Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers. It’s Hal Elrod. Welcome to the podcast. Well, last week was the episode I shared called Why 2019 Was the Worst Year of My Life and Three Steps to Make 2020 The Best Year of Your Life. And as I mentioned, last week, it was a tough one to record just being so open and vulnerable and the feedback from you guys and gals was incredible. Thank you so much for the love and encouragement. And, yeah, it was just really special for me to see the comments and the responses from all of you. And many of you are saying that you had a tough year in 2019 as well. And many of you similar to me saying you had a tough year despite normally you are the most positive optimistic person that you know, as I kind of identify with and you’d said that, yeah, just you lost sight of your optimism and just struggled in a lot of ways and kind of a year of fear for a lot of people.
And I have a friend who’s big into astrology and he actually broke it down for me recently. He’s like, “You know, Hal, the star is aligned and this was the toughest year for all of us optimists but 2020 is our best year as we came through the struggle. We made it. We survived.” Anyway, so, if you had your best year ever in 2019, kudos to you. If you were on the side of the fence that I’m on where you actually had a really tough year, welcome to the club. And, yeah, 2020 is going to be our best year ever. So, I want to follow up on last week’s podcast, which was again really about the struggle that I shared, but then it was really about what are the three keys I gave you to make this your best year ever and that was about identifying your highest values. And specifically, I talked about first and foremost, if you are struggling in any way, be vulnerable. Be willing to be vulnerable and ask for help. That was the first thing before we got into the values.
And then we got into values. I was quoting some of the work I’ve been doing with my coach, Jeffrey Williams. He shares this three-part kind of perspective, know yourself, love yourself, and be yourself. And just to summarize last week’s podcast since I recommend listening to it, by the way, if you haven’t, one of our most popular most shared episodes ever. So, that was really cool but the three components to identify and live your values, number one, know yourself. That’s to get really clear on what do you value most. And I shared for me last year or for me going into this year, last year identified toward the end of the year the three values that I want to hold true to are health, first and foremost, because without that I get nothing. Family because the most important people in my life are my family, my wife and my two kids, my daughter, and my son. Daughter is 10. Son is seven in case you want some details.
And then last but not least, freedom, which is a freedom that to really live, well, the first freedom is to live in alignment with those first two values, right? And then beyond that, it’s freedom to pay our bills without having to stress and so there’s work kind of fits into the third category. So, those are the three values that I shared and that I lost sight of last year and work got in the way. I overworked myself and sacrificed my health. A lot of the lessons that I learned during my cancer journey I kind of forgot and I think that we can do that where we learn lessons, maybe we go through a struggle, maybe we just have great success, and then we tend to coast, right? We tend to kind of forget what got us to the dance, so to speak, the basics, and we get away from those basics. And I found that I’ve been guilty of that. I’ve really gotten away from the basics, gotten away from living my values. So, I’ve been shutting everything down that is not in alignment with those values and I invite you to do the same.
So, know yourself is to know your values. Love yourself is to shut down everything that is not in alignment with those values. And be yourself is to create a lifestyle and really a schedule that you love to live that you wake up and you love to live. My coach, Jeffrey, one of the things that he often says or he said at one time, but he said to me once that every challenge that we face is a result of not filling our schedule with things that we love to do. And there was a context around them because every challenge that we face like mentally and emotionally or in terms of our inner conflict as well. We’re waking up every day and our schedule is filled with things that don’t align with our values, things that align with other people’s values, other people’s agendas, because we’ve said yes to others or we’re working a job we don’t like or whatever the case may be.
And so, be yourself, that third component is get clear on what your values are, shut down the other things, and then create a schedule a lifestyle that is filled with what you value most, what matters most to you, what you love to do. So, there’s kind of a summary of last week’s episode. If you want to go deeper, of course, and hear about my worst year ever, feel free to go check out that episode.
[EPISODE]
Hal Elrod: Today, I want to talk about perfection. How do you live your life perfectly this year? How do you live perfectly? How can you be perfect in 2020 and beyond? And I’ll tell you a few months ago, I was listening to an audiobook that came highly recommended from my good friend, Mike Dillard, and the audiobook is titled The Voice of Knowledge. It’s by Don Miguel Ruiz, who by the way also wrote two of my all-time favorite books, the Mastery of Love and the Four Agreements, two of my favorites. And in the book, Don said, “All of conflict and suffering in the world and all of the drama you suffer in your personal life is the result of believing in lies mainly about yourself.”
And that begs the question, “Well, what are the lies?” And he went on to say the first lie that you believe is that you’re not good enough. You are not perfect. He said, “The reality is we are born perfect, we grow up perfect, and we will die perfect because only perfection exists. But the big lie is that no one is perfect so we search for an image of perfection that we can never become. That image is false. It’s a lie, but we invest our faith in that lie and then we build a whole structure of lies to support it.” So, the question or my question for you and possibly the internal conflict that many of us wrestle with might be along the lines of, well, how can I possibly see myself as perfect when I have so many flaws, so many insecurities, problems, and there’s so many areas that I want and or need to improve, right? How can I see myself as perfect? I’m a mess, right?
And so, I’d like to help you answer that question for you so that you can experience the true joy, self-love, and freedom that comes with seeing and experiencing yourself as perfect now, right now, today, every day exactly as you are. And perfection when it comes to ourselves in our lives, it’s really a relative perspective. Unlike math or science for which perfection can be calculated and measured and formulas must be exact, the human experiences is both messy and it’s beautiful at the same time but there are no perfect lines or measurements when it comes to us as human beings when it comes to our lives. But you can either see the messiness of life, such as your problems or your perceived personal flaws and I say perceived because who’s to say they’re flaws.
But you can either see them, the messiness of life as imperfect, and cause for concern, or even pain or you can see that you are perfect as you are, problems, flaws, and all of it. And from that place of perfection, you can continue to learn, grow, and inevitably expand your vision of what perfection is for you, and not how society or anybody else attempts to define it for you. So, thus, you don’t ever have to approach your miracle mornings or any other form of personal development for that matter from a place of, “I’m not enough so I need to improve,” and instead come from a place of, “I am perfect today as I am. I love myself unconditionally.” And from that place of perfection, self-love, joy and freedom, I will continue to elevate my consciousness so that my vision for my perfect self and what life looks like in all its perfection can continue to expand and my ability to live into that vision will expand alongside it so that I can make my ideal possibilities become my reality.
And, yes, I’m reading that as an affirmation that I wrote down. I’ll say that again, actually. So, you can either come from this place of I’m not enough or a place of, “I am perfect today as I am, I love myself unconditionally. And from this place of perfection, self-love, joy and freedom, I will continue to elevate my consciousness so that my vision for my perfect self can continue to expand and my ability to live into that vision will expand alongside it so that I can make my ideal possibilities become my reality.” If you want to pause this, rewind, write that down, you’re welcome. I invite you to write that as an affirmation because I think it applies to all of us.
And this perspective of perfection has been extremely liberating for me but I don’t have it perfected. I don’t have the vision of perfection, the perspective of perfection perfected by any means. It is still something that I have to work on daily, consciously, and deliberately. You know, I’ve got a lifetime of insecurities and past programming, both from myself and from others or what Don Miguel Ruiz have probably called, you know, that’s believing the lies that you tell yourself that others have told you. That’s something that takes effort but it is worthwhile effort as the rewards that I’ve been talking about, joy, self-love, freedom, all of it are so, so, so worth it. So, I hope you’ll take this to heart. And if you do, I really hope you’ll translate this message into an affirmation so that you can read it every day and edit it as needed. So, you can embody the perfection that is already in you, inside of you, that you already are.
I want to share one other resource for you. If you want to go deeper into this topic of you being perfect as you are and embracing that, so that you’re not always feeling like, “I’m not enough and I need to do more and achieve more and be more.” You know, it’s interesting, by the way, I would have never thought that I fell into this category of thinking that I’m not enough because I’ve always been this achiever, right? I’ve always achieved relative success in my life or not always but since I was about 19, when I started in sales, so I wouldn’t have thought this applies to me. I’m like, “I know I’m enough. I’ve proven that I’m enough.” But here’s what I realized and this is a message for all of you, achievers, all of you badass six and seven-figure earners and wildly successful entrepreneurs or CEOs or stay-at-home moms or dads, whatever.
If you view yourself as like an achiever and you’re thinking like, “This doesn’t apply to me,” I realized that deep down like deep, deep, deep, deep down, I was achieving so much because I didn’t think I was enough because I didn’t feel like as I was, I was, you know, I think that when we really go fundamental, it’s worthy of love. When we really get down underneath all of it, like our deepest human desire is to feel love and to be loved, and to experience love in every possible moment. And if we don’t love ourselves, then we seek it from other people, right? We seek from other people. And in this vision of perfection, this perspective of perfection is really a form of self-love. And by the way, on that note, and then I’ll get to the resource that I was going to give you, but I do want to mention most recently, this perspective of seeing the perfection in myself, the perfection in my life, which again, that includes the flaws. It includes the mistakes that I make as a human being.
As human beings, we’re destined to make mistakes. That’s life. No human being goes without making mistakes. The question is do you beat yourself up for those or do you see them as part of the perfection in your journey as part of the growth, as part of the learning that you are experiencing so that you can continue to evolve into your highest self and the best version of who you are, the perfection that you are, and that you are redefining and up-leveling and evolving and living into. So, most recently, I am reading it’s a brand new book that’s not even out yet. I got an advance copy from the author and, however, it is an updated and revised and expanded edition of one of my favorite books. That book is Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant and actually, I’m excited. He and I are talking next week.
So, you will get to hear from him. In the next few weeks, you’re going to hear our conversation. And Kamal I’ll save the story of how we met. It turns out Miracle Morning is one of his favorite books and his book is one of my favorite books, and we met without knowing we were the authors. And anyway, it’s a cool bromance that I’ll share with you when we have our episode. But here’s the point. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It is arguably one of the most important books because it’s one of the most important messages. Again, we all just love, right? How do I say this? Love is what we want. That’s all we want. That’s what life’s about, right? It’s seeking love, and what Kamal he radically transforms this paradigm of what love is by really focusing on loving yourself as if your life depended on it, right?
Love yourself like your life depends on it, the idea that most of us seek love outside of ourselves and we seek it through pleasing others, achieving, looking for recognition from other people so that we can feel loved and accepted and embraced by others. We spend our lives, many of us, most of us probably, seeking love from other people. And looking for that significant other, our soulmate so we can have just love. We just want love. Just love me, love me all the time. And what Kemal talks about is and gives you just this amazing practice, I encourage you to start looking him up now and you can even get the original version of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It is available today. And in fact, a new book might be available. I know it’s coming out very soon, so it might even already be available. In fact, I should look that up real quick while I’m talking to you.
But the idea of loving yourself like your life depends on it is the idea that you don’t need to seek love from others, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you don’t need to seek love from others when you love yourself. Oh, and by the way, Kamal’s new version of his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It is available. So, that’s cool. But Kamal is one of my favorite authors. It’s one of my favorite books and one of the exercises that he had me do, the readers do was to write down everything that you hold against yourself, everything that you carry shame or guilt around that it is time to forgive. And I wrote down some of the deep things that I wasn’t even aware that I was carrying. The first one was that I’ve failed my children by not spending enough time with them.
That’s a constant fear and kind of shame and guilt that I feel, a disconnect from my values. And I’ve got to reconcile that I have to make peace with that, because that ultimately isn’t necessarily true. I probably spend more time with my kids than most parents. But for me, it’s like this bottomless pit, like I can never spend enough time with my kids. And so, I’ve carried this guilt and shame. Some others are I’m a terrible listener, and thus a mediocre friend. My friends would probably tell you, the first is true, I’m a terrible listener, but they probably wouldn’t say a mediocre friend. They’d probably say I compensate in other ways, right? But that’s a big one. And another one was my life has caused other people pain. Now, that’s one that I really carry a lot of weight around that, you know, my car accident, my cancer, all these things like my parents have endured so much pain. My wife has endured so much pain. My friend, I mean, all the people in my life that I love, I carry around this idea that I am a burden, my life is a burden for other people.
So, part of this loving yourself and I’m kind of getting into moving a little bit away from seeing yourself as perfect topic that we started this with, but it really is part of it. Because when you carry this guilt and the shame around for mistakes that you’ve made, that gets in the way of seeing the perfection that you’re just doing your best that you’re human. You’re human, I’m human. We all make mistakes. And so, I would imagine that you can probably look back at your mistakes and realize that you were doing the best if not close to the best that you could at the time with the information that you had or the resources that you have or the knowledge that you had or the emotional intelligence that you had. And so, forgiving yourself is a part of that. So, we’ll get a lot more into that when I talk to Kamal here in the next week or two. So, look out for that one.
Today, I just wanted to invite you to reframe your vision or I should say your perspective on yourself and your life and to embrace that you are already perfect as you are. You were born perfect, you grew up perfect, and you will die perfect because only perfection exists and everything else is a story, a lie, as Don Miguel Ruiz says that you believed and that’s where all our challenges come from. So, love yourself as you are, see yourself as you can be, create the life that you deserve, and help others do the same.
[CLOSING]
Hal Elrod: Thank you. Thanks for listening today. Goal achievers, I love you. I appreciate you. Hey, we actually did a short episode for once. Actually, I was going to start this by saying I think today will be a short episode, but every time I do that, it ends up being like way long. So, we actually did it. Nice work. Alright. Guys and gals, goal achievers, I love you. I appreciate you and I will talk to you all next week.
[END]
