualize, you know, a bag of money arriving from UPS. You have to sort of visualize, it's like you called it rehearsal almost. You have to visualize you specifically becoming the person who can survive cancer or run a four minute mile or make money after going broke. Like you, you, you can't, it's not, it's not a hope or a wish. It's, it's a strategy really. Yeah. Uh, and am I interpreting it correctly? Like that's how I interpret it. Yeah. You know, visualization, it's similar to affirmations in the way that the way we've been taught it, I think is counterproductive.

30:10So we've been taught to, you know, make a vision board, um, which really is just a, you know, visualize the end result. And that's important, but it's only half the equation, if you will. And to me, it's the less important half. And what I mean by that is, so step one, visualize your ideal outcome, right? Yes, see it, feel it because that does generate emotions that will pull you toward it or push you toward it. Like when I was training for an ultra marathon, I hated running, but I would visualize crossing the finish line every day. And that compelled me to want to make that experience a reality.

30:41The problem is if that's all you do is all you do is visualize the end goal, you can actually trick yourself into thinking that it's a foregone conclusion independent of any effort on your part, right? So for example, somebody visualizes - I think that's the problem. Yeah, that is the problem. And then the vision board is even more passive, like that's just like making a board, putting it on the wall and being like, all right, well, the secret told me that all those things were gonna come true. The second step in visualization to me is the most important. And you mentioned it earlier, mental rehearsal.

31:12and if you think about the world's greatest athletes, Roger Bannister being one of them, they swear by visualization but this second step is the piece that I think goes untaught in the self-help world and it's the most important part. It's mentally rehearsing yourself doing the thing you need to do today, taking the action today that will move you in the direction of your long-term vision. That word today is the key because he can't just sort of visualize himself running past the finish line and then looking at his watch. Oh, it's three minutes, 56 seconds. He has to visualize what is he going to do today, again, to become the sort of person who could, I think that's the key.

31:54I can't just visualize, oh, it feels so good putting this check in the bank. I've got to visualize what am I going to do today to move myself closer to that. And it's visualizing what you're going to do today, mentally rehearsing it, while putting yourself in a peak physical or sorry mental and emotional state so um again world's greatest athletes they mentally rehearse themselves going through the motions being on the court performing at their best responding to adversity etc and and then how am i going to respond if this happens in the game how am i going to respond if there's 10 seconds left and we're down by two how am i going to how am i going to swing the club on this right tiger woods would say he would mentally rehearse golfing the entire 18 holes or whatever course he was going to.

32:41And so if you bring that away from athletics, because most of us aren't professional athletes, and you just imagine visualizing yourself doing the thing that you need to do, whether it's playing with your kids today or it's getting on the phone and making cold calls, visualize yourself doing the activity and then put yourself in a peak mental and emotional state so that you're excited. And I can use affirmation sometimes to go, I'm gonna do this, it's gonna be awesome. I'm gonna go for this run today. I don't like running, but that doesn't matter because by running today, I'm becoming stronger and faster.

33:14And it's great. You get yourself really, I mean, almost pumped up in a positive way while you see yourself doing the thing. And that way, when it's time to do the thing, you're ready to go. Yeah, and the reason I asked about how did you do this when those inevitable days, and I pick, obviously you do this every day. Obviously you've had lots of problems in your life like anybody, but you know, this cancer was life threatening. And so I'll bring it back to that again for a second. But, you know, Mike Tyson says, everybody's got a plan until they're hit in the face. And so do you rehearse what you're going to do on the moments when you have that inevitable, you're hit in the face, like you have in this case, you know, your fever spikes and it looks dangerous and the doctors think this is it.

34:00Like, do you rehearse in your mind what we're going to do when things go negative or do you only stick to positive? Yeah, not so much. I mean, I think that that depends on the context. Like, again, if you're, you know, if you're, I'm a fan of mixed martial arts. And so I've heard a lot of mixed martial arts fighters will say that they will mentally rehearse, like, if things aren't going well, how are they going to respond? For me, typically, I'm mentally rehearsing doing the thing I need to do to take one step closer to my goal. So for example, when I was training for that ultra marathon, I would visualize the alarm on my phone going off at 7 a.m.

34:38So I would literally be sitting there doing a miracle morning on my couch in front of my coffee table where my phone was sitting. I would close my eyes and I would imagine the phone right in front of me. I'd imagine it beeping at 7 a.m. I would hear it, I would see it. And then I would visualize myself picking the phone up, turning off the alarm, going into my bedroom, and then getting dressed in my running clothes. It was like a little two-minute movie I would see in my mind. Then I would head out my front walk, and I can still see it, by the way. I visualized this for six months. I can still see the visualization over and over and over.

35:09I'd then walk through my living room, put my hand on the front door, open the front door. I would see the sidewalk where I was gonna run. And then I would bring out my affirmations. I'm committed to completing a 52-mile ultramarathon because no matter what, there is no other option. Step two, why is it a must for me? I'm committed because it's enabling me to become the person that I need to be to overcome any obstacle and create any result that I want in my life. Step three, which we didn't get to earlier, which specific actions will you take and win? In order to do this, I will follow the training plan in the book, the non-runners marathon trainer to a tee five days a week, no matter what.

35:47So I would be there visualizing and affirming as I picture the pavement and I would get myself excited to go for that run while I was sitting on my couch. And then here's what happened. When the alarm went off on my phone at 7 a.m. in real time, human nature would be, God, I hate running. I'll just do it tomorrow, right? And how often do we do that? We put off the thing we know we should do because I could skip a day. But here's the thing, James, I didn't mentally rehearse procrastinating. I didn't visualize not running. So it's almost as if the visualization is programming you. I became like a robot.

36:25When the alarm went off, I turned it off, stood up, went into my bedroom, got dressed in my running clothes, went out my living room, opened the front door. I was flooded with the affirmations and the emotions that I created during my visualization that morning. Again, this is real time now. And then I was excited to go for that run because I generated those positive emotions and that excitement when I visualized during the morning. and you can apply this in any area of your life. When I'm on the weekends, when my kids are gonna be coming out, I will visualize my kids walking out of their bedroom.

36:57I did this more when they were little. It's not, I don't do it quite as much anymore. I probably should, but I'll use it with my wife as well. But I'll visualize them coming out and I'll visualize how I'm going to respond, how I'm gonna interact and engage. Because I noticed in the past, I'd be like, oh man, they're out here, crap. I still wanted to keep doing my miracle morning, right? That doesn't serve my kids. So I'd mentally rehearse as soon as I saw them, How was I gonna feel? What was I gonna say? How was I gonna interact with them? I had mentally rehearsed that on a Saturday morning. And then when they came out, I was ready to go.

37:27And I, by default, like a robot, without the negative connotation, I was like, hey guys, what's up? It's whatever I rehearsed that morning. And so you can apply this to your business goals, to engaging with your spouse, to your fitness goals, any area of your life, whatever you need to do today to achieve that long-term vision, mentally rehearse it. And it only takes a few minutes. Like that's it. It's really simple. And you started doing all this or thinking about this way back. You were like 20 years old and you had this car accident where you were essentially dead. Were you officially dead or like what happened?

38:07Yeah, so I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour. I was then broadsided by a second vehicle, an innocent family behind me. I spun in front of them and they hit me in the door. my driver's side door at 70 miles an hour and I broke 11 bones instantaneously and I started losing a lot of blood and it took the paramedics and the or the fire department they had to use the jaws of life to tear the roof off of the car and it took them 50 minutes from the time the accident happened so almost an hour that I was sitting in that car trapped and losing blood and I eventually when they pulled me out of the car I lost so much blood that I was that I died my heart stopped beating i stopped breathing and i was clinically dead for approximately six minutes while they loaded me onto a helicopter and they uh revived me and thankfully they were able to get me my heart beating again after six minutes they sent me to the uh i airlifted me to the hospital how'd they get you breathing again they i mean they just use the different you know so they hooked me up to an iv to get blood back in my body and then they use and they put oxygen on my face and they use the defibrillators to shock me back to life i spent six days in a coma I flatlined twice more.

39:16So I was very, it was very critical condition. I technically died three times, once was extended for six minutes and then I flatlined twice more in the hospital. And then I came out of the coma six days later and the doctor said I had permanent brain damage and that I would never walk again. And so when I woke up, that was the reality I faced is I have 11 broken bones, permanent brain damage, and the doctors are saying that I'm probably never going to walk again. And, you know, so obviously when he says this, this is a doctor in a professional setting. At that moment, you couldn't walk. At that moment, maybe you felt a little foggy.

39:50I don't know what you felt in your brain. Very foggy, yeah. But you probably believed him, and it probably depressed you. No. Well, interestingly enough, I mean, I for sure was kind of like the cancer diagnosis. You know, initially I was like, oh, my, you know, I was like, my, my, my, it was hard to even comprehend that this was not a dream or a nightmare, right? I'm like, wait, I'm 20 years old. I'm never going to walk again. I'll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. But after a few days of processing it, I decided I can't change that I was in a car accident. I can't change that I broke 11 bones.

40:23I may or may not be able to walk again. To me, it was undecided. And I decided I'm going to accept the worst case scenario. If I never walk again, I decided I'll be the happiest, most grateful person that you've ever seen in a wheelchair. Because I'm in a wheelchair either way. So I will never let the unchangeable circumstances in my life determine the changeable mindset that I get to choose. Gosh, it's so hard to think that way, though. You know, it's so hard to practice. Well, I'll tell you, and I know we've talked about this, I'm sure, at some point in our conversations, but the reason I was able to get there is I learned something in my Cutco sales training a year and a half prior called the five-minute rule.

41:04And the five-minute rule simply stated that when something goes wrong, it's okay to be negative and feel sorry for yourself, but not for more than five minutes. And I was literally taught by my manager, my mentor, Jesse. He said when, you know, and now to be fair, the context was much milder than this car accident, right? It was like, you know, customers being rude to you or canceling an order, but still it was things that upset you mentally and emotionally. And he taught us set your timer for five minutes and you get five minutes to bitch, moan, complain, cry, vent, like feel sorry for yourself.

41:37But when the timer goes off, he taught us to say three very powerful words. Can't change it. And it's a simple acknowledgement. This applies to every aspect of life. When something happens that upsets you, whether it's waking up from a coma and being told you're never gonna walk again, whether it's hitting traffic when you don't wanna be late, whether it's going bankrupt, losing, and I've applied this to cancer. I've applied this to every aspect of my life. It's the idea that when something happens and you can't change it, You have one of two choices. Number one, you can continue to wish it were different, wish it didn't happen, resist reality.

42:12But what you find is that that's actually the cause of emotional pain is resisting reality and wishing you could change something that is unchangeable. And if it's already happened, it's unchangeable. It's five minutes ago.

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43:27and you start to think like, oh, how could he or she do that to me? Like I did this, this, that. You start to really dwell on it. And it's not like he's gonna, that's who this boss is. Like it's not like they're gonna change their behavior. And if you try talking to him or her, it still won't change their behavior. Well, do you know well, good. And you think, well, I should quit. If you can't change it, maybe you should quit the job. But let's say you can't for whatever reason. and like, you need to pay your mortgage. There's no other jobs in the area, whatever it is. Yeah, so here's what I would say is that you, the five minute rule, you know, and the timeframe is arbitrary, right?

44:05Five minutes, if you lose your loved one, right? I don't expect you to, you know, it's healthy to grieve for a lot longer than five minutes. But here's the point is this, it's the understanding that every painful emotion that we have ever experienced in our lives has been self-created by, as I mentioned, the resistance to reality. and here's how you know that's true. If, imagine the exact same thing happens to two different people, okay? Same exact experience and we can use the boss as the example, right? The boss, you know, so two people have this boss and he treats both of them terribly, right?

44:40Person number one goes, they're resisting reality. They go, gosh, this boss is such a jerk. I wish you were different. I wish he didn't treat me the way that he does. It's so unfair the way he treats me, right? They're resisting reality. Like, look, you wishing he didn't treat you doesn't change the way he treats you. It just causes you to be frustrated and angry and upset. Now, person number two, right? Maybe they're totally calm. And the person number one's going, aren't you mad? He's such a jerk to us. And they go, yeah, but we can't change him. So what's the point in allowing him to determine how we feel?

45:13That seems like a waste of energy. I'm gonna choose to be at peace with what I can't change, which is my boss, so that I can enjoy this one life that I've been blessed to live, you know? And look, until I can find another job, I got to deal with him. I'm not gonna, it's hard, it's bad enough to listen to him. But if I allow listening to him make me feel horrible inside, that's giving him all my power and I'm not willing to do that. This is really great, Hal. I really like this philosophy. And I've, you know, this applies to all six practices in the saver's routine. But I really had these questions about affirmations and visualization.

45:51But the first S is about silence. Every morning you wake up and find at least 10 minutes to be silent, whether it's meditation or prayer or just silence, but no phones, no nothing. And real quick, I wanna just correct you on one piece there, which is you said at least 10 minutes. And I wanna, this is a really important thing that I've learned over the years teaching the Miracle Morning is I, my very first Miracle Morning was 60 minutes. and for a long time, I would talk about the Miracle Morning only the way that I did it. And I have a good friend, Brianna Greenspan. She's actually now the director of education for the Miracle Morning.

46:29She's brought it to hundreds of schools, mostly in New York City. I feel like I've seen her name. You've met Brianna. You guys are both in the Miracle Morning movie actually. But Brianna is the one that pointed out to me that she's like, Hal, you need to explain to people that they don't have to be like you. They don't have to do your Miracle Morning. So there's a chapter in the new edition of the book. It's called the six minute miracle morning. And it literally teaches you how to do all six of the savers, the entire miracle morning in a total of six minutes. So you can do one minute of silence and just say a quick prayer or meditate or calm your nervous system, one minute affirmations and so on through the rest of the savers.

47:11You're right. You know, I read that in the book, the one minute idea. And I was thinking more of like when you first started doing it, you set aside 60 minutes for 10 minutes for each one. So sorry for the confusion. No, no problem. But so there's the silence, there's the affirmations, there's the visualization, exercise, reading, scribing. And I think the silence makes a lot of sense. I think the reason I had the questions on the affirmations and the visualizations is that that's what personally I grapple with. Like obviously some moments of just like free time where you don't have your book or you're not immersed in like responding to stuff is great.

47:48So that's the silence. The exercise is sort of obvious and it's striking how many people don't do it. And even though there's clear benefits to health, reading is a practice I've always done. I could tell you read enormously because again, you've probably read every self-help book on the planet to kind of really take all the ideas into your mental laboratory and distill them down into the miracle morning. Who do you think are like the most legit self-help writers in history, really? In history, that's a broad - Which means really like the past hundred years. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, for sure, James Clear with Atomic Habits.

48:33I mean, that book has become an anomaly in terms of just the impact that it's made for people. And James has such a great way of communicating. Actually, I'll tell you, I don't know if you know about this book. It comes out tomorrow, but this is quickly becoming one of my favorite books of all time. Arete. Are you familiar with this? No. You should go pre-order it today, James. Wow. Brian Johnson. It's 1 ,001 pages long. It's 451 mini chapters. And he is - I love how he calls it volume one. Yeah. It gives it this historical context. It's brilliant. I mean, he's amazing. So that is, this is one of my favorite books.

49:08I mean, I'm only a little bit into the 1 ,001 pages, but it is phenomenal. and it's 451 chapters long. So there's 451 mini chapters and there's actually a Miracle Morning chapter in here, which is kind of cool. But that's one of my favorites. Some of my favorite authors, Michael Singer, who wrote The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment. Yeah, he's been on my podcast. Oh, has he really? Yeah, I've stayed in his compound where, you know, I like him a lot. You went out there and meditated with him? Yeah. That is cool. That's a bucket list item for me. Michael Singer, big fan of Michael Singer.

49:42and you know of course Think and Grow Rich I mean God there's so many good authors and I always draw a blank when I get asked who are my favorites I asked this to Oliver Berkman who wrote The Antidote which is kind of like an anti-self-help book like he's just critical of the whole industry but I asked him because he met Eckhart Tolle and I said is he the real deal and Oliver Berkman thought he was like the one guy he met who was the real deal like he really like lives in the now and he's very similar to michael singer in terms of philosophy totally totally um the you know i think that that that for at least for me personally um i i've done the miracle morning every i'd say i average more than six days a week because the only time i don't do it is if i'm up late for some reason like for a date night or a concert or something like that but i i estimate i've done over 4 500 miracle mornings over the last 15 years it's something that I do every single day.

50:37And I do think that that is important as an author or as a teacher. It's one thing just to teach something, right? Because you get it or you understand it, but it's another thing to actually live it so that you, I think that's a big reason that I wrote the updated and expanded edition, right? I don't think, I know, but is that I've been doing the Miracle Morning for 15 years. Well, when I first wrote the Miracle Morning, I'd been doing the Miracle Morning for like six months. So I was still pretty new to each of the savers. And I was writing from a place of like, Like, you know, hey, here's a really simple way to do meditation, even if you've never meditated before.

51:09I think that's why the book, one of the reasons it stuck is because I was really bringing people in that were only a step behind me, right? Like, hey, you know, I wasn't some advanced practitioner because I think once you've been doing something for so long, you often lose sight of the beginner's mindset. And so now 15 years later, it was like, I have evolved, my practices have evolved so much over the last 15 years that the update and expanded edition was, I wanted to, you know, hey, if you're brand new, here's where you start, but I want to show you what this looks like, how you can evolve to more advanced.

51:40You know, I teach this thing called emotional optimization meditation. It's my favorite form of meditation. And it's rather than just following your breath, you're actually identifying what is the optimal mental and emotional state that would serve my highest good today. And then I walk you through how to get into that state and then meditate in that state. So whether it's joy and happiness or confidence or playfulness or forgiveness or focus, whatever it is, you are hardwiring your optimal mental and emotional states every single morning so that you talked about who you become. You're literally becoming the person that can maintain those optimal states throughout the day.

52:20Yeah, that's great. And that's so important to do during the ebbs and cycles of a day where we, you know, crash and lift ourselves up and then crash again. And it's so good to practice that in the morning to start the day going. and uh uh you know you talk about the 2008 to 2010 period where obviously it was the financial crisis your your business was having problems you were having problems uh making your bills you were losing your house i've i've certainly had scenarios like this and it was affecting your relationship too with with your wife ursula who has stood by you through so many things so many things yeah Yeah, and how did you use techniques to kind of lift yourself up during that time?

53:05Again, I'm focusing on these moments when you're hitting the face, when it's really hard to, you could preach all you want, but not you specifically, but it's just hard to follow these ideas that are so uplifting when you just don't feel uplifted at all. You don't have the energy at that moment. Yeah, and I think that's when they are the most important, right? I mean, that's when we need them the most. Well, so 2008, the financial crash, that is why I created the Miracle Morning. I was like millions of Americans. I lost over half of my income, right? My business was failing. I was deep in debt.

53:43My house, my first house that I had ever purchased a year and a half prior was now being foreclosed on and taken back by the bank. And as you mentioned, so I was a mess. I was depressed. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. And I felt out of control. and can I ask, can I ask? Yeah. Were you afraid Ursula was going to leave you because you were losing the house? I honestly, I do not remember. Um, I don't remember if I was afraid. Yeah. I honestly don't remember if I was afraid. I mean, she, I do know, I mean, she was there for me, you know? So I think that, I think that loyalty is her, one of her top values.

54:17And so I think that I didn't know, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure it crossed my mind and I was nervous about it, But overall, I mean, she was very, you know, she would assure me and this and that. I'm not going anywhere. But here's the thing. She married this happy, fun, loving, you know, I'm one of the most energetic, positive people you'd ever meet. And then I was like this scared, depressed shell of a man, if you will. And she was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help you. I can't help you. And she actually encouraged me to talk to one of my good friends, John Berghoff, because he's very smart.

54:51and she said, why don't you call John and ask him for advice? And I called John and he ended up recommending this Jim Rohn audio. And I listened to the Jim Rohn audio and I heard a quote. And the quote, I'll share it right now. This quote literally was the catalyst for me to create the miracle morning. Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become. I love that. And when I heard that, I quantified it immediately. It's how my brain works. I'm, you know, I'm a numbers guy, quantified it.

55:24And I went, okay, wait a minute. If my level of success is not going to exceed my level of personal development, then there's two questions there. Number one, what level of success do I want? On a scale of one to 10, level 10. I don't know anyone that wants a lesser level. You know, I don't want to be too happy or too successful or, no, we all have an innate drive and desire to achieve this level 10 success in our lives. But then the second question, and this is the gut check. I went, okay, well, if my level of success is not going to exceed my level of personal development, what's my level of personal development?

55:55And at that time in my life, I was like, it's a two, like maybe a three or four on a good day. And let me define that. To me, personal development is what is your daily personal development ritual that's enabling you to become a better version of yourself in moving toward that level 10 version of you, where you are, you have the best mindset that you could possibly have and the skills and the habits and the knowledge that enable you to achieve everything you want for your life. And so to me, that's the disconnect for most of us. I want level 10 success, but my level of personal development, my routine every day is like a two or a three.

56:30And so the epiphany for me, James, was I need to go, I need to figure out what the world's most successful people do for personal development. And I need to create the ultimate level 10 personal development ritual so that I can become the level 10 version of myself who's capable of creating and sustaining the success that I want. And that's where I went online. I researched these six practices, what I came up with. I woke up the next morning. I did all six pretty poorly. I didn't know how to meditate. They were all new to me. But even doing them poorly after one hour, I went, wow, this is it. If I start every day like this, with this much clarity and energy and motivation and gaining knowledge, it's only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be that can turn my life around.

57:14And to be honest, I was thinking it would be one year. Like I just, in my mind, I'm like, I'll give myself a year to turn this around in less than two months. Now, now James, keep in mind, this was at the height of the great recession. The economy continued to get worse. I doubled my income in less than two months because of the miracle morning. And I went to my wife and I said, sweetheart. And is that because you had more energy? So you were making more calls and networking more and meeting more people for lunch, dinner, whatever. So it's honestly the sequence of all of the practices. So let's start with reading, okay?

57:47I ordered a book online by Michael Port called Book Yourself Solid. And it was basically teaching service-based businesses how to get more clients. So that was like the starting place. Okay, I'm gonna get a book on how to get more clients. Then I used my meditation practice to get in a peak mental and emotional state every morning so that I could implement what it is that I was learning. Then I took the main points in the book and I translated them into affirmations that clarified what I was committed to, why it was a must for me, and what I was going to do. Then I visualized, aka mentally rehearsed myself doing the things that I had just affirmed that would get me where I wanted to go.

58:33And then I used my journaling process practice, right? Every day to look at my to-do list. And instead of doing the easy things, the busy work, which too many of us are guilty of doing, I went, okay, what's the number one thing on my list every day that I need to do that's going to move the needle and get me clients? So it was literally stacking all six of the practices. And the exercise, of course, just gave me some energy and got me in shape and all that. But it was stacking the practices and sequencing them together that enabled me to, you know, implement what I was learning in the book every single day, take action, generate motivation, generate energy.

59:11And then I got the results that I wanted. Yeah. And then I'm going to fast forward to another time in your life where you were having some troubles, the 2019, 2020, maybe it was, uh, were you having trouble sleeping? You were sleeping only two, three hours a night. Do you know why you were sleeping so, so few hours? Um, my guess is because of chemotherapy. But I'm not, you know, chemotherapy, it's something that they call it chemo brain, where it's basically chemotherapy is poison and it is poisoning your body. And one of my, an oncology nurse told me this. I said this earlier, it actually came from her.

59:45She said, Hal, I'm gonna be straight with you. She like kind of looked, you know, side to side and leaned in. She's like, look, she's like, chemotherapy is poison, okay? It's killing you right now. It is killing you. And I was literally, you know, hooked up to chemo right then. I'm like, okay, this is, yeah. I'm like, I already know this, but it's not really encouraging. She said, and let's be honest, the goal is that the chemotherapy kills the cancer before it kills you. And then we can get your body, you know, build you back up so that you can live a life like a normal life. That's a very good explanation of chemo, actually.

1:00:16Yeah, yeah. It's killing the cancer and it's killing your body. It's killing every part of you, right? You can't kill the cancer without killing your body. I mean, it's killing you. But the idea is that you're gonna hopefully live. And I forgot, what was your question? Now, you're asking an old man now. So, oh, I was asking about your sleep habits. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, they call it chemo brain, which that phrase, it bothers me because of how dismissive my doctors were. They go, oh, that's just chemo brain. Like it's this cute phrase. I go, why don't you say what it is? My brain is being poisoned.

1:00:50And now I can't function the way that I used to. After three years of chemotherapy, my cognitive abilities declined significantly to where I feel like my IQ dropped 30 points and I feel like I was not myself anymore. And I developed - You should have tested it before and after. I know, I should have. I know that wasn't like highest on your priority list, but that would have been fascinating. Fascinating data point for sure. But I went from being, never in my life have I experienced anxiety. I didn't even know what it felt like. I developed such extraordinary anxiety and then that led to depression.

1:01:27And I think that, so the chemotherapy, I think, caused the anxiety, the depression, because it was all this vicious cycle where because my cognitive abilities were there, I was nervous to talk to people. I couldn't have normal conversations anymore. And that made me anxious. Then the anxiety caused depression and like it was this vicious cycle and I was depressed that my brain felt like it was not mine anymore. And so I started sleeping two to four hours a night was my average sleep. And if you ever slept two hours in a night, you're a mess the next day. Compound that over four, five, six months of sleeping two to four hours every single night.

1:02:06I was hallucinating. I was, I mean, I was not, I lost my mind and I was suicidal. I wanted to kill myself. Yeah, yeah, I saw in the book, you mentioned you wrote to Ursula one morning and said you wanted to die. You couldn't take it anymore. Or what was going on in the, like you're responsible for a big, you know, social media community around the Miracle Morning. Like what was going on then? How are you kind of presenting yourself to the group? Yeah, so I'm usually, I have no problem being vulnerable typically. But the thing was I did have a problem being vulnerable at that time because I was such a mess that I couldn't even think straight.

1:02:44So I was like embodiment of fear. I was afraid of everything. thing. I was scared to get on calls with people that I had known for 20 years. I was scared. And I ended up, that was the year that the Miracle Morning movie was supposed to come out. And so I ended up letting my team go because I couldn't manage them. I couldn't, I would, I would, I would get on calls and be shaking. I was so scared to talk to these people that loved me and that I knew I was an absolute mess. And so I just did the, but I had to record a podcast every single week. I had to record the Achieve Your Goals podcast. And so I just did the best I could with, you know, with who I was.

1:03:24And I will tell you that, you know, 2020, when that happened, and I asked myself, okay, I am, you know, as a leader of the Miracle Morning community and my podcast listeners, what should I be focusing on right now? Because there was so much thrown at us that was out of our control, right? The pandemic and the, you know, the economy and the this and to that. And what I realized is that when we focus on that, which is out of our control, and this is true across all aspects of life, when we focus on that, which is out of our control, we feel out of control and feeling out of control leads to anxiety and stress and depression and so on and so forth.

1:04:02And so I will say that I did double down on a miracle morning that year, which is part of what helped me get through the sleeplessness as well is I realized, okay, I can't control COVID and the economy and all this crazy stuff in the world. I can only control showing up at my best every single day for myself, for those I love and for those I lead. And that's all I'm gonna do. And that's what I encourage my listeners and the Miracle Morning community. I go, guys, look, I know you're scared of this. You're scared of that. You're worried about this. Those things are out of our control. All you can control is double down on your Miracle Morning so that you can show up at your best for those you lead, those you love and for yourself.

1:04:39And so that's what I did. And that's what our community did. And I've, there are a lot of testimonials of people saying like that got them through the most difficult time in their life. Well, and also you, this also resulted in the chapter in this expanded edition, the miracle evening, which helped you improve your, I'll let people read that. I've done several podcasts about sleep, but as you mentioned in the miracle evening, having a ritual that helps you sleep healthfully is so important. Like they say, if you, if you sleep six hours or less for three days in a row, you'll have, you won't have Alzheimer's, but you'll have symptoms almost similar to like Alzheimer's or dementia, just three days of six hours or less.

1:05:20Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I wrote that chapter is because I, you know, and I started in that chapter about telling my sleep, you know, deprivation, um, chronic insomnia story. And it's like, I, cause since then I've started asking my audiences when I, when I give keynotes and I speak, I say, how many of you struggle with sleep, either falling asleep or staying asleep? You know, James, it's over half on average. It's half or more of the audience. And I realized what a huge problem it is. And I think, you know, part of my, one of my abilities, if you will, is to really communicate information in a way that resonates with people and that is so simple because I'm not an intellectual.

1:06:01Like I'm not someone that has a wildly expansive vocabulary and can talk over your head. Like I really need to simplify things to make sense for me. And so as an author, I'm able to do that for other people. And so it's similar to how the Miracle Morning has enabled millions of people that never thought they could become a morning person, right? I mean, we've surveyed our audience. It's 72 % of Miracle Morning practitioners say they never in their life were a morning person nor believed they could become one. And now they read the book and it completely changed that for them. And so my hope is that this 22-page sleep or miracle evening chapter will do the same for people for sleep as I'm telling you, these are the simplest, most specific, straightforward, step-by-step practices in the evening that I use to overcome six months of chronic insomnia so I could get a good night's sleep and I hope it'll work for people as well.

1:06:55So, and I love that you added the miracle evening to your expanded book, The Miracle Morning. And again, it's been 10 years since, you know, The Miracle Morning first came out, millions of copies sold. You've helped so many people, including me. Like I love this book. And it's one of the few self-help books I think are legit and I really enjoy reading and I love the ideas behind it. And I feel it overlapped a lot with just my instincts on what a good morning should be. and it really put to words a lot of things. But I want to talk about the business of The Miracle Morning for a second. I also love how you kind of franchised the concept.

1:07:37You know, like, let me read some of the chapter titles. You know, you had other authors essentially write, you know, The Miracle Morning for couples, The Miracle Morning for entrepreneurs, The Miracle Morning for parents, The Miracle Morning for college students, the Miracle Morning for Writers, which I wrote the foreword to. Steve Scott wrote the book or you and Steve Scott wrote the book. And you've done a really good job just building this business and brand and franchise of the Miracle Morning. How's it going? Yeah, that's a great question. It's going really well. And I want to give credit where credit is due.

1:08:14Early on when I had the idea for the book series, I met a woman named Honore Corder. I remember that. You know Honore. You met Honore. And Honore, she had created a book series called the Successful Single Mom Book Series. And now she is one of the most prolific authors on teaching authors how to become authors, how to sell a lot of books. That's kind of her niche now because she's done so well. She's written like 40 books. And so I hired her to help me develop the Miracle Morning series. And so she helped me figure out how to create this book series, if you will. And yeah, and so the Miracle Morning, one of the things I've had a lot of authors that have seen me give, I give a speech occasionally.

1:08:54I gave it at Genius Network and I've given it a couple of times. It's called Beyond the Bestseller, how to write a book that creates a movement, earns you a fortune and changes the world. And it's based on the premise that many authors are chasing a bestseller list, but that actually doesn't give you what you really want, which is impact and income, like lasting impact and lasting income. I think if any author's honest, that's what they want. We think we want to get on a bestseller list because that'll give us what we want, but it doesn't. There's a lot of bestselling authors that if you look at their book on Amazon, it's ranked, you know, 650 ,000 on the bestsellers on Amazon.

1:09:28It falls into obscurity, even though it was a, what do they call that? A flash in the pan where it hit the bestseller list. So I talk about how do you write a book that really sustains, if you will, becomes a perennial bestseller. And when I give that speech, I show a graph that shows how long it took for me for the Miracle Morning to take off. And it wasn't an overnight success. It took 18 months of sustained promotion. I had been on over, I think, 200 podcast interviews in those 18 months, done TV interviews. Like my whole life revolved around this Miracle Morning concept. And then it finally took off.

1:10:04And I have so many authors that go, man, you promoted for 18 months before you even got any traction. And now it's sold millions of copies. They go, if I would have promoted my book for, I only promoted it for three months and then I got bored or then I changed my mind or then I did something else or then I, right. And so my point is this, I believe the Miracle Morning is the most, of anything I've ever created in my life, it's made the biggest impact for people, the most profound impact for people. So it is my life's work. So now the Miracle Morning book series, the Miracle Morning movie, the Miracle Morning app, which I mean, that alone now, tens of thousands of people use the Miracle Morning app every day and it's got 2000 five-star reviews in the app store.

1:10:48Like people love that. But the point is, it got really clear that this is my life's work. So every shiny object, every awesome financial opportunity, it's only a yes if it's in alignment with my mission to share the miracle morning with more people. Because 2 million people have read the book, 8 billion people are still waiting for me to find a way to share it with them. You should make a book like The Miracle Movement and write about the process of that talk, basically the concept of that talk, because that's incredibly valuable. Like I thought about this a lot, this concept a lot when I was, after I wrote the book, Choose Yourself, and it received a lot of coverage and recognition.

1:11:30And A, you're totally right. Like that's the most successful book I've ever written. And it's directly correlated to how much work I put into promoting it after the book. And even before the book came out, I was writing a lot about the concepts. I was basically promoting a lot before I even wrote the book, wrote the book, and then I was on podcast for years talking about it. And that's directly correlated to the success of it. But I never, I thought about some of these ideas that you're talking about, but I ultimately, it wasn't the right thing for me. And, but I really admire how you did it with the Miracle Morning.

1:12:06You've done such a good job. You hired community leaders for the community and you did this Miracle Morning series, which again, I'm glad I was a tiny bit of participant in and really grateful for your how and really grateful you came on the show. And I'm so glad you wrote this expanded edition because it allows me to recommend the Miracle Morning a second time. And again, to people listening, I literally, instead of giving my own book, I gave this book to my kids to read when they were going through different periods in their lives. and it's a valuable book. I encourage people to read it and try the practices described and all the suggestions.

1:12:48There's no one size fits all, which Hal definitely stresses in the book and stressed in this podcast. So there's lots of different ways to try these ideas. Really great, Hal. And look, I hope we could one day interact again in person instead of just on a podcast. I really enjoy spending time with you. And as always, thanks once again. Yeah, James, I feel the same, man. You're one of my favorite people, one of the most enjoyable people to talk to. and we definitely need to do it in person, not just on Zoom or virtually. Yeah, definitely. Thanks.