[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and this week we are talking about how to create your external reality. How do you create the circumstances that you want for your life? If you want to speak in cliché terms, the life of your dreams literally. How do you create the life of your dreams? Last week’s episode was titled How to Create Your Internal Reality. In other words, it was about how to cultivate the optimal mental and emotional states, regardless of your circumstances.

But again, this week we’re talking about how do you create the circumstances like the other half of creating your own reality is the actual reality that you experienced with all five of your senses, not just how you feel inside. And of course, both are interconnected and both are crucial to really creating and experiencing the life that you want and deserve to live. So, in today’s episode, I’m going to walk you through how I close the gap personally from being an insecure, undisciplined, and unfocused person, relatively unsuccessful in areas of my life, all there is in my life to creating the literal life of my dreams and most importantly, I’ll dive into practical strategies you can use today to create a powerful external reality that aligns with the life that you envision.

Before we dive into the podcast, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our two sponsors for today’s episode. The first is Organifi and I really want to focus on if I had to pick one Organifi product that is my favorite that I use literally seven days a week, I mean, I’m sure I miss a day here and there, but it’s virtually every single day. It is their complete protein powder, a plant-based protein that helps control cravings and gives you the muscle-building nutrients that you need. So, there’s 18 grams of healthy organic plant protein, and that is a combination of pea protein, pumpkin seeds, quinoa, and flax seeds. You’re getting various nutrients from four different sources.

It also comes with whole food, vitamins, and minerals and is 100% organic plant-based so no soy or whey, no bloating or estrogen increase production or any of the things from those other sources of protein. I use it every morning in my Miracle Morning shake and I mentioned this last week but it’s the best-tasting vanilla protein powder that I have ever used. When you open the package, sometimes it smells a little chemically with certain protein powders and this one smells like organic vanilla beans. It’s phenomenal. So, if you want to up your protein game and, of course, there are dozens of organic whole-food products and supplements available at Organifi.com/Hal.

But definitely check out their vanilla plant-based protein. Of course, there’s the chocolate flavor as well. That is Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. And last but not least, I wanted to take a quick moment to tell you about some exciting news regarding the Miracle Morning App, the tool designed to help you stay consistent, build habits, and transform your mornings. Now, first off, let me share a review from one of our amazing Miracle Morning app users. This is from Carolina Mom.

She says, “The app I always needed to organize my Miracle Morning. I have been doing the Miracle Morning since 2014 and when I realized there was a companion app, it made it much easier for me to stick to my Miracle Morning routine and also inject some fresh new variety into the ritual. I love the tracker that is built in to mark off each of the SAVERS. I also love the fact that there are options to complete each of the SAVERS, and combos to complete your entire SAVERS routine is a great tool for people just getting started with the Miracle Morning, but it’s also awesome for people who have been doing the Miracle Morning for years.”

Thank you, Carolina Mom, for taking the time to leave that kind review and more importantly, for committing to your Miracle Morning practice and using the app to enhance your journey. Because your journey inspires all of us and we are so grateful to have you in our community. So, now here’s the exciting update. We are getting ready to launch a brand new update for the app, and I want to walk you through some of the new features, some of the highlights that will make your experience even more seamless. So, what’s new in the app? Full SAVERS tracks all-in-one button. So, you’ll be able to complete your full SAVERS routine with a single tap saving time and keeping your mornings focused.

Also, quicker access to your activities. So, navigate directly to your affirmations, journaling, and visualizations faster than ever thanks to a new, streamlined library. And last but not least, there’s a new onboarding journey. So, if you or someone you know hasn’t tried the app yet, we’ve created a custom seven-day onboarding experience to help users start strong with their first Miracle Morning and build it into a habit. Now, this update is just the beginning. We’ve got more exciting features on the way as we approach the end of the year, ensuring that the app continues to evolve and support you in becoming the best version of yourself.

So, if you haven’t tried the app yet or you’re ready to dive back in, now is the time. We are building this experience to help you stay accountable, track your progress, and maintain consistency on your Miracle Morning journey. So, thank you for being a part of this incredible community and for trusting us to support your personal growth. I cannot wait to hear what you think about these new updates.

All right. Without further ado, let’s talk about it. Part two in this two-part series. Last week, we talked about how to create your internal reality. Now, we’re talking about how to create your external reality, the life and the circumstances that you want. Here we go.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: Good morning, goal achievers and Miracle Morning community members. And I realize that it might not be morning when you’re listening to this, but it is for me. So, good morning. It’s morning I guess somewhere in the world at all times. This is Hal Elrod. And I am beyond excited to be with you today. A couple of reasons. One, I’m just on a high from the trip I just returned from. My wife and I got to go to Puerto Rico for four days, five days, which was extraordinary. I got booked to speak at an event down there, which was actually really cool because it was a company I spoke for in January about 9 or 10 months ago, and they brought me back to speak again, which that’s always an honor when that happens.

And so, of course, being in Puerto Rico, my wife’s like, “You know, can I come?” And actually, I think I asked her. I think I’m like, “Hey, sweetie, let’s make this into a little vacation.” And it was much needed, by the way. Man, we realize that we haven’t gone on a vacation without the kids since before I had cancer, which was like eight years ago, and I can’t even believe that. But we rekindled our love and it was just incredible. So, if you’re married and anything you can do to get some one-on-one time, get a little vacation without the kiddos, my experience from this last week is that it can be transformative for your marriage. So, I’ll just throw that out there. And then I flew from Puerto Rico, I flew to Orlando. I had another speech to give to a real estate company, 1,000 real estate agents in Orlando. And my wife went back home here to Austin.

And I wanted to share that with you because it’s really in alignment with what we’re talking about today, how to create your own external reality. We’re following up on last week’s episode, of course, on how to create your own internal reality, right, your mental and emotional state, your mental and emotional well-being, how you experience your life. I believe that’s the most important thing to master, right, is how do you feel about each moment that you are alive and how do you optimize your mindset, your mental and emotional state so that you can not only enjoy this one life we’ve been blessed to live, but you can get yourself to do the things to create the life that it is that you want.

And that’s what we’re talking about today. How do you create the life you want, the circumstances that light you up? How do you actually go beyond just feeling good regardless of your circumstances to proactively designing and creating the circumstances that you want? And I think about the speeches I just gave in like 25 years ago. That was my dream. That was my dream reality was to be a professional speaker to travel the world, to give speeches, and now it’s what I actually get to do. And so, I want to break down in this episode. I want to give you practical strategies on how you can do the same, how you can create the reality that you want, no matter how challenged you are right now.

And today is going to be a little bit unique. I’m going to share some things, personal things that I don’t know that I’ve ever shared on the podcast and really even publicly before. I’m going to talk about my battles with addiction, drug addiction, which I don’t know why, but I’m usually an open book with most stuff, but I’ve kind of not shared that openly. So, I’m going to share that today because I want to talk about how I went from that and how I went from my car accident and just being in really places where I felt like there was little to no hope, during the 2008 crash, little to no hope.

And the reason I want to share those perspectives and those kinds of rock bottoms is because I know that a lot of people listening right now, you or someone listening, are going through difficult times and to varying degrees. Some of you are at your lowest point in your life. And yes, my heart absolutely goes out to you because I’ve been at that, what feels like my lowest point multiple times and maybe you can relate to that. And then some of you, things are going well right now. You’re crushing it. But I would say for most people listening, you’re somewhere in the middle, right? Like, maybe your connection with your partner is great. It’s strong that they’re your rock but like the money is tight right now.

I talked to a friend of mine yesterday and he is in the real estate industry and he’s in commercial real estate. And I could sense the stress in his voice and he was openly sharing like it’s hard. Getting a deal right now has really been challenging. And I could sense the stress that he’s under, this constant pressure to perform and produce and provide when it’s not as easy as it used to be. But I know he’s got a great marriage and he’s a phenomenal father. So, a lot of things are going well for him but there are also challenges. And like you said, for most of us, that is the case. So, there’s the extremes where we’ve all been at our low points in life and rock bottom. We’ve all been, most of us have been at places where, “Hey, life’s going better than it’s ever been before,” but for the most part, we’re somewhere in the middle.

And so, I want to talk from a perspective of no matter where you are on that spectrum, the rock bottom, thriving, or anywhere in between, how do you create your external reality moving forward? And I’ll tell you, I had a realization very recently. I actually was in Puerto Rico talking to my wife, and I told her I started talking about like goals and dreams. And I said, “Sweetheart, I realized that I’ve been in a fear state ever since I got cancer and I’ve been playing defense in my life. Everything in my life has been about playing defense, trying to protect you and the kids, trying to protect myself, trying to survive.” And I’ve talked pretty openly about that in varying contexts on the podcast.

But I said, “It’s been defense. It’s been like, okay, how do we protect our money so we don’t lose it?” Like, I’ve been very risk-averse, whereas I look back, the old me used to be like I was like willing to take calculated risks and I was always dreaming and I was always pursuing big goals. And that hasn’t been me. And maybe you can relate to that. In fact, I think that happens when life beats you up a little bit, right, which that for me was for sure the reason. When we’re young, I always say that like when you’re, depending on your childhood, some of us there was trauma that we never really had big goals or dreams. But for a lot of us, we were young and innocent and you could say naive. It was like the future was limitless.

The future was limitless. There was we could, “Wow, like, oh, I’m going to create the most amazing life and there’s nothing I can’t have, be, or do. The future exists as pure possibility.” And then you try something and you fail. Life beats you up a little bit and you’re like, “Oh.” And each time it does, it knocks you down a notch. It knocks you down a notch. And then you start to settle in to your comfort zone, which often isn’t very comfortable, right? Your comfort zone is an uncomfortable zone. You’re settling for less than you want, less than you’re capable of, right? And, I mean, I think that’s the story of the human race. Like, that’s most people.

And so, the first thing I want to share is I want to talk about the connection between your inner beliefs and your ability to create your external reality. So, the connection between your inner beliefs and your ability to create your external reality, and I’m going to start with a story. I’m going to try to do this with each lesson that I share. I’m going to share a personal story. And when I go back to as a kid, I was pretty insecure. I didn’t have really strong beliefs in myself that I could overcome or accomplish much in my life. I had a little bit of that innocent naivety, how do you say that, where I had some goals and dreams.

I wanted, you know, I started deejaying when I was young. I kind of fell into this. I had my own deejay business and that was really cool when I was 15 and did that throughout high school. And I did have a dream of I wanted to be a deejay, a professional, own like a deejay company. That was the dream. Then I got on the radio and so I had some dreams when I was young, but I didn’t really have a lot of belief in myself. It was just kind of just mindlessly like pursuing these dreams and these goals.

And it was when I was 19 years old and I started in sales with Cutco, and I didn’t have a lot of belief in myself and my ability, especially after my first day on the job. I actually set a goal. I want to break the all-time company record. And that was the innocent, naive, didn’t know what I didn’t know. That was where that was coming from. It wasn’t the belief like, “I’m amazing and I can do anything.” It was the, “I don’t know what I don’t know and so why not? I’m going to shoot for it.” And then my very first day I did three, my first three Cutco sales appointments and I was all excited and my first one didn’t buy anything. And I felt really discouraged. And I called my manager and he got me excited for my second one.

And so, “Hey, you okay? Let’s go. Let’s dust yourself off and regain that enthusiasm for your second, your third appointment.” And of course, my second one didn’t buy anything and my third one didn’t buy anything. And I called my manager ready to quit. I’m like, “I’m a fraud. I’m a failure. I was talking all this big game that I was going to try to break the all-time record and I can’t even make a single sale.” And during that phone call, he said, “Hal, do you want to be successful in your life?” I said, “Of course.” And he said, “Okay. Let me ask you, what do you think a successful person would do in this situation? Do you think they would give in to their self-doubt and their fear and feelings of failure and insecurity and inadequacy that they have?”

He said, “Or do you think they would do the next thing? They would get on the phone, make phone calls, schedule appointments for tomorrow and just keep trying until they found success.” And I was like, “Yeah.” I mean it’s kind of almost a rhetorical question but it also hit home because it resonated. I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. I mean, the only logical thing I could do is really accept what I can’t change, which is that I went 0 for three my very first day when I was seeing the three people I thought for sure would buy. It was like my grandparents and family, friends. I thought for sure these people would buy something from me even out of pity and they bought nothing.

And I dusted myself off the next day. I got on the phone. Scheduled more appointments the next day. I did ten appointments, I made seven sales and sold $2,700, and off to the races. The point of the story is from day one of my Cutco sales training, I was borrowing the belief that Jesse, my manager, my mentor that Jesse had in me. And it started out in all of us, right? He was running a sales training class for I think there were like 28 of us. It was a big training class, and he was telling us like, “You can do this. You’re going to have ups and you’re going have downs and you’re going to have setbacks. But if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, if you keep moving forward, if you keep taking action, if you learn from your failures and you learn from your mistakes and you keep moving forward,” he said, “You can’t fail. Eventually, you’re going to learn, grow, improve, get better and better and better.

And he said, “And it might take you a few weeks to get the hang of this and figure out, you know, find your groove. But he said, “If you keep moving forward, you cannot fail.” And so, I want to connect this back to this first lesson, which is just understanding that connection between inner beliefs and your ability to create your external reality. Now, I didn’t have a belief in myself, an inherent belief in myself. I had to borrow the belief that Jesse had in me. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I would encourage you to borrow. I’m actually, you know, there’s two pieces to this lesson.

One is borrow the belief that someone else has in you. Whenever I read a book and the author is telling me, “You can do this. I’m going to tell you exactly how I achieved the results in my life that you’re reading this book to learn how to achieve.” It could be a specific goal. You know, you’re reading a book on managing money or achieving goals or improving your marriage or whatever. And you’re reading it from somebody who spent a lot of time figuring out how to do it and has a proven track record. And that person is telling you they believe in you because they know that if you do X, Y, and Z, you will and you consistently do it, right? Not one time.

Your first time might not work out the way you wanted, but if you consistently do X, Y, and Z, you will get similar results as to what that person, that mentor, that author has gotten. And that for me was if you keep making sales calls for Cutco, if you keep scheduling appointments and you keep doing appointments and you keep learning and growing and your confidence grows and you get better, you can’t fail. You’re eventually going to get there. So, for you, I want you to borrow this belief that every person on the planet, you are just as worthy, deserving, and capable as any other person on the planet. That’s that inherent belief that for me, you’ve probably heard me say that’s one of my most important fundamental affirmations, and I utilize it whenever I’m feeling down or insecure or I’m feeling hopeless.

I remind myself I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of overcoming and accomplishing anything in my life that I commit to over an extended period of time that I stay committed to. I’m just as worthy, deserving, and capable as any other person on the planet. And that’s an inherent truth. It’s not just some random belief. It’s an inherent truth. You might get knocked down. I gave that speech in Puerto Rico and it was on the Miracle Equation, which in case you don’t know, that’s the book that I wrote after the Miracle Morning. It’s the Miracle Equation. The two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable.

And I talked about the two decisions are unwavering faith and extraordinary effort that you maintain unwavering faith in yourself and in your ability, your abilities, and then you put forth extraordinary effort, consistent effort over an extended period of time. And one of my favorite people to share as an example is Thomas Edison. Like, he’s the ultimate embodiment of the Miracle Equation. And if you don’t know Thomas Edison, he invented the light bulb. And if you don’t know his story, he failed. As the legend is that it’s over a thousand failed attempts. He tried a thousand different ways to create a light bulb and failed. And imagine failing a thousand times to achieve your goal.

I don’t know. I wasn’t there. It could be exaggerated. Maybe it was only 50 or 100. I don’t know. But. Thomas Edison, and I believe it’s documented in his journals that it was a thousand-plus failed attempts. And he finally figured it out. So, he maintained unwavering faith. He put forth extraordinary effort. And so, he’s a living example that the connection between the inner belief that he knew that if he didn’t give up, like the only failure is in giving up. If he didn’t give up and he kept iterating and trying and adjusting and learning from his mistakes, that eventually he would create the external reality that he wanted.

And so, I encourage you to instill and to cultivate the inner beliefs that will support your ability to create your external reality. And if you want to just start with the affirmation that I shared a minute ago, “I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of creating anything I want for my life as any other person on this planet.” And then I added to that affirmation later on after I read it, probably hundred plus times, hundreds of times, I added, “And I will prove this today with my actions. I will prove it today with my actions.” So, I’m just as worthy, deserving, and capable of creating everything I want for my life as any other person on earth. And I will prove that today with my actions.

All right. So, that’s the first step is cultivating the inner beliefs. And that goes back to your inner reality. But ultimately, your external reality is a mirror of your internal reality. You cannot separate the two. And that’s why last week I was going to do an episode on just how to create your own reality. But I realized these are two distinct and also connected aspects of creating a reality. There’s an internal reality, how you feel, and the external reality, which is the circumstance that you create in your life, but you cannot separate the two. The second step, the second concept to understand is the power of clarity and vision.

And I want to pause for a second. What I’m teaching you today is fundamental truth. You’re going to hear things that you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard. Of course, you have to have a vision and you have to have clarity, right?” I’m not trying, you know, there’s only like there’s one truth or there are many truths that can be taught in a gazillion different ways. And I don’t want to overcomplicate this for you. I’d rather share this in a way where you go, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” but are you doing it? And this is what I want to challenge you to ask yourself. Whenever you hear something and you think, “I already know that,” I believe those are four of the most dangerous words in the English language.

When you hear something and you go, “I already know that,” and when you say that, you tune out. If you’re at an event and the speaker says something and you’re like, “He’s talking about goal setting. I already know that.” You tune out. You’re no longer curious, open, receptive, and you shut down your ability to learn, grow, and get better. And so, I would encourage you right now and take this with you that whenever you catch yourself saying, “I already know that,” replace those four words with, “Am I living that?” And I’ll tell you so often, like at least every week, at least every week, if not almost every day, I realize as I’m teaching something, I’ll be teaching something in a speech or on a podcast or to my kids or whatever and I’ll realize, “Am I living this?” And I’ll go, “No.”

Great example, … the Miracle Morning. I do the Miracle Morning every day. But I was recently challenged by our app team, Josh and Jeremy, our app team to– they said, “Hey, are you tracking your SAVERS in the app?” And I go, “I haven’t done that in a long time.” They said, “We encourage you to do a 30-day challenge and start tracking your SAVERS.” And I said, “Why?” They said, “Because when we did it,” and Jeremy Reisig, by the way, he’s been doing the Miracle Morning since like 2009, I think, way before it was a book. He’s been a friend of mine for 20 years. He said, “Hal, because when I started tracking my SAVERS, I realized how many of them I was skipping each day.” I was like, “Interesting.”

So, I start tracking my SAVERS and I realize I’m only doing three of them every day, like I’m just consistently skipping them. But I wasn’t even aware of it. I wasn’t even aware. So, yeah, of course, I already know that. I know what the Miracle Morning is. I know what the SAVERS are. But I wasn’t doing them all. When I started tracking it, my Miracle Morning got so much better when I got back to the basics doing all six of the SAVERS. And this is a little bonus, encouragement, invitation challenge for you is use your Miracle Morning app, track your SAVERS, and really, you might be aware like, oh, wow, I actually am only doing like three or four of them, like, what would happen if I added visualization and journaling back in or whatever those might be for you.

So, anyway, back to lesson number two here, the power of clarity and vision. And this is simple, but it’s so important, and that’s to create the reality you want, you first have to get crystal clear on what that reality looks like. And I mentioned to you a few minutes ago that when I was with my wife on vacation in Puerto Rico and we had carefree timelessness. We didn’t have responsibilities and stresses. And I gave my speech on the last day of the trip. So, the first four days were just like, just space to talk and dream and this and that. And when I told her, I said, “Sweetie, I’ve realized that I’ve been living in fear and playing defense ever since cancer.” Like, it completely shifted my mindset that I have to protect everything I have. I’ve got to protect my kids. I’ve got to protect my health. I’ve got to protect my family. I’ve got to protect my finances. I said, “And that has really stunted my growth and it stunted our– I haven’t been expanding. I’ve been contracting and protecting and so on and so forth.”

And so, we started dreaming again, and I actually pulled out my journal and I started writing my goals and my dreams. And I got out of my comfort zone. And you might find this, but it was like a little uncomfortable and scary. And I know I’ve done this over the years periodically, but if I had to measure the ratio of how often am I in like fear, protection, contraction versus dreaming, abundance, expansion, it’s probably, I’d say, conservatively, 80/20, where 80%, I’m guarding and protecting and I’m not envisioning and clarifying what I want.

And here’s the thing. We move toward what we focus on, right? You may have heard, what you focus on expands. I don’t know who said that. It’s a very cliche phrase. And like my friend Rene Rodriguez says, the greatest wisdom is found in cliches. Their statements or philosophies, they’ve been repeated so many times that they get called cliche because they are so true. That’s why they get repeated so often. And then we all fall prey to those four words and you go, “Yeah, I already know that, dude. That’s totally cliche,” right?

But the importance here is setting specific, vivid goals. Oh, that’s what I’m saying. What you focus on expands, right? When you create a vision for what you want and you revisit that vision every day and you get specific, even if it’s out of your comfort zone, even if you don’t– I’ll give you an example. I’ve always dreamed of having a lake house. That’s been my dream, and I’ve never made it a reality. And in the last four years, or how long have I had cancer? Seven years, whatever, right? It’s been like this, I just got to protect what I have. I can’t even think about what I want.

And now, when I was with my wife, I was like, “Hey, my dream is a lake house, and maybe, it’s going to take us 10 years, but I’m bringing that back into my life.” Like, as much as I criticize vision boards and kind of tease them and it’s like kind of fun art projects, but not really serious visualization, I think I need to get my vision board on the wall with that lake house, right? So, I see it. Because what you focus on, it expands, your vision expands, you move towards it, and when we focus on what we’re afraid of, that expands that feeling of fear. And I know you can relate to this because if you’re a human being, you have fears. And when you focus on them, they expand, right? They expand.

And I’ll tell you, I’ll give you another personal example, right? I wrote my vision when I was– how old was I when the Miracle Morning published? 32, I think, 32, 33 years old. Yeah, 12, 13 years ago. Yeah, 12 years ago. I’m 45, so okay, 33 years old. I wrote my mission. My vision was to change 1 million lives one morning at a time. And that was just a mission-driven way of saying that I want to sell a million copies of the Miracle Morning and reach a million people. And you know the story, right? Well, you might be brand new to the podcast, but I fell short my first year. My goal was to sell a million copies and I only sold 13,000 copies. If you do the math, that means I was 987,000 copies short of my goal.

But the miracle equation, unwavering faith, extraordinary effort over an extended period of time for as long as it takes to achieve your goal, just like Thomas Edison, failing to achieve his outcome of creating that light bulb, I was like, all right, I’m going to try again year two. And I failed miserably year two. I was 960,000 copies short year two, right? But I had a vision. The power of clarity and vision, that’s what we’re talking about right now. And so, do you have a clear vision in writing that you look at every single day, a clear vision in writing that you look at every single day? If you don’t have that, you are likely to continue not creating that, right?

So, for me, I had a clear vision. I talked about it on podcasts. I mean, it was in my goals every day. I had a North Star to change 1 million lives one morning at a time. I was an unknown author. Like, you understand that when I published the Miracle Morning, I self-published it, I had no audience, I was an unknown author. And I was starting essentially, pretty close to from scratch, but I was committed to the vision no matter how long it took. I love that philosophy or that phrase, that cliche phrase, it takes 10 years to be an overnight success, right? And I was like, “All right, well, if it takes me 10 years to reach a million people, then I’m committed, however long it takes. Maybe it takes me 30 years, but I’m committed. I want to help a million people with this concept that has helped me so significantly.” And it took six years to make that vision a reality.

But I want to ask you something. If I didn’t have that clarity and vision to reach 1 million people with the Miracle Morning and if I didn’t revisit that vision on a daily basis, on an ongoing basis, and let it direct my thoughts, my beliefs, and my behaviors, do you think I would have gotten there? Do you think I would have reached a million people? Maybe. Maybe it would have taken off, but it would have for sure taken an immeasurably amount longer because I was doing 150 podcast interviews a year because that was the behavior that I had determined would allow me to keep sharing the Miracle Morning message and promoting the book to reach that goal.

So, turn it back on you, how does that apply to your life? The clarity and the vision, do you have it? Are you revising it every day? And if you are, just know that it may take you longer than you ideally want or hope. It almost always takes longer. But how important is your vision, right? I was being interviewed by Mike Koenigs and I brought up the whole 10 years to be an overnight success. And he said, “Yeah, that begs the question, Hal. For anybody listening, if it takes upwards of 10 years to be an overnight success,” he said, “what do you believe in so much? What are you willing to commit 10 years of your life to get to that point that you would define the ultimate success that you’re working towards?” And that was a profound question, right? Oh, yeah, well, what are you willing to commit to?

And for me, at the time, I was like, “Yeah, I believe in the Miracle Morning. I know it helps people. So, that for me, I was committed.” Now, what is that for you? What is that for you? What is your vision? And if you don’t have it, right, then start creating it. What do you want for your life? And don’t put any limits based on your fears or based on your past. You can’t predict. Typically, if you’ve never done something, like I’d never sold a million books before, right? You can’t predict how it’s going to unfold. I couldn’t have predicted the people I would meet because I was so committed to that vision. The people that I would meet and the opportunities that would emerge and the resources that would come to my aid in unexpected ways, like I couldn’t have predicted any of that. That’s part of what makes it a miracle, right? That miracle equation, it’s these unexpected path or various paths that emerge while you are on the journey toward your vision.

All right, the third step, so the first step again, it’s the connection between your inner beliefs, right? You have to cultivate those inner beliefs, that belief in yourself. And again, if you have a past that is riddled with failure and mediocrity, meaning you’ve constantly settled or consistently settled for less, if you’re like, I don’t have a lot of inner belief, Hal, then you have to borrow it from other people and you can borrow it from the inherent truth that you are just as worthy, deserving, and capable as any other person on the planet.

And then number two is from that place, okay, I know that I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of anything that I want to create. Anything I’m committed to creating as any other person on the planet, then that leads to step two, which is okay, the power of clarity and vision, well, what is that? What are you– what do you want? What kind of life do you want? What kind of marriage do you want? What kind of lifestyle? How do you want to spend your days? What do you want to do for work or not do, right? When do you want to retire? Like, what do you want your financial success and abundance to be like? And this is permission, I’m giving you permission to take the lid off, right? Remove the ceiling. Don’t set this, create this vision from a place of your past, but from a place of your limitless future.

And then the third step is to cultivate those daily habits that will move you in that direction, that will move you toward that vision. And I’m going to give you another way to say it, instead of daily habits, you can also call it creating your process. For me, when I was in Cutco, and I did the same thing when I was with the Miracle Morning, selling Miracle Morning, I did the same thing when I was trying to become a professional speaker, which all started at colleges, and it was I defined how many _____ do I need to do each day? This is how I created my process. Okay? So, you can call it your habits, your daily habits, such as I’m committed to exercising every day for 20 minutes, right? That is a habit. For me, I exercise typically five days a week. So, that’s a habit.

In terms of the process, that’s where you get really specific. And again, this is all semantics, but the process for me, like when I was in Cutco in sales, it was I’m committed to making X number of phone calls per day, five to six days per week, no matter what. And I knew that if I committed to the process for an extended period of time and I chose– and this was easier said than done, but it became easier and easier as I chose it not to be emotionally attached to my day-to-day results, but committed to the process regardless of my results.

And if I committed to that process of 20 phone calls a day over an extended period of time, I’d have bad days and good days and average days and terrible days, but the law of averages, which is a– it’s a law, right? It states that if you do the same thing day after day after day over an extended period of time, and I might be, I don’t know if this is the best definition of the law of averages, but an average will play out, right? It’s like if you look at a graph of the stock market over the last 50 years, things average out and you can predict based on averages.

So, I knew for me that if I did 20 calls a day, five days a week over the course of 52 weeks, that an average would emerge. I would have an average number of appointments scheduled. Maybe out of those 20 calls, I would schedule six appointments on average. Some days I would schedule 12 appointments, some days I would schedule zero appointments. But over the course of an extended period of time, an average emerged, and it emerges in anything that you do. And so, that was my process that I committed to. And when I did that, it made success. It took the guesswork out of success. It was, okay, I’m going to make these calls every day.

Now, when I was trying to change 1 million lives with the Miracle Morning, I committed to schedule podcasts, to be on other people’s podcasts, and I broke that down into emailing five podcasters per day. And so, I would reach out and email five podcasters per day. And I wasn’t perfect. Some days I was really busy and I didn’t get to my five, and some days I could make it up and do 10, but more often than not, I would just miss the day, right? I wasn’t always perfect. Like, this is not perfection. It is about progress.

But I found the secret to success was to be committed to a predetermined process because every result that you want in your life, from generating income to building muscle or losing weight, every result that you want in your life is preceded by a process. You could even say a process, the Miracle Morning is a process of personal development that enables you to become a better version of yourself each and every day, gain knowledge, gain skills, abilities, habits that will improve your life. Every result is preceded by a process.

So, the secret to success is to commit to the process without being emotionally attached to your day-to-day results because you have the good days and bad days. And if you’re emotionally attached to your results, then you’re riding an emotional roller coaster. And very often, that emotional roller coaster takes you off track because you have a few bad days in a row. You feel like you’re failing. You’re feeling hopeless. Then you lose the commitment to the process, the drive that you need to keep your foot on the gas, right?

And so, what was the other example I was going to give you? Oh, it was when I was booking speeches to speak at colleges. That’s how I got my college speaking career off the ground. And it was, again, I would email, I would find out who actually hired an intern, free intern and paid intern. And she’s been with me now for eight years, I think. But I would actually have her go get all the contact info from all these websites. And I did this myself. I learned how to do this myself until she started working with me and I said, “Hey, will you start doing this?” And so, she would get the contact info for all these colleges. And then we created an email template and we would reach out and email them and offer to send a book.

And I figured out a process. And that process allowed me to go from having a dream of being a professional paid speaker, which like there was no easy way to do that. It’s not like you go get a degree and then you go get hired somewhere to be a professional speaker. It’s kind of like a guerilla marketing strategy. And so, for me, it was defining the process. And I learned that, by the way, from a mentor. I went to James Malinchak’s college speaking boot camp. I didn’t make this up. I mean, you can make it up, but I figured out what are other people doing? And that’s a much faster way to figure out a process, to figure out which actions and habits are going to get you where you want to go in the important areas of your life. When you create that clarity, that vision, okay, now I know where I want to go. What do I need to do to get there?

And you typically don’t know everything you need to do on day one. You just know, okay, well, where do I start? What’s an article I can read or a book I can read or a ChatGPT inquiry that I can submit to figure out where do I start on this path, on this journey to creating the life of my dreams? For me, the life of my dreams was to be a professional speaker, and I had to start somewhere. And I was young and I looked even younger than I was, right? I was like, I left Cutco. I want to be a professional speaker. I was like 26 years old. So, it was like, companies, who’s going to bring in a 26-year-old kid?

And even though I had great results in Cutco and broken records and stuff, I look too young, right? If I go to a conference and it’s a bunch of 40 or 50-year-old sales reps, they’re going to be like, “I’m not listening to this kid. Who’s this kid? This Doogie Howser wannabe,” right? So, I was like, “Where should I start?” I’m like, “I guess I should start at colleges.” So, I’m talking to people that I’m older than, right? I’ve got a little bit of seniority over. And so, I figured out what’s the process. I need to reach out to colleges. It’s a numbers game. The averages will work out. I will reach out to these colleges. I will offer to send them a copy of my book, which at the time was Taking Life Head On! I mean, if you don’t even know that, I wrote that book, but that was my first book, Taking Life Head On!

And then I built a really successful college speaking career by predetermining a process, committing to that process, not being emotionally attached to my results, and executing the process over an extended period of time. And so, there’s a fourth step that I wrote down. But actually, I’m going to save it. Well, I’ll mention it. Well, let me think here. I’ll mention it. So, step four, it’s surrounding yourself with the right environment and the right people. Like, that’s a really important piece. In fact, when I spoke, I’m kind of a recluse. Like, I’m totally introverted. You may not realize that, but I do not like being social, except for my close friends who I already know, but I’m uncomfortable with small talk. And so, I’m kind of a recluse, like kind of I’m a homebody, or not even kind of. I’m a total recluse. I’m a total homebody.

But because I’m a speaker and I do love that, like, I love giving speeches, it’s one of my favorite things to do, but that gets me out of the house, right? And like, whenever I speak, I’m like, oh, wow, it’s so empowering to get in these environments and surrounded by these people. And I’ll give you an example. Two nights ago, I spoke at this EXIT Realty, this event for a thousand real estate agents. And then that night, I went to their cocktail party to– they asked if I would, and I always am agreeable to support in any way that I can. And so, they want me to go meet people and take pictures and stuff. And I did that.

And then I got to sit down with the founder of EXIT Realty. His name is Steve Morris, a phenomenal individual. He’s almost 80 years old. He’s 78 or 79. And he founded this company based on the belief in the potential of the human spirit. And he views his company as a family disguised as a company. And this is not lip service, like he is– I sat and I talked to him. I actually listened to him for an hour, and he stimulated my thinking in ways that I hadn’t been stimulated in a long time. And he got me to think bigger and think better and think outside the box and hearing his life story and his journey, which I hope that me sharing some of my journey today and turning it into lessons, the lesson that the journey embodied that you can apply this to your life.

I got back to my hotel room and I took notes after my conversation with Steve Morris. And now, I’m thinking bigger. And it is going to inspire me to create an even bigger and more exciting, the external reality of my dreams. And when you create the life of your dreams, that doesn’t mean that you’re dreaming stops. I mean, at times, you can enjoy it. You should always enjoy what you’ve created, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t go, hey, what’s the next? Is there anything else? Not that you’re not content with where you are and at peace with where you are and grateful and loving every moment of your life, right? It’s not where you’re in this, oh, I need to create more to feel like I’m worthy. No. But even when you create the life of your dreams, I would encourage you, right? Learn from my mistake of, I stopped dreaming for a few years to keep dreaming.

And so, now, after talking to Steve Morris and putting myself in that environment, that’s that fourth step is to surround yourself with the right environment, the right people because your external reality is also deeply influenced by the people and the environment you surround yourself with. It can’t not be. If you think, if you’re hanging around five people that are all talking about goals and dreams and what’s possible and they’re sharing ideas and lessons, that’s going to affect your consciousness, your thoughts, your focus. So, whether it’s listening to podcasts like this, reading books, getting into masterminds, or being the lighthouse for your circle of influence, which I encourage you to do no matter what, you be the most positive, proactive, intentional human being in your circle of influence, right? You be the leader in your environment and you be the one that raises the standards of your family and your friends and your colleagues and everyone else.

So, in summary, the main points, internal beliefs shape external reality. You’ve got to get clear on your vision in order to create it because what you focus on is what you move towards. So have a clear vision. Make sure you have a process, daily habits. A process determined that you commit to over an extended period of time knowing that you can’t fail if you commit to a predetermined process that generates the results that you want, even though it might not happen as fast as you want, you might have some bad days or bad weeks or bad months or bad quarters or maybe even a bad year, although I find that’s pretty difficult to do. If you’re doing, committed your process over an extended period of time, it’s hard to have a bad year, but it is possible.

And then last but not least, make sure you create a supportive environment and surround yourself with supportive people who are aligned with creating the biggest, best possible life and enjoying the life that we have on the way. Goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, friends and family, I love you so much. And between last week’s episode on creating your internal reality and this week’s episode on creating your external reality, I hope that you will listen to these two and put them into practice because you deserve and you are just as worthy and capable of creating everything you want for your life. I love you so much and I will talk to you next week.

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