411: How To Live Your Life in 30 Day Challenges

Hal Elrod: Hey, there. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and you’re in the right place. We’re going to talk today about How to Live Your Life in 30-Day Challenges. What does that mean? It means how do you intentionally choose one area of your life, one important area that you want to hyperfocus on for the next 30 days and focus on improving it, enhancing it, expanding your knowledge, your awareness, how you show up in that area? And at the end of the year, of course, you multiply that by 12 months. You’ve got 12 areas of your life that you’ve focused on in terms of transformation or improvement or enlightenment if you will. And this is something I’ve done for quite a few years now, and it’s every 30 days just getting really clear what’s the most important, I call it my monthly mission, what’s the mission this month? What’s the most important thing for me to get done this month? I’m going to focus my Miracle Morning on that one thing and focus my time and my energy and my creativity on improving in that area. So, that’s the topic for today.

Before we dive in, I want to open with something I posted on social media the other day. it resonated with me. I mean, it was my own thoughts, but I thought it was worth sharing to start the episode today. Here’s what I wrote, “Each day, let us remember that we are all members of the human family. That despite our perceived differences, we are all fundamentally the same. From this perspective, we can embrace that what unites us is infinitely stronger and more deeply rooted than that which divides us. We can begin to replace judgment and condemnation with empathy and understanding, we can give up hate for love, and replace division with unity. And in doing so, we can begin to heal ourselves and the world.” Look, I realize that we have a lot of work to do in addition to this, but I do believe that it begins here. Once we can love and accept each other, regardless of our differences, and realize that we are all members of humanity, the human family that we are all striving for the same things, health, happiness, love, freedom, financial security, etc., then we can actively work together to support each other. So, now I’m asking you, what about you? Do you believe that we are all fundamentally the same and need to accept love and support each other now, arguably more than ever? That’s a theme for me. It was in 2021, and it really is going into 2022, which is unity. Unity is a theme for me and that to me really, it’s needed. And it’s one person at a time, it starts with you, it starts with me.

Alright, one more thing before we dive into today’s episode on How to Live Your Life in 30-Day Challenges, I got two things, actually, number one is an exciting announcement. I don’t know if you saw, if you follow me on social media, if you don’t, by the way, you can follow me on Instagram. I’m active almost every day there, Facebook as well. But Instagram’s probably my favorite platform on social media, but the Miracle Morning app, the official Miracle Morning mobile app for both iPhone and Android, is officially available right now in the App Store. I’ll put the links in this email so you can go back to the email, and there will be a link for the iPhone version, the App Store version, and a link to the Google Play Store if you’re on Android. But the Miracle Morning app has been something we’ve been working on for close to a decade, and we actually had an early release. I did kind of a make-your-own app when the book first came out, it flopped. The company went out of business, blah blah blah.

But anyway, so we’ve had multiple designers. I’ve had multiple designers, multiple designs, concepts, and none of them felt good enough. I just never felt like it was right. And this app, we’ve beta tested it with a huge group of over 100 members of our community for 30 days. The feedback was incredible. We implemented the feedback. The app is awesome, so check the links in this email to get the Miracle Morning app. And I think you’ll love it. There are daily videos from me and members of our community which I love watching, not the ones from me, but the ones from our community members every day, which is really cool. There’s tracking for your SAVERS, there are all sorts of resources and more, and we’re working on new updates for future versions. But this first one is fantastic, so check it out.

And then last but not least, of course, I want to take a minute to thank our sponsor Organifi. And if you’re a listener to the podcast, you know that Organifi has been our longest sponsor. In fact, they’re one of the only sponsors I’ve ever taken on other than maybe one or two here or there, but Organifi has been consistent, and I’m consistent because I’ve used their product for almost half of a decade now, roughly five or six years. And I use their Green Juice, their Red Juice. I use their Protein powder in my smoothie every day. I use their Gold at night, which is like a nighttime, warm kind of beverage. It’s like a tea to relax your nervous system and sleep better. I use their Pure. I took their Pure this morning, which is a mental clarity enhancing supplement. It’s a powder you put in. It’s really yummy tasting. It’s like a lemonade. And then what else? There was one other. Oh, their immunity, I use that during cold and flu season to boost my immune system, all the things. So, head over to Organifi.com/Hal, that’s O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal. Check out their plethora of products and then use the code H-A-L at checkout, HAL at checkout, you’ll get an additional 20% off your entire order, and I hope you find something there that you love. It’s something that I use every day to enhance my health, my energy, my nutrition, etc.

Alright, here we go. The first episode of 2022, without further ado, How to Live Your Life in 30-Day Challenges, is simply an extra strategy for you to make 2022 the best year of your life.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning community, friends, family, my fellow human being, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. This is Hal. And this is the first episode of 2022, the year 2022. And we just wrapped up a four-part series on an unconventional approach to make 2022 your best year ever. Many of you probably have been listening to that. I’ve gotten lots of feedback, which is cool. In fact, I always get feedback that’s really positive when we do a series. I’ve done like the Miracle Equation series in the past and different series on the podcast, and you seem to like that. So, we’ll do more of those here in 2022.

And if you missed that, if you missed the last four-part series, the premise of it is essentially, that your best year ever, we were kind of reframing the criteria by which you measure your best year ever. So, most folks measure their best year ever based on their results, which is, you set some goals. If you hit the goals, you have a great year. If you don’t hit your goals, it wasn’t a great year. The problem with that is you have to wait until the end of the year to see if it’s a great year, right? You’re living the entire year, it’s kind of the whole, you’re missing out on the journey trying to get to the destination. And if you get to the destination, you succeed. And if you don’t, you fail, right? So, that’s the kind of black and white measurement that most people use.

So, one way to measure your best year ever is the result at the end of the year. Another way to measure it, the second way would be on what happens to you during the year. Like if good things happen to you during the year, good things happen in your life, then it’s a great year. And if bad things happen that are out of your control, then it’s a bad year. This year, I got a divorce, or my spouse did this, or I got COVID, or this thing happened, it was a bad year, right? And that, of course, is never a great way to measure any aspect of your life, to measure it based on things that are out of your control because then you’re giving up the control and the power over your life, you’re giving it to circumstances or to people that you don’t have control over. The third way to measure, and this was really the foundation of the series was based on how you show up every day, how you show up every single day. And that’s the one thing that, fortunately, we can control, is how we show up every day. And the other two aren’t completely in our control, the other two measures that I just referenced.

And the thing is, life is going to do what life is going to do, right? It’s going to present us with challenges and obstacles and adversity that’s inevitable. But we get to choose how we show up every day in the face of, in the midst of life, in the midst of challenges and adversity. So, do you show up with fear and insecurity and pessimism and hopelessness and anger and frustration and disappointment? Because you can show up that way in the midst of life, in the midst of challenges, or even though life’s going to do what life is going to do, or do you choose to show up with courage and grace and optimism and love and forgiveness and compassion and discipline? And just that fire and gratitude, I mean, on and on, you get to choose how you show up.

And so, this four-part series that we just did, and I’m just reminding you because it’s important. In fact, you need to remember this like daily. It’s so funny, I think that we often hear something that we’ve heard before and we’re like, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before. I already know that. And we dismiss it. And it’s so important to not do that, to go, I need to revisit this every single day. Like you look at a master of anything, athletics is an easy one to point to, someone that’s a master at their craft, the best basketball player in the world, or a master of martial arts. They don’t do one move one time and go, yep, did it, done it, made the basket, I’m good. No, they practiced the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

In fact, in part, what was it? Two of the four-part series that we just did was about mindset, and I talked about how mindset is often misunderstood. We just think it’s positive thinking, like a good mindset, it’s positive thinking. And that’s for sure, I would say that’s a component of it. But my argument or my evolution in terms of thinking about your mindset is it’s about programming your mind every day with the thoughts, the words, the actions that you need to fulfill your potential, to achieve your goals. So, that’s a mindset, right? It’s a repetitive daily conditioning of your thoughts and your beliefs to be in alignment with the highest version, the optimal version of yourself, right? So, the point is that repetition is crucial, and that’s why so few people master anything because it gets boring after a while, you’re like, ah, I’ve been doing the same thing over and over every day for the last few weeks, and I’m bored, whereas the master says, I’ve been doing the same thing every day for the last few decades and I’m getting better. I still got a long way to go. It’s only been a few decades, right? I guess, like the 10,000-hour rule. Anyway, with all of that said, if you’d like to go back and listen to the four-part series if you haven’t heard it yet, I recommend starting with Part 1, which is Episode 407, and it can be found at HalElrod.com/407.

Now, today’s episode is 411, right? What’s the 411? And we’re going to talk about How to Live Your Life in 30-Day Challenges. I don’t know how long ago I kind of decided that I’m going to live my life in 30-day challenges, meaning every month, every 30 days, I’m going to choose one aspect of my life, at least one, sometimes it’s more. Oftentimes, I go big and I’m like, I’m going to focus on improving– in my physical health, I’m going to up-level in this way. In my relationship, I’m going to up-level in this way. In my marriage, I’m going to up-level in this way. As a dad, I’m going to up-level in this way. In my finances, my business, I’m going to up-level in this way. So, I often bite off more than I should probably chew. But the essence of this is choosing one area of your life, one area of your life that you want to take to the next level, right? It could be your physical health, or it could be your finances, or it could be your spirituality, or it could be your relationships or relationship, romantic relationship, could be your relationship with a child or a friend or a parent, or whomever, right? You choose an area of your life that you want to up-level. It could be in your career, the impact you’re making in the world. And you focus, you diligently focus on improving in that one area and you do it for 30 days.

And so, the idea is that you imagine if every year, you choose 12 aspects of your life that you want to up-level, and it could be the same one multiple months, or you might do, month one could be physical fitness, and then you might revisit at the end of the year or halfway through, whatever. There’s no exact way to do this. You can play with it so that it feels good for you. But the idea is that you pick one area of your life every single month and you’re constantly focused on improving, on getting better, on going to the next level, on evolving in the important areas of your life, and asking yourself where to start here. I would just ask you, yourself, what’s the most important area of my life or a very important area of my life? The word most can throw us off, it can, like, paralyze us, right? Ah, what’s the most important area? I don’t know. Is it this area? Or is it this area? This one is important, but so is this one. Ah, I don’t know, I’m paralyzed by uncertainty and lack of clarity, right? That happens to all of us.

So, be careful with the word most, if it trips you up. Just put your hand on your heart. In fact, do that right now, and ask yourself, what’s an area of my life right now that I really want to improve? Maybe it’s an area that you feel aspirationally inclined to transcend your current level of success or performance or satisfaction or fulfillment, right? Or maybe it’s an area that you’re feeling pain in, like, ah, I’ve been accepting mediocrity in this area of my life for too long. And damn it, no more, right? Maybe it’s painfully obvious. Maybe it’s your marriage or something, and you’re like, yeah, we are like, no, I’ve got to get serious about this. And I’m going to tell you from experience that when we’re stuck in an area of our life for a long time, it can often feel hopeless. You can go, it’s been this way for months or even for years. It’s been this way for years, I feel like giving up.

But I can tell you from experience, and I’d imagine that you can probably identify times in your life where you’ve seen an area that you were struggling with, and then you struggle in it for months or years. And then finally, something clicked, a conversation that you had, a book that you read, an example of someone else doing the thing that you wanted to do, that you wanted to overcome or improve. You saw somebody else do it. Something happened, something clicked for you, and you realized, I can do this. And then you took that first step, that baby step, and it felt better. And you saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of us have had that experience where something was difficult until we finally draw a line in the sand and we said, “I’m committed to making this change.”

And the beauty of living your life in 30-day challenges that’d be roughly 12 of them that you’d have this year. And by the way, if you’re listening to this on January– in fact, and it comes out January 5th, so if you’re like, oh, I guess I get to start February 1st. I missed my first 30-day challenge. No. Do a 25-day challenge. If you’re listening to this on January 13th, do a 17-day challenge, like just start where you are. In life, don’t wait for the perfect moment. The perfect moment is now. The perfect moment is now. So, I want to make sure that I’m clear on that. Again, we make these excuses, we get in our own head, we overcomplicate things that, oh, I miss January 1st, or now, I got to start on, I had to wait until the first of the month. No. Start where you are.

So, if you’re going to live your life in 30-day challenges, you can start with the 25-day challenge or a 20-day challenge or a 10-day challenge or whatever. In fact, what you could even do is you could, and I actually recommend this, you can start at 20, 25-day, whatever point you’re at running in. Maybe you’re listening to this six months from now, wherever you’re at right now, you could start the challenge now and you could use the first challenge as kind of your trial and error planning, tweaking, adjusting part of the challenge, meaning like you could actually restart it February 1st, right? So, wherever you’re at in the middle of the month right now, start your challenge, and your challenge, and I’m going to give you guys specific steps, so grab something and take notes with it. We’ll get into that. I’ll give you specific steps on how to do this. Right now, I’m just talking kind of high level getting your mindset, your mind wrapped around the ideas here, the concept of living your life in 30-day challenges.

But the point is, I find that for me, I always like trudge my way through the mud initially. Like, I almost never get started perfectly right off the bat and I’m in my flow, I’m in my zone. I usually mess up, make mistakes, and also not even just messing up, making mistakes, but I just don’t have clarity. In fact, it’s a great example. Going into the new year, I started planning my new year and setting my goals like the first week in December. And when I sat down, there were a lot of blanks. I’m like, I don’t know what I want to do, I’m not sure. And then, what ended up happening was I gained clarity day by day by day, from one shower to the next, falling asleep at night, from one night to the next, I would have these little moments of insight, of clarity, of inspiration. Maybe you operate the same way, but they rarely come when I sit down and I open my computer and I try to force the clarity. It rarely comes when I try to force it, it’s usually when I meditate. In fact, just so you guys know, here’s a little bonus tip. I’ll try to throw in a lot of bonus tips today, but when I meditate in the morning, something I’ve been doing, really just the last few weeks, I’ve done it actually before. I always come back to these things that work for me and then I forget them. I’m just as human as all of us.

But I now meditate with a journal on my lap, not my phone, but a written journal. And it’s a journal I found. Actually, I got it from the Front Row Dads retreat. What I love about it is the pages are perforated. It also has a little loop where the pen fits inside it, but most importantly, the pages are perforated. What I love about that is very often, I’ll journal something and then I don’t want it in my journal. I want to pull, rip it out and I want to use it for a to-do list, or I want to put it in a book that I’m reading or that I’m writing or whatever. So, anyway, so just a little bonus tip. I meditate with my journal, and very often when I’m meditating, I have an idea, an insight, an epiphany, and I pull up the journal. I write it down and then I close it, go right back to meditating. And then later, I go back and organize my thoughts in the journal and put it on my to-do list or into my goals or whatever.

So, again, the premise, choosing one area of your life that you want to improve and committing for 30 days to focus, to hyperfocus, to make that your primary focus for those 30 days. And it doesn’t mean you neglect anything else, of course, but it’s just that you’re putting an intention, you’re hyperfocusing on improving this area of your life. And what I find is that when you do that, when you focus on your one thing for the month, you can call it your monthly mission. In fact, I’ll talk more about monthly missions. I’ve done a podcast on that before. But your monthly mission, that’s what I tend to call my one area for the month. My primary focus for the month, when you focus on that, somehow it helps you improve every area of your life. And I think that it’s because you’re developing clarity and you’re developing discipline to focus on this one area, and that spills over into how you’re showing up in every area of your life, right?

Remember the premise of how we’re going to make 2022 our best year ever is by optimizing how we show up every day. And the two aspects of optimization that we covered in the four-part series that we just did, number one is the mindset, optimizing your mindset each day so you can show up with courage and clarity and focus and discipline and confidence and love and energy, beginning with that mindset optimization every morning. And then the second was your behaviors, optimizing your behaviors, ensuring that you’re focusing on the behaviors that will move the needle in your life, in your business toward your goals, in the areas that matter most. So, you choose your one thing each month that you want to optimize, that you want to focus on your monthly mission, and then your 30-day challenge is to hyperfocus on improving in that area.

Now, here’s where we’re going to tie in the Miracle Morning. This is really important. And the Miracle Morning, it’s your daily practice that is perfectly set up to incorporate a 30-day challenge within. Okay, so we did last year in the Miracle Morning Community Facebook group, we did Miracle Morning monthly missions. And we didn’t do them every month, in fact, I think, I started them in July last year. Actually, no, I started them in July 2020. But anyway, we didn’t do it every month, that’s my fault, right? But we did them here and there, I would start a monthly mission, a Miracle Morning monthly mission, and the idea was choosing that one area of your life that needs the most attention or improvement, or at least maybe not the most, careful with that word, but then focusing your Miracle Morning SAVERS primarily on improving in that one area.

So, first, you would start with, okay, and here you go, if you’re taking notes, you can start with step one is to choose your monthly mission. If you want to call it your Miracle Morning monthly mission, you can. I always like to give you or encourage you to be very intentional with the words that you choose, right? Language has a very different meaning for different people. So, I will just give you that flexibility, choose a language that resonates with you. But choose that one area, that’s step one is simply choosing the area, it could be one new habit that you want to add in. Like, you know what? I’ve really wanted to start biking or running or stretching for 10 minutes a day, right? So, choose that one habit. I’ve fallen off in my SAVERS. I haven’t been journaling or I haven’t been meditating.

So, just pick one new habit that you want to add in to your life. It could be something that you incorporate with your spouse or your family. I want to start reading to my kids at night. I want to start playing with– for me, last year, I incorporated spending just 30 minutes to an hour in my daughter’s bedroom every night in the evening after dinner, just hanging out with her and just talking with her and asking her questions. That was actually what we did is I had a book of 3,000 questions and I would go in and ask her like 20 to 40 questions every night. And it was such a beautiful way to deepen our connection, to get to know her better, to help her, and give her guidance where she wanted it. I try to not impose advice on my kids, or they usually roll their eyes at me, right? But if I go, hey, is this an area that you want any help and/or guidance in? And usually, if I phrase it that way, they go, yeah, actually, dad, what do you think? What if I just try to just spout out the guidance or the advice without asking if they want it? Asking for an invitation usually doesn’t go as well. But anyway, so that’s one thing, that’s an example of something that I did last year that could be your monthly mission, one new habit that you want to add into your life.

It could be achieving a specific, measurable goal. This month, I’m committed to making 20 phone calls a day or I’m committed to achieving this goal or doing everything in my power to achieve this specific goal. It could be just in a general intention, like, I want to be happier, I want to experience more gratitude. It could be again around health, I mentioned earlier, I want to eat healthier. And you can get specific, I’m going to cut out soda this month, I’m going to cut out alcohol, I’m going to cut out sugar, I’m going to cut out fast food, etc., right? Or I’m going to start eating, I’m going to do a smoothie every day with greens, I’m going to get the Organifi powder that I talked about in the beginning of the episode, or I’m going to do my Green Organifi powder every morning to start my day with some healthy organic nutrition every day. I’m going to eat salads every day or something. You can cut something out, you can add something. It could be the daily exercise, it could be around your income. Just giving you thought joggers here, right?

Again, it could be strengthening your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your parents. It could be calling your mom or your dad or both every day for 10 minutes or it could just be texting them. That’s something I try to do every night before bed, and usually, it’s after, I have already my phone on airplane mode and I lay down and I often forget, I’m like, oh, yeah, shoot. I didn’t text mom, dad, and Hailey. So, my mom, my dad, my sister Hailey, I usually text them, hey, good night, I’m going to bed. Goodnight, I love you so much. Just something super simple, and a little shortcut, usually, whoever I think of texting first, my mom, I’ll text her, and then I’ll usually copy and paste the text to my dad and to my sister and just change their name because I’m not writing them a novel, I’m just letting them know I’m thinking about them and I love them, but I figure, it takes me a minute or two and it’s a net positive, it’s adding value to their life, it’s adding value to our relationship, to their connection. And you never know when that person, when they needed that text, when they were feeling lonely, when they were struggling, right? So, that’s something that’s really a great return on investment, a minute or two of your time to send a thoughtful text and even copy and paste it to multiple people to let them know you love them and you’re thinking of them, but it can make a big difference for them.

Again, so step number one is choose your monthly mission. What’s the one area this month that you want to focus on improving? And remember, I mentioned this, I just touched on this, but anything that you want to improve on the outside begins with establishing and developing, number one, the mindsets, beliefs, confidence, clarity on the inside, and then combining that with the behaviors, the actions, the habits, the rituals that will create those meaningful improvements. You don’t have to eat the elephant. You got to take one bite at a time. It’s just making those baby steps. And this 30-day challenge concept allows you to take, instead of a 12-month goal where you feel like there’s this lack of urgency because you’ve got 12 months to work on your goals, incorporate them into your 30-day challenges so that there’s a little more urgency. Alright, I’m going to focus one day at a time every day for the next 30 days to improve in this area.

And then step number two is to clarify and affirm your mission. So, again, clarify and affirm your mission. Once you’ve decided on the area of your life that you want to improve, write out a simple affirmation that for that one area, it clarifies three things, so here are three simple guidelines for your affirmation. This is again, you’re going to clarify and affirm your mission. So, step number one, for the guidelines, so I shouldn’t say I’m confusing you because I’m on step number two, which is clarifying it from your mission. The first guideline, alright, so number one guideline, what are you committed to improving, accomplishing, stopping, no matter what, there is no other option. So, that should look like I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. And if you want to add in a time frame, you can say I’m committed to blank for January, every day during January. You can get real specific. I’m committed to blank. What are you committed to doing? I’m committed to making 10 phone calls, running for 10 minutes, texting my parents before bed, whatever, eating a salad at lunch, drinking a smoothie in the morning. I’m imposing my diet on you guys. So, what are you committed to improving or accomplishing or stopping or overcoming or whatever, right? So, that’s number one.

Number two, the second guideline, is you’re going to answer the question why is that outcome meaningful and important to you? So, why are you doing that? And I like to usually bullet point this. So, this is crucial to me. I’m committed to this because, and then what are the reasons? So, when I did my first monthly mission and I decided to share it in the Miracle Morning community, I was in a really difficult time in my life. This was May of 2020 when you may remember, I was sleeping. I didn’t tell people at the time because I think I was too in it, but I’ve shared it looking back. But I was sleeping two to four hours a night, I was really depressed, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I was a wreck. I was suicidal. I was in the worst mental and emotional state I had ever been in, so much so that I didn’t understand, like I couldn’t fathom how I had gotten to such a bad place.

And so, my first monthly mission, like most things that I teach in life, I did it for me, and then I thought, well, let me share this with other people. And so, for me, number one, during the month of May, it was May 2020, I wrote down, I am 100% committed to being fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment, no matter what, there is no other option. So, that was guideline number one for me. It was what I was committed to, being fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment, which was the opposite of how I was feeling. Now, thinking back, I would have rewarded that I probably would have included something about I’m at peace with how I feel while striving to be fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment because what you resist persists. And so, it’s important when you’re experiencing, here’s another bonus thought for you, but when you’re experiencing painful emotions, what makes them worse is wishing you weren’t experiencing painful emotions. That amplifies the pain that you’re feeling.

I’ll say that again. When you were experiencing painful emotions, wishing that you weren’t experiencing them only makes them more painful. It amplifies the pain, what you resist persists, right? So, if you’re feeling depressed and you’re like, no, I don’t want to feel this way, why am I feeling depressed? Which is what I was doing, I was judging myself for it, I was resisting it. I didn’t want to feel that way, which is it’s understandable, but it’s not beneficial. And so, if I were to reword that, again, it was to be completely at peace with the way that I’m feeling while I strive to be fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment, so that way I could experience both sides of the same coin. I could be at peace with the pain while I leaned into the joy and the gratitude. It’s available to us all at all times. It’s just sometimes that we’re blocking it, we’re not allowing ourselves to experience it.

And then so the second guideline, why is that outcome meaningful and important to you? So, I wrote down the reason it’s so important for me to be, and there’s a third guideline, which I’m kind of skipping ahead, but I’ll get to that so hang tight. I wrote down the reason it’s so important for me to be fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment is because the quality of my life is ultimately determined by how I feel inside, regardless of what’s going on around me. By getting back to being genuinely happy and deeply grateful, I’ll be a better husband, father, leader and be able to enjoy my life as it’s meant to be enjoyed. I wasn’t good in any of those things, I was not a good husband because I was a wreck, I was a mess. And it spilled over into every aspect of my life. I wasn’t a good leader because I was experiencing anxiety. You guys have no idea how hard it was to record the podcast for you. If you’ve ever been depressed, like deeply, deeply, deeply depressed, and if you’re there now, my heart goes out to you, and I hope some of what I’m sharing is helpful. But it was so hard to turn on the podcast and try to record something helpful for you guys when I was just struggling just to maintain. So, I really wanted to get back to being my genuine, my true nature that I had always been, not just for me, but for my family and for you, for all of us.

And then, the third guideline under step two, clarify and affirm your mission, the third guideline is which specific action or actions, might be more than one, but the simpler the better, but which specific action or actions will you take and win? Very important, get clarity, win to ensure that you make progress toward your commitment, your 30-day challenge commitment. So, which specific action or actions will you take and win to ensure that you make progress towards your commitment? Now, let me share with you what I wrote down for that because this is really something for you to model. This is how I was incorporating the Miracle Morning into my 30-day challenge. So, I wrote down, in order to be fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment, I will simply begin each day with the Miracle Morning SAVERS seven days per week from five to six a.m. and focus each of the SAVERS on generating and feeling authentic happiness and gratitude. So, that was the specific actions I was committed to taking. It wasn’t even doing anything differently, I was already doing the Miracle Morning, but it was focusing my Miracle Morning, focusing my SAVERS on my 30-day challenge commitment.

So, here’s what that looked like, and I’m going to give you this as an example, and then you can apply this to whatever your 30-day challenge is going to be. So, here we go. So, we’re going to go over the SAVERS, this is how I was applying each of the SAVERS to my 30-day challenge. Silence, I will meditate on feelings of peace, love, joy, and gratitude. If you’re a follower or a listener to the podcast, you’re probably familiar with emotional optimization meditation. I’ve been teaching that off and on here for the last year or so. Very quickly, it’s simply every day or not every day, but whenever you do the emotional optimization meditation, EOM, emotional optimization meditation, you identify what emotion would best serve you right now. And right now, might be in this moment, it might be today, it might be this morning, it might be at this time in your life. Right now is a relative term. But identify what emotion would best serve you right now, what emotional state.

Number two, think of something that brings about that emotional state for you. If you want to feel confident, if that’s the emotional state that you need right now in your life, to feel confident, think about the last time you felt confident, visualize it, get into that state, remember what it was like? And then step three, once you’ve identified the state that you want to be in, the optimal emotional state for you, once you’ve come up with some sort of stimulus to get you into that state, a memory, a thought, an idea, a vision, step three is to set your timer and meditate, a.k.a. marinate in that state. So, five minutes, ten minutes, however long, close your eyes and imagine, feel those emotions that you felt before. Maybe you haven’t been feeling them lately because you’re not in that same place, maybe you’re in a bad, difficult place. Maybe your emotions, you’ve been struggling emotionally. That’s the point of the emotional optimization meditation is that you are going to identify the emotion that best serves you. So, for me, silence, I will meditate on feelings of peace, love, joy, and gratitude. So, each day I would ask myself, now, we identify, okay, I want to feel feelings of peace or of love or of joy or of gratitude or of happiness and then I would think when was the last time I felt that? Or what circumstance or what person or people, what brings that about for me? Like I want to feel grateful, I think of my kids and I smile and I immediately feel grateful. And then the idea is that you marinate in that state, you meditate in that state for the five, ten minutes, an hour, whatever you want to do.

Now, the point of this is you’re essentially reprograming your nervous system to experience this emotion. And the more you do it, the easier and more natural it is for you to experience this emotion. You can tap into it. Now, when I do it, I usually have some sort of physical anchor of my hand on my heart very often, or my fingers where I touch my middle finger and face my palms up. Sometimes I put my hands in a prayer position. But the point is I’m anchoring it, that emotional state to a physical action that I can take that will immediately bring back that emotional state. When I used to do this for keynote speaking, the state would be confidence. I would want to be in a confident state so I could deliver my message powerfully. And I would squeeze my fist while I meditated in that state. And then when I was on stage, I could squeeze my fist and immediately be flooded with confidence.

So, I encourage you to tie in a physical anchor with that emotional state that you are meditating on. So, that was a little bonus extensive deep-dive lesson into silence, emotional optimization, meditation, but that for me, was how I incorporated my silence. So, for you, whatever your area, your mission for the month is, meditate on that. And when I say meditate, that could be as simple as just think about or not even think about, don’t force thoughts, allow thoughts, right? It’s those moments of silence when our genius is enabled when we’re able to receive messages from the universe or God or collective consciousness, whatever you want to tap into. I believe that’s where do ideas come from. I don’t take, I rarely, if ever, take credit for an idea because I go, no, that just popped in my head. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know where it came from, but I feel blessed that I had the idea. Thank you, source. Thank you, God. Thank you whoever that idea came from in those moments of silence.

So, if you’re trying to make money, like if your 30-day challenge is to increase your income or get clients, I’m just using this as an example, that’s very different from just feeling joy or focusing on spirituality, and I say it’s very different. To me, it’s all one, it’s all connected. But the point is, let’s say it’s money, and I’m using this as the example because you go, how do I meditate if I’m trying to increase my income or get clients or improve my business this month? You just set your intention. My intention is to increase my clients. My intention is to come up with a new idea for a book or for my business or whatever and just sit in silence, set your timer for five minutes. So, in this case, you may not use emotional optimization meditation, you might use a different form of meditation, a contemplative meditation where you’re just opening yourself up to receiving whatever ideas come up.

And as I mentioned earlier, keep the journal on your lap, and when that idea comes up, write it down. Don’t judge it as, oh, that’s kind of a dumb idea. No, write it down. If you get 10 dumb ideas, those might connect into a brilliant idea, right? So, that’s how you might use silence for your 30-day challenge. The point is you’re incorporating the 30-day challenge, whatever your objective is that you want, whatever you want to improve or achieve or overcome or stop doing, you’re just incorporating that into each of the SAVERS, affirmations, for me, I just recited those three guidelines. That was my affirmation, right? During the month of May, I’m 100% committed, be fully present, deeply grateful, and genuinely happy in every moment, no matter what, there’s no other option. The reason, it’s so important for me to be fully present and yada yada yada. In order to do that, here’s what I’ll do, the actions. So, that was my affirmation. I just committed to recite that over and over and over to reinforce that I was committed.

And also, I printed some other affirmations that I had written over the years and even that I downloaded on the internet about being happy and being grateful and overcoming depression. I had some other affirmation that we just read those every day. Visualization, visualize yourself, achieving that thing or doing the thing that you need to do today to achieve the objective that you have. Exercise, for me, I wrote down, I will go on a 30-minute mindfulness walk every day outside at 8:30 a.m. while being totally present to the beauty of nature, breathing in the fresh air, and generating feelings of happiness, joy, love, and gratitude that I have the ability to generate and feel it any time. So, see, I literally took exercise and incorporated feeling good by connecting with nature, going on a walk, feeling right into my exercise. Reading, I wrote down I will read books on happiness and gratitude, starting with the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie.

And then scribing, I will scribe a.k.a. write in my day one digital journal every day following the simple format. Number one, write down anything and everything that’s weighing on my mind that may be causing me stress or anxiety so that I can release it and create a clear mind for optimal creativity and resiliency. Number two, write one to three things that I’m deeply grateful for and sitting with each for a few minutes to feel and cultivate a deep sense of gratitude. And number three, write the top one to three actions or outcomes that I’m committed to complete today in order to know and feel that I accomplish what’s most important. So, that was my scribing practice during that time.

So, that’s a very detailed example. And I wanted to make it detailed so that you can have as many thought joggers as possible, things that you can model, that you can implement, that you can go, ooh, yeah, I could apply that in my SAVERS to my 30-day challenge, to my monthly mission. And that enables you to use your Miracle Morning to start every day focused on your 30-day challenge. And guess what? Every single day you’re making not necessarily measurable progress, not that you’re not making that, but with your Miracle Morning, you’re making mental and emotional progress that you’re moving forward by focusing on your challenge so that you’re acclimating to following through with this 30-day challenge. And every day, it gets easier and easier and easier, and every day, you feel more and more committed, and every day, you’re making more and more and more progress. And the beauty of this is after you do your first Miracle Morning or your first monthly mission, 30-day challenge, for January, and I don’t care again, if you’re starting on January 7th or 12th, it doesn’t matter, right? Start where you are. But if you do this 30-day challenge, you’re going to see, and it won’t be perfect, you might feel like you didn’t do it quite right or you could have done it better. You were slightly off.

Like I said, my first 30-day challenge or my first start to anything is usually, I fumble my way through it, but then I get better and I feel like, ooh, I made some mistakes, but I’m going to recommit. Challenge number two, monthly challenge number two is going to be even better than number one because I’m getting better. I’m getting better at how I show up every day for these 30-day challenges, I’m becoming more effective, I’m becoming more focused, more knowledgeable, I’m getting better. So, my invitation to you is to try living your life in 30-day challenges during 2022. And if there’s any resistance, if you’re like, I don’t know, I would ask you, what do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose by simply every month, picking one area of your life that you want to really focus on improving? It could be a really small area, by the way. It could be a five-minute commitment. I’m going to meditate for five minutes every day. I haven’t been doing that, that’s why I’m doing it this month. I’m going to meditate or if you want to go big, I’m going to do all my SAVERS this month. I’ve only been doing like two of them or three of them, I want to do all six of them. I want to do a full hour of 30 minutes, right? That’s my 30-day challenge. That would be a great month one, 30-day challenge to actually do your SAVERS for the full month, right? Talk about combining everything we’ve talked about today.

And then the beauty of it is if you focus on up-leveling your SAVERS and doing all six of them for 30 days for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, whatever works in your schedule, then now you’re going to have those tools in your tool belt to follow through with the rest, the next 11, 30-day challenges that you do. So, that’s a great first 30-day challenge is to really recommit to your Miracle Morning and doing all six of the SAVERS and following the example that I gave you today, just incorporate your 30-day challenge. And if your 30-day challenge is to do the SAVERS, then you don’t have to pick one thing that you do the SAVERS focused on, you can, meaning, the monthly mission is that you pick one area of your life you want to improve and then you filter it through your SAVERS.

Well, if your SAVERS is the one area of your life you want to improve, then you can kind of focus on your SAVERS, whatever you want them to be focused on. Or you could choose one other area of your life that you want to improve and filter it through the SAVERS. So, you do you. I always try to give you as much direction as I can and as many examples as I can, but as much flexibility as I can because there’s not one way to do things. You do things the way that works for you. I do things the way that works for me, and we can learn from each other, but we can still do things in a way that feels good and resonates with us. I hope that’s helpful for you.

And again, if you don’t have the Miracle Morning app yet, well, as of now, it’s supposed to be released in a few days, but we’re waiting on Apple and Google to approve it. So, I don’t know if it’s released the day that you’re listening to this or not, but you can preorder right now. So, go to– how do I tell you to find this? I’m posting it all over my social media. I sent you an email on it. So, click on the link in the email. There’s one for the App Store for Apple, there’s one for the App Store for Google, the Google Play Store, but it’s a 30-day challenge app, the Miracle Morning 30-Day Challenge app. And then once your 30-day challenge is over, you can either restart the 30-day challenge and do it month after month after month, which would go completely in line with this podcast. Or you can just continue it without a 30-day challenge and just continue your Miracle Morning tracking indefinitely. So, a 30-day challenge is done, and then you can just continue your Miracle Morning tracking indefinitely. The app is set up to work either way. Hope that made sense.

So, I think that’s it for today. Yeah, thank you so much for listening. I hope this is helpful for you, I hope it’s valuable. Step three, which is optional, is to share your progress publicly, like I’d love to see in the Miracle Morning community. I check in there every day in the Facebook group. And if you want to share, hey, my monthly mission, you want some accountability. My monthly mission is this for this month. Thank you for your support. Are you doing a monthly mission? That is something that I completely encourage you to do. In fact, now what I’m saying is that I should probably go into the community and set up a monthly mission this month. In fact, I will do that. I’ll make a commitment. I’ll do it right now.

So, if you go in the Miracle Morning community, I’ll pin it to the top. I’m going to have a monthly mission post so you can comment there and share your progress and what you’re going to do for your first monthly mission. And yeah, give it a try, living your life in 30-day challenges. It’s been a very valuable commitment for me to make, and I think it will be for you too. So, I love you so much. Thank you for listening today. And let’s make 2022 the best year of our lives because dammit, there is no good reason not to.

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