[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hey, today, we’re going to talk about how to receive divine guidance. How do you get out of the way in terms of your overactive, ego-driven thinking brain that feels like you have to solve all of your problems and figure everything out on your own? And how do you get out of your way so that you can make room, create space to receive divine guidance? Think about that. When you have your best ideas, you don’t think hard to get to the idea. You are falling asleep at night, taking a shower, waking up in the morning, meditating, you’re creating space, and that divine guidance, those divine downloads come to you unprompted. That’s the key to your biggest breakthroughs in life. And today, we’re going to unpack how you get there.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and I am talking to you today out of inspiration. And what do I mean by that? Well, we’re going to talk about how to stop thinking, or I should say why to stop thinking and to start receiving. And what do I mean by that? Well, I was just at a mastermind with a bunch of authors, 52 of us. And it’s a pretty cool mastermind. There were some of the top authors in the country there, actually, from around the world, including like a children’s book author Adam Wallace who sold 15 million copies of How to Catch a Unicorn, and James Clear was there, author of Atomic Habits. And this was my third year at the event.

Another author that was there is Joseph Nguyen, who I met last year. He wrote the book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End of Suffering. And I met him last year at the event. We really connected. He is a really nice guy, very smart human being, very intelligent, and he’s very tapped in to source, to God, to the spiritual side. He’s inspired. He writes about, in his book, the difference between setting goals from desperation, which is like, I need to make more money, so I’m going to set a goal to make more money, versus setting goals from inspiration. And a goal from inspiration is the kind that when you’re taking a shower or you’re falling asleep at night or you’re meditating in the morning and you’re inspired with a thought.

He talks about the difference between thinking, which is from our ego, it’s what our mind does when we’re thinking and analyzing and overthinking, and that’s what leads to anxiety. And a lot of our thoughts are negative and self-limiting and self-defeating and destructive, right? Many of my thoughts, I can even argue, the majority of my thoughts are negative. They used to be more positive, but that’s another story for another time, or maybe I’ll weave it in today.

But he talks about the difference between a thought and thinking. So, thinking is what our ego does, what our mind does when we’re trying to control things. And that’s what causes us anxiety because we feel like we have to control things and so much is uncontrollable, versus a thought, which is just a random moment of inspiration. It comes from God, from collective consciousness. Maybe it emerges from your subconscious or your highest conscious or all of the above, depending on the moment, the thought, the inspiration.

I want to read a passage from the book that talks about the difference between our thinking and thought. He says our thinking, this is again from Don’t Believe Everything You Think, highly recommended. It’s like a must-read book. I think it sold 1.7 million copies in the last couple of years, mostly word of mouth. “So, our thinking creates a dam that blocks the river of inspiration within our minds, leading to self-doubt, self-sabotage, and anxiety. But once the dam is removed, so once thinking is removed, the ecosystem will heal and return to its natural state. The same is true for our minds. When we’re tapped into our intuition and free from the blockages that come from thinking, new, inspiring thoughts and ideas can freely come through us as intended, and that is how we create goals out of inspiration instead of desperation. A question that significantly helps me settle my unhelpful thinking and tap into the limitless well of creative possibilities is this, ‘If I had infinite money, had no fear, and didn’t feel the need to receive any recognition, what would I do or create?’ Try asking the question and seeing what comes up for you.” And then he goes on to conclude this chapter by saying, “To a mind without the limits of thinking, anything is possible.”

I want to invite you to consider for yourself where your inspiration comes from. Is it when you’re thinking, as in you’re trying to figure things out? Or is it when you’re not thinking, when you’re in a state of non-thinking, such as falling asleep at night? And I know for me, that’s when many of my best ideas come. And sometimes, it’s annoying because you’re like, I just want to sleep, but I can’t shut my mind off. But if your mind is worrying about things, you’re thinking, right? You’re thinking about ruminating about the things that cause you stress. That makes it real difficult to fall asleep. I’d much rather be woken up or have my falling asleep interrupted by inspiration of a thought, an idea.

And I believe that God places those in our consciousness. And I don’t know how to explain that process, so I’m not going to act like I know how that works. But Miracle Morning, like I always say, Miracle Morning, that whole concept, I was inspired to create that. I didn’t think, hmm, I really want to write a book. What’s the best book I could write? In fact, I’m dealing with that right now, right? And oh, you’ll love this. I’ll get there in a second. But I’m dealing with that right now where I’m trying to figure out, I do want to write another book, but when I sit down, I try to think through what I should write about, it feels, I don’t know, it’s stressful.

And then when I was at the mastermind the other day, the Author Mastermind, a woman named Tiffany Aliche. She’s known as the Budgetnista. I’d her on the podcast a while back. She shared her story on the last day of the mastermind, and it was the story of her husband calling her to let her know that he had a headache. He was a very healthy, fit 45-ish-year-old man. And he called her to say he had a headache and he was going to go to the emergency room because he felt like it was different than a normal headache. He was concerned. It was probably his intuition. And three days later, he died of brain aneurysm.

And when she shared her story– I wasn’t planning on speaking at the event. I contributed here and there, just stood up, raised my hand, that kind of thing, but I wasn’t planning on speaking, like giving a message in front of the room. And when Tiffany shared her story and her authenticity and her vulnerability, it really opened, like, I felt inspired, right? I had a thought. The thought that came in, I didn’t think it, the thought came in, right? Oh, the difference by the way, just real quick for context, that Joseph talks about is that a thought is a noun, thinking is a verb. That helps you distinguish the two, right? Thinking is a verb, it’s an action. It’s something that you are doing, whereas a thought is something that just comes to you, it emerges. Nobody really knows where thoughts come. It’s an electrical impulse, I believe. You can actually measure a thought, right?

So, the thought came to me, oh, I’m supposed to give a message at this event. I’m supposed to share something. And what it was, I wasn’t sure. So, I quieted my mind and I just started journaling. I just started writing. And what came up for me is that we’re at this Author Mastermind, these are all very brilliant authors, and we’re learning how to reach more people and sell more books and write really effectively to help people implement the messages in our books, right? So, we’re learning all these strategies to write better books, sell more books, impact more people, and then also, some business strategies, like how do you utilize your book to maybe create a coaching program or an online course? So, everybody’s sharing different ways that they approach authorship, not just writing the book, but even beyond that. How do you take the book and turn it into coaching or content that can help people?

And what I realized as I was inspired in that moment, the thought that came to me was, everybody’s learning things that don’t matter most, right? Meaning why are you trying to sell more books, whether it’s to make more money or to impact more lives, but what do you really care about? What really matters? And most of the people in that room are parents. Not all of them, but most of them, right? I would say our kids, whether you’re a parent or not, our family, our loved ones, our health, and so, what came to me in that moment was, oh, I’m not supposed to give a message related to books at all. I’m supposed to give a message to this audience about what really matters most.

And so, I jotted some things down and I sent a text message to Mike Michalowicz who’s the author of Profit First and many other books, and he is the emcee and kind of hosts the event. And I said, hey, Mike, no pressure at all, but I felt inspired after Tiffany’s message that maybe I should share a message with this group about what really matters most in their lives and what they should make sure they’re prioritizing, in addition or before, all the cool things that we learned in the last two and a half days at this event. And he said, “Oh, I would love that, Hal. I think that would be a really powerful message.” He said, “I’ll give you– is 15 minutes enough time?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely.”

And then he actually text back. He said, “Hey, would you go last? Would you close out the event?” And I’m going to be honest with you. I felt, I was like, ah, yes, but I also felt really nervous. You have to understand that this is a room full of not just like my peers, but people that I look up to, that I admire, that I hold in the highest regard, and not that I don’t hold every human being with that level of just like inherent respect, but this is like, oh, man, half of these people are professional speakers, right? If that helps put it in context. Like, half of these people or maybe even 80% are professional speakers and I’m supposed to close out the event. I’m the last thing they’re going to hear, and I don’t even know what I’m going to talk about. I don’t have a speech written.

Like, when I give a speech, it’s usually either the Miracle Morning message that I’ve given hundreds of times, thousand times, and I’ve got it dialed in and I know how to open it and capture attention, and I’ve got jokes that are built in, right? It’s a well-orchestrated performance, message, right? And, so this is like, I’ve got nothing. I’ve got no time to practice. Literally, I was like a few hours away from the event ending.

So, I said yes to him because again, I wasn’t thinking that I should give a message. I was inspired with the thought that I should, that I needed to give a message. Again, you think about this, it was as much of a feeling as it was a cognitive function. It was as much like a, oh, like an all-encompassing full mind, body, and soul feeling of certainty, of inspiration that I’m supposed to give this message. And please stick with me, I know I’m sharing a story, but I’m going to close this out with some very tactical advice for you on how you can move from thinking to receiving, to receiving inspiration, to receiving inspired thoughts, divine downloads. I love that term, right? And divine downloads, that’s what they feel like to me, and maybe you can relate, these inspirational thoughts of, wow, this is what I’m supposed to do. The problem is we often turn that into thinking. You go, oh, no, wait. Who am I to do that? I don’t have time for that. I’m not qualified to do that. Like, you follow? The thought of inspiration comes in and then we think ourselves out of acting on it with all sorts of excuses and self-judgment and imposter syndrome and self-imposed limitations.

And those, for sure, were starting to come up for me in that moment. I’m like, oh, my gosh, who am I to close out this event of these authors? So, I said, yes. And then I wrote down, I pulled out a piece of paper. I started on my phone. I was writing notes, writing notes during the event, and feverishly writing notes and thinking, okay, what am I going to talk about? What are the stories I’m going to tell? What’s the message? And what came up for me is what really matters most was the message. Like, I mean, yeah, that was the title. I said, hey, that was the title of the message, What Really Matters Most.

And so, here’s the point of the story. I mean, there’s already been some points, right? Like, the thought came in, I acted on the thought. I didn’t let my thinking stop me from doing what I was inspired to do, and when I went up, when it was my time to go up, I was nervous, for sure. I was nervous. And I never speak with notes. Again, as a keynote speaker, I’m on stage. I’ve got a lavalier mic over my ear or in front of me and I’m performing and I’m using my hands and I’m going from one side of the stage to another side of the stage. And I was like, I can’t do that. I don’t even know what I’m going to talk about. I have to have these notes in front of me, which feels insecure. I’m like, and I don’t want to walk around. It feels weird walking around with notes.

So, I went up there and I said, “Hey, y’all, how many of you are speakers?” And like, more than half the hands went up. And I said, “Yeah, me too.” I said, “You know, when we speak, it’s a performance as much as it is, like, you’re delivering a message and content to impact the audience.” But if you’re a professional speaker, you’re probably– for me, I’m enthusiastic and I’m delivering it in a way that is also entertaining while they are learning. And everyone kind of nodded their head. I said, “I don’t want to do that right now.” And so, I grabbed a stool that was off to the side of the stage and I said, and it’s just small– there wasn’t even a stage, actually. I mean, it’s a 50-person room. It’s small.

And I pull the stool out and I sit down. And I said, “I’m going to sit here.” I said, “And I normally never speak with notes. In fact, I’m insecure right now that I have to keep notes in front of me to be able to talk to you.” I said, “But I’ve got my notes up here because there’s some important things that I want to share with you. I want to talk about what really matters most for all of us, and it’s not what we’ve learned over the last two and a half days as odd as that might sound since we’ve learned so much great information.”

And then what ended up happening was I talked for my 15 minutes. To my recollection, I didn’t once look at my notes. That’s the wild thing. That’s the difference between thinking and inspiration, inspired thought, divine downloads. I got the message that I was supposed, or the download, the thought that I was supposed to give this message. Then I went up there thinking, oh, I’ve got to read my notes so I don’t mess it up. And then I just got into flow and I just started talking and I didn’t even know exactly what I was going to say or how I would transition from one point to the next, or which lesson, like, I really didn’t know. And what came through me was, in fact, I’m so bummed they didn’t record it because it was inspired, it was– I call that channeling, right, where you’re channeling inspiration.

And by the way, the way I prepared for that message and that I prepared for all of my messages, but especially that one because I didn’t have a message really prepared other than the notes I scribbled on a piece of paper is through prayer. And I closed my eyes right before I went on stage and I prayed, “God, please fill me with the wisdom and the words and the energy and the love and the empathy and the humor that the souls in this room need for me to be able to make or for them to be able to experience the greatest impact possible in their life, and may this be the best message that I have ever given.” That’s essentially how I prepare roughly those words. It’s not always exactly that word for word, but that’s what I pray before I give a message.

And again, that’s even when I give a message that I’ve given a hundred or hundreds of times before my Miracle Morning keynote. But in this case, it was like I really needed that prayer because I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. And what happened, right, is exactly that it came through me, inspired thought. And then I somehow weaved together one story into another, things I had never shared in this way before. And then I tied it together. And then at the end, I did a callback from the beginning and like, I wrapped a bow on it, and then everyone erupted into a standing ovation.

And then I got off stage and Mike Michalowicz hugged me. I mean, half the room was, I don’t know if it was half, I wasn’t counting, but many people were in tears during the message, including me, by the way. I probably cried during that message, which I did not know I was going to cry at all. I had no intention of crying. And I cried probably more than I ever have in any message on stage. And I was just okay with it. Like, normally, if I cry, I am like, oh, I need to talk and I can’t talk because I’m crying. There was a lot of silence. I would just look up, I would close my eyes in the middle of this message. I’m sitting on this stool, holding my notes that I’m not looking at, and I would breathe and just regain my composure and start again.

And it was one of the best messages. I prayed that it would be the best message I ever gave, and I think based on the feedback and the text messages and the people that I talked to after that, it was one of the best messages I’ve ever given. And it was born from a thought that morning, not thinking, not, oh, I’ve got 50 people in front of me. I really should give a speech so that I can show them that I’m a good speaker, right? Like, that’d be thinking out of desperation, but instead, it was a thought that entered my consciousness out of inspiration. I’m supposed to give a message today. What’s it supposed to be about? Again, don’t think, quieting my mind. Oh, it’s supposed to be about what matters most to all of us, which is nothing that we learned over the last two and a half days for the most part. Nothing.

And this is important because you’re listening to me right now and I’m hoping that you’re feeling a bit inspired, it was inspired by another human being, right? It was Tiffany Aliche giving her message, sharing her truth and her story about her husband, the love of her life, dying of a brain aneurysm, that inspired the thought in me that, oh, there’s something that I’m supposed to share today. So, let’s get a little bit tactical. How do you apply this to your life?

First thing is, if you’ve got room in your schedule to get a new book and read a book, I would highly recommend get the book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen. Highly recommended. And it’s now got the expanded edition that just came out. So, you can actually get the new one. Again, he talks about thought versus thinking. And how can you apply this right now? You can apply this right now by spending time in silence on a daily basis and keeping a journal nearby.

Now, the good news is you might go, oh, awesome, Hal, I’m already a Miracle Morning practitioner and I do my SAVERS every morning. And so, I do spend time in silence. And whether that is prayer or meditation, keep in mind that it doesn’t come when you’re thinking. So, if you’re praying, if you’re praying to God, God please, I need your guidance. I need your help. Please help me overcome the challenges I’m facing and give me clarity to know where I should go next and what I should do next, keep in mind that it’s not during the praying, the act of praying itself that the inspiration is received. It is during the silence that follows the prayer itself, that follows the requests for guidance.

So, it’s in our moments of peaceful, purposeful silence that we’re able to receive inspiration thoughts, inspiration in the form of thoughts, a noun, not thinking, a verb. And those thoughts that come to us, consider that those may be, I believe that they are, our greatest truth or truths, plural. They’re what we’re supposed to do. And let me be clear, I am so guilty of being so overwhelmed in my life that I don’t always act on the thoughts, but when I do, the best version of me emerges and the best outcomes and impact, whether for my family or for the world, for my community, for my readers, for you, for the listeners of this podcast, like right now.

Right now, I didn’t plan on this episode. I have zero notes in front of me. And I think you can feel the difference, I’m guessing. If you’re a regular listener of this podcast, and I’ve been so guilty of dealing with brain fog, basically, for the last five years or maybe even longer than that. But if I don’t allow myself these moments of inspiration, I try to think of what I should talk about, and then I try to write it down. And it’s not the same as when I just– I literally, today, I was walking outside and I went, oh, I should talk about the difference between thinking and receiving, receiving thoughts, inspiration, divine downloads.

And then I was like, you know what? I’m going to grab that book off my shelf, Don’t Believe Everything You Think. And I opened it up and y’all, what I read to you, that was just the page, page 87, that’s just what I opened it up to. Like, I didn’t search, I didn’t think of what I should tell you. I just opened up a page and I looked at what I underlined on that page. It was a page I’ve already read and I read it to you.

So, this podcast is a living example of a thought, an inspiration, divine download of something that somebody needed. Hopefully, it’s you. Hopefully, it’s you. Hopefully, you’re getting something from this to realize that if you’re feeling overwhelmed in your life and you’re trying to think your way out of it, and thinking is a form of control, right? If you’re trying to think your way to a solution to your problems, you’re essentially trying to control the path and the solution to your problems as opposed to, I’m going to go outside for a walk. I don’t know about you, but when I go for my morning jog, I get more inspiration than when I sit and I try to think of what to do. When I meditate and I pray in the morning and then I sit in silence and I’ve got my journal within arm’s reach so that I can capture the thought, which is an important part by the way. How many times have you had an inspired thought and you didn’t capture it, and then you didn’t think of it again? Or maybe it came up for you again years later and it instilled regret because you’re like, oh, I thought of that so long ago. Why didn’t I do it? And again, I’m guilty of this.

Y’all, I’ve had a book on my heart for four years called The Miracle Life. And I’ve second guessed the title. Should I call it The Miracle Life? Is that generic? It’s too much like the Miracle Morning, or should I call it The Miracle Life? Because it is like an extension of the Miracle Morning. And you’ve heard me on the podcast talk about it. I am guilty of doing this where I’ve had inspired thoughts. I felt like God’s told me you should write this book. And then I’ve let overwhelm and distractions get in the way. And I’m trying to get better at that, and so I’m sharing it with you.

Everything I’m sharing in today’s podcast, everything I’ve shared so far, everything I’m sharing is something that I’m personally trying to integrate into my life, into my way of being, to replace thinking. And not that thinking goes away, but that you allow yourself space and silence and faith to receive the inspired thoughts, the divine downloads, and then you pull out your journal and you write them down, and then you start thinking, how can I apply this? When can I apply this? Then you pull out your schedule and you schedule time to actually work on that thing.

And then once you do that repeatedly and you stay focused on that inspired thought, like for me, the Miracle Morning was an inspired thought, oh, this morning routine, I’m going to do this. It’s going to change my life. Oh, my gosh, it changed my life. Now, I have an inspired thought that I should share it with other people. And then I did. But as I do that now, it’s like day after day after day, in my moments of silence, because I allowed that inspired thought to take form as a goal. And again, he talks about in the book, the difference between goal set from inspiration and goal set from desperation.

And so, the Miracle Morning, as an example, was a goal set from inspiration. What is that for you? Have you had thoughts in your life, moments of inspiration, divine downloads, but that you haven’t acted on because you thought yourself out of it? I’d imagine the answer is yes for every person listening to this, including you. Have you had thoughts, inspired thoughts, divine downloads that you talked yourself out of because you thought, I don’t know how, I don’t know where to start, I don’t believe I can? What if I fail? I don’t have time.

And I’m inviting you to start spending time and even just let this enter your consciousness. I mean, when I’m reading this book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen, it’s like it’s changing my thinking. The irony, it’s changing my thinking, and that I need to stop thinking so much and I need to give myself space for inspiration more, and then I need to act on that inspiration that comes from thoughts, a noun, not thinking, a verb.

And so, I encourage you to take this episode today, take what you’re feeling right now, take what you’re thinking or any inspired thoughts or feelings that you are experiencing and put time in your schedule. And again, you might already have it with The Miracle Morning. Awesome. Just let this enhance your periods of silence during your SAVERS, right? The first S in SAVERS, of course, is silence. Let today’s episode, and if you need to go back and listen to it again, if that would help you, let this inspire your thoughts to spend time in silence and create space for divine downloads, those inspired thoughts that you can act on to transform your life, to fulfill your potential, to play a bigger game, to make the impact that you’re destined to make.

And just like when I was at the Author Mastermind and I had the thought that I’m supposed to share a message, right, I immediately took action and I sent a text message to Mike Michalowicz, said, “Mike, I want to speak.” Before I even allowed the thinking to get in the way of me doing the thing that I knew in my heart, my soul, every fiber of my being was like, I’m supposed to speak, so I immediately took action. Can you apply that in your life? Can you create space for thoughts, inspired thoughts, divine downloads, and then have your journal nearby when you’re in the– and by the way, for me, it looks like this. It’s like I have an inspired thought. Open the journal, I handwrite it, by the way. Something to me is more effective to handwrite it than to open your phone, probably because the phone is a digital device. It can bring up lots of distractions.

So, for me, I always write down my digital downloads on paper in my journal, and then go back to silence. Go, oh, great. I just got some– if you pray for guidance or clarity from God and you get it, write it down and then close your journal, set it to the side or in your lap, and close your eyes and pray. And that pray or meditate, sit in silence.

All right, goal achievers, I could keep going, but I want to leave you with that. And I love you so much. Thank you for listening today. I hope that you are leaving today’s podcast inspired and that you aren’t just leaving with the thought of inspiration, but that you’re going to act on it and start integrating non-thinking time into your schedule to receive your highest thoughts, ideas, inspirations that you can implement to transform your life and the lives of the people you love and care about the most, and then extend that impact out into the world. Love you so much, and I will talk to you next week.

[END]