Episode 299: How We Can Transform Our Next Generation with Honorée Corder

Hal Elrod: All right, goal achievers. Hey, it’s Hal Elrod and welcome to another episode of The Achieve Your Goals Podcast. And today, my guest is one of my good friends, business partner, co-creator of the Miracle Morning book series, Mrs. Honorée Corder, and you’ve heard from her quite a few times. I’ve had her in the podcast this probably third, fourth time. If you don’t know Honorée, I’ll tell you a little bit about her before I tell you how her and I came to work together. She is the author of more than 50 books including You Must Write A Book. She is, as I mentioned, my partner and co-creator of the book series, The Miracle Morning book series. And being that she is such a prolific author, she is also a strategic book coach, she is a speaker, and she provides group and one-on-one strategic book coaching to business professionals who want to write, publish, and market their books to best-seller status who want to use books, create a platform, and develop multiple streams of income. And as someone who has done all of those things at the highest level, it’s easier sometimes, she’ll like write a book a month. Just she writes a book for fun. No big deal. But as the author more than 50 books, you can kind of see that that is true.

So, here’s how this all happened. 2012 I wrote this book, The Miracle Morning. You might be aware of that and shortly thereafter, in 2013, I met Honorée and it’s really serendipitous. I was on Goodreads. I was reading 150 reviews for the Miracle Morning book and something about her review stood out to me. And I don’t know why but of all the reviews, she’s the only person that I googled her. I’m like, “Who is this person?” and found out she was this prolific writer and I was looking at potentially doing a Miracle Morning book series and reached out to her about possibly doing a book in the series, and then realized she was more qualified than I was to create a series and asked if she would partner with me on that venture. And since then, we’ve got over a dozen books that have been published in The Miracle Morning book series. In fact, I’m looking at my wall here. We’ve got the Miracle Morning for College Students, for Writers, for Network Marketers, for Salespeople, for Real Estate Agents, for Couples, for Entrepreneurs, for Parents and Families. We also have the Miracle Morning Art of Affirmations, which is a mindfulness coloring book for adults and kids.

We’ve got Miracle Morning Millionaires that we did with David Osborn, What the Wealthy Do Before 8AM That Will Make You Rich. And one of our more recent is the Miracle Morning for Couples which I don’t have to mention that but with Brandy and Lance Salazar. So, we’ve got over a dozen books in the series, and here’s the deal. This is where we’re coming to today’s episode for a very special announcement, and not just announcement but really an initiative that we’re in the midst of to elevate the consciousness of humanity one person at a time and to do it through schools. So, the newest book, The Miracle Morning for Teachers, and that book is designed for both teachers and their students. So, for teachers to use in classrooms with their students, and the subtitle is Elevate Your Impact for Yourself and Your Students.

And I’ll back up a little bit more. When I wrote the Miracle Morning, I was thinking small. This little routine changed my life and I wanted to share it with some other people and I thought maybe I’ll sell a few hundred books, a few thousand books maybe, and I just feel responsible to share it with anyone that might benefit from the Miracle Morning practice. But once I started getting all these emails from people and feedback and reviews, saying that the Miracle Morning had radically transformed their life, I started thinking bigger and I went, “Okay. This is changing people’s lives. I have a responsibility to get out there in a bigger way.” And so, the mission became change 1 million lives one morning at a time. And then once, you know, years went by, Honorée and I have been working together, and we’ve surpassed a million copies sold, now 2 million copies sold, and millions of lives impacted around the world, we asked ourselves, how can we take this impact to the next level? And I believe that the Miracle Morning for Teachers is arguably the most important book in the series. In fact, I’ll let Honorée, I’m going to bring you on because you say this really well.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Honorée, welcome to the podcast. I’ll bring you on.

Honorée Corder: Hi. I’m here.

Hal Elrod: A little clunky there. But, hey, you’re here. We’re here. So, you and I were just talking about this before we started recording. From your vantage point, why this book? Why this book, and what’s your highest aspiration for the Miracle Morning for Teachers and the impact that it can make?

Honorée Corder: Well, I really got into your desire to impact the lives of a million people one morning at a time and we’ve done that. We’ve done that a couple of times and I think we were in agreement that the next book in the series needed to impact the next generation. And we thought about it from a global perspective, how do you impact the lives of children? No kid is going to Barnes and Noble looking for work on personal development, right? So, the best way would be to impact the lives of the people who impact their lives, right?

Hal Elrod: Yeah. To reach others.

Honorée Corder: Yeah. So, to reach the kids we needed to impact the people they spent most of their time with and that was teachers that very logically to me meant that we would impact the lives of teachers. And impacting those millions of lives of teachers, we then have the opportunity to impact tens of millions of lives if not hundreds of millions of lives of students, and those students are our next generation.

Hal Elrod: Absolutely. And I think one thing that’s important to point out is that this book, The Miracle Morning for Teachers, was written or I should say created if you will very differently than any of the other books. So, every book that Honorée and I have co-authored in the Miracle Morning book series, we have found a co-author who is an expert in their space. So, the Miracle Morning for Writers, for example, we co-authored with Steve Scott who’s written dozens of books himself, David Osborn who’s a very wealthy individual did the Miracle Morning Millionaires book. This book Honorée and I are not teachers. So, rather than picking one teacher to co-author the book with, we actually empowered dozens and dozens of teachers around the world not just to write but to actually create a real-world experiment in their classrooms where they took the Miracle Morning practices known as the SAVERS, the six practices, silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing or journaling, and actually lead their students everyday through a process through that practice and do it for an entire month, and then report on the results along the way and at the end.

And so, this book was created not only from Honorée doing a lot of research in the world of teaching and outside-the-box teaching and what’s been found in the latest research to really work for students. But beyond the research was the real-world experiment that, again, the teachers did. And Honorée, I’d love for you to speak on that. You really led the charge for that process leading the teachers and I was in the Facebook group, of course. They were interacting and engaging. What for you are some of the most profound responses that you got from teachers or for me it was often seeing what their students were telling the teachers?

Honorée Corder: Sure. So, you asked a lot of questions. I’ll try to unpack one at a time. So, the first aha moment for me was recognizing that teachers really want to connect whether they are new teachers or new-ish teachers or they are veteran teachers and they’ve been around for a decade or more or decades. They really want to empower their students. They became teachers because they love teaching and they love their students and they were hungry for a way to become better people that are teachers and to help their students become better students and to learn easier, better, and faster. That was the first aha moment and then watching the results of the experiment come in. So, we did a call for teachers. We said, “Hey, we’re going to write this book,” and we want teachers to create a 30-day experiment in their classrooms where they are using our guidelines. I wrote a guide for the teachers to use the Miracle Morning practices that you just mentioned only one minute at a time in their classrooms. So, they went to have a six-minute Miracle Morning with their students at the beginning of every day or really when it fits in their day but most of them stuck with the morning thus the Miracle Morning.

Hal Elrod: Sure.

Honorée Corder: So, doing those practices, taking those six minutes out of their day, which if you’re a teacher, you understand this, every minute of the day is critical. Taking those six minutes and putting in another piece of curriculum was a big ask but what we found, what we learned from our teachers was that it actually helped their students to learn easier, better, and faster in the classrooms. The students were nicer to the teachers, the teachers recognized and saw that the students were being nicer to each other. It was really groundbreaking in that the students became more confident and in becoming more confident, they became more kind to themselves and to others. They at first were rolling their eyes when doing the affirmations. They didn’t want to get out of their chair and do the exercise piece, but when the teacher would say, “Okay, well it’s not exercise. It’s dancing.” They put on a piece of music for a minute and let it wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle for just a minute and get some of that energy out. The students really responded to it, and then they started asking for it. Do you think we could do another minute of affirmations later? Do you think we could do another minute of silence later? I wasn’t finished reading. Can I read a little bit longer? Those are all things that happened.

Just in this little 30-day period, just in these little dozens of classrooms which were a microcosm of the world, right, just a little tiny slice we made a difference in perhaps a couple of hundred students’ lives, but it gave us a line of sight into the possibilities of what could be created if we follow through and publish the book and now we are.

Hal Elrod: Oh, yeah. And it was really neat to see the Miracle Morning for Teachers Facebook Group where the teachers were interacting and exactly they would say, “Hey, I’m struggling with getting my students excited about exercise,” like you said, and then somebody that, “Oh, we’re doing dancing every morning,” and then all of sudden, all the teachers like, “Genius, right?” So, that just spread. Everybody was learning from each other. Some of what you said reminded me of the original vision for this book that I had before it was really even, I mean, there’s years and years ago when Miracle Morning first came out as I thought, “One day, if we could get the Miracle Morning in classrooms around the world where Imagine if every classroom every teacher, every student started their day with the six practices of the SAVERS.” I thought that would radically transform their lives like I thought it could end bullying.

It’s going to enhance their focus and their emotional well-being the same way that it does for anyone that does these practices, the Miracle Morning practices, whether you’re an adult or a kid. Either way, the emotional well-being optimizing your mindset, all of the things the benefits that occur, it benefits not only the students, but of course, the teachers, and then the whole classroom collectively, and then society, right? I mean, just the ripple effect is incredible. One thing that I think is really interesting that we decided to do was two 30-day challenges in the book. We’ve never done that before. Every Miracle Morning series book ends with a 30-day challenge. In this one, we did a 30-day challenge for the teachers at the beginning their own journey, their own Miracle Morning challenge and then at the end, leading the students. If you talk a little bit about, Honorée, what that looks like for teachers and for students?

Honorée Corder: Sure. Imagine you’re on an airplane and they are going to say, “Hey, before you put the mask on the kid next to you or the person next to you, put the mask on yourself,” and that’s the idea. Behind this idea was to empower the teachers to take 30 days and do their own Miracle Morning practice. If they were new to the Miracle Morning and many people will be discovering the Miracle Morning and the Life SAVERS for the very first time with this book, the very first 30 days needs to be the teachers and focus on themselves in their transformation. You can’t show up at your best if you are not practicing the Miracle Morning Life SAVERS yourself. So, that first 30 days, we encourage the teachers to really just focus on themselves and their own personal and professional development in whatever way that works for them. And once they’ve got the hang of it, then to take that next 30 days and incorporate it into their lessons incorporate it into their curriculum. And we offer some ways to do that.

Hal Elrod: Wait. And one of the things is you created this downloadable guide. Right? I mean, you talk about that, but this is to where the teachers, it’s not just reading the book, you know, and that’s it. There are some awesome supplemental materials to teach the teachers how to lead a Miracle Morning in their classroom.

Honorée Corder: Right. So, we actually have some teachers who were already using the Miracle Morning themselves and, in our classroom, before we started. They just weren’t doing it under our suggestion. They had already taken the idea themselves and were using it in their classrooms. And we had a video from a teacher that we shared. And I wrote the guide with the idea in mind that if I say, “Go bake a cookie,” you’re like, “Well, what goes on a cookie? What do I do? What’s a cookie? And then how do I bake one? What are the ingredients that go in?” I wanted to make it a 1-2-3 easy, you know, a 1-2-3 step process for them to be able to follow. And once you know how to make a cookie, then you can make a chocolate chip cookie or you can make an almonds pecan cookie or you can make a pumpkin cookie. And you can also bribe me with cookies like that’s a side note. But giving them the recipe in the guide so that they could customize the process for themselves but give them a place to start.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I love that. And I know for me personally, which is why I did this when I wrote the original Miracle Morning book like I need my hand held like, “Make it really, really simple for me. Don’t talk high level. Just give me like do this, then do this, then do this, then do this.” I’m holding the book in my hand and I just flipped open to this page and I wanted to read some of these. This is really cool. These are actually students. I see four students here and what they said after the 30-day challenge. So, Cameron said, “I loved how Miracle Morning woke me up. I am not a huge morning person.” By the way, this is in elementary school. “I’m not a huge morning person and this helped me to become one. The visualization was my favorite because it showed me how I would have a good day and I did have a good day every time.” And then another student said, “I’m changed at school because of Miracle Morning. Every day when we do the visualization, I say I am positive that day. I am super positive. For example, if I’m playing basketball and I miss a shot, now I say, ‘That was so close,’ instead of, ‘What? That should have gone in. Come on.’”

Another gal said, “It really helps clear my mind and it makes me feel calm. It sends my body into a whole new place and sends my mind to a successful road instead of a dark road.” And then last but not least, this is from my daughter, Sophie. She says, “Think about yourself as a flower. You have to start blossoming soon, but you don’t know how. You need water, sun, and lots of love from others but it is your job to start blossoming. But then there’s a gardener who gives you lots of love, water, and sunshine. This is why you can’t do everything by yourself. You need the love from others and during Miracle Morning, you can visualize that.” Wow. She should be a writer someday.

Honorée Corder: Right?

Hal Elrod: Anyway, I wanted to interject that because that was the amazing thing is, of course, the teachers were excited but to me, it was the most inspiring to hear about the results for the students because like you said in the beginning, they’re kind of rolling their eyes and anytime you introduce anything new, right? Whether you’re an adult or a kid, you’re like, “Ah, come on, what are we doing? This is new for me.” And for the teachers to the students at the end to be like, this has changed my life in just 30 days. It was really, really special. So, talk about in the Miracle Morning books, all the book series books, and this one is no different. There is the Miracle Morning content that’s customized for the specific reader of the book, in this case, teachers but then we also, there’s always brand new content. And in this particular book, we call these the ABCs of being a legendary teacher. And there were three of them. The first was A plus attitude optimization. The second was best behavior. And the third was community creation. And, HC, I’d love for you to speak a little bit on all three of those and kind of what the focus is for teachers with regards to the three skills.

Honorée Corder: Sure. So, we wanted to stick with the theme of teaching, the ABCs, a little nod to our educators and our teachers out there who are doing this heavy lifting. So, I took the attitude as the A so A plus attitude optimization, and this is for teachers and then to pass on to their students and then I just broke it down into the sub-skills of attitude. So, how do you create an attitude? What’s your approach to having a better attitude? What is the belief you have to have? And then what are the character traits you need to embody? And then how do you put those into practice in your everyday life? And how are you sharing that with your students? How are you modeling that with your students? I think every teacher will nod and smile and probably have a lot to say about the fact that some parents are more involved than others. Some parents are more equipped than others. And sometimes they are literally doing the heavy lifting, not just some teaching curriculum, not just teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are actually teaching social skills and personal development skills. And we wanted to just put in this book how they could do that and it started with attitude.

And then the next one was how are they on their best behavior? How are they modeling best behavior? How are they keeping themselves in a positive frame of mind, so that they could model that best behavior for their students, teaching them acceptance, and how to behave or act in different situations? And finally building confidence, building confidence in themselves as teachers and as people because when you show up to a situation and you are confident, I was at a conference this past weekend and one of the monikers was, “Confidence has no competition.” When you are confident, you can love and accept yourself and love and accept others and I think that model by a teacher is really powerful for the students, whether they are preschool students or graduate students. And then finally, the final legendary teacher skill is community creation, how do you create positive associations so friendship and companionship and connection within your classroom? How do you create a safe and wonderful space for every student in the classroom? Moving on to belonging, how do you make everyone feel like they belong?

And I don’t know about you, Hal, but when I was going through school, I went to five high schools I didn’t always feel like I belonged. I mean, let’s just talk about middle school. I went to the same middle school the whole entire time but I didn’t really feel like I belonged in middle school necessarily all the time either. And it’s not until you’re older that you realize, “Oh, gosh, well, I wasn’t alone.” Everybody feels awkward at one point or another and we wanted to give our teachers some really good nuggets of information on how they could make a space that everyone felt like they belonged and how do you as a teacher feel like you belong in your community. And then finally, I started my part of the introduction, talking about Mrs. Lawrence who was my 10th-grade French teacher and she made just such a positive impact on me. She made me feel like she actually cared about me as a person and she demonstrated that many times. She actually cared. And part of being in a community is knowing that people care about you and care that you show up. Being a teacher and teaching someone how to multiply or divide or kind of read a book report or just the basic education history and those sorts of things.

If you add the component of actually caring about the students, they know if you do and they know if you don’t. You as a teacher can care for your students and then you can teach them to care for you and care for each other. Imagine the ripple effects of not just that, but all the other things that are talked about in the book going out into the world. The thing that excited me the most about this particular book, more than any of the others and I think people have to understand is people call me the book lady. So, I love all of my books like they are my children. So, this is like saying I don’t have a favorite child but if I did, this might be it. The thing that excited me and excites me the most about this book is I understand and you understand this too, Hal, because you’ve been doing this work for such a long time is if I impact the life of one child, I don’t just impact the life of that child, I impact the life of their siblings. I impact the life of their parents. I impact the life of their grandparents in their neighborhood, then we go back to the classroom. If you teach the students these skills in the classroom, then they impact the classroom to the left and to the right and across the hall.

And if the teachers are doing it, the other teachers are seeing what’s going on, then we have a little teacher community and then a big teacher community and then a nation and then the world that has these skills that they will rely upon for all of the situations that they’re in. This has the possibility not to just impact eight-year-old Annie but everyone in eight-year-old Annie’s life, in her world. And then we multiply Annie times a million and we’ve impacted the consciousness of the world. That’s why I’m excited about this particular book.

Hal Elrod: I couldn’t agree more and I feel I think you and I both just feel from seeing and experiencing, witnessing what happened for the teachers that have done this already, you know, the dozens of teachers that participated in the real-world experiment back in February of 2019, I think, right? It was this year. Not that long ago. But seeing what it did for the teachers, what it did for their classrooms, what it did for their students most importantly, in my opinion, I think that we are very optimistic. And obviously, anyone who’s listening to this, if you have a teacher in your life whether you’re a parent or you are a teacher, well, actually, Honorée, talk about that. How can listeners help get the word out about this book in a way that will change the world one student at a time?

Honorée Corder: Sure. So, we were talking about how as non-teachers, right, so we are not the selected Secretary of Education. So, how do we get the word out about this book that we are so passionate and excited about? And we talked about a top-down approach. So, top-down approach would be giving a book to the Secretary of Education or anyone in a position of influence in the world of education. We are talking superintendents of schools, principals of schools, teachers, guidance counselors, anybody who has influence where you can influence many people, right? So, that’s from the top down. We also were really wanting to create a grassroots effort where one teacher at a time gets the book and as they do their own 30-day experiment and they teach their classroom how to do the 30-day experiment, they are then watching the transformation of their students and people around them are watching the transformation and that gets the word out about the book. And pulling that one, from a little bit wider of a lens, parents, if parents have students that are in classrooms, this book is the perfect Christmas gift or just a perfect Tuesday gift, right? It’s a Tuesday gift.

Hal Elrod: Yes. Well, isn’t it great? It’s a great year for the holidays, which is part of why we try to get it done or we work so hard to get the book done in time because teachers go on holiday break and this is a neat gift to send your child to bring to school to give to their teacher before they head off on holiday break and then they can read up in the holiday break and then going into the new year. They can start the Miracle Morning in their classrooms, right?

Honorée Corder: The classrooms as they come back from break but there’s really no wrong time to get the book but we wanted to release the book because I know parents are out there. And as I’m giving the book to people, I know with kids who are in school, I’m asking them how many teachers do you have? Let me give you books to give to each of your students’ teachers. You can make them cookies or you can buy them a teacher’s ornament that they’ll put on their tree or for about the same cost, you can give them a book that could potentially change their life and change the life of everyone that they come in contact with forever. It’s no brainer. I mean, I just kind of made the argument for no more teachers ornaments, but you can…

Hal Elrod: You just did the teacher ornament industry. It’s a huge disservice, Honorée.

Honorée Corder: Yes. I’m so sorry.

Hal Elrod: They’re going to take a hit.

Honorée Corder: I didn’t mean to make ornaments go the way of the vinyl record. Anyway…

Hal Elrod: That’s funny. Oh, yeah. That’s why I’m getting copies of this for every single teacher at my children’s school. You know, starting close to home, as we start with your family, then your community, and then out to your city and then your state, your country and the world. And that’s for me, I see getting this out there through, as you mentioned, this grassroots effort of members of the Miracle Morning Community and listener to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast, who believe in this mission and what we’re talking about, and elevating the consciousness of humanity and realizing that, as Honorée said, that our next generation is the place to really invest our time and energy and attention and our teachers are teaching that generation every single day. So, Honorée, anything else to share or ask or anything else before we wrap up?

Honorée Corder: I would love the listeners to imagine what their life would be like if they have learned this in preschool or fifth grade, or eighth grade, or 10th grade. Imagine, Hal, if you’re listening to this particular podcast, if you’ve read the Miracle Morning book, then you are well connected to the fact that you have to work on yourself and that these are skills that you’ve learned and you’re practicing and they are beneficial to you. And imagine if someone had given me the gift of these practices 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years 50 years ago, whatever that looks like for you, and you have the opportunity to make that impact on the lives of other people. And we thank you in advance for not only listening to this but taking the time to identify one teacher, just one teacher, and maybe 100 teachers.

Hal Elrod: Anywhere between one and 100.

Honorée Corder: Pick a number between 1 and 100, 1 and 1,000, whatever works best for you but just one teacher, if you can identify one teacher, if you’re retired, you don’t have any children, you don’t have any grandchildren, you couldn’t be less interested, please just still find a teacher at your church or at your community center, one of your neighbors who’s a teacher and just give them the gift of this book and see if it doesn’t come back in spades to you from giving that gift and then tell us about it. Hop into the Facebook community and tell us how you gave the book to and what their response was. We really just want to know that this book is getting out there and making a difference in the lives of our next generation and in the lives of our teachers because our teachers really are underpaid and underappreciated. And in some small way, this was my way of paying Mrs. Lawrence back for all those French lessons and more importantly, for seeing potential in me when I did not see it in myself. And teachers don’t get paid for what they do that is not curriculum-based. Everything is numbers-based, but what they do that actually makes the real difference they are not paid for and a lot of times not acknowledged for and we want our teachers to feel like they matter in what they’re doing makes a difference, because it really does.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. It does and I think that’s one thing that was really unique about this book is it addressed all those intangibles of what it takes to be an exceptional or as we refer to legendary teacher. It’s not are you the best at teaching history or math or science, right? It’s are you the best at nurturing the hearts and minds of the students so that they have that confidence that you talked about, that they have that peace of mind, and they have that ability to focus that they feel good that they feel part of a community? So many intangibles, which I think that is, again, making the biggest impact for people, not just I got a good grade on my test but it’s like who am I becoming as a result of the teacher that I have and the environment that has been created. Well, hey, if you are listening and you’re interested in supporting the mission and helping your teacher in your life, head over to Amazon. You can get your copies of the Miracle Morning for Teacher there for your favorite teacher in your life.

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: And, Honorée, you did the majority of the research and the writing and leading the charge with the teachers and as I’ve been focusing on recovery and health, you’ve just been incredible. So, I just want to publicly say in front of everybody listening how much I love and appreciate you and I could not be more thankful and more grateful and more blessed to have you in my life and as the co-creator, my partner in the Miracle Morning book series. So, thank you so much.

Honorée Corder: It was my pleasure. I look forward to hearing how this book impacts the lives of everyone it touches. Thanks, Hal.

Hal Elrod: As do I. All right, goal achievers, I love you and I appreciate you. Thanks for your valuable time and attention today. Hope you enjoyed the podcast and can’t wait to hear about the impact that the Miracle Morning for Teachers makes in your life and the lives of your teachers, your students, and anyone else that any of you touch. Love you guys. Appreciate you.

[END]