Episode 253: Manufacturing Your Own Breakthroughs In 2019

[EPISODE]

Hal: Goal achievers, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. This is Hal Elrod. I am under the weather right now, but it hits me every time. This last year it was the same thing in January, but I got over a lot better this time, which is great. Hope you’re feeling well and if you’re not, get lots of rest. I stayed in bed for two days. Lots of rest and I’m definitely feeling better. My fever broke and all that good stuff, but I want to record a podcast for you. So, under the weather or not, we’re making this happen. Let’s see, what are we going to talk about today? No, I actually know. I want to talk to you about something I’ve mentioned over the last probably month or two or three. I don’t know. My memories are challenged. I often I might tell you something and you’re like, “Yeah, dude, you just told us that like the last three episodes. Every time every week you tell the same thing.” I don’t know. I can’t remember them all unless I go listen to them again every time, but then I forget. All right. Those are my excuses.

But I want to talk about manufacturing breakthroughs today and I mentioned this over the last few months that I’ve been taking time in the evening, you can call it Miracle Evening. In fact, I’ve been thinking about this as an upcoming book. It’s been suggested for a long time but I wasn’t living a miracle evening and a few weeks or so ago I did an episode called The Miracle Evening I think with a question mark so it’s like this is kind of like an idea for a miracle evening. It’s very new and it’s fresh but the bottom line is the Miracle Morning allows you to start your day with intention, starting your day with intention, putting yourself in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state.

What I’ve been using the evening for is really, really looking at my life from a point of reflection. You can almost say that actually, celebration and reflection, so at the beginning of the day is that intention to put yourself in the peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual place so that you can optimize your day and really take action on all of your most important goals and dreams and all of the above. The Miracle morning does that really effectively and what I didn’t have is people always say, “What’s your evening routine?” I’m like, “I just like play with my kids until I’m exhausted and then I fall fast asleep,” like that was my evening routine. And over the last few months, I’ve been taking time to really meditate and journal in the evenings and it’s usually in my bedroom or in my bed. Actually, it’s not formal, it’s not where I do my Miracle Morning which is in my family room, but these evenings have, I’ve had the most profound impacts or breakthroughs and it’s been a result of asking questions. It’s asking brutally honest and I don’t love the word “brutally honest”. To me, it’s more lovingly honest because if you’re trying to improve yourself, I don’t think that’s brutal but I understand where the expression brutal honesty comes from because to really love yourself sometimes, it takes that rough honesty like that difficult to hear, that difficult to swallow, you know, being honest with yourself about what your disappointments are, disappointments in yourself, in your life. In the day, what are the areas where you’re not living your full potential, or you’re settling for less than you really want or less than you’re capable of.

And so, I’ve been using the evenings to go a little deeper in that reflection process. I also do a celebration process too. That’s part of it which is I look over my day, I write my five-minute journal, and I just get really grateful. So, I do that in the morning too but at the end of the day, obviously, it’s a great way to close out the day to look at everything that you did. And if you have a to-do list of 10 things and you did one, that’s what you’re going to celebrate like think about this. The only thing standing between us and the happiest life being like the most joyful human being on the planet, the only thing standing between you and a life of bliss, the one thing standing between all of us and joy and happiness in everything we possibly want, at least in terms of our experience of life, I’m not talking about the material things that we might want to buy or achieve or that sort of thing but in terms of our quality of life begins and ends with our mindset, with our emotional well-being. So, the only thing standing between us and being the happiest we can ever be is our mind. It’s our brain. It’s what we think about. At the end of the day, if you had a to-do list of 10 things for kind of a simple example, and you did one of them, you probably feel really crappy about the other nine things that you didn’t do. You might beat yourself up and be like, “Oh man, I failed again. I’m such a loser.” I’ve been dealing with that a lot over the last few months, dealing with a lot of challenges with productivity and being focused. I tribute my chemo brain to that. I don’t know if it’s something else, but the cognitive challenges that I’ve spoken very openly of like those really have caused a lot of problems.

And if you haven’t listened to the previous episodes where I’ve been talking about this a little bit more openly, well, it’s a new thing for me so never was something to talk about before, but it’s really weird your whole life you don’t have anxiety and maybe you’ve dealt with that where your whole life you’re one way and then you’re like, “Wait a minute. Why do I have these weird issues? Why am I thinking this way? Why am I feeling this way like what’s going on?” So, I’ve really been navigating these waters of anxiety but if anxiety is something that you deal with, it’s totally new for me. So, when something new comes up, it freaks you out like, “Wait. This isn’t me. What’s going on?” But Mel Robbins has really been awesome about talking about her anxiety and if you google Mel Robbins anxiety, you can find some great videos, great training. She’s more of an expert if you will and I’ve been consulting her. It’s her material. So, where was I going with this?

Yeah. So, in terms of manufacturing these breakthroughs, I’ve had the biggest breakthroughs in 2018 because of this intentional evening process and breakthroughs around my kids and spending more time with them and my wife and the fact that she’s my best friend and just things that like, you know, that it’s one thing to get something intellectually, but we don’t really get it until we get it emotionally like until we feel it. If you don’t know what it feels like to be in someone else’s shoes, for example, you can imagine, kind of, but you’re like I don’t really know what that feels like and same thing in our lives. Like, if we get something, someone tells it like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense. I should eat healthier. I should probably not smoke anymore. Yeah, got it.” Like I got it, but it’s in one ear and out the other, right? It’s until we get it emotionally. In fact, there’s a story that I’ll butcher. I don’t even know this is – I heard this probably 20 years ago from maybe Tony Robbins, I don’t even remember who, but it was just a gentleman who had tried quitting smoking, tried quitting smoking, tried quitting smoking, tried quitting smoking because he knew intellectually that he should quit smoking. I don’t even know if it’s a real story or just kind of made up anecdote but there’s value in the lesson, in the story and it is that he I believe it was his four-year-old daughter came in one day and she’s crying like her eyes were all welled up and said, “Daddy, I don’t want you to die,” just out of the blue and he goes, “Well, sweetie, come here,” and he hugged her and he goes, “Why would you say that? I’m not going to die,” and she said, “Daddy, I just saw a commercial on TV that said cigarettes kill you and you smoke cigarettes and I don’t want you to die,” and she like broke down crying.

And all the years he had tried to quit smoking all of the, you know, I think he had done like hypnosis, and the patch, and all different approaches. It took looking into his daughter’s eyes and him to not get it intellectually. We all know our health is important intellectually, but for him to get it emotionally, to really get it. But once he got it emotionally, the potential consequence of his daily action that smoking a cigarette that he was taking for granted, the story goes that he never smoked another cigarette again. So, where was I going with that? Oh, so the idea is that you’ve got to take things from your intellect, and you’ve got to bring them into your emotional, you know, what’s the word I’ve been looking for, your emotional – I’m drawing a blank. I blame it on the sickness. I’m going to blame it on all sorts of stuff in this episode but, anyway, your emotional well-being. Like, you’ve got to bring it into your emotions and so I’m going to share with you some of the breakthroughs that I’ve had like I’m going to actually read you some of the breakthroughs because I write them down. I use an app called Google Keep in case you want to use that. It’s basically my app for breakthroughs and it’s a great app for affirmations and actually, it’s kind of one and the same because I turn these breakthroughs into affirmation so that they stick which is a good little bonus tip.

Anytime you have a realization or a breakthrough, don’t just go, “Oh yeah,” and then expect yourself to remember it. Actually, maybe your memory is 100 times better than mine so you’re like, “Hal, I’m going to remember it.” But I think most of us our memory is short-lived because we have so much stimulation in today’s world and so you have one idea, one thought, one breakthrough, one goal, and if it’s not written down, not just written down but written down and reviewed regularly, it tends to fall by the wayside and then you look back a year later at your affirmations, your notes, your breakthroughs, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting. I forgot that I had totally committed to do that because I never reviewed what I wrote down and it totally fell by the wayside.” I’m actually going to – I will do this with the anxiety that I’ve been kind of struggling with or not kind of, I guess. It’s been, well, it’s weird. I feel like I figured it out like for the last couple of months I’ve been struggling with this and I feel like I’ve kind of figured it out and so I’m going to read you the breakthrough/affirmation that I created when releasing my anxiety. So, I found a picture on, I am a very visual person, so I found a picture on Google images and it says, “Anxiety uninstalling…” It’s got a little picture like a bar like moving down, down, down and that was a great visual to remind myself that I’m going to uninstall this anxiety that I’ve somehow picked up. And then here’s how I kind of talked through it. So, I’m just reading this because if anxiety is something that you struggle with at all, fear, nerves, whatever there are some different words that are kind of synonyms for anxiety but I’m hoping you pick something up in this short realization that I’ll read to you.

“So, my anxiety/fear isn’t real. It’s self-created and can be overcome in an instant by simply changing my thinking and what I focus on. For example, I think what caused my anxiety is just a lack of clarity. It’s not knowing exactly what I need to do and when I need to do it that causes me to feel overwhelmed and anxious. So, the solution is simply making step-by-step plans, and then taking everything one step at a time, one day at a time. I can do anything, including all of my biggest projects one step at a time, one day at a time. I’m highly intelligent, and any cognitive deficiencies I have I just need to be at peace with and do the best with what I have,” and that’s just an important lesson for all of us like our anxiety are resistant to the challenges that we have cause more problems usually than the challenges. Once we just, “Okay. I’m dealing with this. Okay. I feel this. Okay. What’s the best I can do with this now? What’s the best thing I can do today given my circumstances like I’ve been sick for the last few days so best thing I do is rest.” And then I have a few pointers here. “I am in control over my anxiety. I am fearless by choice. I am happy and then I went on to say I can also use questions like what can I do to be proactive about improving my cognitive abilities to be much more effective at solving my problems, accelerating my personal development, and making my life a lot easier and less stressful because I’ll know how to solve my problems instead of lacking clarity and feeling hopeless or overwhelmed like I’ve been feeling lately, which by the way doesn’t even make sense because I know better.” It’s in capital letters, K-N-O-W, I KNOW better. What is wrong with you?

“But knowing better is something that I haven’t been aware of because of my negative emotional state,” and then I put, ooh, this is big, “I haven’t been accessing my full potential lately because I’ve been in a negative emotional state, feeling the anxiety, stress, fear, etcetera, which is caused by my challenges with chemo brain and has prevented me from thinking clearly and acting from that clarity. This is a powerful life-changing breakthrough that will allow me to almost immediately get back to my old self because I’m in here, it’s just that my fearful emotional state is causing anxiety which is causing me to not be able to formulate thoughts which is causing more anxiety and so on. It’s a vicious self-perpetuating cycle.” Yeah, the tip. So, remember I said whatever, and for you, it might not be anxiety. Maybe you’re just not feeling happy or maybe you’re, I mean, it could be just stress but just realize that the only thing standing between us and an optimal emotional state and I say only this is, of course, there are disclaimers and everything. I am not speaking about chemical imbalances, I’m not speaking about childhood trauma, but I’m speaking about general life and I guess, yeah, again it has become those topics because that’s not my area of expertise but the only thing standing between us for the most part and an optimal emotional state where we feel happy and grateful and joyful is our brain. It’s what we’re thinking about. It’s what we’re focused on.

Typically, if you’re feeling bad because you’re focusing on things that make you feel bad. If we’re feeling good, we’re focusing on things that make us feel good, and both are equally realistic, but which you choose to focus on, if you perpetually dwell on and focus on things that make you feel anxious or make you feel bad then you’re going to feel that way. And for me, that’s what I love about affirmations is affirmations are written statements. To me, it’s a blueprint for your brain. It’s literally like, “Hey, this is who I am. This is how I’m thinking, etcetera. I want to piggyback into another breakthrough that I had recently that and then I’ll just read this to you again or not again because it’s a new thing I’m reading but the breakthrough I titled it It’s Time To Reinvent Myself. Here we go. I’ll just read it along to you.

“Huge identity shifting breakthrough. I just realized that I’m living my life as a past version of myself from probably my early 20s. I’ve been stuck in the past, hanging on to the limiting beliefs I had about who I was back then. I need to let go of who I’ve been for the person I truly am and can become. Now is the time to own my greatness,” and this is true for all of us, “And let go of who I’ve been for who I truly am and even who I can become so that the true, new, and improved best version of me can emerge. I need to let go of the identity I’ve been hanging on to for way too long.” And let me pause. Disclaimer. These are all written kind of a stream of consciousness. I don’t usually edit them and so I just want to say that if you’re relating to this at all, it doesn’t mean that you should completely let go of your identity like there are a lot of great parts of my identity from when I was a child and when I was in my teens and when I was in my 20s that like I still embody, hopefully of all. Hopefully, I have all those areas or improve those areas but it’s like I throw everything out, get rid of everything. But I just realized that some of the ways I viewed myself in high school, like those stick with us the way you view yourself because of a situation at work or maybe get embarrassed or whatever and then you won’t step up or speak up anymore because of that. So, part of these breakthroughs you’re asking questions, you’re looking at what part of my past am I still hanging onto that doesn’t serve me anymore? What belief from my past, what perspective from my past am I hanging onto, are you hanging onto that doesn’t serve you?

And the beauty of this is realizing that you get to reprogram yourself. You do whatever you want. Again, use affirmations, call them declarations, call them whatever you want, call it psycho-cybernetics but utilizing written statements that articulate who you are committed to being whatever parts of your past, present, or future you need to bring into that vision, that written – I shouldn’t say vision, I like written statement a lot better because that’s what it is, and then you read that every day and you read it every day and you become what you focus on. And so, it’s amazing how when my first affirmation 15 something or 2008, I don’t know, 10 years ago, it was about overcoming my bad memory from a brain damage from my car accident and I read for about a month and then all of a sudden, my memory started to improve and it was like that was where I fell in love with affirmations. I was like, “Whoa,” and it improved without me realizing it, meaning it was when a normal question that somebody would ask somebody, which is, “Hey, will you remember to call me tomorrow?” I didn’t have anything to write anything down with and normally I would say, “No. I have brain damage. I have a bad memory. I can’t but can you remind me or text me or whatever?”

And after I did affirmations every day by memory for a month or maybe three weeks was actually my best buddy, one of my best friends in the whole world, Jeremy Katen, who’s here visiting right now. He’s in the other room. But anyway, he asked me if I would call him the next day and I said, “Sure. What time?” and he said 8 AM or whatever. I said, “No problem,” and hung up the phone. And I started to go out of business and I went, “Whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute.” I just my instinct was that my memory is good enough to remember to call him the next day and I believe it and I felt it and I remembered the next day. And that was when I realized, “Wow. We can literally reprogram our brains,” and depending on how deep-seated an issue is or a belief or a fear or a cause of anxiety, it may take you longer than a month or maybe shorter. I also think that it has a lot to do with the intensity of your belief that what you’re saying is the ultimate truth and for me, if I were to say I have a great memory, if I were to affirm that, I wouldn’t have believed that because I’m like, dude, I have a bad memory because I have brain damage like so back then when I was writing the affirmation, I crafted it in a way where I could believe it and it would move me toward having a great memory.

So, let me give you an example or I’ll use this as an example, but instead of saying, “I have a great memory,” or if you want to whatever area, when you’re writing affirmations when you’re reprogramming yourself if you will, whatever area of your life you’re focusing on, don’t oppose it. Don’t say, “I am _____,” if you don’t believe you are _____. Say, “I am committed to becoming _____ or I’m committed to achieving _____ or I’m committed to doing _____.” Like, don’t try to state it as if it were already true because if it’s not yet true then you’re going to fight that lie. State your affirmations, your reprogramming if you will based on what you’re committed to achieving and you can get as like I think that my affirmation way back then I said something like, “I’m committed to having the best memory I’ve ever had, even better than it was before my accident and every day I will focus on remembering things that right now I may not believe I can remember.” So, it was like it was rooted in action. It was based in truth, it wasn’t lying saying, “Oh, I have a great memory,” when I don’t or didn’t. So, anyway, there’s a little bit of back story on how affirmations came to be. Did I read this to you yet? Oh, I was cutting myself off to tell you that story. All right. One second.

All right. “I need to let go of the identity I’ve been hanging onto for way too long.” I’m back to reading this by the way. “I need to listen to all my own teaching, such as I am limitless to make this become more than just a short-lived breakthrough, but something that becomes a permanent fixture that significantly improves my results and ultimately my emotional health and overall quality of my life. I must add bedtime meditation affirmations to intentionally design my ideal mental and emotional operating system and choose the qualities of my highest and best self, which can be different at any given time depending on what my circumstances are and what area I’m focused on at that time. I’m talking about qualities such as rock-solid confidence, consistent work ethic, heartfelt empathy for all people, etcetera.” So, that was the breakthrough around realizing that I was still hanging onto limiting beliefs from when I was younger and so might that be true for you, might that be true for you. And I want to close this episode out with this and it’s the new me and this is the activity I would encourage all of you to do. Obviously, there’s been a lot of activity sprinkled throughout here in terms of doing the evening affirmations and meditation and that sort of thing, but a specific activity is creating affirmation for yourself called the “new me” and you can name, of course, this is all loose. You have flexibility to do whatever you want here, but this is how I did it. I’m just throwing this out there.

So, I put the new and I did this for 2019, “The New Me…” and then I listed so far there’s nine and it’s an ongoing document, my affirmations always are. It’s an ongoing document, but I put “The New Me…” and then I’ll read through these so you have some examples to do this on your own. Number one, takes time to set and review my goals daily. That’s something that I’ve gotten away from. I think as you go on, sometimes you forget the fundamentals as you get older, as you move through different levels of success and you kind of go, “Ah,” you forget what got you there. And so, for me, my goals were kind of, I mean, there were always things I was working on, but I wasn’t reviewing every day. I didn’t have a rock-solid plan for each of them. It was kind of like, oh yeah, I’ll work on that. I’ll work on it. It’s a little bit loosey-goosey, right? By the way, there’s a cool app that I found called the Goal Wizard or Goals Wizard, something that. It’s by Brian Tracy. So, if you search in the app store for Goals Wizard, I’m sure you’ll find it. It’s a really cool app for goals. I’m pretty impressed with it. So, if you like to use apps for your goals, check that out.

Number two, the new me takes time to plan, track, and reflect on my progress. Yes, goal achievers, the old me did not do that very well, meaning the planning was kind of haphazard, the tracking was nonexistent, and the reflection is something that only lasts a few months I’ve really started to get better at. So, the new me is committed to that. The new me follows a weekly promotions and marketing calendar to consistently make offers to our community in the spirit of service and that also generate revenue/profit. So, I don’t know if you know this about me, you might, but I’ve got my background in sales, but I’ve got a real challenge with selling stuff to our community and it doesn’t make sense logically, right? So, I get it logically. Logically, I understand that, hey, well if people want to purchase something that adds value to their life, you’re doing them a service, and if you offer something and they don’t want to purchase, they won’t so no harm, no foul. So, I know that but at the same time, I have this weird insecurity of like, “They’re going to think I just want to sell to them and that’s not my purpose.” That’s not the blah blah. So, now I figured, hey, if I have… It goes back to what I was saying about the anxiety, which is the lack of clarity. If you don’t have clarity on what you’re going to do when you’re going to do it then you get in your head too much, but if you literally wake up every day and this is for me, my day schedule from when I wake up until I go to bed like every hour. The only time is like family time is just as nonspecific because we do whatever we want but I’ve got like hour by hour.

This hour I’m working on the Miracle Morning Movie. This hour I’m working on the new Miracle Equation book. This hour I’m doing my high priority to-do list. This hour I am answering emails. This hour I’ve got an interview. So, that helps me. I think without that, I just go through the day and get nothing done but the whole idea of the promotions and marketing calendar is the idea that if I just know what I’m supposed to do every week and what I’m supposed to promote and offer or share then it’s easy. I just go do it and that kind of takes away the fear and anxiety. So, number four, the new me believes I’m a details person and simply slows down and takes the time to plan and review important details. So, that’s a limiting belief of mine that I’m not a details person and it might be true. There may be truth to it, I’m sure, and I don’t want to become a like hard-core details person where I’m caught up in all the details like I think it’s important to have a team, especially as you grow a business and you have a lot of different facets of the business. We’ve got the live events and the books and the book series and so I’ve got partners that help with that, Honoree Corder in the book series and Jon Berghoff and all of our live events, Tiffany Swinehart who helps me run day-to-day operations at Hal Elrod International and Miracle Morning. But anyway, but that’s when you’re asking questions and going through breakthroughs manufacturing on breakthroughs, ask yourself what’s a limit that you’re placing on yourself? And there might be more than one. I’m sure there’s more than one. There’s one or five or ten or whatever, but what are any limits that you’re putting in yourself that are just at their limits that you are putting in yourself and what would happen if you shifted your belief and the dialogue that you had in your head and on paper, your affirmations, around who you are and what you’re capable of.

Number five, I put the new me has no issue with anxiety or fear but is in complete control of both. Number six, the new me does 20 to 30 minutes of cardio every day to expand my physical endurance. Yeah. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Number seven, the new me dedicates time to learning how to become a business genius so that I can run, lead, and grow a successful enterprise and be a leader that Tiffany and all of my partners and even my future employees deserve so that’s just me taking time and reading every day on business. Number eight, the new me is frugal and lives below my means spending less so that I can save more. And number nine, the new me loves myself and acknowledges myself through a healthy sense of pride for the impact I’ve made and committed to continuing to make. And I ended that with a really smooth sign off.

So, that’s it, you guys and gals. I could keep talking, I could keep going, but the whole point of this episode was to give you a little peek behind the curtain on this whole manufacturing breakthroughs process that I’ve just been – it’s just being intentional in the same way that you’re intentional about your morning and by the way, you can do this for your Miracle Morning. You don’t have to do it at night. You can do it whatever you want. This could be part of your Miracle Morning. It could be part of just your affirmations, right? For me, what is happening is in the evening is I don’t know if it’s just the mental space but is when I come up with these and then in the morning, I read the breakthrough that I wrote in my Google Keep app and then I will edit it and print, position it into an affirmation, that sort of thing. Yeah. Then I just wanted to encourage you to do the same and a great way to do it is, A, schedule a time. So, here’s kind of some actions, scheduling time to manufacture breakthroughs and you don’t need to call it manufacturing breakthroughs. That’s just the term that came to me. It could be just your reflection, just reflection, and progress or reflection and awareness, just taking that time to ask yourself very pointed honest questions. We often go through life kind of numb and we just kind of wake up and just do the same things. We just kind of live the same day over and over. We eat the same things, we talk to the same people, we watch the same television programs, we read the same things, we listen to the same stations, like we tend to just become these creatures of habit and it’s really important that we are always stopping and looking at how are our actions impacting us. How are our thoughts, how are your thoughts impacting you?

If you have a habitual fear or habitual anxiety, a persistent anxiety or any stress like look at how are you thinking about those things? And then use written statements affirmations, call them whatever you want, call them affirmations but use written affirmations to design your programming. Obviously, the new year is a great time to upgrade everything, to revisit, reflect, etcetera, but here’s what I would encourage you to do is don’t make it a once a year event. Make sure you schedule a time. It doesn’t need to be every day. It can be once a week where you spend an hour on Friday mornings or Friday evenings or Sunday morning. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. And pick a time and spend an hour per week to reflect, to contemplate, and to breakthrough and then schedule the actions that will make that breakthrough last. And sometimes the breakthrough if it’s mental, there’s no action other than just reading the affirmations consistently enough and long enough that it will reprogram your mind, it will reprogram your beliefs, it will reprogram your emotional well-being, and realize that you are in control of your life, starting with your mind. And what you think about and what you focus on, that’s what creates your internal and your emotional quality of life.

[CLOSING]

Hal: So, I encourage you to schedule time to make some breakthroughs for yourself. Ask yourself some pointed questions and then again, I gave you that challenge of if you wanted to for 2019 my invitation for you is to create a “The New Me…” document and this is an ongoing document and as you have breakthroughs, so start, create some time for those breakthroughs, maybe you had some over the new year, create this new me document and then just read it every day and live into it and become what you design in writing in your real life. I think that’s it for today, guys and gals, goal achievers. I made it through. I wasn’t sure. I was like, “I’m so sick,” but you guys, just talking to you energizes me. So, thank you for being a member of the goal achievers. Thank you for being a member of the Miracle Morning Community. I love you, I appreciate you, and either I will talk to you next week or I think I have a guest between now and then. I’m not sure. I’m not looking at the schedule. Either way, it’ll be great. I hope it adds a lot of value to your life, and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

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