Written by Christopher Kelly
Dec. 11, 2014
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and I'm joined today by Hal Elrod. Hal is a number one best-selling author, international keynote speaker, hall of fame business achiever, one of America's top success coaches, national champion sales manager, record breaking sales rec, ultra-marathon runner, grateful husband and proud father. Wow, that's a lot to live up to.
Hi, Hal. Thanks for coming on.
Hal: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Chris.
Christopher: So tell me about rock bottom. What does it mean? Have you ever hit rock bottom?
Hal: Yeah. You know I always says that I've been fortunate in my life to hit rock bottom twice and probably more than that, but when I say rock bottom just to kind of give everybody a kind of some perspective it's something we've all experienced. It's a time in our lives where we've never felt that way before. You know and I kind of joke that when I was in seventh grade and Britney broke up with me that was my first rock bottom not the one that I'm going to talk about today, right, but I mean I was right where you're like, "Oh, my gosh. I've never felt such pain and anguish and despair and sadness." And you know what I mean and so we've all experienced that at different times in our lives and to different degrees.
My first rock bottom was very unexpected. It's one of those things that you never ever would imagine happening to you. I never imagined it would happen to me. I was driving home one night after I gave a speech at a sales conference. So you mentioned my sales accolades. When I was 19 I started in sales selling kitchen knives door-to-door essentially and I broke the all time company record and I was one of their top sales people.
So they always asked me to give speeches at conferences. Well, one night gave a speech, loved the speech. After hitting my first standing ovation, so it was like a really special night for me. I got a standing ovation. I was you know euphoric. I was elated, got into my brand new ford mustang. It was my brand new shiny white like dream car at age 20 and on the freeway cruise control set it to 70 miles per hour and a man that I never met before was in a large Chevrolet truck and he got on the freeway going the wrong way. He was up to 80 miles an hour and his much larger vehicle to my little ford mustang and what I'm about to tell you, Chris, I don't remember this.
I actually know what I'm about to share with you from police reports and eye witnesses and hospital records. But approximately 11:34 p.m. as I'm cruising down the highway just feeling grateful for my life this drunk driver crashes head on into my car 80 miles an hour while I'm traveling at 70 miles an hour, crashes the front of my car and my airbag explodes, my windshield shatters and the worse was actually yet to come as my car it was hit head on off center and it sent it spinning sideways where my driver side door was vulnerable to the car that had been behind me.
My car spun in front of them and according to the driver of that vehicle later when they were interviewed by the police they didn't have time to even hit the brakes or swerve. They crashed directly into the door of my car, my driver side door at 70 miles an hour and instantly crushed the left side of my body. I broke 11 bones. My femur broke in half, my pelvis broke in three places. I broke my arm in half. I severed the nerve in my forearm. I destroyed my eye socket almost completely severed my ear and the ceiling buckled and it sliced.
The metal broke through the roof and it sliced a V in the top of my head like a big thick V. And I was just bleeding from head to toe, broken bones, ruptured spleen, punctured lung 11:30 at night and I instantly or very quickly my body could not withstand the pain and thankfully I slipped into a coma. And six days later and also after dying three times, I actually died on the side of the freeway. I died for six minutes and then I flat lined twice when I was in coma and six days later I came out of the coma to the devastating reality.
The doctors they told me I mean just the fact that what had happened to me was devastating, but then I found out that I was according to them probably never going to walk again. And I also had permanent brain damage so I had no short term memory and three weeks later with the power of positive thinking and telling my parents that I was putting all my belief and my faith and my energy and visualization into walking again three weeks later after the doctors had told my parents they thought I was in denial because I was so happy. They thought it was a façade.
They thought there's no way. He must be delusional. He can't be this happy, but I had realized that you know what one of the greatest lessons that we can learn -- Chris, I'll ask you a question here. Have you had bad things happen to you in your life?
Christopher: Yeah, of course. But I'm starting to understand now that I've been in some -- I've been in a serious motorcycle accident actually. It was a life-threatening injury too, but I don't think I ever hit rock bottom in that same way. I'm kind of interested in the difference now.
Hal: Hmm, interesting. Yeah. So what I found is like anything. We all have adversity and there's more adversity to come. So what matters is not how much adversity you avoid, you know how many bullets you dodge. It's how do you respond when you take -- how do you respond when you know. And so I realize that look, the first step is we have to accept all the things that we can't change, right. I call this the ABCs of taking your life head on.
[0:05:22]
A is for accept all things you can't change. B is for be grateful for everything and C is for create progress everyday towards your goals and towards your dreams. And that really to me is a formula for living. If you accept all things you can't change and that's everything from you know being in horrific car accident to losing a loved one to hitting traffic. Rather than be frustrated in traffic you go I can't change it. There's no point in feeling bad about it, right, and then you're focus so much you're grateful for and that allows you to be really present to all that you have and then just make sure that every day you're scheduling time to create progress towards your ideal dreams and goals and what you want for your life.
Christopher: So how did you even know to do this at that time? How did you know that this was going to be a strategy that would help you recover?
Hal: Yeah, great question because I couldn't articulate it that way, right. I mean back then I was just doing what I was doing and responding well. I was very fortunate. My manager in when I was sales I sold Cutco knives, right. My manager taught me something in my sales training. He taught it to all of the trainees. It's called the five minute rule and it was simply he goes, "When you go out there in sales just in life you're going to have rejection. You're going to have disappointment. You're going to have some people that are rude."
He said, "You've got to live your life by the five minute rule which says it's okay to be negative sometimes, but not for more than five minutes." He said, "Literally, set your timer on your phone or look at the watch and you give yourself five minutes to bitch, moan and complain, right." And he says, "And then you focus all of your energy not on what you can't change. You basically go, okay, I can't change it. So there's no point in feeling bad about it or wishing I could. The only intelligent choice we have is to accept what we can't change and focus on what we can."
And now granted the five minute rule was taught to me for much milder adversity, right. I mean you know it's like no sales, not dying and being told you can't walk, but the principle was the same.
And so when my dad came to me in the hospital and he said, "Hal, the doctors think you're in denial. They think you are being delusional. You need to be feeling the sadness and the pain and the anger and the fear and all of those things. What's going on in your head? What are you really feeling?"
And I said, "Dad, I live my life by the five minute rule." I said, "It's been two weeks since the accident. What's the point in me feeling sad, angry or depressed? What would that do? That's not going to fix anything. It's going to make me miserable. I'd rather be the happiest person you've ever seen trying to learn how to walk again." And I told my dad, "And this is really important." I said, "Dad, I've already decided. If I never walk again I have decided that I'll be the happiest person you've ever met in a wheelchair because that's my choice just like no matter what happens to us in our life we can be the happiest person going to the most difficult time."
I said, "Or the other possibility, dad, number one is the doctors are right and I can't walk again and I've already accepted that if that's the case. However, I'm not focusing on that possibility." I said, "I'm putting all of my energy into walking again." Again, visualizing it, believing in it, putting every ounce of focus thinking about walking again and one week after that conversation, three weeks after the night that bones were broken and I died the doctors came back with routine x-rays and they said, "Hal," you know they addressed my parents, "Mr. and Mrs. Elrod, we have some pretty exciting news. We don't know how to explain this, but your body is healing in such a rate that we're going to let you try and walk again today or try and walk for the first time today."
And so three weeks later I took my first step and four weeks later I went home and you know less than two months after the accident I was against doctor's orders I was back to work selling Cutco.
Christopher: Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's incredible, power of positive thoughts, awesome. But then that wasn't the only time that you hit rock bottom, right? Something happened again.
Hal: Yeah. Well, you know one of the lessons that I learned from the first accident is everything happens for a reason, but not the way that most people think. Whenever I give a speech I always say, "How many of you believe everything happens for a reason?" And usually about 80% of the room's hands go up, right. And then I say, "How many of you don't buy into that? You're not really sure?" And the other 20% go up and I say, "Here's a perspective, a philosophy if you will that it's take it or leave it, but we can all kind of agree on this." I said, "Everything happens for a reason, but it's our responsibility to choose the reason. We get that opportunity and it's our responsibility." Most people go through life banging their head against the wall going, "Why did this happen to me?"
Like they're trying to figure out the reasons rather than decide on the reasons. And so for me I just told my dad, I said, "Dad, I always wanted to be a motivational speaker, but you and mom were really good to me. Like I had a normal life, I don't know what the heck I would talk about or why you will listen to me, but maybe that's why this happened. I'm going to explore that possibility." And now that's one of the main things I do is I'm living my dream as a speaker.
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So the interesting thing though was there's a major disconnect with that adversity, right, meaning when people hear my story they're like, "Wow, that's incredible." But they kind of disconnect like, "Well, yeah, of course he's positive. He died. If I died I'd be positive too, right." So in 2007, eight years after the night of my crash [0:10:36] [Indiscernible] was dead, the US economy crashed and I lost nearly everything.
I mean I lost over half of my income. I couldn't pay my bills. My house was taken away from me by the bank. I stopped exercising completely. I was in the worst shape of my life and it was really surprisingly that rock bottom, the second rock bottom was worse than the first. And people often ask me, they go, "Wait, you died. How could it be worse than dying?" And maybe this is what you experienced, Chris, when you said that you didn't have the same rock bottom is because it's kind of like when I died and I came out of the coma I said, "Wow, it can't get any worse. It can only get better, right."
Whereas in 2007, it felt like rock bottom at so many times and then another client cancelled. Then I found out I was losing my house. It just got worse and worse and worse and for the first time in my life I got deeply, deeply depressed to the point of being suicidal, not wanting to live, not wanting to get out of bed in the morning and this went on for six months kind of a downward spiral of just really physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and even spiritually and relationally I was at the lowest point in my life.
And to keep a long story short, a conversation with a friend led me to go for a run. I hated running at this time and literally hated it. Had never really run, but he said, "Hal, if you're not exercising you're not going to put yourself in a physical, mental and emotional state and you're not going to be able to solve your problems. You got to exercise every morning and get the blood flowing and start thinking clearly. Listen to a motivational audio or business book or something to put good things in your mind."
And I went for a run the next day and I heard a quote on the run that changed my entire life and it became a catalyst for what is now practiced worldwide by over 100,000 people called the miracle morning. And here's the quote from Jim Rohn and you may have heard of this one, Chris, because the funny part is I had heard this before. You know you have to hear something sometimes over and over and over and over and over and over again before it clicks.
So here's the quote and if anybody's listening this is worth writing down from Jim Rohn. "Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development." And I stopped running and I realized probably because I was looking for any excuse to stop running, but I realized I'm not dedicating time every day to my personal development so that I can become the person that I need to be to create the success that I want.
And a way to make that give people kind of a tangible to -- what's the word I'm looking for, to measure that. Let me ask you a question, Chris. If we're measuring success in any area of our life, not just our you know career, like success is often measured, but I'm talking about our energy, our happiness, our health, our relationships. If we're measuring success in any area on a scale of one to ten what level do we all want?
Christopher: Well, ten obviously.
Hal: Yeah. Nobody's like, "Yeah, I don't want to be too happy. I don't want people to -- I don't want to annoy people. I don't want to be too rich. I don't want people to judge me." No, it's like, "Dude, we want as much happiness and love and energy and money as we can possibly get." But here's the disconnect I realize in that moment. My level of personal development was maybe at a two or a three at that time in my life and by the way let me define personal development.
Your level of personal development is your level of knowledge and your level of physical, mental and emotional vitality. On a scale of one to ten where is your knowledge related to -- if you want to be a millionaire where is your knowledge related to millionaires, right? If you want to be in peak, physical fitness where is your physical vitality? And so for me, I realized my level of personal development is at two or three and gee that's why my level of success is at a two or three.
And I have this theory. I thought maybe Jim Rohn is right. If I develop myself to be a level ten person then I can really it would seem that if I become a level ten person and develop myself in all of these areas my level of success should kind of meet me head on in parallel. And here's what happened. I ran home and two challenges that I had to figure this out I thought, number one, when am I going to find an extra hour to do the personal development, right?
I mean everybody is busy. I was busy. I was trying to survive and I realize you know what the only time that I really have my schedule is if I wake up an hour earlier, but I wasn't a morning person. But if you're listening to this right now and you do not consider yourself a morning person tune in.
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I'd say probably 70% of the people that have read the Miracle Morning, they've read the book, they do it every day probably 70% give or take absolutely did not consider themselves a morning person before the Miracle Morning. So that was me and I decided, you know what, if I want my life to be different I got to get out of comfort zone. I got to do something different. So I go, "You know what, I'm going to wake up at 5:00 a.m."
The second challenge was what am I going to do for "personal development?" What does that look like? And so I did about an hour of research online trying to figure out what were the best personal development practices known to man, the ones that people that were the most successful people in the world swore by. I had my list of six. I went to bed that night for the first time in six months not feeling depressed. I mean literally my depression started to go away the moment I had a strategy that I thought this could be the one thing that changes everything for me.
If I developed myself everyday into a better version of who I was when I went to bed the night before I will eventually become the person that can create the success I want in my life. I didn't know for sure, but, Chris, I thought it could work and the next morning I woke up. I did these six practices. They're now known as the life savers, SAVERS is an acronym for the practices. But I didn't know how to -- I was horrible at it. Like one of them is meditation.
I was like the worst meditator ever, but I'm like you know, but I did it and it felt good. It felt calm, but here's where my whole life changed. At 6:00 a.m. that morning even though my life was still in shambles, even though I was still at the lowest point in my outer world in my inner world I felt amazing. At 6:00 a.m. after one hour of what is now known as the miracle morning. It didn't have a name. I was so inspired and energized and I had clarity and I was motivated. My confidence went up like five notches. I was becoming a level ten person and I'll just wrap this up with the results because that's what matters.
Did this work? I didn't think it'd work this fast. Within two months of doing my miracle morning I more than doubled my income, in fact I increased it by like 65% in two months. And I didn't get a new job. By doing the same work I was already doing I figured out how to increase my income by over double. And that would be 165% I guess.
So anyway, I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically where I hadn't exercised in six months to training for and completing a 52 mile ultra-marathon where I ran 52 miles in one day to raise money for charity and I had never run before that. And then last, but not the least I mentioned my depression. My depression literally was gone not in two months. It was gone in 24 hours. I had a complete new outlook on life after my very first morning ritual and that's when I started calling it my miracle morning.
It was never supposed to be a book. It was never supposed to be one of my speeches. It was just the thing that turned my life around, but I started sharing it with my coaching clients. They've gotten the same results I got. They were losing weight. They were increasing their income on and on and on just profound and that's when I realized I have a responsibility to share this miracle morning thing with the rest of the world and now as I mentioned I mean you know. I don't know how many exactly tens of thousands.
I think it's over 100,000 people do the miracle morning every day and they swear by it and I'm just on a mission now. I feel like this is the most important thing I can do with my life until further notice is share the miracle morning with as many people as I can.
Christopher: I'm pretty sold by this point. So you better explain what the six things are. So you mentioned meditation. What are the other five things?
Hal: Yeah. The funny part is it goes back to you know you hear something over and over. Well, at first I almost discounted these six completely because none of them were new to me. I had heard of all them and you know that's like our society today. We're looking for the cutting edge thing, the new thing, the thing we've never heard of, the app that'll change our life, the diet that'll lose all the weight for us, right. We want the easy way, the fast way, the new way.
And these six practices were older than dirt you know what I mean like people have been doing them for centuries. And I went, "Oh, man." You know I almost dismissed it and then it hit me. "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. The most successful people in the world for centuries swear by these practices whether it's a modern day you know Will Smith swears by this, Oprah swears by this. I mean CEOs of fortune 500 companies swear by this."
And so then I decided, okay, I got to figure out which of this is going to be the biggest bang for my buck. And I couldn't figure it out. They were all equally as compelling when I was doing my research online so then my big aha was what if I did all six of these every single day? If one of these, if any one of them is a total game changer according to the world's most successful people, some people swear by meditation. Some swear by visualization. Some swear by affirmation. Some swear by reading, right, on and on.
[0:20:05]
And so I thought what if I did all six? That'll be like personal development on steroids or whatever it's probably not the most positive connation, but you know what I mean. So here are the six. There's an acronym to make these memorable so if you're taking notes the word is SAVERS. You want to write that vertically, right, straight up and down because the S is for silence.
So rather than starting your day hectic and rushed and chaotic you start your day with silence. Now that might be meditation or for you it might be prayer. It might just be gratitude. It might just be deep breathing, right, combination of all. For me it's kind of a combination of all. When I meditate I meditate on gratitude. I also say a prayer. I kind of go through ten minutes of silence every morning.
The A is for affirmations. Affirmation essentially there's I think affirmations have a bad rep. They're basically a written statement of any thought or action or belief that you need to embody to achieve what you want in your life and it has been proven scientifically that the repetition of affirmations with emotion will literally reprogram your subconscious mind to embody whatever the affirmation says. And we all have self-talk whether or not we realize it. We all have negative self-talk, affirmations allow you to consciously decide what input you're putting into your subconscious mind, what beliefs do you need to have to become a millionaire or to find love in your life or whatever it is.
The V is for visualization. That was made famous by the movie the Secret. Visualizing what it is that you want and where it's not taught very often that I think it's the most important part of visualization, but most the gurus don't even teach it is don't just visualize what you want long term and see it. It's important, but it's only half the equation and I think it's the least important half. The most important half of visualization is once you visualize the long term result, the goal, the dream you see yourself in your ideal career or relationship or buying that house or whatever the vision is.
The reason that's important is because all of our goals, dreams and desires are floating around in our conscious or subconscious and imagine each of them like a little ball of energy, a little limitless ball of energy. The problem is those little balls of energy are cloaked in fear. They're cloaked like a little clear coding of fear and insecurity and our past. Our identity is someone that's never achieved these things.
So the problem is this fear, this coating of fear around this ball of energy it keeps it trapped and we never create it, we never manifest it. What visualization does is when you see it you closed your eyes and you see what that little ball of energy, what that dream that desire, what that goal will look like when it's manifested, when it's real all of a sudden it removes the fear coating, the fear bubble if you will because now you see it.
You can feel what it going to feel like, but the most important part of visualization that's only the first half. You've got to visualize yourself taking the action that will produce that result. If all you do is listen to the gurus that tell you just see your dreams and you'll attract them into your life, bullshit, right. Pardon my French, but it's not true because you in fact science has shown, research has shown that it actually is counterproductive.
If you visualize the end result so much you will actually trick your subconscious into thinking that it's going to happen with or without your effort and it won't. You've got to visualize yourself doing the thing that is necessary to create that result, writing the book at your computer that's what I did when I wrote the Miracle Morning I literally would use my miracle morning. I would write affirmations around the book. I would meditate on the feeling of the book being real. I would visualize people reading the book, but then I would see myself at my computer writing the book with a smile on my face with the words just flowing.
So the V is for visualization. The E is for exercise. You got to get your heart rate up first thing in the morning, get the blood flowing, the serotonin release. You'll feel better. You'll think clearer. You'll be happier and perform better throughout your day, make better decisions, have more self-discipline. The R is for reading not like Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Grey, right. Not that those are bad, but I'm talking about if you read the books that are written by people that have achieved what you want and they've written books on those subjects that's one of the fastest ways to shorten your learning curve, increase your level of personal development to be a level ten person so you can achieve level ten success.
And the final S is for scribing and I owe the thesaurus for this one, Chris. My vocabulary is not that big. I wouldn't even know what that word meant, but originally it was journaling. But SAVERJ was not a good acronym, right, SAVERJ. So I took the J and I you know. So scribing means writing and that could be journaling, I use an app on my phone called five minute journal. It's the best journal I've ever found. In fact, I actually created a miracle morning journal that you can purchase on Amazon, but I actually think this is better.
[0:25:02]
So I mean the miracle morning journal is great if you want to go read the reviews, cool. But I recommend five minute journal and if you go to fiveminutejournal.com you can get the app on your phone, but you can actually buy the hard cover edition as well.
So that's it. Those are the life SAVERS and any questions on those because I could talk for hours.
Christopher: Yeah. So how long are you spending doing all of these things? It sounds like quite a lot to get in before 8:00.
Hal: So here's the idea. The miracle morning is not waking up early necessarily. It's waking up earlier than you already wake up. So I wake up every day a 3:30 in the morning. I'm not normal, right. Most people don't do that and I'm very careful when I say that to go that is not the miracle morning. It's not waking up at 3:30 in the morning. It's whenever -- let me share a very important -- this is like a big picture benefit of the miracle morning that in some ways it could be argued that this is the most important benefit and that is that when you set your alarm clock earlier than you have to wake up meaning most people in the world they wake up when they have to, right.
They have to be somewhere, do something, answer to or take care of someone else. And if you think about that if you set your alarm for the last minute you hit the snooze button a few times you're literally resisting your life. You're sending a message to your subconscious that says, "I don't have the discipline to get my butt out of bed in the morning let alone create the life I claim to want."
So when the alarm clock goes off in the morning that's life's first gift to you. It's also life's first challenge and life's first opportunity, right. Most people fail at the challenge. They hit the snooze button and they go, "I don't have the discipline to get out of bed. I'd rather -- I'm going to procrastinate on waking up and lay here."
You think about that how you do anything is how you do everything. So how could you possibly start your day once you realize this? Why would you start your day with procrastination and a lack of self-discipline because how you start your day sets the tone for how you live your life? If you have an unfocused, unproductive, undisciplined morning that's the type of life you're going to live and it's going to be a real challenging life.
But if you set your alarm clock not for when you have to be up, but for when you want to be up whether that's 30 minutes or 60 minutes before your normal time that you're used to getting up and you focus that golden opportunity that time while the rest of the world is asleep. You dedicate time to becoming the level ten person that you need to be to create the level ten life that you really want because it only happens in that order. It only happens that you get better first then your life gets better.
So the miracle morning is an opportunity for you to get up and become the person that you need to be, become a better version of who you were when the alarm went off and it starts with the discipline to actually get yourself out of bed. Now, you ask me how long it takes. Most people do a one hour miracle morning. However, you can do it in as little as six minutes and anywhere in between.
There's an entire chapter in the book dedicated to the six minute miracle morning and this is basically a half where it was something that I did kind of just an experiment. One day I was -- or I shouldn't say one day. There were a lot of days when I would wake up and I would be like, "I got an early appointment or call or I don't have time to do the miracle morning today." And I would skip it.
And then one day I have the idea, I thought, "Wait a minute. What if I did a six minute version where I did each of the life SAVERS for just one minute each, but I was really present?" One minute of silence, I just got really clear, took some deep breaths, meditated, maybe a little prayer, right, one minute of silence and I did that. I was like, "Wow. It was only one minute, but I actually feel a lot more centered. I feel a lot more calm."
Then I pulled out of my affirmations. I read those. It only took me a minute to read the affirmations. I felt a lot more confident, a lot more empowered. My mind was refocused on my highest priorities and who I needed to be to achieve those priorities. Then so I went through these six practices and here's the amazing thing. Chris, it only took me one-tenth of the time that I was used to. Normally I did an hour. This day was six minutes.
It only took me on-tenth of the time, but the way I felt, the benefit that I derived it was like 80% of the benefit in one tenth of the time because the miracle morning is completely scalable. I know people that do a two hour miracle morning or three hour miracle morning. In fact, I used to do a three hour miracle morning from 4:30 to 7:30 a.m. But now I do one hour miracle morning meaning the life SAVERS and then I do one hour of writing and one hour of reading I kind of go through you know I work on stuff the other time.
But yeah so to answer your question a long answer it's a six minute to as long as you want routine.
Christopher: That sounds quite doable.
Hal: Yeah, yeah. There's really -- makes it so there's no excuse not to do it and it's funny. But people always kind of skeptical I think like six minutes come on. You can't get anything done in six minutes then they do it and like, "Wow, I absolutely feel amazing after six minutes."
Christopher: Yeah, that sounds great and then so you mention coaching clients. So what kind of results have you been getting with this?
Hal: So I mean it's really profound. It's across the board. When I wrote -- I think what kept me from writing the book because see writing the book was one of my top goals for three years in a row and I failed every single year, 2011 or I'm sorry 2011 -- no 2009, '10 and '11 I failed.
[0:30:14]
Finally in 2012 I had a breakthrough. I realized, "Wait a minute, what if I use the miracle morning to write the Miracle Morning?" Meaning and this is a really big lesson for everybody. Whatever your number one goal is whether you want to write a book or you want to be a millionaire or you want to lose 100 pounds or ten pounds. The miracle morning is what I have found to be the most effective strategy to accelerate your success and the way that works is this.
When I wanted to write the Miracle Morning and I already kind of alluded to this earlier, but I filtered it through all six of the life SAVERS. So I meditated on the feeling of being a best-selling author. Then I pulled out my affirmation then I those you know articulated why I wanted to be a best-selling author and why I wanted to change people's lives with Miracle Morning and what I needed to do or what I was committed to doing to make that a reality.
Then I visualize people reading the book as I mentioned and then me writing the book. Then I read books on how to write a book. I read a great book called If You Can Talk You Can Write and that helped me get over my insecurities and fears of being you know having writer's block. Then when I would exercise I would exercise thinking about the book, right. I went out of order.
Exercise and reading and then scribing, I would journal everyday my progress, what I was grateful for and what my highest priorities were to get the book written and then eventually when it was written it was okay. Now, I focused on how do I market it, how do I get it in hands of people? And so my biggest fear was I don't know if people are going to do it because people adhere to the limiting belief that says I'm not a morning person. And so the result people are getting are profound. I'll just give you -- I mean I can give you a lot of people, but I'll give you one person for example. I'll give a few examples.
Dawn Poe, so we have a miracle morning community on Facebook by the way. If you're on Facebook search for the miracle morning community, this community -- Chris, are you a part of the community yet by the way?
Christopher: I'm not, but I will be very shortly.
Hal: Oh, you're going to be blown away. I mean I am awe struck. I have never seen a community that is so positive and supportive of each other and encouraging and accountable. It's incredible. And it's grown from -- I started it with five people. Now, there are 7,300 and something all over the world. It's amazing.
So anyway, people post their progress in there. They always say, "Hey, I'm on day one, day two." They kind of use it as a place for support, but also for accountability. So one woman, Dawn Poe, she was posting her report every day and she said, "Hey, today was day 30. Here are my results. In 30 days I lost 12 pounds, I read three self-help books, more books than I've read in my entire life. I had the best month in my career in terms of sales and income. I'm the happiest I have ever been." And I think there's one more that I'm forgetting.
I had a college student. He read the book and he said he used to sleep until 11:00 a.m. or whenever he had his first class and then now he gets up every day early and his GPA went from a 2.1 I think to a 3.4 within one semester after doing the miracle morning. And then I want to read this last one. I actually just picked my book up.
So have you heard of the book the Millionaire Fastlane?
Christopher: I haven't actually. There's so many things I haven't read.
Hal: It's the best book I've ever read on building wealth. So the author who I was a huge fan of. So when he sent me a message I was like star struck. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh." I'm like, "I love this guy's book and he's sending me a message." Well, he sent a message saying, "Hal, I read your book and --" or no, no. I'm sorry. He said, "Your friends keep telling me that I need to read your book, but I'm not a morning person." He goes, "I'm retired. I don't need to be a morning person, but you know what my friends are pretty convincing. If you want to send me a copy I'll read it."
So I said, "Okay, sure." Sent him a copy and I get a Google alert a few days later and he writes this on his blog, okay. So this wasn't written for the book. I asked him if he could put it in afterwards and I redid the book with this in it, but here's what -- this is the author, MJ DeMarco, a millionaire retired, does not need to do anything to make money or anything. I mean he's been there, done that. He's where he wants to be.
Here's what he wrote. "I never thought I would say this about a morning book, but the Miracle Morning changed my life. You read that correctly. For years I've told myself I'm not a morning person and for the most part it was true. When I started reading this I was curious to see if it could break my strong narrative and my strong why. I did. After reading this book I actually started getting up at 4:00 a.m. and hitting the gym. You read that correctly, 4:00 freaking a.m. As a result," and listen to this, here are the results.
This is from that was already a successful as most people want to be. "As a result my days are far more productive and my physique is changing before my eyes." This is my favorite line and it's the last one. "I never thought I could be one of these idiots that gets up at 4:00 a.m. Now, I am one of those idiots. I do it five times a week and mostly without an alarm." MJ DeMarco.
[0:35:20]
So whether you are struggling like I was or you're already extraordinarily successful what the miracle morning does is it gets you to where all of us want to go which is the next level, right. No matter how successful someone is we all want to get to the next level and the miracle morning as I said is the most effective way I've ever discovered to get you there faster than you ever thought possible.
Christopher: Wow. You're fantastic salesman, Hal. I'm like kind of itching to hang up this call now and go read more about it. But yeah no that's fantastic.
Hal: Yeah. My wife said, "Stop trying to sell me." I go, "Sweetie, I swear I'm not like trying to sell. This is --"
Christopher: I think it's just your enthusiasm. That's all it is. I don't know it's like convincing.
Hal: That's funny. When I give sales training or like I talk I go, "Look," I go, "I don't really have sales skills that I'm aware of." I said, "I just -- I have the two things that every sales person has access to: enthusiasm and work ethic that is it. If you believe in something and you talk about it authentically with passion to me that's the best selling you could do, right. No tricks or tactic, just authenticity, right."
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. It's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been really insightful. Thank you.
Hal: Hey, thank you, Chris. I really, really appreciate it and I don't know -- am I allowed to mention where people can get the book?
Christopher: Of course, of course. I'm being forgetful here. Yes, so.
Hal: Oh, no problem. So yeah, if you want to get the book you can to Amazon.com. Now, if anyone's listening and you are financially strapped right now, I'm very sensitive to this because I have been there before. If you're listening and you go, "Hal, I love the book, but I don't even have the 15 bucks or whatever to buy it on Amazon," you can go to miraclemorning.com and get started for free by getting the first few chapters, a 17 minute training video and a 60 minute training audio.
Miraclemorning.com that is all free or you can go to Amazon to actually read the reviews, buy the book.
Christopher: Wow, that's quite incredible. I will definitely link to that. I think people would be very enthusiastic about that. That's brilliant. Thank you very much.
Hal: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it, Chris.
Christopher: No problem. Thank you.
[0:37:29] End of Audio
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