
“It’s not what you learn that matters, it’s what you live that matters.”
Hal Elrod
This week on the Achieve Your Goals podcast, we’re doing something a little bit different… I’m answering questions straight from The Miracle Morning community about all sorts of topics, including how I plan my week, how to keep up with your SAVERS when you’re short on time, my favorite tools for staying organized, and upcoming projects I’m looking forward to sharing with you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My weekly planning process and rituals—and why they’re much simpler than you might expect.
- My favorite meditation apps.
- Why clarity, commitment, and accountability are key to reaching the next level in EVERYTHING you do.
- Why we must stop prioritizing work and productivity over our physical well-being.
- My current position on how much sleep we actually need.
- How to get back into The Miracle Morning (or any routine) when you’ve fallen off of it.
- Exciting new updates for The Miracle Morning movie/documentary!
- And much more…
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
If you enjoyed this post and received value from this episode, please leave a quick comment below and SHARE with your friends. Thank YOU for paying it forward! :^)
COMMENT QUESTION: What is your big takeaway? Write it in the comments below.
[EPISODE]
Hal: Yeah. Look at everybody. Come on in. I think this is my first live Q&A stream in the Miracle Morning Community and I was planning on originally this was supposed to be with Mel Robbins today. So, if you’re just tuning in, it’s supposed to be with Mel Robbins today, the author of The 5 Second Rule, who is becoming a great friend of mine. She is a beautiful soul. She is brilliant. I know our Miracle Morning Community are some of her biggest fans, right? 5 Second Rule has changed a lot of your lives. It really goes hand-in-hand with The Miracle Morning, getting yourself to take action whether it’s waking up when the alarm goes off or anything that’s going to move you towards your goals. So, Mel had to reschedule so good news though is she’s 100% committed coming and doing a podcast and a live stream. That’ll be soon and then I didn’t want to let you down and give you nothing today, so I wanted to answer your question.
So, I gave everybody a chance to ask questions. I put a post earlier. I posted on the Mel Robbins post and said, “Hey, ask questions,” and I’ve got probably about 20 questions here so I’m going to go through all of these and time constraint. I don’t have time to take a bunch of new questions unfortunately but, again, we’re going to do more of these and when we do, you’ll be able to submit your questions in advance then I can look at them, think through them although today I was on the plane. I didn’t have internet. I didn’t think through them. I copied and paste them, so these would be very authentic, off the cuff if you will.
I just came back from New York speaking to 120, 150 real estate agents for an event that Justin Kim put on and Justin Kim is a friend of mine from back in the day. I’ve known him for over 10 years and, wow, every person in that audience or I’d say 90% they are members of the Miracle Morning Community and it was special. It’s so special to be in person with any of you. I actually said that this last December, November at the Best Year Ever Blueprint, the annual live event that I do with Jon Berghoff. We do only one live event a year at this point and I was with Jon and what I realized is you’ve heard the expression, “There are levels to these.” You ever heard that before, right? When it comes to anything, if you’re competing with somebody, you’re playing basketball with somebody, it’s like there are levels. You might think you’re good but there are levels.
Well, I had a distinction. As I was connecting with people at the live event, the Best Year Event, there are levels to this. And what I mean by that is we have an email subscriber community or list if you will, but I communicate with via email. You’re probably on that list and I could send up a podcast every week and anything else that is important I can communicate with that group. Mostly one-way communication. Occasionally, they email back but mostly one-way communication so that is a level if you will of our community. And then if you go to the Miracle Morning Community, that’s a whole other level because it’s not one side. It’s not just me firing emails at you. It’s, as you know, you’re a member of this community. It’s very engaging. It’s very interactive. In fact, I always describe this as one of, if not the most beautiful, loving, engaged, supportive, online communities in the world and I don’t have a lot to compare it with. I know what all of us bring to this community. So, that’s a whole another level from my email list if you will, a whole other level. And then when I was at the Best Year Ever Live Event, I realized with 400 Miracle Morning practitioners in the room that connecting and talking and I’m able to communicate and see your faces and the expressions that that was the highest level if you will or that was a whole new level that in-person community compared to the email subscriber or even the Miracle Morning Community.
So, I forgot where I was going with that. I think I had some point that I was going to make but let’s dive into the questions. I want to answer everyone’s question that asked one. Thank you for those that submitted them. If you have any more questions, you can go look in the post. So, in the Miracle Morning Community, if you go search and type in Hal Elrod or Hal Elrod Q&A, it should bring up a post and you’re welcome to post questions there. I’m not going to get to them today. We already have enough to cover. I’ve got an hour right now, but I will go look there and I can kind of copy and paste them for the next time we do a Q&A so that’s a way that you could submit some questions.
All right. We’re going to dive right in so thank you for being here. Before I do that, you probably know this, but this is the first time that I’ve been live with you, so I just want to say the Miracle Morning, or not the Miracle Morning. If you saw the video that my wife Ursula posted that I shared, we got the news last week I think, best news ever, that my cancer test came back not just as it had in the past which was called minimal residual disease which was like 0.05%, a small amount of cancer detected but they still consider that in remission because you’re on the way to healing and it’s not enough cancer that they can hurt you but there are cancer cells still present in your body and essentially my cancer can multiply. Well, we got it back, the test results came back as negative residual disease which means 0% and so I cannot thank you enough for your support and your prayers. I believe in the power of prayer, the power of positive energy and positive thoughts. I believe in all of that and I believe that you, every single member of the Miracle Morning Community that was praying and supporting that you’re a part of my healing and I could not have done it without you.
And when I write, I’m working on a new book called the Miracle Equation for it’ll probably be out I don’t know when, later this year or early next year, but the Miracle Equation it really talks about the cancer journey and how I was able to beat the cancer and this Miracle Equation that I created a long time ago which you can find here we talk about if you google Hal Elrod, Miracle Equation, I’ve talked about it on podcast and such but I’m going to finally write a book about it. And in that book, I’ll be talking a lot about our community and how the support of this community it has the power to heal and I really believe that this community has the power to heal the world. I believe that the Miracle Morning Community has the power to finally a goal of many, many, many people for many, many, many years, world peace.
I believe that the Miracle Morning Community can literally be the catalyst for realistically achieving world peace and this was a distinction, a realization, an awareness that I had a few months ago but I realized that the Miracle Morning Community all of our members they’re achieving inner peace and if you achieve inner peace one person at a time and you spread that big enough to enough people, all of a sudden it becomes world peace. That’s kind of a tangent but really, I want to thank you for being a member of the Miracle Morning Community and I want to thank you for everything that you bring to this community. The way that you support each other, it blows my mind in a really positive way. It’s beautiful. I check into the community almost every single day. You see, I like. Actually, I almost never like on it. It’s almost I always love comments because I love seeing the way that we all support each other. It’s a beautiful thing.
So, all right. We’re going to dive into the questions. First question is from Chip Franks. My good friend, Chip Franks. Actually, I love Chip. Chip said, “Can you detail your weekly planning process, please?” And, again, I just got home from the airport, so these are not organized in any order besides copy-pasting them. I’m going to go through them top to bottom. So, Chip says, “Can you detail your weekly planning process, please?” Chip, thank you for asking that. Obviously, planning is very important, and I learned a quote when I was 19 years old and you’ve probably heard this, maybe not but if you fail to plan then you might as well plan to fail. And I also I have a quote that says, “Don’t just do it, first plan it then do it,” and I think too much of us just jump in without really much thinking or planning. We jump into our day. We jump into our week. We jump into a new business opportunity without a lot of thought, a lot of planning.
And of course, I will always be transparent with you, so I will let you know I don’t love planning. I’m not a huge planner. I plan goals but, Chip, to really to answer your question, my weekly planning process in some ways it’s almost nonexistent. So, my weekly planning process is almost nonexistent, and it might surprise you especially based on what I just said about how important planning is but here’s why. I have an ongoing planning process that’s happening whenever a thought enters my mind that needs to be articulated in writing into a plan or into an action step or into an appointment in my schedule to get done. So, I use a calendar app called Fantastical. Actually, it’s Fantastical 2 I think now but I use a calendar called Fantastical and it’s similar to Google Calendar that syncs with that. I use iCal, any kind of online calendar. But I will tell you this, I was like the last person to the online calendar party meaning I use a paper planner until I think it might have been going into this year or I think it was last year. It was last year I think but I kept the paper planner forever. I was just so used to it. I had trouble switching and every year I’d go come and switch this year, but I would buy another paper planner and I would just write everything out.
And obviously, you can argue while there are certain advantages to a paper planner and science has shown that you connect your left or right brain when you actually write things out versus typing them, right? So, there are some advantages and I would kind of use those as justifications I think but I finally made the switch and I will tell you, arguably the biggest game changer in my productivity chip has been using that online calendar. And the beauty of it when I say my planning and I don’t have a weekly planning process because it’s ongoing, I have in my online calendar, Fantastical, I have my goals for the year. Here’s the beauty of it. They’re not just a list of goals. They’re a list of goals but they’re scheduled to be reviewed at 7 AM and every single day at 7 AM I get a reminder, that notification that says, “Review your goals for 2018.” So, I open those, and I click on it and then I review my goals for the year and then 15 minutes later I have another pop up that says plan and prioritize your day and I’ve got all my to-do list on that.
So, this was actually I don’t know if someone taught this to me or I just thought of it but it’s really, really cool. Instead of having a list of stuff over here and then schedule over here, my list is in my schedule and it’s scheduled when I review that. So, I don’t have a weekly planning process, Chip. I have really a daily planning process and then ongoing. So, I’ve got goals for the year and it’s just my brain whenever I think of, “Oh, there’s something I need to get done.” I don’t go to a list and just add it to a to-do list. I pull out my calendar app or my scheduler and I go, “When does that need to get done?” Now, if it’s a daily to-do that I just got to fit somewhere then it goes into that 7:15 AM, review your day, prioritize and plan the day or if it’s a big goal for the year, it goes into the goals but that’s my planning process, Chip. It’s not weekly. It’s definitely somewhat daily but it’s really more ongoing whenever I think of something that I need to get done, it goes in there.
And of course, whenever I’m reviewing my goals for the year or I’m reviewing my planning and prioritizing my daily tasks then new ideas pop up and new things maybe get done, things spin off of one task or up one goal, etcetera. Sometimes I review my goals and I go, okay, I’ll ask myself a question like, “What am I doing today? Or do I have something in my schedule this week that will move me closer to that goal?” And so, that review every day of the annual goals is an accountability process to make sure that I’ve got activity scheduled so that I’m moving towards those goals. So, that’s it, Chip. Thank you. It’s a great question, buddy. I appreciate you.
All right. Next question is from I think it’s [Bandy Chandra Sacar – 15:08]. I apologize if I pronounced anyone’s name wrong today. I’m just going to say it upfront. There’s a disclaimer. I will probably pronounce the names wrong. Bandy, I hope I get yours right. So, Bandy says, “After morning SAVERS, I am active for the rest of the day. Kindly suggest me an evening ritual as I will be nearly drained out after office hours.” So, it’s funny. Maybe a lot of what I do is counterintuitive but I – hey, Judith, good to see you too. Sorry. I just saw comments coming in here. Judy Miller from India. Is that Indiana? I don’t know. But anyway, so after the SAVERS, my evening rituals. So, I don’t have a real robust evening ritual. So, my evening ritual is when I get off work I go play with my kids or usually we eat dinner first and then I play with my kids, spend time with my wife. I go to bed relatively early, but I don’t have like a shutdown and there are a lot of great evening routines out there.
In fact, a lot of people suggested that I find a co-author that’s got a killer evening routine to write the Miracle Evening. If you like that idea, you can put it in there but in terms of my evening ritual, it’s really just spend time with my family, get ready to go to bed. That’s it, right? Move my alarm clock across the room. I still do that. It’s in my bathroom. I turn on white noise. I have an app for my phone for white noise. It helps drown out any background noise that I can sleep better and find that works well, but I don’t have a real evening ritual. Now, Honoree Corder, my business partner, my partner in the Miracle Morning book series, I think she’s got a more robust evening ritual, so I put her on the spot. You can tag her in the comments and say, “Honoree, what’s your evening ritual?” But again, I would just google “evening rituals” and you will find an abundance. And if I don’t have an answer to your question here, I would just tell you to google it, right? That’s my research process. I call it G search, Google search, but you can do a little G search and in a matter of minutes you’ll have dozens if not thousands of articles on any topic that you want and that to me is like the quick short way to learn something.
And so, for me, if I want to like if I didn’t want to implement a really robust evening ritual, I would google “best evening rituals” or “evening rituals of entrepreneurs” or “evening rituals of dads or parents.” So, I would google some specific topics then I would read a few articles and I would pick together what made sense for me, what resonated, what was aligned with me and then I would create my evening ritual. And think about this, that literally would take maybe 5 to 20 minutes to go read a few articles, find out what you like, what works for you, and then create your ritual. So, what I just shared there is really a process for how you can quickly learn and implement anything and make a change right away in your life.
Bandy, one more question. Thank you for that one. “Will these morning rituals improve health and cure any ailments?” Whew! That is a deep question. It’s one that obviously, legally, I don’t think I could make any medical claims. All I know is I had a medical ailment over the last year that was cancer. I don’t know that it was the Miracle Morning that cured it. I will tell you that I have heard and again, I cannot, will not make any medical claims. I haven’t done enough – we don’t have science-based research or studies that have been conducted that the Miracle Morning could improve health or cure any ailment. So, that’s why ethically and legally I wouldn’t and couldn’t make any claims. But I will tell you, in fact, you’re actually going to see, you know what, I’m going to move this question because the next question, well, let me just read to you, Dawn Rene Keller’s post. I’m going to read to you Dawn Rene Keller’s post because while I can’t make any claims, I can definitely share with you someone else’s experience.
So, Dawn Rene Keller said, “I want to share with you that I have used the habits in the Miracle Morning to defeat depression. It’s not all in the morning but just completing the SAVERS throughout the day has given me a routine of self-love and I now have the tools to live a happy life free from depression.” Now, my daughter’s, she’s getting here. Hey, baby. “Now, I want to help others live a happy life free from doubt, depression, and fear.” Dawn, that is a beautiful thing both that you found that it alleviated your depression and that now you want to pay it forward and help others. So, I commend you for that. I love you for that. I acknowledge you for that. And Dawn goes on to say, “I find so many people post here about being stuck on the times to do Miracle Morning and almost saying they can’t do it because they can’t get up early. I understand the value of early morning, but I don’t want that to keep me from doing the SAVERS at any time. It would be great if we could talk on that if you agree. Thank you for being a light for me when I was living in the darkness.” Dawn, you are welcome. Thank you for paying forward and helping others and sharing your message and being vulnerable with us. I really, really appreciate it.
So, yes, so back to Bandy though before I answer Dawn’s question and talk on that. Bandy said, “Will these morning rituals improve health and cure any ailments?” Well, Dawn just told you that it literally helped her to overcome depression. Now, I will tell you that I have dozens if not hundreds of emails from people telling me that the Miracle Morning cured their depression. Again, well I guess it cured my depression now that I think about it. I was deeply depressed when I created the Miracle Morning and it took a matter of days like literally the first day I did the Miracle Morning I did it and don’t feel depressed anymore. I had a young man come up to me at a conference. He was 19 years old. I was probably 28 or something. I was speaking actually at a Cutco conference, my old stomping ground where I used to work. I was speaking at a Cutco conference. A 19-year-old young man came up to me in the hall and he said and he’s real flustered. He goes, “Oh my gosh, I have to thank you.” I said, “Yes, please.” And he said, and I can’t remember so I can’t quote the specifics, but it was something along the lines of, “Hal, I’ve been doing the Miracle Morning for I think it was three months.” He said, “I’ve been on depression medication for years and since I started the Miracle Morning, I cut my dose down further and further and further and now I’m almost completely off of my depression medication in just a few months after starting the Miracle Morning.”
And so, again, there’s no scientific data that shows the Miracle Morning cures any ailments but you probably if you actually dove, if you spend some time on Google and looking at is there scientific data that shows meditation cures physical ailments, that affirmations cure? So, if you actually break down the SAVERS and you look into those, I would imagine you’ll actually probably find data research, etcetera, and by the way, we are planning on writing a book one day that is very scientific. It’ll be like the Miracle Morning on turbocharged like it’ll be like three, four, five times as long. So, one day we’ll write a book probably called Miracle Morning Mastery that has that. It may be the ten-year anniversary or something but as of now, I have to go off other people’s experience like Dawn who shared that.
Now, Dawn who I just read her kind of testimony, she asked if I could speak on doing the SAVERS at different times and whether or not you do in the morning. Here’s what I’ll say. Can you do the SAVERS at different times in the day and still get great benefit? 100%, yes. Absolutely. The SAVERS if you meditate in the evening, you get great benefit from meditation any time of the day. Virtually, in fact, not virtually, every single one of the SAVERS gives you typically physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits no matter what time of day you do it and have actually you’ve seen in the community where a lot of new moms that have newborns that they’re staying up with all night. I’ve seen posts where they say, “Hey, I’ve got a newborn. I’m up with him or her all night. How the hell am I supposed to do Miracle Morning? I’m trying to get sleep anywhere that I can.” And being that I’m not a new mom but I always turn it over to other moms to answer that question and what the answers that came in were, “Do the SAVERS whenever you can. So, you may not benefit from starting first thing in the morning, but you’ll benefit from the SAVERS. So, do them when the baby goes down for the first nap, do the S and the A. When they get off for the second nap, do the V and E. So, spread up the SAVER or do them in any order that you want.”
So, that’s one question we get a lot from your new Miracle Morning practitioners. Do the SAVERS have to be in order, this little tangent? Answer: Absolutely not. You can do them in any order that you want. Now, I do want to speak though to Dawn’s topic, Dawn’s question, and what we’re talking about right now about doing the Miracle Morning at different times of the day, doing the SAVERS throughout the day. Can you do that? Yes. Will it benefit you? Absolutely. Any one of the SAVERS has been proven over centuries to be a life-changing practice. When you do more than one of them, you’re amplifying that life-changing those benefits and if you do all six of them, you’re harnessing six of the most proven powerful personal development practices in the history of humanity. And it doesn’t matter what time of day you do them to benefit. However, and this is a very, very big however, and the however is all of those benefits they impact you when you do them and for hours thereafter. So, if you wait to do the SAVERS until later in the day, you’ve now missed out on the benefits you would’ve experienced throughout your entire day had you done them first thing in the morning.
So, science has proven meditation lowers your cortisol levels. So, going back to Bandy in terms of health and ailments that it can cure, yeah, so meditation there’s a lot of physiological benefits and psychological benefits of meditation that are scientifically proven, lowers cortisol levels which lowers your stress. I mean, there’s a lot of benefits. So, if you meditate only at night, you might sleep better but you now missed out on the benefits the entire day. When you exercise first thing in the morning, you wake your lymph system up. You get blood and oxygen to your brain. You think clearer. You have more discipline. You have more energy. You don’t want to wait on those benefits until 4:00 in the afternoon or 7:00 in the evening. You want those benefits first thing in the morning so that you start your day right and that’s what makes the Miracle Morning and doing the SAVERS first thing in the morning so important and so beneficial. So, now if you had to pick between doing the SAVERS first thing in the morning or doing in the afternoon or not at all, yeah, do them in the afternoon. It’s better than nothing but by doing them in the morning as all of you know, you’re getting the benefits first thing in the morning that impacts the quality of your day.
And Steve, author of Personal Development for Smart People he said, “Win the morning, you win the day.” How you start your day sets the tone. For Ashley Ellsworth said, “I need to reread the Miracle Morning.” That’s a great idea by the way. I can’t tell you how many people have said that when they read it the second time or the third time you’re reminded, you pick up on things, and actually you’re reminded of things and you pick up on things and I want to give you a little – here’s a little bonus tip on rereading books. I’ve said before, I’ve said it in the Miracle Morning that I’d rather read one life-changing book ten times than ten life-changing books one time each. And the reason for that and it may be ten times. Maybe only three is enough but the point is this, it’s quality over quantity. When you read a book, and this is true, I want you to think about this. I think it was Jim Rohn that said, “Repetition is the key to mastery.” The world’s best athletes, they don’t try new moves all the time. They do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again and that’s how they get really, really good at that thing and that other move. They do less moves over and over again.
When you learn a new idea whether it’s through a book, a podcast or any other medium, you’re being exposed to that idea. You’re getting an, “Aha. Wow,” but typically when you’re exposed to an idea, that’s not the same as really, really taking the idea in and contemplating it at a very deep level. That comes through repetition. Kind of like that basketball player. It’s not the first shot that they go, “Oh wow, I got this.” It’s through the 180,000th shot where they’re tweaking their wrist by 1/30th of a degree every shot to get it perfect. They’re taking in that information, that new idea, that new behavior, and they’re doing it over and over, they’re learning it over and over so when you reread something or you re-listen to a podcast, that’s when the information goes from a new idea that gets you excited to actually deepening your learning and really taking it in and going even into your subconscious so that you can start to live that idea because you heard me say this, it’s not what you learn that matters, it’s what you live that matters. People read books like badges of honor, “Oh, got another one done. Got another one done. Got another done.” But if you go, “Hey, what have you implemented from those last five books?” They go, “Um, well, I…” Yeah. Good luck with that, right? So, repetition is crucial.
All right. But, Dawn, great question and again, SAVERS, do them anytime you want but first thing in the morning is what’s going to put you in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state first thing in the morning so that you win that morning and then you’re in that state through the best version of yourself to win the day. Emma said, “When are you coming to the UK, Hal?” I am coming to the UK to speak at Chris Ducker’s event. Youpreneur, November 3 and 4, I think, 2018. So, go to YoupreneurSummit.com. I’m speaking there in the UK on November 3 and 4, I think, and I think the website, I don’t know if it still says sold out. It said sold out for a while, so people were complaining that I had told that I was going to be there, but I checked with Chris and he said, “Oh, we haven’t updated the website. That’s from last year. Last year was sold out. We didn’t update the website for this year.” So, they are not sold out. You can go to YoupreneurSummit.com and you can join us. Emma, I love to meet you in person and give you a big hug as long as I’m not sick because I was in New York yesterday. I couldn’t hug anybody which was a bummer so awesome. Dawn, thank you for the great question.
Anna Nomoba, our next question. Anna, by the way, is a freaking rock star. She was at the Best Year Ever Blueprint in San Diego, California from Russia and she flew by herself from Russia. It was like 20 hours to spend three days with us. It was amazing. So, I want to give a round of applause to Anna. Anna, I love you. You’re so great. All right. So, Anna asked a few questions. I’m going to answer them all. She said, “Have you ever fallen out of your Miracle Morning routine not counting the time of being sick and if yes, how did you return to it?” I’ve definitely fallen out of my Miracle Morning routine. In fact, I fall out of it when I travel. I don’t do it when I travel. I won’t say I don’t do it at all but for the most part, I don’t do it. I still wake up early and I usually read, and I usually do my affirmation. Say what, now that I’m saying that, I guess I don’t fall out of it when I travel but it’s just not as structured. For me, I’m a very routine person. So, Miracle Morning, it’s very holistic in terms of waking up, brushing my teeth, turning up the alarm, going it like everything is the same every day. My water is in the same place, my books are in the same place. I do the Miracle Morning in the same place. I stretch on my car in the same place. I do my exercise.
And so, when I get out of my routine, it’s true for all of us I think but it’s more challenging and I don’t know, it just feels different and actually, I also look at it is as a break. So, when I travel for me actually it’s like, “Hey, kind of a break to my normal routine,” but the beauty of it is, I’m always back into it when I get back. When I’m back in my environment, the only time I miss the Miracle Morning is if I have like a date night with my wife and I stay up late so I value my sleep. So, if I stay up until midnight or whatever because I had a date night, I’m watching a UFC event or something, and I want my at least seven hours of sleep so I will sleep until the next morning at whatever time and usually my kids are up by then, so I don’t do a Miracle Morning. So, the only time I miss my Miracle Morning is usually when I have a late night the night before for some reason which happens maybe twice a month or when I’m traveling but because my environment is such an anchor at home for my Miracle Morning it’s just part of who I am. I fall back into it every time.
And I definitely have thought about having a co-author once I find somebody that travels and never misses the Miracle Morning in hotels, on the road. And definitely like I said, I do it. I usually just wake up, I wake up early like I did this morning. In fact, this morning I woke up an hour before my alarm. I was in New York. I woke up at 3:30 AM. I woke up feeling awake which is 2:30 AM Austin, Texas time so I’ve been up since 2:30 AM my time that I’m at now because I flew home today but I woke up and I read my affirmations. I wrote in my five-minute journal and I read a parenting book. I think that’s it. I stretched a little so I guess I do it a little bit but there are definitely days when I travel where I don’t do it at all. I wake up, I got to give a speech, or I got to go to a meeting or whatever and I don’t do it at all.
So, yeah, I think there’s nothing wrong with – I love the 80/20 rule. It’s a great book, The 80-20 Rule, and it’s the idea that as long as you do, well, there are a few different ways to define it but in this context, it’s as long as you do what’s right 80% of the time, it’s okay if you’re not perfect 20% of the time, the other 20%. And that’s how I feel with 80 like with diet. For me, I eat a plant-based diet primarily vegan and then, well, I guess, I eat a little healthy grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish. I try to eat really healthy meats. When I do eat meats and I eat very small amounts of meats just maybe two or three times a week, small portions. But the point is I eat a primarily plant-based organic diet and so I don’t feel guilty to eat crappy food occasionally because most of the time I’m eating really healthy.
So, I don’t feel guilty to eat a piece of pizza because I know that I’m going to wake up and I’m going to have an organic smoothie and I’m going to follow that up with maybe some organic oatmeal and then I’m going to have a killer organic salad for lunch and then my wife’s going to make a really healthy dinner and then I’m going to have a smoothie for dessert if I have dessert. So, I know that, again, it’s that anchoring in that environment and for those of you watching you’re like, “I need to get there,” it didn’t happen overnight. When I spoke yesterday I was asked, how did you get to the next level in your life or in any area of life or in business or whatever? And it comes with clarity, commitment, and accountability. So, that’s not a question on here but I write that down. The question to how do you get to the next level in any area of your life? Clarity, commitment, and accountability. In fact, will somebody message out in the comments or something? Somebody write out the comments please for me and tag me? How do you get to the next level in any area of life? Clarity, commitment, and accountability. I don’t remember if I said it that way, but I like that, so I want to be able to teach that. Put it in the comments, the more, the merrier and tag me. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.
Karina, “They made me cry tears of joy, the news about no cancer too. Thank you.” So, I’m going to cry now when I talk about it but so clarity, right? What is it that you want to change? Why do you want to change it? What do you need to do to make that change? So, you got to get clarity first and foremost. Then you’ve got to make a rock solid unwavering commitment that you are going to take whatever action that’s necessary to make that change. Now, what does that mean? Well, I like to say, “Just set a 30-day challenge. Live your life in 30-day challenges.” So, anything you want to change. If you’re like, “Ah I eat unhealthy. I need to eat healthy,” which is arguably the most important change that you ever make in your life if you don’t eat healthy is to eat healthy. Take it from somebody who just went through a major physical illness and not from eating unhealthy but still, most people’s illness is because of their diet. Most people’s illness, the number one cause of death in the United States plus I don’t know if still is, but it was heart disease was number one. Cancer was number two. That was years ago. I don’t know if it’s still the case but most of those, most cancers or tumors and such are often created by diet. Heart disease is often created by diet so they’re preventable. So, anyway, I eat on a real dietary soapbox if you will.
But hey, Tammy Hatch, welcome. Stephanie Blackbird, hello. Miracle Morning moderator and celebrity Stephanie Blackbird. So, I had enough saying hi to people because then totally I forget. I’m like, “What was I talking about?” All right. So, I was talking about 30-day challenges. So, number one, if you want to take any area of your life to the next level, number one is clarity. Number two is make a rock-solid unwavering commitment and number three is accountability which is make that commitment public either public to one other human being, public to your circle of influence, public to an accountability partner, to a coach, etcetera. Jeffrey Sooey was on the live stream or maybe he still is. I saw him comment earlier. Jeffrey was my accountability coach. I want to explain, in fact, Jeff, I credit you all the time for this buddy. Jeffrey taught me the power of accountability. Accountability, right, whether it’s holding yourself accountable which is normally not as effective.
Very few people even, in fact, no one that I’m aware of on the planet will hold themselves who as high as standards in every area of life as someone else that they are commissioning if you will or giving that responsibility to hold them to a higher standard meaning that like when I started with Jeff, I hated running and so I remember I was like, “I need to get over that,” and so I made a commitment to Jeff that I would run and guess what, when I went to the gym, guess what I didn’t want to do? I didn’t want to run but, in my head, I went, “Wait a minute. I made a commitment not just to myself which is easy to let ourselves off the hook. I made a commitment to Jeff, my coach, and I’m talking to him next week and I value my integrity.” So, I’m not okay saying, “Yeah, Jeff, sorry. I got a bunch of excuses why I didn’t run.” So, I got on the treadmill because Jeff was my accountability but guess what happened? After a few weeks of that, all of a sudden, I didn’t need Jeff anymore because I had developed, I had made the change. I had gone to the next level in that area. I had broken through the barriers of not being a runner and I started getting on that treadmill and going for a jog without Jeff’s help.
So, that’s my recommendation. If you want to take any area of your life to the next level, it requires clarity of what you want, why you want it and what you need to do to get it. It requires a commitment from you, unwavering rock-solid commitment and then accountability isn’t necessary. If you can follow through with your commitment without accountability, that’s great but if you know yourself, if this is something you’ve tried before maybe over and over and over again, and you haven’t stuck with it, you haven’t followed through with what you need to do to go to the next level in your life, your business, your health, whatever, you’ve got to get some accountability from other people. And accountability is in a lot of forms. Me and Jon Berghoff went to the accountable time by simply saying, “You have a call. What needs to get done by our next call?” Just like a coaching call with Jeff Sooey and he go, “Okay. Great.” And that call is in my schedule and as it gets closer, I go, “I got to get that done,” and I get it done not because of my commitment to myself often but often it’s because of my commitment to Jon and the fact that I have accountability in the form of that commitment or a phone call that’s coming up. All right. I riffed on that for long enough.
So, Anna, yes, I’ve fallen off and if you’ve fallen off the Miracle Morning, by the way, recommit public. So, how do you go back on Miracle Morning? Clarity, commitment, and accountability, right? Clarity of why are you getting back on? Remind yourself of why the Miracle Morning is so impactful, how it helps you get clear on that, clarify that. Number two, make an unwavering commitment. Number three, post the Miracle Morning Community or get accountability buddy or whatever and recommit. Carolyn Marco said, “Literally just finished the Miracle Morning. I love it so much. We’re going to do the 30-day challenge tomorrow officially.” Carolyn, woo, welcome! Awesome. All right. Anna had a few more questions. Let me see if I can jump in. These are I think I can answer these pretty quick.
Number two, are you planning another book? Yes, we have two books coming out this year, The Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery and that is being co-authored with Anna David and Joe Polish who are specialist, experts if you will in addiction and overcoming addiction and all kinds of addictions, sexual addiction, porn addiction, drug addictions, food addictions. You name it, it’s all going to be in that book. I’m really excited about that. A lot of people told me the Miracle Morning has enabled them to overcome their addiction or supported their 12-step program and been perfect in alignment and that helped them to overcome their addiction. So, that book is coming out and then The Miracle Morning Millionaires, What the Wealthy Do Before 8 AM That Will Make You Rich. That’s coming out this year, co-authored with David Osborn, New York Times best-selling author of Wealth Can’t Wait so good friend of mine. Those are the two books coming out this year and I keep convincing my daughter to do Miracle Morning for Kids. I’m like, “Sophie, if you don’t write it with me, I’m going to write it with somebody else,” but she’s not quite there.
So, yes, Anna, great question. Every year we’ll throw out probably at least two Miracle Morning books occasionally. In the past, we had one year we did three I think so, yeah, but I don’t want to force it. I want them to really be organic and what I feel like there’s a need for and not just, “Oh, what book do we write? Let’s give them the book done.” I don’t want to force it so we’re going to take this slow. In fact, at one point I’m like, “Hey, we can do four books a year. Let’s just do all these books,” and then I just step back. No, no, quality over quantity and so that’s where we’re at right now.
Anna, you said, “Please tell me some news about The Miracle Morning Movie.” Don’t get me started. The Miracle Morning Movie is so if you’re at Best Year Ever Blueprint we showed a one-hour screener. If you were there, you laughed, you cried right alongside me laughing and crying and it’s amazing. In fact, early next week I’m supposed to get the first cut of the full roughly 90-minute documentary, the Miracle Morning Movie. I’m going to get feedback and we’re submitting it for the Illuminate Film Festival which is to my knowledge is the largest conscious film festival in the world. I don’t know if it’s the largest, but I think it’s a conscious film festival. I believe Deepak Chopra released that movie there and a lot of folks release movies there and, yeah, so we’re going to launch it there and then after that, I’m going to have to figure this out as I go along or find an expert. We’ll get it on Netflix, that’s the goal. Netflix, Amazon Video, iTunes, you name it and then we’ll do theater releases.
Where I’m at in Austin, Texas there’s a chain of theaters in Texas called Alamo Drafthouse which are those really cool theaters where they bring you food, you order food and you’re in a big recliner and all that. Their daughter goes to school with my daughter at Acton Academy, they’ve already agreed that they’ll let us do like red carpet premieres. So, the movie is coming out this year. I really believe that that is going to further the mission of elevating the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time because if you think about it, way more people watch movies than read self-help books. And so, what is it like? I mean, I don’t know, 95% of our society probably watches movies and maybe 5% read books or self-help books so that’s the whole reason we did this film is to really further the mission and I’m excited for that.
And then Anna said, “Do you have a dream destination to travel?” Anna, I’m going to let you in on a secret and everybody else. I don’t care to travel anywhere. I don’t have any ambitions to travel. I’m actually a boring person. I’m kind of a homebody. I love my family. I like UFC. I like my friends. I like my basketball. There are a dozen things I like doing but most of the things that like most people have these dreams of traveling and stuff, I’m like, “Eh.” Actually, my favorite part of traveling is I like flying and getting worked on the plane and I like staying in hotels. That’s it. I don’t care about seeing sights. But luckily my wife is a normal human being. Thankfully Ursula is a normal human being and if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t do anything or go anywhere. She drags me, and she pulls me out. I’m always glad when I do it. We went to Paris. I literally would’ve stayed in my hotel in Paris. I probably would’ve stayed in my hotel and work and done the media tour but of course, I had to take her to the Eiffel Tower. We had to try different stuff but thanks to her I get to see some cool stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Anna, for your questions. You’re awesome.
Maria Samerine, you said, “I am reading the Miracle Morning for Writers. Any advice or just a shout out for fiction writers?” I don’t have any advice for fiction writers because I am not a fiction writer. I’m actually toying with the idea of my next book, The Miracle Equation, being a fiction story. Now granted, the book I did with Michael Meyer, we did that as a fictional story, but I will tell you Michael had the majority. That was his expertise, so he had the majority of the story aspect and how that flowed.
So, anyway, if I were you, I would first take the advice that I said earlier which is google but I would really look toward Honoree Corder. Honoree Corder, she is my partner in the Miracle Morning book series and if you go to Amazon and type in Honoree Corder, she’s got tons of books, I mean, over 30 books that she’s written but she’s got quite a few books on writing and publishing. I don’t know if even them are for fiction or not but there’s lots of book on Amazon and how to be a successful fiction writer whether you want to know how to actually write the book, form the book or you want to market you writing your book, that sort of thing. So, Maria, great question. Sorry. I don’t have a more robust answer for you.
All right. And then we’ve got Christine Raki Anderson says, “Who are your top five to ten meditation teachers or guided meds and what are your favorite types of meditations? Do you use meditation, visualization in your healing process?” So, I don’t have a top five to ten meditation teachers. For me, I typically meditate on my own, so I don’t do – I should say it’s about half and half. I do about half guided meditations depending on the day and then half the time I just sit in silence and I go inside, and I quiet my mind. Actually, I’ll teach you. Well, first, let me try to answer your question further and then I’ll teach you my favorite form of meditation. In terms of my favorite guided meditation is by Vishen Lakhiani. I posted this in the Miracle Morning Community a week ago or something and it’s on YouTube for free. It’s called the 6 Phase Guided Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani. He has an app with a lot of meditations called Omvana and then there’s a newer app that I found that I like. It’s called Simple Habit because, for me, I don’t like to do things for long periods of time. I like it short and sweet.
So, I really like five-minute meditations during the week. And then on the weekends like the Vishen Lakhiani, the 6 Phase Guided Meditation is a 20-minute meditation. So, I do that usually on the weekends. So, I’ll go deeper and longer on the weekends but during the weekend I do five-minute meditation either by myself or if it’s guided, I use the app, Simple Habit. So, they are my favorite apps are Omvana and Simple Habit for meditation. If you had a YouTube, you can literally find guided meditations on anything. You just type in “guided meditation to be a better dad or a better mom or to be rich or to be happy or to lower stress.” There are guided meditations for free on YouTube for everything. You just find the ones you like, make a playlist, save them, and then you’ll have your killer meditation. So, Christine, great questions.
And then Stephanie Blackbeard, our group admin, we’re going to wrap up with she has seven questions and here’s why. Because Stephanie, she moderates our group and thank you. I want to publicly say to Stephanie, to Hank, Sally Hayden. Who else? We have Tiffany. All of our moderating team, thank you. We have moderators around the world, about half a dozen and it takes – we get, I don’t know the amount even, hundreds of posts every day, hundreds and hundreds of posts every day and unfortunately, like any group when it gets big, we start getting people spanning the group. If you’re around a year ago, you might have seen all of a sudden because they were selling all their stuff and we were getting pornographic posts in here which were I would log in. I’m like, “Oh, this person’s new to the Miracle Morning.” I’m like, “Oh my God like that’s terrible. Delete. Delete. Delete.” We couldn’t catch them because there are so many posts going in. So, we switched the settings. I did. I said, “We can’t have the quality of the group just go downhill because we can’t keep up with the posts.”
So, we can’t have spam and pornographic. I can’t have that. So, we changed the setting. Now every post has to be approved. Some people didn’t like that but that there was really no – I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure the quality of the content that you get in the group. And so, I couldn’t keep up with approving all of the posts and so we had a volunteer moderator team. So, they don’t get paid for this. They are out of the kindness of their heart supporting our community. So, if you ever get a chance to love on Stephanie Blackbeard, Sally Hayden or any of the moderator team, I think they’re all listed in the description, please do because they put in so much time, so much effort and just that are hard to really maintaining the heart and spirit and quality of the Miracle Morning Community so thank you, everybody.
And Stephanie basically is awesome. She posted she’s like, “Here are some of the common questions that I see, Hal.” So, if you didn’t get to ask me a question, you might find that yours is covered here. So, number one from Stephanie, she says common question that she sees a lot. “How do the people who are super time-pressed squeeze it all in?” Stephanie, I don’t know if you meant squeeze all the SAVERS in or everything they need to do in, I’m not sure but I imagine it’s the SAVERS. So, I would just say, well, there are a few answers. Number one is the first answer, one of the first questions about getting to the SAVERS to different times of the day, yeah, and think about this. Here’s kind of like a hybrid strategy for you, and this actually answers two questions. It answers Dawn’s question about doing the SAVERS at different times and Kisha, thank you. Kisha Celeste, I appreciate it. I am thrilled that I’m kicking cancer’s ass too but Dawn’s question, “Do you do SAVERS at different times,” right? And then Stephanie’s question here about people that are time-pressed, when do they do it or how do they fit it all in?
So, here’s an idea. Imagine the hybrid Miracle Morning. What if you pick the three SAVERS and this is I’ve never set this exact thing before and have this distinction. What if you pick the three SAVERS that make the biggest impact for you and you do those first thing in the morning like the ones that impact your day the most, maybe it’s exercise, maybe it’s meditation, maybe it’s journaling. I don’t know. You do those in the morning and then you pick the three SAVERs that don’t impact your day as much, but you actually find that they are a great way to close out the day. So, that’s a great way to do miracle morning. You could do three SAVERS in the morning, five minutes each, 15 minutes in the morning and then three SAVERS at night, however long you want to do them, five minutes each, 10 minutes each so 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night or 15 minutes and 15, whatever. That’s a neat and I like that idea. It’s kind of a hybrid way to split up your SAVERS. You still get the benefit of first thing in the morning, but have it take less time in the morning and then have the benefit at the end of the day to kind of sandwich your day between the SAVERS. So, Stephanie or if somebody could send me that as a message, I like that idea. I appreciate it.
All right. So, we are time-pressed or you could do the six-minute Miracle Morning. There’s a whole chapter on the book on the six-minute Miracle Morning and I don’t believe that that’s an ideal strategy for every day. I don’t think that six minutes is enough to go really, really deep but it is enough time to get the benefits of all of the SAVERS in literally six minutes and you just don’t go to go deep but you do get all the benefits. 60 seconds of jumping jacks? You’re getting the blood and oxygen to the brain. 60 seconds of meditation and quieting the mind, you’re lowering your cortisol levels. You’re feeling more centered. That’s true for all of the SAVERS and it will take 60 seconds to really read affirmations, etcetera. Getting along there.
All right. Number two, “People who live in small spaces or shared space, don’t want to wake up their spouse or children. How can they do it?” That is a great question. I have a great answer. You may have seen this probably a year or so ago, two years ago. Actually, I posted this multiple times. Whenever I share a room with a roommate that like a business conference so, for example, me and my friend Brad Weimert or Jon Berghoff, we had friends, we go to masterminds, business conferences together. We usually share a room so that we could, A, save a few bucks but mostly just so we can hang out and we can share what we’re learning and just talk after the event. And so, I wake up. I still when I travel I do wake up at the same time even though I don’t do the same. In fact, now that I’m saying this, I don’t know why I said there’s a period where I didn’t do the SAVERS during travel because I’m thinking back I’m like I always do them. So, I renege on what I said earlier. But I go into the bathroom so that’s the answer. Do them on your bathroom floor. Now, if your bathroom floor is cold tile, go buy a rug for $10 at Walmart or target or whatever, have a comfy rug or fold up a towel and sit down and do your SAVERS but when I share a room, I have my alarm set so unfortunately, they have to deal with me and my alarm going off but then I grab it. I go into the bathroom of the hotel, I shut the door, turn on the light and I do my Miracle Morning on the bathroom floor. So, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have a bathroom in their home so imagine that that would be an answer except to that question where if you have small space or shared space, do your Miracle Morning in the bathroom.
Number three, “Does it have to all be done super early?” Yes. I mean, no, we already knocked that out so that’s great. That’s a question we already talked all about.
Number four, “What is your current position on sleep and how much do we need?” Again, there are so many. Like I wrote in the book, there are so many different scientific takes on this. And they’re all so anecdotal evidence of people, great minds that slept very little. Now, we don’t know if they died early because they slept little, so I can’t speak to that. I know I said in the book but I talked about Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, people that were known for sleeping three or four hours a night and there’s something called Polyphasic Sleep where you sleep three to four hours a night and then you nap every three or four hours for like 10 or 15 minutes and it resets your bio – I haven’t read up on it in a long time but here’s the deal. I used to sleep five-and-a-half to six hours a night before I got cancer and then when I got cancer and I looked at all the reasons what could’ve cost my cancer, one of them was I thought, “You know what, I didn’t take enough time to rest and rejuvenate.” And not just at night when I was sleeping but during the day if I was tired I would usually turn to caffeine. A lot of us do that because I valued productivity above my health, above rest and rejuvenation. I didn’t know that. I wasn’t aware of that.
Think about that. Do you value productivity above health? If you’re tired, that’s your body saying rest. If instead, you take a stimulant like caffeine, you are literally valuing productivity or unless you’re spending time with your kids during that time then you’re valuing that I guess and that’s a different way to look at it. But you’re valuing whatever above your health. And so, for me, that’s why I started sleeping seven hours a night so now that’s a rock-solid commitment that I make is you sleep seven hours a night and I do that probably 6.8 days out of the week. Rarely do I get less than seven hours now but, again, my take on sleep. My position hasn’t changed in that you have to find out what works for you and you should do your own research. You should google. You should read what research is out there, what does Harvard say? Because you see there are studies that show you need eight hours and there are studies that show that six hours is actually optimal and all over the board.
And by the way, okay, glad I remembered this because this is very important. If you, how much sleep you need is dependent on so many variables that you – you want to give me a hug? You want to say hi to everybody? Everybody, this is my daughter, Sophie. She is eight years old. She has some friends and she is going to co-author the Miracle Morning for kids someday? Yeah? When are we doing that? Talk to the microphone.
Sophie: I don’t know.
Hal: You don’t know? All right. Soon. You want an ice chip? All right. By the way, if you want some sugar-free candies, I saw these on Shark Tank and you can have like one little piece and they’re really fulfilling. These are called ice chips. They’re not a sponsor or anything. That’s a small one, sweetie. Let me get you a slice. There you go. Anyway, but they’re really good and they’re sugar-free. They use xylitol which is a natural sweetener. You like them, sweetie? All right. So, that was my daughter, Sophie, everybody. She is awesome. That’s enough. You’ve made your appearance, your cameo. All right. We’ll play soon. I’ll be off in half-an-hour. Not off of this half an hour. I’m off of this in a few minutes but I’m off to work in half an hour. So, Casey got, “Oh, we got half an hour more.” No, I can’t do that long.
But here’s the deal with sleep. Think about this. How much sleep you need is dependent on I mean a lot of things, genetics, on your weight, really your overall, I’d say if there’s anything, it’s dependent on your physical fitness and your health but largely it’s dependent on your diet too. Everything revolves around diet. So, if you eat a large meal at night, think about this. If you eat late at night and you eat a large meal or any meal, forget a large meal, just any meal, what happens is then you go to sleep, your body is digesting food all night long. Your metabolism has slowed down because you’re now sleeping but think about that. If you eat at night, late at night or even forget late at night. If you eat fried food for dinner, that takes a long time to digest. You’re going to sleep poorer than you would if you either didn’t eat late at night or you ate something plant-based healthy easily digested that would go through your system really easy.
So, you need more, if you’re eating unhealthy or late at night, you’re going to need more sleep because you’re going to wake up in the morning and it might not matter how much sleep you get. You could 10 hours of sleep, 10 hours of sleep but if you eat unhealthy food before bed, your body was digesting all night. It didn’t get to rest. It did not get to rest so you wake up feeling tired. But if you eat a really clean diet and you eat healthy foods and you don’t eat late at night, and the last meal that you eat is a healthy meal then your body you’re going to get rest. You’re going to feel good in the morning.
I recently discovered a supplement I’m going to share with you guys. Am I allowed to do this? I don’t know like rules and legalities and stuff. Can I recommend stuff? I think I can. It’s a supplement called My Brain. It’s on Amazon and, again, I’ll give my disclaimers since I don’t know if I’m allowed to say but I don’t endorse this supplement. I can tell you that I am taking it in my experience. I’m not endorsing it. I’m not recommending you take it. I’m going to tell you that I started taking it about a week ago and I’ve been waking up feeling more refreshed than ever before. Now, it’s interesting, it’s a supplement for headaches so I bought it in case I ever got a headache and it’s a natural supplement. It’s called My Brain on Amazon.com but it has magnesium which is known to be something to help you sleep better and then an herb called Feverfew but I’ve been taking it every single night. I’ve been taking it for every seven to nine days. Every single night that I’ve taken it which is every night for the last seven to nine days, I have woken up before my alarm clock and I sprung out of bed.
Now, I’ll let you know that’s not my normal thing. When the alarm goes off, it’s still a struggle for me to be like, “Ah, got to get up. All right. Time for a Miracle Morning,” but it still takes a lot of discipline. I still feel compelled to go back to bed. Not for the last seven to nine days because I’ve been taking this My Brain supplement. So, it’s for headaches but I just take two before bed and I’ve been waking up and feeling totally refreshed. I’m not telling you that will work for you. I’m not endorsing this product. I’m just telling you this what I’ve been doing and it’s working for me and if you don’t wake up feeling refreshed and you think that’s something you might want to try, that’s up to you. All right. I love being paranoid.
Okay. Number five, great question. Stephanie, thank you. “What all can count as exercise for people who are less mobile?” Oh, wait until you see the Miracle Morning movie. Sean Stephenson who is 3 feet tall, 3 feet something, he is in a wheelchair. You may have seen a few habit – I think he’s going to speak at Best Year Ever today. Fingers crossed. He told me it’s tentative, but you probably – he’s just one of the best speakers I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen him, go to YouTube and search Sean Stephenson. He’s 3 feet tall, 3 feet something and great guy. He does the exercise portion in the movie. He has every excuse in the world not to exercise and he has created this gym that he has to crawl out of his wheelchair and get on to this platform and is like using bike pumps and like all these crazy things, but bottom line is no, he says, “My body is a temple. I have to take care of it if it’s going to serve me.” And he finds a way. So, everybody if you’re less mobile, I really can’t give a one-size-fits-all approach because everybody is different. I don’t know what your issues are. The bottom line is find a way. If you go, “Well, I don’t know where to start,” google it. How do you exercise if you are in a wheelchair? How do you exercise if you’re… Figure it out. Figure it out. There’s always a way. If you’re committed to finding out what that way is. Sean Stephenson is a living example of that.
Number six, “How does the accountability partner thing work? Please expand a good routine that works.” Ooh, that could be a loaded question, but I can answer it as quickly as I can here. The accountability partner thing, there’s not one-size-fits-all. The way that I do an accountability partner is usually I’ve done it with Miracle Morning in the past where me and a friend will text each other in a specific time and we’ll say, “Hey, I’m awake.” And it’s almost like a race and you text each other first. We have our alarm set for the same time. We text each other, “Hey, I’m awake,” and if you don’t have text, you can email each other. Whatever. And you do your own way like I’ll just give you a couple of ideas, but you could say, “Hey, I’ll do all of the SAVERS today and then I’ll let you know.” So, that’s real simple accountability where you’re just saying, “Hey, I’m awake. I’m going to do all the SAVERS. I’ll text you when I’m done at 7 AM.” That’s it. There’s your accountability.
Now, it can get more specific which is, “Hey, today here’s the book I’m going to read or here’s the exercise routine I’m going to do,” or it can be even asking, “Hey, when you text me, will you make sure that I did blank?” Again, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for anything let alone accountability but figure out what works for you. The point is that someone who cares about you is holding you accountable. Another way to do it without a partner is online. I used to do that. I did a lot like when I want to do running an ultra-marathon, I needed accountability so I simply made a public announcement on all my social media, Facebook, and everything and said, “Hey, everyone, I’m giving you my word that I will train for the next six months and run 52 miles on blank date at the Atlantic City Marathon to raise money for the Front Row Foundation. I give you my word,” and that was it. That’s all I needed. Like, I didn’t even need them to check in on me because I gave my word and I know that somebody saw it. I don’t know how many. I don’t know if it was 10 people or 50. That was before the Miracle Morning, I think, was even the book. So, that’s that. Yeah, it was. It was like 2009 or something that I did that.
All right. And last but not least, “How are the Miracle Morning books different from each other?” You could see them up on the wall there, a bunch of them. How are they different from each other? They’re very different. I’ll tell you, that was my biggest challenge. This is the last question I could answer. That’s the last question we have. So, they’re very different from each other and that was my biggest kind of concern when I have the idea for the series. It was actually my co-author, Ryan Snow, the series was his idea. He called me one day and said, “Hal, since I started the Miracle Morning, my sales have increased significantly double.” I don’t remember what it was and he said, “I’m giving it out to all my team members and their sales have increased since they did the Miracle Morning. This really is needed for salespeople. It helps you sell more.” He said, “What do you think about doing a Miracle Morning for salespeople where we customize the affirmations for salespeople and you really customize the book?” I said, “I love that idea. Let’s co-author. Let’s do it.” And so, it’s very organic. It wasn’t like a big, “I’m going to take over the world with a Miracle Morning book empire.” None of that. It was like, “Oh, cool idea. Let’s do it.” And then that led to the real estate book and that led to the next one. It’s one book at a time.
Well, it took a long time. In fact, it still is I would say a part of a process where for us to figure out, because this is my concern, we had to figure out how do we make every single book stand out so that if you’ve read the Miracle Morning it doesn’t feel like it’s just a copy of the Miracle Morning where you change the word to salespeople or whatever. How do we make it so different and new and valuable that people that are Miracle Morning fans that have read the book, they read each new book and they go, “Wow, this is incredible?” I go, “But how do we put enough of the original book in there if someone’s never read the original and they go to the new book, they’re wondering or they’re not wondering, ‘How do I do Miracle Morning? How do I beat the alarm clock? How do I get out of bed?’”
So, that is a process that took a long time, I mean, probably a year of really trying to figure out and I would buy different books that had series and I would study them and go, “How are they doing it, how can I improve on that?” And the formula that we come up with and we’re always improving. At every single book we learn something, we could’ve done better, and we do it better the next one. I mean, the book is just getting better and better and better. But essentially, the formula now for all of the books is the first three to four chapters sum up the entire original Miracle Morning book, but they’re customized for salespeople or college students or writers or entrepreneurs. So, if someone’s never read the original book, they get the entire Miracle Morning how to wake up early, what the SAVERS are, but customize for their unique who they are as a realtor or whatever or writer or whatever. And if you’ve read the Miracle Morning but you’re like, “Oh, I’m a salesperson, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a college student, I’m going to read that book too,” you’re now getting a killer refresher of the original in those first few chapters, but it’s customized for you.
So, you’re like, “Wow, not only is this a great refresher of the whole first or the original book but this is actually like it’s even better because I’m getting a refresher all over again but I’m learning like a bunch of news, how I can apply it. Really, I never thought of applying silence in that way as a college student. I never thought of applying affirmations.” Literally, in every book we usually put a list of affirmations for that type of person that’s reading the book, salespeople or whatever. You keep saying the sales people book. That’s what’s in my head. And then the next six chapters are brand-new fresh content that has nothing to do with the Miracle Morning. It’s how to improve in whatever area you’re buying the book in.
Now, there are few books in a different format like most of them follow that format but part of affirmation. This is an adult coloring book that Brianna Greenspan and I co-authored. I know a lot of you love that. I always see pictures of you. Your kids are coloring the pages, for adults and for kids. But simply it’s all or not all but it’s all made up of my quotes in the form of affirmations and then you color them. The idea is whether you’re an adult or a child, you’re staring that affirmation for maybe 30 minutes while you’re coloring it and then you can rip it out and hang it up on your wall. It’s a larger book. It’s a larger than a normal Miracle Morning book. It’s a bigger book so that you can color the pages. But going back, that’s the essence of the series and what makes it so different is the first three to four chapters are the original book customized for the niche that the book is designed for. The rest of the book is brand-new fresh content, not by me, how I usually write. I contribute to it but primarily, my job in the series is to find co-authors that are experts in the niche that we’re going into.
So, like this is a good one, Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs. That’s Cameron Herold. Cameron Herold is the former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? His nickname is the $100 million man because when they brought him in, the company he helped grow them, he was like the guy that grew them to $100 million company. I can’t remember what they were at before, but he multiplied their revenue many times over. So, Cameron, he’s an expert as an entrepreneur so we brought him in, wrote the book and what I’m grateful to say? This is the last thing I’ll say about the book series. As an author, you always are afraid. You have fears. You have insecurities around like, “Is this book going to be good? What if nobody likes it?” That’s what I thought for Miracle Morning like, “Who’s going to read this? Who am I to tell people to wake up early. What?” So, you’re always afraid.
And the Miracle Morning book series, the books across the board, every single book in the series if you take all of the reviews, they’re even better than the original book. The series is 4.8 out of 5 stars and the original book is like 4.6 out of 5 stars. So, it’s like my big fears of like, “Oh I don’t want these series titles to feel like they’re not original,” like the formula we figured out it works, and the reviews are a great reflection of that. People love the books in the series. So, if you haven’t read the books in the series but you’ve read the original, I encourage you to, well, first of all, read the original again. As I said earlier, repetition is important but, yeah, if you go to Amazon and type in the Miracle Morning, you’ll see the whole list of the entire catalog of the Miracle Morning books.
All right. So, we’re a little over time. That’s all I’ve got for you today. This has been fun. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Stay cool, positive enjoyment and I’ll mention in the box. I’m going to go play with my daughter. Miracle Morning Community, from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul, I love you. I never knew I could love a community in the way that I love you but it’s I love you, guys and gals. It’s a beautiful thing. We are truly elevating the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time and I can’t do it by myself and I could not do it without you so thank you for being a member of the community. I love you and I will see you on the next one. Take care, everybody.
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