Welcome to Passive Real Estate Investing. I’m your host, Marco Santarelli. Well, we have a great show for you today. You know, there was a quote, I will member from someone I heard many, many years ago, and it’s basically this “Be the person you want to become.” And I think that’s really powerful, but the question is, is how do you do that? How do you be the person you want to become? So I think a lot of that comes down to the habits that we incorporate in our daily lives and that, that leads right into today’s topic and our guest for today. So without stealing any of his thunder, I’m gonna let Hal talk about everything that he has been working on for years here and put into a great book. So with that, let us move forward with our guest today.
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Well, it’s my pleasure to welcome Hal Elrod to the show. He is an author keynote speaker, a success coach, and he is the author of the bestselling book, The Miracle Morning, which is a phenomenal book. He’s also the author of The Miracle Equation, founder of The Miracle Morning book series. And he’s the host of the podcast Achieve Your Goals. Hal, welcome to the show!
Marco. It, it is a pleasure man. And great. Thank you for having me.
I’m glad to have you on, I mean, you’ve impacted so many people with your books, which has been out for years and you know, as I was telling you, before we started recording here, one of the people that I know Robert Kiyosaki told me on one of the cruises that I went on with him, how much it has changed his life. I mean, he was very vocal about it and he had nothing but good to say about it. And he’s one of those people that’s like always into personal development and he practices, you know what he preaches. Yeah. So that says a lot about the book, but we’re gonna get into that in a minute. If I love my audience, especially those that have never heard of you or your books to learn a little more about you and your history, because you actually had a air quotes fatal accident many years ago, and you’re obviously still here, which is phenomenal, but that changed the course of your life. So why don’t you share a little bit about your background and talk to us about what it was about that accident that changed the course of your life?
Yeah, absolutely. I was, so I was 20 years old. I was a sales rep for Cutco cutlery. I was, you know, in college and I actually one of the top reps in Cutco, they make kitchen knives for those that don’t know. And I was in direct sales with them and I gave a speech one night at one of their events. And that night driving home from the speech. My car was head on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles per hour. And I spun off the, the head on collision with a drunk driver, sent my car in a tailspin and my driver’s side door, the car behind me, my car spun sideways. And they crashed into my door at 70 miles per hour. And so if you can imagine, you know, having a car crash into your door at 70 miles an hour, what you’d imagine would happen.
And it crushed the left side of my car into my body. I broke 11 bones instantaneously in my leg, broke in half my arm broke in half. I shattered my elbow. I severed the nerve in my forearm, ruptured my spleen, punctured my lung, almost completely severed my ear, fractured my eye socket. And I was essentially that night I almost died or I did technically died. I was, I bled to death. I lost over blood over the course of an hour. When they finally pulled me out of the car, using the jaws of life I had bled out and my heart stopped beating and I stopped breathing. I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes and they used the defibrillators. They threw me onto a helicopter and put me into an eye IV and they shocked me back to life essentially. And after about six minutes without a heartbeat, they jolted me back to life.
And I, I went, spent six days in a coma. When I came outta the coma, I was told I would never walk again. And I had permanent brain damage. I came outta that coma with this mindset of, well, I can’t change what happened to me. Like I, I learned this in my Cutco sales training, believe it or not, it was called the five minute rule, which, and to this day, it’s one of the most powerful lessons I, I still live by and it simply says that when something goes wrong, when something doesn’t go, according to plan in your life, set your timer for five minutes and give yourself five minutes to, you know, moan, cry, complain, vent, like whatever. You gotta do, feel all your feelings don’t deny. But after the five minute timer went off, I was taught to say, can’t change it.
And to acknowledge I can’t go back in time and change what happened five minutes ago. So there’s no point in wishing it didn’t happen. There’s no point in being a victim. There’s no point in feeling sorry for myself. The only choice I really have, if I wanna move forward is I’ve gotta accept life exactly as it is, and be at peace with it and then ask, what can I do? What’s in my control to move forward. And so three weeks after the crash I took my first step, doctors said, I never walk again. And I, I said, I begged to differ if you will. And and then, yeah, as you mentioned, it changed the trajectory of my life, cuz I went, well, why did this happen to me? And not from like a victim, you know, I’m I, you know, why did this happen to me? I’m a good person. I don’t deserve this, but what can I do with this experience to add value, to improve my life, to help others. And I started writing a book. I started speaking and kind of, you know, went down the, doing the work that I do to this day, of course, in a different context. But yeah, sharing my story any way that good to inspire people that, Hey, no matter what happens to you can overcome your challenges and you can create anything that you want for your life.
So you mentioned the five second rule. I was gonna ask you about this later, but since you brought it up, let’s talk about it. Now. This was actually probably the biggest aha moment for me in everything. You talk about everything you write about because I have this bad habit and tendency to dwell on things that I can’t change or at least things that I can’t change immediately. And maybe cuz I’m just a, a plus personality. I wanna push push, push, but when things are not going my way in the timeframe that I want, I dwell on those things. But when you said, you know, to have this five-minute rule, hopefully I didn’t say five second rule before, but…
You said five-second, but five minutes, we corrected it.
Yeah. Yeah. For some reason I was talking, thinking about five seconds, but five minutes, that was an aha moment for me because it really forces you to put things in real life perspective. And can you just elaborate a little bit more on this? Cuz I think everybody listening to this, if they implement just that one thing and nothing else, I think it it’s a game changer for a lot of people.
This is one of the most important, I mean I’m glad you gave an opportunity here to go deeper because yeah, this is one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned and not just the five minute rule, but understanding the context behind what causes our emotional pain and how we can free ourselves from that. Right? So the cause of all emotional pain, right? Any anytime you’re feeling angry or sad or, or resentful or regretful, we point our finger at the thing that we believe is causing it, which is, oh, well of course I’m upset. Look at what happened to me, right. Or of course I’m angry. Did you hear what she said? Or he said, or of course I’m sad. Look at what I lost. We always are pointing at the circumstance, the event, the other person and assigning blame as to, that’s why I feel the way that I feel.
And what I learned at a young age was that every painful emotion that you’ve ever experienced in your life that you’re experiencing now or that you could experience in the future is self-created all of our emotional pain is self-created and it’s self-created by our resistance to the things that we can’t change. In other words, to the degree that we resist reality, right? Things, we can’t change our reality, the degree that we resist determines the degree of emotional pain that we create. And I’ll give you one of my favorite examples that brings this really makes it relatable for everybody. You know? Cause you might hear well you’re in this car accident. You know, I might have an epiphany like that too. No. How about traffic? You know, imagine when you leave the house late, maybe cuz you slept in or whatever the kids were, you know, acting up, whatever the reason is you left the house late and you’re headed to an appointment you’re headed to work, you’re headed to a meeting, whatever it is.
And being late is not good. Right? You’re gonna have some sort of consequence on the, on the other end when you get there and think how you spend the time. If you get in the car and you’re going, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be late. And then you hit traffic and most people, you know, you have this. No, no, not today. Ah, come on of all days, right? Like, like it’s the traffic’s fault that you left late. Right? But we end up, we spend that time in the car, frustrated and tense and gripping the steering wheel and running through the morning and wishing it would’ve gone differently and being angry that this or that did or didn’t happen. And that’s a microcosm for life. We spend those 30 minutes in the car, resisting reality, wishing it were different than it actually is or can be wishing.
We had left earlier wishing that the, the consequence that was gonna be at the end of the, you know, when we arrived, wasn’t there and what I used to be, that person like most. And then I realized, oh, I can’t change the traffic. I can’t change that. I left late this morning. I can’t change the pace of the cars in front of me, but I can choose to accept all of that fully and by so when you choose the opposite of resistance, which is acceptance to accept life exactly as it is, you essentially unlock the door to emotional freedom to being at peace. And so when I’m in traffic, now I go, I can’t change it. I don’t even need five minutes. I just need the acknowledgement of, oh yeah. Why am I upset over or something? I can’t change what a waste of my life, what a waste of energy.
Right. And so can’t change it. And then I get to turn up the music. I smile and I enjoy every moment in that car because that is the choice that we have. And life is too short, right? To spend time wishing you could change things that you cannot change. And that’s the past, everything that’s ever happened to you up until this point, you can’t change and you can’t change what somebody else is doing. Right. The only thing we can really control is ourselves. And the first step for me was that five-minute rule, which eventually did become, you mentioned the five-second rule after practicing it for a while. Eventually, I got to the point where I’d set a time for five minutes and I would, you know, I would curse or son of a, I can’t believe this is happening. Ugh. And then I’d look at my time around my phone and I’d go, I’ve still got, you know, 4 minutes and 38 seconds left. Like, why am I gonna sit here and dwell for the next four minutes when I could actually just turn off my timer and immediately do something to resolve the situation or to, to move forward.
I guess if you’re seasoned enough in practicing what you talk about in miracle morning, five minutes becomes five seconds cuz you can process it in your head so fast and you can eliminate all the negative thoughts and just focus on what you need to focus on. That is the stuff you’re gonna enjoy and that’s gonna move you forward. So maybe that’s a goal to aspire to is go from five minutes to five seconds.
Well, and that’s like to be fair if you’re listening to this, right, and someone’s going five minute rule, like I, I can’t get over something in five minutes. I need like, can I get like a five hour rule or a five day rule? Right. That was my thought when I first learned this and I go, there’s no way in the first time I set my timer for five minutes. Now again, I learned it in my sales training. So it was the context of like, you know, I had a big order cancel, right. I was accelerating, oh my gosh, I had a great order from a customer and they canceled it the next day. And I was just devastated and I set the timer for five minutes and when it went off, I remember I go, I I’m still upset the timer going off. Doesn’t change that I’m upset.
But Marco here’s how powerful this is what this does. Is it changes your awareness. Once you’re aware that wait a minute, I’m creating my emotional pain. It’s not cuz of the thing that happened or didn’t happen. It’s because I’m resisting it and wishing it were different. And then when the timer, eventually I remember it was about three weeks of practicing this five minute role and it got easier and easier and easier and just became natural where I’m like, can’t change it. I re that was where I remember I set the timer and it went on, you know, I looked at it, it was 4 minutes and 32 seconds left I think. And I remember turning it off and going. I was literally sitting in my apartment. I can picture the moment and I go, why extend this for another four and a half minutes? I’m done.
I can and accept it now in this moment. And when I came outta that coma, I was told I would never walk again. Now, granted, I took longer than five minutes. I took, you know, I mean, but I probably took five days to process and think through what if I’m in a wheelchair, the rest of my life. And I told my dad, I said, dad, if I’m in a wheelchair, the rest of my life, I’ve made a decision. I will be the happiest, most grateful person that you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair because I’m in a wheelchair either way. I’ve decided I will never again allow my circumstances that are out of my control to dictate my emotional wellbeing. I get to choose how I feel in any moment. I can be happy. I can be grateful even in the midst of the most difficult time in my life. And I’ve applied that ever since then, I answer a few years ago and it was horrible, but I went, I can’t change it. I might as well be the happiest and the most grateful person I can possibly be while I endure the most difficult time in my life. And it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Yeah. That’s powerful. I’m gonna come back to that in about two minutes, cuz I actually have a comment about that, but just for a moment, I mean, I love this deep dive that we’ve just done, but let’s just step back for a moment for yeah. You know, for some people’s benefit listening to this, you know, miracle mourning, the book has been widely regarded as actually one of the most life-changing books that was ever written. And if you go to Amazon, I mean, it’s got over what, 3005 star reviews.
It’s 10. It just surpassed 10,000.
Oh wow. Okay. So far more than 3000. That’s amazing for those listening. Just take a minute. Talk about what is the book about and really who is it for? I define that book in a way as a personal success book, beyond personal development, but actually towards success. But I I’d like to hear how you define your own book.
Yeah. So The Miracle Morning, I’ll just, I’ll tell a quick story. This is, that’s my style here telling a story, love it. In 2008, when the US economy crashed, I was like countless other people. I crashed with it. Like my BI at that time I was thriving when it started right before the economy crashed, I just bought my first house. My business was thriving. I, I had my own coaching business. I just published my first book back then taking life head on. I was launching a speaking career, like everything was going great. And then it felt like it was overnight, but it was really like a six month downward spiral where I lost over half of my clients because they couldn’t afford to pay me cuz they were feeling the effects of the economy. They were losing their job or their business was struggling. So I lost over half of my income.
I started living on credit cards. I went from deep debt and I, my house was foreclosed on by the bank. I had to move back in with my dad at 29 years old with my fiance, which not part of the plan. Right. And I got really depressed. I got, I was really, I just, I, it was depressing. I couldn’t figure out how to turn this thing around. And a series of events led me to go on a run and listen to a Jim Rohn audio. And Jim Rohn said, I’m gonna share the quote because this quote is what kind of gave birth to the idea for The Miracle Morning. It was never a book idea. This was my own desperate attempt to turn my life around. Jim Rohn said “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development.” And when I heard that, it just, it clicked for me where I kind of,you know, I’m a numbers guy, equated the numbers.
I go, okay. Yeah. On a scale of one to 10, you know, we all want level 10 success in our lives. And that’s true in every area, not just like your professional success, I’m talking in our relationships. We wanna be at a level 10. Our have you wanna be at a level 10? Right? Our, our health, we wanna be to level 10, our finances, every area of life. There’s this innate human desire and drive to, you know, have it as good as it can be. Right. But then I, I looked in the mirror and I asked myself, okay, if, if Jim Rohn is right, your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development. I went, okay, well I want will 10 success, but what’s my level of personal development. And at that time in my life, I was in, you know, I was in just like desperation work mode where I’d wake up, go in the office, you know, make calls, look at my computer, answer emails until at night when I was just burned out and then I would go to bed and I would do it again.
My level of personal development was like two or three, you know, maybe you had a four on a good day. And the epiphany I had was okay, I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna do a little research. I’m gonna figure out what do the world’s most successful people do for their personal development rituals. And I’m going to combine them to create the ultimate personal development ritual. And if I do, this was my theory. I thought if I do that every day, if I figure out what the best is, I do it every day. I will gradually slowly but surely become a better version of myself. I’ll become a level 10 person. I’ll develop the qualities, the characteristics, the mindset, the skills that will enable me to create that level 10 success that we all want. And I went home. I did this research. I decided, you know what?
I’m not a morning person, but there’s no better time to do this ritual than start my day with meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. Those were the six practices of The Miracle Morning, right? I woke up the next morning, like a kid on Christmas, Marco, like I was excited to try this. I was pretty mediocre at the whole thing, cuz I had never meditated before affirmations. The way they were taught to me were super. They felt cheesy. You know, I am awesome. I am a millionaire. I am powerful. Right? I don’t do affirmations that way. I don’t teach ’em that way in the book, but that’s how I started out. And even doing, you could say a mediocre morning that first day an hour later, I felt incredible. I thought if I can start every day like this, doing this ritual and having this much energy and clarity and motivation and, and, and learning and growing every morning, I feel so excited.
I thought it’s only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be to create the success I want in my life. And it happened faster than I ever imagined. It was less than two months later. Now, mind you, this was in 2008, the economy continued to crash. But even though it got worse, I got better. And within two months I had more than doubled my income in a declining economy. I had gone from being in the worst shape of my life physically, where I hadn’t exercised in six months to committing to run a 52 mile ultra-marathon. I had never run before. Wow. Except in high school PE class and my depression went away on day one because this morning ritual gave me hope. I thought this is the thing that could change everything. And I went to my wife after the two months, I said, sweetie, I signed two clients today.
We have officially doubled our income. We are earning the most income I’ve ever earned before. And the economy is still tanking and it’s all because of this morning ritual, I go, it feels like a miracle. And she goes, it’s your miracle morning! And I go, yeah, I like that miracle morning. I like that. So I started writing it in my schedule miracle morning and then to kind of transition and put a bow on the story of how this turned into a book. I started teaching it to my coaching clients, almost every single one of them, just like me believed that I’m not a morning person now. Like, but I’ll give it a try. And I think was like 13 outta 14 of my clients came back to their next call and said, oh my gosh, I’m having the best week in my career. You know, I’m reading, I’m doing your miracle warning and it, and I’m, I’m a morning person.
It’s amazing. And that’s when the light bulb went off and I went, if it changed my life and I wasn’t a morning person, it changed all of my clients’ lives and they weren’t morning people. Well, this could change the world. Like people need this. And I self-published the book three years later to an audience of very few, no one knew who I was, but I was committed for as long as it took that I was gonna share The Miracle Morning. And it’s, you know, it’s been to the 10 year anniversary of the book where over 3 million copies sold and I’m just started the way I look at it. There are 7 billion people that need this practice in their life that don’t know about it. And so most likely until the day that I die, you know, I’ll, I’ll be sharing The Miracle Morning, every chance that I can.
Well, this is probably resonating with a lot of people listening to the show. And when I looked at the metrics, there’s about 68,000 unique listeners to this show. Wow. So hopefully a few of those are gonna be inspired enough to pick up the book. So, I mean the answer to my question about, you know, who’s the book for, and what is it about you’ve answered the about, but it sounds like it’s for anybody who’s looking to improve themselves and improve their life. Right?
Yeah. I thank you. I forgot to answer that part of the question.
No, you’re fine. But so many people, you know, I hate to say live in mediocrity, but you know, so many people struggle with one thing or another, whether it’s finances, their weight, their career choice, whatever it may be, but that doesn’t mean that you’re stuck or you need to be stuck forever. It’s a, you know, we keep using this word as a choice. That’s a decision that you make, which makes me think about what Tony Robbins once said. “It’s something about that, your life, your destiny, and who you become is shaped by the decisions you make today.” And that’s such a powerful, powerful thought. So really the book is for anybody who wants to improve.
So it is extremely universal. And that’s one thing that I realized a few years ago. It, you know, The Miracle Morning is practiced by people in 217 countries. It’s practiced by people that are in elementary school students. In fact, it’s in a lot of elementary schools being done at the school. Now we have school program that are being rolled out across the country. And then there are like the next book in The Miracle Morning series. We have a series of books, The Miracle Morning for College Students, The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families, The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, The Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents on and on and on. And the next book in the series is The Miracle Morning for Seniors. And so what was really is I realized that this concept, it crosses cultures. It crosses all demographics from age, race, sex, you name it.
And I used to always, whenever I would give a speech, I would, I would have a put up a, a slide of Robert Kiyosaki and his quote about how The Miracle Morning changed his life. That was after I had told my story about how, you know, I was at rock bottom when I, I created The Miracle Morning. And I said, so if you’re wondering if this applies to you, if you’re anywhere between rock bottom and Robert Kiyosaki’s net worth of 80 million, if you’re anywhere in between that spectrum, The Miracle Morning applies to you. You know? So yeah, it really is universal for anyone. And that didn’t include if you’re like me and you’re struggling right now, The Miracle Morning can be the one thing that can turn that around. I’ve had many people and I, you know, I’m, I just, with a disclaimer here, I’ve had many people tell me that they overcame their depression because of The Miracle Morning.
And even many that told me they were able to stop taking their depression medication. Now again, I know that’s a, like, I’ve, I’m not a doctor not prescribing that. I’m just telling you anecdotally what I’ve been told many times I got over my depression, but then if you’re really successful and you’re like a Robert Kiyosaki that, you know, you’ve, you know, you sold millions of books and made millions of dollars, right? I mean, everything that you could, anybody could ever want human potential is limitless. There is always a next level, right? Yeah. And that, and like you said, Robert practices what he preaches. He does The Miracle Morning, almost every single day. And he has for, I think it’s been five or six years, maybe longer seven years. And that is a perfect example of you can never be too successful to wake up every day and optimize yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, so that you can be it your best for those that you love for those that you lead and for yourself.
A hundred percent. Yeah. I love that word limitless. It’s such a mind opening word and I’d love to, you know, repeat that to myself that we can be limitless. And we just strive towards that. That’s powerful. You know, one of the favorite quotes that I have in your book is “You are where you are because of who you were. But where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be.” Something like that. Is that pretty close?
Yeah. You hit it exactly word for word. That was right.
So you know that it’s a pretty deep statement. People listening to that are thinking, how do I do that? And is that even believable? But you know, it’s all about choices, the choices you make, shape your life and put you in the direction that you go, but can you just take a minute and elaborate on that quote, because I think that is deep and maybe even profound.
Yeah. So I’ll say the quote again, “You are where you are because of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be.” And you mentioned earlier, you know, you talked about mediocrity and I agree that I think most people settle for mediocrity and I don’t define mediocrity as how you compare to another person, right? So it’s not, you know, one person’s mediocre. The other’s not because they’re, they’re better than the other. To me, me is only a measure against your own potential, that limitless potential that we talked about. Right, right. And only, you know, if you’re settling and I think most people, they settle for less than they really want. And less than they’re capable of being, you know, we all want extraordinary life. I mentioned that level 10, we want level 10 success and fulfillment in our lives.
But most people wake up every day and life pretty much stays the same. And they just run the same patterns every day. And they, you know, they wake up at the same time. They go through their day, then they watch TV and veg out in the evening and then they go to bed and then they do it again. And then they do it again and they do it again. And what ends up happening is our life stays the same because our rituals and routines and daily habits are the same, you know? And then what happens happens is, you know, you wake up, you know, I, I always say, like, let’s say you’re, you’re 20 and you’re, you know, the world is your oyster and you’re ambitious and you’re gonna change. You know, you’re gonna create this amazing life, but you just get into these ruts.
And then all of a sudden 10 years go by, you wake up at 30 and you look back and you go, what the hell happened in my twenties? And why am I nowhere even close to where I was dreaming that I could be back then? Hmm. But then you don’t do anything different. And then another 10 years ago by you wake up at 40 and you go, oh man, right. This is not the life of my dreams. You know, this is not where I wanted to be. And so one of my mentors, Kevin Bracy, he to say, and he might have got it from somebody else. But very simply, “If you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different first.” And interestingly enough, that was the quote that got me to do my first miracle morning because I had done this research.
You know, I had created figured out what would be the ultimate personal development routine. And it was these six practices. And I thought, when am I gonna, then, then once I got to like rubber meeting the road, I go, well, when am I gonna fit in an extra hour? I don’t have, like, I wake up at [spp-timestamp time=”6:00″] AM. I work all day until I can’t work anymore. And then I watch an hour of TV and then I go to bed. Like I don’t have any room for The Miracle Morning. And then I looked at my schedule and I go that like [spp-timestamp time=”5:00″] AM was like, like kind of calling out to me and I’m just, and I resisted it. I go, no, I’m not getting up at five. I’m not a morning person. I don’t wanna wake up at [spp-timestamp time=”5:00″] AM. That’s me. And then I heard Kevin Bracy’s quote in my head, if you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different. First I’m looking at [spp-timestamp time=”5:00″] AM my schedule that comes into my mind and I go, it, I’m getting up at [spp-timestamp time=”5:00″] AM tomorrow. And, and once I committed, you know, it’s interesting once you commit the energy that you need, the motivation that you need tends to come alongside you. Yeah. I forgot your original question, but did I, I answer it in there?
I was just saying that quote is a very, very deep statement. It’s profound and you’re more or less answering it, you know, you’re elaborating on it. And you’re saying that it’s the choices that you make. And if you can’t find the time, you gotta make the time. And for you, that was waking up at [spp-timestamp time=”5:00″] AM rather than [spp-timestamp time=”6:00″] AM to fit that one hour in.
Yeah. And again, it’s, you know, to do The Miracle Morning, right? It’s The Miracle Morning is about becoming the person that you need to be to create everything that you want for your life. That in, in the simplest essence of The Miracle Morning, it’s a daily practice that has been proven by millions of people to work, right, to become the person that you need to be, create the life that you want, everything you want for your life. And that answer kinda the question is where you are as a result of who you were. But if you commit to The Miracle Morning or, you know, I mean, it’s not the only way to go, but it’s obviously it’s been proven really effective. That’s how you become the person that you need to be. And that determines where you end up. Right?
So you’ve mentioned routine multiple times here. We don’t need to go super deep into any of this, but can you just take that miracle morning routine and just break it into its part? So people have like a 30,000 foot view of what it entails. We don’t need to get so deep into specifics. Sure. Cuz it’s obviously a little more involved in that.
So there is an acronym that makes this really memorable. And I owe this to my wife. You know, these six practices were all random, kind of in no way to connect them. And I was writing the book one day, I was really frustrated and she goes, what’s wrong. I said, I have these six practices that make up The Miracle Morning. They work, but I didn’t invent any of them. And I don’t know how to make ’em cohesive. And she goes, why don’t you get a thesaurus and see if you can turn ’em into an acronym by swapping out some words and then it’ll be memorable. And I kissed her and I go, you’re, that’s brilliant. And so that we came up with the S.A.V.E.R.S., you know, that day, S A V E R S. This is what The Miracle Morning is, is these six practices done.
Most people do 30 to 60 minute version. You can customize do it in the order. There’s also a six minute miracle morning in look, there’s an entire chapter dedicated that on days where you’re really busy, you don’t have a full 30 minutes or a full 60 minutes. You can literally do a six minute miracle morning where you do one minute for each of the S.A.V.E.R.S.. And it enables you to, I mean, really well, I’ll explain that in a second. The first S is for Silence, that’s your meditation or your prayer time, starting your day peacefully getting centered, right? The A is for Affirmations, and again, not affirming the way we’ve been taught by like self-help gurus for decades, which is like, I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire, you know, and you’re supposed to convince yourself whatever you wanna believe, even though it’s not yet true.
I don’t believe in that. I think the truth will always prevail. So I believe in affirming what you’re committed to, my affirmations are structured like this. I am committed to blank… Right? Whatever the goal is, no matter what, there is no other option. And then I affirm why I’m committed to it. What are the bullet points? That the reason that I will do whatever it takes to achieve that thing. And then the third part of my affirmations is what will I do? And when will I do it to ensure that I get there, right? What are the specific actions I’ll take each day? So that’s what I’m affirming. The V is for Visualization, just like in the world’s greatest athletes, visualized them performing at their best before they jump on the court or the field we do the same before we engage with our family or go to work or whatever it is that we’re doing, visualize us performing in an optimal way. The E is for Exercise. The E in S.A.V.E.R.S. is for exercise. I’m not saying I gotta go to the gym in the morning, but it is crucial to even just do a minute or two of jumping jacks, do some pushups, get the blood, an oxygen flowing, wake up your limp system. So you have more energy, more mental clarity, and more motivation from that physical activity. First thing in the morning. the R is for Reading, right? And again, not rocket science here, but just every morning, starting your day with five or 10 pages out of a book that is teaching you what you need to know that you can apply that day, that will help you improve an area of your life. And the final S is for Scribing, which is a fancy word for journaling or writing, but you know, the acronym would’ve been awkward with a J at the end of it.
But that is, you know, every day I write down three things, I’m grateful for the three most important things I need to get done that day above all else, all the items on my to-do list. There’s dozens. I look at it and I go, what are the three that are, make the biggest difference in my life? Those six practices, Robert Kiyosaki said it best. He said, Hal, any one of those will change your life. If you do it every day, he said, I really believe that you named The Miracle Morning correctly, because when you do all six of the most timeless, proven personal development practices in the history of human, he said, it creates miracles in your life. And so those are the S.A.V.E.R.S. and that is The Miracle Morning.
You know, it’s, it’s interesting how you kind of came together to put this book by looking at however many successful people out there and what they do, because that’s exactly what Napoleon hill did when he wrote, think and grow rich. He went and interviewed all the most successful, you know, multi, mega millionaires and billionaires of the time to find out what the common denominator was across all these people. And that’s how we compiled that book and created the book. So it sounds like you’ve done something very, very similar, which is great.
Robert said that he goes every successful person on the planet, swears by at least one of the S.A.V.E.R.S., he said, some people, you know, they swear by meditation or they swear by the books they’ve read, or they swear by their visualization said, I’ve never heard of anyone that did all six of these practices in one, you know, at all, let alone in one 30 or 60 minute ritual, first thing in the morning, he said, that’s why it’s so effective is you’re not just harnessing the power of one of them or even two or three. You’re literally doing all six of these practices that people have sworn by for centuries.
Definitely. So how do you wanna wrap this up? Do you want to talk about your ABC rule that I’ve heard you about before? Or is it better just to kind of give an overview of the 30 day plan, the outline of how you implement, you know, the S.A.V.E.R.S..
Yeah, I would, I would say probably if, yeah, if somebody is listening to this and they’re, you know, they’re maybe even if they’re not a morning person, what’s the next step, how do they get started? What’s the first step.
Yeah. Well, I’ll let you take it then.
Okay. So the book ends with a 30 day challenge and the previous chapter sets up the 30 day challenge in terms of why do we struggle to make changes in our lives and how can we successfully make meaningful changes that we can sustain? And that will last, when it comes to the 30 day challenge, it’s really simple. It’s wake up 30 minutes earlier than you do now. So it’s not a huge ask, right? If that means 30 minutes, you know, less of Netflix binging at night or something, right. Just wake up 30 minutes earlier. Now you can do an hour if you want. Right. But I’m just simply starting at 30 minutes. And then just start with one of the S.A.V.E.R.S., start with one of the S.A.V.E.R.S. and see how you feel after even just the few days, the first week it’s about waking up with intention is a big part of it.
Not resisting the act of waking up, but waking up with purpose with intention and devoting that time to becoming a better version of yourself. A lot of people, if you’ve never read The Miracle Morning, they will do the R in S.A.V.E.R.S. for that 30 minutes. Right? So they’ll wake up 30 minutes earlier and then they’ll, you know, stumble out in the living room and they’ll grab their miracle morning book and they’ll just start reading it. And then once you get to the chapter on silence, the S in S.A.V.E.R.S., you incorporate that in your miracle morning, and then you get to the chapter on affirmations, and then you incorporate that, right? So you can, you don’t have to start with all of it at once. You can start with baby steps, 30 minutes earlier, one of the S.A.V.E.R.S., you can start with reading or whichever, and then you can add the other S.A.V.E.R.S. in, you know, as you go.
One tip that I’ll give that’s very, very important. Actually, there’s two things. I’ll suggest. Number one is join The Miracle Morning community on Facebook. You can go to miracle morning, community.com. It’s a free Facebook group. Nothing’s being sold in there. There’s no charge. There are 330,000 people in that group from over 200 countries. And it has become one of the most supportive, engaged online communities, you know, filled of like-minded people that are all committed to waking up to their full potential that you’ll ever see. It’s incredible. And so a lot of folks will join that before they even read the book, just to kind of see what other people are doing. So again, miraclemorningcommunity.com is where you can, it’ll redirect to the Facebook group. But one tip. I want to give you if you are not a morning person, like if you identify as you know, I’m not a morning person, first thing I would say, join the club.
I did not identify as a morning person, which is why it took that quote from my mentor, Kevin Bracy, if you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different first. And I went, ah, okay, fine. I’ll get up an hour earlier, right? But if you’re not a morning person know this, we surveyed The Miracle Morning community. You know which a hundred well there’s millions of people worldwide, but we had access via email to hundreds of thousands of those people. And we asked one of the questions on the survey was, were you a morning person before The Miracle Morning? Or were you not a morning? Person was The Miracle Morning. Your first time ever, once you read the book, your first time being a morning person say 72% of the people in the community that do The Miracle Morning, you know, five to six, seven days a week said they had never in their life, been a morning person until they read the book.
And that’s what, you know, what switched it for them. So if you’re not a morning person, or you don’t think that you are, I’ll say that, I believe that’s a limiting belief. Like if you, I used not run, I hated running. So I wasn’t a runner. I identified as I’m not a runner. I don’t like running. I like, I, I just, I can’t do it. I can’t catch my breath. It’s not me out. It’s I’m not a runner. Then I started running slowly. Just first day. I walked for a minute. Second day, I walked for five minutes. Third day, I walked for four minutes, ran for one minute and just stepped it up from there. And a few weeks later, later I went, oh, I’m a runner. Cuz I started running. You start waking up early at first. It might feel outta your comfort zone, but then you do it a few days and you’re like, whoa, this feels great.
I love getting this awesome. Start to the day I am a morning person. And the one tip I want to give you is this. If you’re gonna do the 30 day challenge, move your alarm clock across the room is are, as you possibly can to still be able to hear it because most of us keep our alarm clock within arms reach. And if you can reach over and turn off your alarm while you’re still half asleep, you’re gonna do it probably nine outta 10 times, maybe 10 outta 10 times myself included my alarm clocks in the bathroom. And so when you get out of bed and you are forced to stand up, walk across the room, you’re now 10 times more alert and aware and awake than you were when you were fumbling over in the dark to turn off the alarm clock. And so once you turn off that alarm clock immediately go brush your teeth, rehydrate with a full glass of water, head out into the living room and go do your first miracle morning.
Great tip. Great tip. So with the community size that you have and all the people that you’ve talked to, do you ever get asked or even told that The Miracle Morning S.A.V.E.R.S. is just too simplistic, overly simplistic? Have you ever been told that it’s a little deceiving on how simplistic it actually is?
Honestly, it’s the opposite. I’ve realized that if I had not, if my wife who I call her, my muse now, because she’s the one that, she’s the one that thought of The Miracle Morning, right? I told her my life, it felt like it was a miracle. This routine I was doing in the morning and she goes, it’s your miracle morning. And then she had the idea for getting at thesaurus and creating the S.A.V.E.R.S.. So I call her my muse but here’s the point. I cannot tell you how many people in the community. They don’t reference their miracle morning. They reference their S.A.V.E.R.S.. I have Robert Kiyosaki tell me. And he’s in the movie. We didn’t even mention this, but there is a Miracle Morning documentary. There’s a movie and it has Robert Kiyosaki and Mel Robbins and Brendon Burchard and Robin Sharma and Laila Ali, Muhammad Ali’s daughter, all these people, we went into their homes to learn about their miracle morning.
What’s their morning ritual. And Robert says in the movie he talks about, he goes the saves. It just works. Cuz I can remember it S. A. V. E. R. S. Right. That’s what he said in the movie. And so, yeah. So I think that if we hadn’t have named it, the S.A.V.E.R.S., that was what made it sticky and people could remember it. The simplicity is where it becomes really easy and practical and repeatable sure. To do. And so I think, I, I actually think to answer your question, it is the opposite. It was, the S.A.V.E.R.S. has been crucial to making the, the practice, you know, people.
Yeah. So let me take that one level deeper because that’s really where I was going with it. Like S.A.V.E.R.S. is a great acronym and I wasn’t really referring to the acronym as much as I was referring to the components, the actual components of scribing reading, you know, affirmations and all that stuff. The combination of those parts that make up miracle mourning. Do you ever get told or asked that this sounds too simple as if it’s just easy but simplistic because these are things I’ve heard my entire life that I should do.
I think that our culture is really conditioned to go after new in fact, actually, yes. The best answer to this question is the original answer, which is when I went online. So this is how I’m gonna take you back real quick. So I, this is how, this is how this went. I, I was on this run. I heard this Jim Rohn quote, I go, I gotta go create the most extraordinary, effective, personal development routine in existence. And I was only looking for one or two practices. I wanted to find out what’s the best practice to do for daily personal development. So I googled per personal development rituals of millionaires and billionaires and champions and just, I just googled every phrase I could think of. And I had a notepad and I found an article that said fortune 500 CEOs who swear by meditation. And that really triggered or caught me off guard because I always thought of meditation is like, I picture, you know, people, I don’t know monks, I guess.
I never a thought, I never attached it to business success, to fortune 500 CEOs saying that that’s how they get their best ideas, how they lower stress, how they gain clarity. So I wrote down meditation on my notepad, like why I’m like, I, I gotta try meditation. I mean, these guys and gals are swearing by it for their success. And then I saw a clip on Ellen DeGeneres interviewing Will Smith and will she asked, will Smith, how he became one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, plus a rap cur star and all these, you know, success that he achieved. And he said affirmations. He said, I learned about affirmations when I was 15 years old. And I wrote out affirmations that just defined what I wanted to accomplish in my life and who I needed to become to accomplish those things. He said, and I read the affirmations over and over and over every day it shaped my mind to think and live in alignment with what I was affirming. And so I went, well, I gotta try affirmations. Right. And on and on and on with these six practices, I had a whole list of six and I was looking at ’em going, none of these are new,
Like none of these are revolutionary. These have been around for centuries. And I almost threw in the towel and I don’t know which ones the best. So I got overwhelmed. And then the epiphany was when I went, wait a minute, what if I did all of these?
Right. That’s true.
What if I woke up tomorrow and I didn’t just pick one or two of these life changing practice? What if I did all six of them? I thought that would be the ultimate routine. And so that’s how The Miracle Morning was born. And so again, the answer to your question is, has anybody ever said it was too simple or too, these are all old. It’s been around forever, right? Yes I did. Right. I did. And then, but it, and then Robert Kiyosaki though, again, he said it best, which is any one of these. He said, you’d be hard pressed to find a successful person that doesn’t swear by at least one of the S.A.V.E.R.S.. Right? So if all you do is meditate every morning, that’s a miracle morning, right? I mean, that’s, that’s a version of it, right? But when you do all six, you’re harnessing the benefits of meditation and affirmations and visualization and exercise and reading and journaling. First thing in the morning, you’re putting yourself in a peak, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state every morning to start your day. And then it’s, you know, it’s game over or game on, I should say.
Yeah, I love that answer. It’s there’s almost like a compound effect there where they work synergistically. And one plus one equals three plus one is six plus one is 12, whatever it may be. So that’ss beautiful. Very powerful. Cool. Well, Hal hey, I appreciate you coming on the show. This has been very enlightening and I, I think this is going to resonate with a out of people because this is kind of like the self-help book of all self-help books. It’s really what you should be doing first because the reading part is one of the parts of the S.A.V.E.R.S. and you read to increase your knowledge and improve what you’re doing and become a better person and become more successful in your real estate investing or whatever it might be. But that’s just one component of S.A.V.E.R.S.. So sure. This is kind of like the book that precedes all the other books. So learn this, read this, do this, and then keep doing everything else that you’re doing. And at least that’s the way I see it.
Yeah. I, I won’t argue with that.
Perfect. Well, listen, you’re a successful author. You’ve got great books. You’re a success coach. Why don’t you share with our audience where they can find you more about you and where you, they can find your programs and your books?
Yeah, the best place is miracle morning.com. That is a hub for everything. So if you go to miracle morning.com, you can get a free, fast start kit, which is basically the first few chapters of the book. It’s a sneak peek of the book. It’s a video, a short 15 minute video training on The Miracle Morning. And it’s actually a, it’s a 15 minute speech that I gave. And then it’s a, there’s a 60 minute audio. So miraclemorning.com. You can start there with the free stuff. You can find the book there, all of the books, there’s 18 books in The Miracle Morning series. You can watch the movie, right? There’s the hub for the movie is that miracle morning.com the community. You can join The Miracle Morning community from miraclemorning.com. And then also we have an app that launched in January, a brand new miracle morning app to help kind of hold you accountable for your 30 day challenge. And again, all of that is at miraclemorning.com.
That’s great. We’ll put all that in the show notes. You’re missing one book though. I think The Miracle Morning for Real Estate Investors.
Yeah. It’s on the, list’s so many, probably a hundred titles. I think on the list that I gotta get around to, to writing at some point.
I love it. All right. Well, Hal hang tight. I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. It’s been wonderful and hopefully this has been helpful for a lot of people. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Marco. And everybody listening. Thank you so much for being here.
I hope you enjoy today’s episode. That was very enlightening and his are phenomenal. So I highly recommend you pick up a copy, but that is it for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember to subscribe. So you catch every week’s new episode. We have some great guests coming on. I mean, all our guests are great, but we have some really good guys and gals queued up for future episodes. So be sure to tune in for those that is about it for today, help to spread the word, share this with your friends and family. And that is it. Thank you for listening. See you all on our next episode.
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