Episode 318: Modifying Your Miracle Morning (for Quarantine) with Chip Franks

Chip Franks: Well, hello, hello, hello, Achieve Your Goals listeners. This is indeed Chip Franks and I want to thank Hal Elrod for that momentous, very moving introduction, which truth be known, I haven’t heard yet but I’m certain it was embarrassingly wonderful. So, Hal, thank you for that. And seriously, thank you, Hal, for just putting together this community and continuing to show up day-after-day for everyone here, for the Miracle Morning community, for all of the Achieve Your Goals listeners. Folks, I get a chance to see Hal behind the scenes and the man that walks his talk like no one else, and just really cares about what he brings to you and to the community. So, Hal, thank you very much for just being that kind of person. So, we really, really appreciate it. Now, today, I have to hurry up because I have a lot of information to shell out, not just information but hopefully, you’re going to get some useful tools today because today’s podcast episode, as you may have read in the show notes, it’s Coronavirus and the Miracle Morning.

 

And this is actually an extension of a post that I did in the Miracle Morning community that got a lot of traction. A lot of folks seem to like it so we wanted to go a little bit deeper with this and just give you some tools to enhance your Miracle Morning, to enhance your morning practice, and in fact, you can do these at any time during the day. But what we really, really want to do with this podcast episode is to introduce you to some tools that you can use to help your mindset during this challenging time, during these uncertain times, during these, you may have heard about the quarantine and the coronavirus. So, this is really an unprecedented time in human history and there are a lot of good things for it and if you’re looking for blessings, you can certainly find those. However, this is to help either maintain a great mindset or to actually go back and get a great mindset for this. So, I hope that this helps for you and I’m excited about it.

 

You know what, if you’re listening to this at home because there’s probably a lot less driving and less going out to the gym, and listening to these podcasts, if you can take some notes on this, it would be really great. And I’m not just saying that for me because it’s an ego thing or whatever but I honestly feel like you’re going to get some tools here that will really help in keeping your mindset where it needs to be. And I’m just going to get started now just real quickly and tell you my three pieces of advice for what to do during this time. And now mind you, obviously, I’m not a scientist, I’m not a biologist, and frankly, I guess what I do is I help people feel better and I help people cultivate joy in their own lives, and that’s kind of what I’ve done. And I’ve helped lots of people do it so take what I say with a grain of salt. If you like it and it’s useful, great. That’s wonderful. Please use it. And if not, that’s completely fine. Just think about it for yourself.

 

So, number one, and this is really what this entire podcast is about and we’re going to get started on this but the first thing that each and every one of us can do is to take care of ourselves first. And that is the biggest and the best thing that we can do really for ourselves, obviously, but then also for all of the people in our lives, people who are depending on us, or an economy that’s depending on us to come out and be better than ever before. And we’re going to talk about that but a lot of it is extreme self-care. And included in extreme self-care is the Miracle Morning and continuing that for yourself to just maintain that mindset and I would argue, the heartset and the soulset that you need to handle some of these challenging times. So, that’s number one. Number two, and the reason why we take care of ourselves and we secure our own oxygen mask on ourselves first, so that we can reach out and we can help others.

 

Now, Fred Rogers, one of my heroes, Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood, you may have heard of them, one of the things he said is that during times of crisis, during scary times, look for the helpers, look for the people who are helping and there’s always, there are always those individuals. And what I say is the people who practice the Miracle Morning, who have this mindset, and also the people, of course, that listen to a podcast called Achieve Your Goals Podcast, we are the helpers. When we take care of ourselves, we’re able to help other people. And I have a little practice that I talked about with that and it’s called AOK-a-Day, which is acts of kindness per day. And one act of kindness and it can be as simple as sending a text to anyone that you love or someone that might need encouragement or it could be a lot more advanced than that. It could be helping someone in saving a life during this time or helping someone financially, or whatever it is, but just helping people do that.

 

So, that’s the second thing is, obviously, after you take care of yourself, reach out to help other people. And the third thing I’d recommend is preparing and just getting ready for an economy that’s probably changing, a job landscape that’s changing. Of course, many of you know that. My voice is probably reaching some people who have lost your jobs. And, my gosh, my heart goes out to you right now. And the good news, the wonderful news is human innovation is alive and well, and I believe that we’re going to have some help for you soon. And by the way, before I forget this, and I will mention it later, but I have included some resources for those who need to get a job after this or when this is over or actually even starting now, honestly, you can do that. But if you go to ChipFranks.com/Jobs and really it’s good information on how to apply for and get any job that you want.

 

There’s another article in there that’s called Finding Your Magic Spot and that’s really how to get into the career that you really want to with that. And there’s a third article in there about shadowing and that is actually what Tony Robbins calls modeling but that is finding someone who does what you want to do in the world and approaching them the right way and actually seeing how they do their job and how they’re so good at it, for one, so you can look at it and you can see what they do and know that, hey, that’s something I want to do. And two is they do it so well that you can get ideas on how to do it yourself. So, anyways, ChipFranks.com/Jobs and it’s just my little way of helping out folks who might need to look for new work after all this is said and done. So, just real quickly, my situation I’m stuck with, that’s probably not the right term but I am quarantined with my family of five including myself, my lovely wife, Laura, who is in the mortgage industry, very, very good at her job. She’s in the top 1% of mortgage officers nationwide and I can tell you that’s a scary, scary situation right now because the rules are changing daily for her. And she like literally works almost every day from 9 AM to 9 PM doing what she does, and it’s a little scary.

 

So, we have some uncertainty In our lives right now. Then, also my daughter, Mandy, who is a pre-med student, and she’s going through her college classes online and doing really well with that. My reclusive genius daughter, Allie, who is 16, and now doing some of her coursework online, and not really appreciating the fact that she has to do that every day. And of course, my eight-year-old, the amazing Alec, some of you know he is born with Down syndrome and every day he tells me at the end of the day, he’s like, “Dad, I want to stay home tomorrow.” And I say, “Boy, guess what you are in luck, son. You can stay home tomorrow.” And that’s our situation and we’re kind of out in the country and we have a pretty good-sized house so it’s kind of nice to just to be quarantined with a family, honestly. We go on lots of walks out here and feel very blessed that we’re able to be together and still able to continue our profession but that’s just our situation and I just say that just so you kind of know where we’re coming from. And if you’re stuck in a little apartment, if you’re not able to make ends meet or anything like that, our heart goes out to you and we’re thinking about you and praying for you during this time.

 

But now, let’s get into real quickly the Miracle Morning and the Coronavirus and here says that what we’re going to start with on that. One of the only things that we can control right now is what we do with ourselves and how we respond to the situation we’re in. And we can help create our own mental resilience with this, number one, so we can feel better about ourselves. Some of you may not feel good about yourselves. If you’re not doing things every day, you’re not experiencing momentum, if you’re binging on Netflix or whatever, it’s completely understandable, but that kind of thing starts to wear on our soul and we start to not feel good about ourselves with that. So, number one, so we feel better about ourselves. Number two is then what I mentioned before. When we take care of ourselves, we can reach out and we can help others and that’s wonderful. And we’re an example for others so that they can see that people are thriving and doing this the right way and you can help out other people.

 

And then three, it really allows you to prepare and you’re in the right mindset to help yourself and make yourself better and to do scribing exercises, which we’re about to get to and make your situation better, just to be in the right place for that. Because if you’re depressed and if you’re wearing pajamas all day and if you’re not taking showers and just not working on yourself, you’re not in the best place to be able to help others or to help yourself when all of the smoke clears from this coronavirus. So, I hope that this really can help you out here. So, that is what we’re doing here. And something just real quickly about the coronavirus is that now is the time it’s like a unique time in history for humanity to step up. And I am so encouraged by what I see and the innovation that people are doing to help one another, and the resilience that people have in taking care of themselves and their neighbors and helping other people. So, just wherever you happen to be during this, our thoughts are with you and you deserve to take care of yourself and be able to do this.

 

And if you haven’t been doing your Miracle Morning, if you’ve been letting your schedule slide, please let this be the wakeup call for that to help you out with it. And today, I think that we’re going to help with it. This is a toolbox that you can open up here in the Miracle Morning and can really help yourself with it. So, that is where we are right now. And just as I get into this, I am going to start giving you strategies for each one of the SAVERS in the Miracle Morning. And again, I hope that you can write some of these down and do this but I am about to name drop, so I’m going to have to like stoop over and pick up this name that I’m about to drop. But last week, I got a chance to be on a group call with Stedman Graham, and he is Oprah’s boyfriend and I asked him specifically, I’m like, “Well, what should we tell people? What should we tell folks in our tribe about what they can do right now and what they can do during this time?” And his answer was amazing and he said to me, let me make sure that I have this right here because it’s fantastic.

 

He says, “The transformation is always love,” and I love that and he’s a really sharp guy, really good with that but what I took that to mean and hopefully what you can take this to mean for you is that we need to love ourselves enough to wake up every morning and do the Miracle Morning, love ourselves enough to maybe set a foundational schedule as Hal calls it so that we are doing something productive each day to feel better about ourselves. We are deserving of the best that we can be and the best that we can do for our family and for others. And while this time is a time to reset, and to maybe step back and take a look at things, it’s really also a time for us to work on ourselves so we can go to work on our lives from that. So, I just wanted to share that with you real quickly. And now, let’s give you some tools for the toolbox with your SAVERS. We’re going to go in order for the SAVERS and you probably know them already, but SAVERS, it stands for silence, then affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing.

 

And again, I’m going to have to kind of go through these fast so please take notes or come back and listen to this. And honestly, if I’m going to go ahead and make some notes on this, you can find the notes at MiracleMorning.com and then look for the podcast and you’ll see this and they usually put the notes and/or the transcript up in this but I will also do this as well at my website, ChipFranks.com/AYG for, again, Achieve Your Goals. And some of these notes will be written out there just so you can print them out, you can use them, you can do whatever you want to with them but I would like to help with that.

 

So, number one, let’s get started with silence and I have a few tools right now that we can do. And of course, that’s purposeful silence and it can be prayer, it can be meditation, it can just be deep breathing or moments of gratitude but let’s get started with prayer and whether or not you’re a believer in prayer, if you’re not, maybe the section doesn’t apply to you or this tool, but that’s cool. But it may still work and you can just rather than praying to God or what have you, pray to the universe or life or whatever makes you feel good there. And this is what I suggest during that prayer is that you pray for yourself during the current situation. Some of us don’t do that and we pray for others a lot easier than we pray for ourselves. So, I would suggest praying for yourself and specifically, this is what I pray for. And you can try this if it works for you, awesome. I pray for wisdom to do the right things and know the right things to do and then I pray for strength and the courage to actually go out and do those. So, that is part of my prayer routine every morning.

 

And then I do something that I call my Pepa prayer. I say Pepa because it’s my granddad. He was a Baptist minister, a really godly man and not in-your-face about sinners in the hands of an angry God kind of thing. He was just a really good person who wanted to help other people. But Pepa prayed every morning for his extended family and those he loved by name. And I would suggest trying that or at least giving it a try, starting with you, then your family, and then the circle of the people that you can help influence and then eventually to the world and that you pray goodness and kindness and health and abundance and love and all of the good things for those people. And I think that what you’ll find is, one, is you feel better by doing that. And then two, of course, I’m a believer in prayer and I think it helps other people, even if it’s the observer effect in quantum physics or what have you with that. So, that is technique number one. I call it my Pepa prayer but again, pray for yourself and then pray for your surrounding influence.

 

Now, number two for silence. This method is the loving-kindness meditation and just what you want to do with that is it’s essentially the same type of thing as a prayer but it’s a really like almost a guided visualization/meditation of you wishing yourself well and then wishing other people well along the way, and continually widening that circle and wishing those well. And Tara Brach actually has a really good, guided loving-kindness meditation. And I have put that and again, it should be on the show notes. But if you go to ChipFranks.com/Meditation, I have Tara Brach’s meditation there, as well as a class that I did on meditation that might help you. It’s like an hour and 40 minutes of my best meditation techniques or whatever and I hope that that really helps you out. So, that’s the second technique, the Loving Kindness Meditation. And then the third one, this is a little different, and maybe it’s a little woo-woo but it’s the self-love meditation. And a little while back, a few months back, Hal had a gentleman by the name of Kamal Ravikant on the show, and he wrote the book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.

 

And that was a great book. It was fantastic. One of the things that Kamal does is he has a meditation that usually he runs like six to seven minutes or so and it’s basically thinking about how much he loves himself, and imagining a light coming from heaven like filling him up, a silver light, while he’s imagining just how much he loves himself and having that loving self-talk while he’s meditating to a song that’s very soothing, relaxing that he likes. So, I recommend just trying that out and again because we can get really down on ourselves during these times, and one of the best things we can do for ourselves and for others is to love ourselves during this time. So, those are my tools for the silence parts of the SAVERS.

 

Let’s move on. Let’s go to affirmations. And now this one I have two tools for you and the first one is an affirmation technique that I’m thinking about just specifically for the coronavirus and that is you want to write out exactly how you’re being, and how you want to show up and how you are showing up during this time in particular, and specifically, that for me, this is what I write, that I will be a light for others and that I’ll be strong myself so I can be an example to others and I can pass on love and kindness to other people. And when you affirm something like that, it just makes you feel a lot better. And if you’re having a problem doing your Miracle Morning, by the way, another affirmation that can help you is to affirm that you actually do your Miracle Morning each morning that you wake up a little earlier than you have to and maybe you don’t have to wake up at any given time right now but you wake up a little earlier than you have to and do your Miracle Morning. And if you affirm that, it will be a little easier to actually make that your reality. And let me turn off my phone so you don’t hear these text messages I’m getting from Hal right now. So, that is the first technique is to affirm how you’re acting specifically during the coronavirus.

 

Now, the second technique and, folks, this is something that has made a huge difference in my life and I don’t have a whole lot of time to go into it because Hal wants to keep these podcast episodes reasonably short so we’re trying to keep this 45 minutes or so but I could talk all day on this and this is called affirmed philosophy. And what this is for me is these are affirmations that I say in the morning that are my spiritual armor for the day. And another way that I like to put it and that I talked about here is that there are these philosophies that I affirm that I read each day are my operating system for life, and they work for my soul, they helped me feel better, and it really helps make sense of the nonsensical. So, when you see the chaos that the world is in right now and you see bad things happening to good people, affirmed philosophy is the kind of thing, it’s the thing for me that just makes sense of it all. And let me give you an example and I’ll give you the God disclaimer on this. If you’re not a believer in God, that’s completely fine. Just please substitute it for universe or life or whatever it makes you feel comfortable.

 

But one of my biggest philosophies is that we have a loving God, and the word, loving, makes all the difference. And Einstein once said, and this is worth writing down, and I really do believe Einstein said this. Half the quotes on the internet are attributed to him but I’ve done some research and it looks like he said it. I’m paraphrasing here but he said, “One of the most important decisions we can make is whether or not we live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe.” And if you’re listening to me right now, you probably know which camp I fall into. I really do believe that we live in a friendly, kind, loving universe when we look for it and that makes all of the difference for me. So, when I see horrific things happening on the news or, again, if I see bad things happening to good people or if I think about things even like the Holocaust or children not having enough food to eat or things like that, that one philosophy helps me think about that. And just to give you an idea, a few of my other philosophies are that I borrowed this from John Lennon is that, “It will all be divinely perfect in the end. And if it’s not divinely perfect, it’s not the end.”

 

So, if things are going bad right now and it’s a horrible time, and there’s too much for us to bear at any given time, then I know that’s not the end and I know that something better is coming along because we live in a friendly universe. I hope that makes sense to you for the affirmed philosophies. And just a few other things that I believe and actually, let me flip to it, I have my journal here and this is how I do it, by the way, and this is a good exercise to do is I write these out in the front of my journal so I can read them every day and this really, really helps me. Another philosophy that I got from one of my students in my joy class is that love wins. I love that. Love wins. It always wins. In the end, love wins which is really good. Another one and this is really cliché but again, it makes sense if you apply it to what’s happening right now and that is everything happens for a reason and we get to choose that reason. And now if you see like these affirmed philosophies, and by the way, again, I mean, I feel like I’m dropping all of these everywhere here but if you go to ChipFranks.com/Philosophy, you can actually see all of my affirmed philosophies written out for you.

 

And you are welcome to take those, you can steal them because I stole a lot of them. You can modify them, you can change them to yourself, but again, in your affirmations each day, this is a strategy in a toolbox that you can use as write out your affirmed philosophies. And I can tell you that it has made me so much more joyful this year. It has provided me spiritual armor that like almost nothing can touch me that that’s bad in the world when I believe in and I affirm my philosophies. It is my spiritual armor and it’s very difficult for something to touch me, much less hurt me. And honestly, I’m dealing with a few things right now and my mother is doing really bad in health and my dog is older and not doing so well. And you know what, I can’t say it doesn’t touch me at all, but it certainly doesn’t crush me and it’s all because of affirmed affirmations. So, again, I hope that is something that really helps out for you and I know it really helps for me. But those are the tools for affirmations.

 

And now let’s go to visualization. I know from working with the Miracle Morning community, that this is the toughest one for most people. So, I’m going to give you two methods for visualization that I think can help and that you can add to your toolbox especially during the time of coronavirus. And if you’re ready, the first one I learned from a gentleman named Sadhguru and that’s S-A-D-H-G-U-R-U and one of the things that he does is he meditates and while he is meditating, he does a visualization of essentially himself acting perfectly and this is something that I’ve adopted and it’s something that’s really wonderful. Here’s the thing and this is what you want to do during your visualization. For me, I close my eyes, and I actually do it as part of my meditation practice but I close my eyes and I visualize in my mind that I see myself in the daily situations and daily situations that we all go through like we do 90% of the same things each and every day. And what I see myself in this visualization is I see myself acting perfectly. I see myself not reacting with anger but responding with love and I see myself reaching out and helping people and being a loving father, and a wonderful, kind, caring husband for my wife and helping her out and saying the right things like on a podcast.

 

I actually thought about this when I was doing my Miracle Morning today, that I would say the right things to reach out to you and do the right thing today and that’s something that I visualize in my head. So, I’m hoping that this is working and what you want to do is just think about the things that you do all day or the things that you can do in the future as well and see yourself in your mind’s eye and there’s two ways of doing it. One is you can actually see yourself like you’re in a movie and you see yourself doing it and there’s also the way that you are looking through your own eyes and actually acting out and doing the right things as if you were seeing from your own eyes you doing those things, those right things, those perfect things in those situations. And I suggest that you try both of them and figure out which one works for you. For me, the one that’s most effective is actually visualizing it from my own eyes. So, when I get to that point, I’m much more likely to do it. And another quick statement on that is that you can also visualize yourself at the hardest moments of your day and the hardest moments of maybe your workouts or whatever you have to do, a challenge that you’re not looking forward to and imagine yourself and visualize yourself at that moment pushing through and going further and doing better. And that’s something that just really helps. So, that is the first technique for visualization. I hope this helps.

 

The second one is something I picked up from Rob Dial and this is from our product, the Best Year Ever Blueprint Mentors, that I did in conjunction with Hal Elrod and Jon Berghoff, which is really wonderful and Rob Dial explained the visualization technique that lead to 1 billion views. That’s the name of the lesson that we have in that product, which by the way is at BYEBMentors.com just if you’d like to check it out. Obviously, you don’t have to and maybe I’m pimping things out too much. So, maybe I need to stop that but I really believe in this so I’m hoping it can help you. But anyways, Rob Dial, what he does is he uses visualization. He calls it GPS and what that stands for is goal and then the path and then the screen. So, what you want to do in this system of visualization is you imagine your goal, whatever that is that you’re looking for. It can be material items, it can be the way that you feel, the relationships that you have, a certain bank account, traveling. Whatever that is, you visualize that goal in your head and you bring it and you make it real, and you smell it and you see it, and you make it visceral for you. You do as much as you can with that.

 

And then the second part, the path, that one’s a little more fuzzy but what you do is you imagine yourself doing the things that you know you need to do to get to those goals, in that goal, and you just see yourself doing it. And seeing yourself doing it, by the way, is the S part and that’s the screen. That’s what we just talked about, seeing yourself doing those actions, either from a movie screen, like you see that or I would suggest adding the one like where you do them through your own eyes, so you can see that but again, it’s the GPS system, which stands for goal, path, and screen. And that is something that is just really fantastic and really helps out a bunch.

 

Wooh! Okay. We are through these and, guys and gals, as you’re listening to this, I know I’m kind of going through them fast and have a lot of energy behind this. It’s because I’m looking at the clock and I want to make sure that I get this in the right amount of time for you. But with that said, we’re halfway through the SAVERS. So, if you can play with me here, just pause just for a little bit, taking a deep breath. Hold it for a little bit, then let it out. And there we are. I’ve just reset myself. This is wonderful. If you don’t do that during the day, something I do is I just set my alarm to be able to do that a couple of times during the day and that’s something that helps out. Now, where were we? We were at exercise and I’m not going to tell you too much about exercise because you know about exercise and I’m not the one to really tell you about it but here are these twists and this isn’t rocket science or anything but, man, I just really feel that this helps. And with exercise, that is to get outside as much as you can. And of course, during this time, that means being safe while you do it.

 

Stay away from other humans and, in fact, I’d recommend staying more than six feet away, just in case, but just be safe with that, but as much as you can get out into nature. And I mean, it’s just so good for you and nature is just fantastic. It is one of the very best things that a human being can do to cure their soul. And so, if you can get out so one of the things I do is either a walk and/or a run in nature and here’s the thing, if you can do this, and especially right now because most of us have electronics going all day, we have screens going all day, or on the phone or on Zoom calls, whatever it is for you, turn off the phone and in fact, if you don’t have to bring it with you, don’t bring your phone out and just go for a nature walk or a nature run or if you plan on lifting weights or doing push-ups or burpees or anything like that, do it outside. And another thing and this is again a little woo-woo but I know it works for me. Take off your shoes and walk around in the grass like literally ground yourself because it’s something that will help you feel much better. Put this in your schedule and I promise this can be one of the very best things for feeling better during this time of the coronavirus.

 

Now, the second tip for exercise is something that I call the afternoon recharge and the way that I do it, if I am on the ball and I’m doing it right is about 2:00 to 3:00 I start to feel the afternoon sluggishness like I’m ready for a siesta. I’m ready for a nap or whatever. So, what I do is I do my second meditation of the day then and that’s documented in the meditation class or course that I mentioned earlier. Again, ChipFranks.com/Meditation to watch that I gave that class to the Miracle Morning Community and a lot of people were helped by it, I believe. So, you can check that out and it shows you exactly how I do it. So, I do my afternoon meditation and then just immediately after that, like after I’m calm and collected and recharged with that, I do some quick exercises. And I have like a little rebounder, that little mini trampoline, and I jump on that for five minutes and I usually watch like an inspirational YouTube video or something, I do that or you can do burpees or you can go for another afternoon walk or a run or something like that, but just do something quick to kind of get the blood flowing through your system again. And that is so much better than be like a five-minute energy or whatever it is, five-hour energy, excuse me, and it will help you a lot more. So, that’s my second technique for that.

 

Now, we are to the R in SAVERS, and that is reading of course. Here’s my take on things. Actually, economics was my minor at Texas A&M, and of course, I don’t know everything that there is to know about economics, obviously, and I don’t know exactly what our economy is going to look like through all of this. Now, I’m seeing encouraging signs from China and their stock market has returned and rebounded and a lot of their stores are open again like even Apple. The American stores are open over there and I think that what they saw in their economy was like a V. Like it went off a cliff, went down for a while, while people were quarantined. Everyone was worried about it but then when they came back, a lot of people were put back to work. People started spending money again, the stores open, the stock market rebounded, and it seems like it’s going really well. And I take some comfort from that. However, I don’t count on that. And there are some other strong signals that our economy could be in for a really bad ride like people not paying their mortgages and thinking that a mortgage forbearance is the same as forgiveness, which it isn’t. So, just take a look at that.

 

And people not paying their bills which sets off kind of a cascading effect like it knocks down dominoes, where people don’t have money to pay their mortgages if they’re landlords and causes foreclosures and credit being ruined. And as a result, lenders tightening their lending requirements, and it’s a downward spiral in a situation like that. So, what I would, and how this relates to reading is that I want each of us if you are listening to this, I would just encourage you to prepare for this and get all of the knowledge that you can and you can use your reading session for finding out what the economic future looks like. But what I would suggest is actually reading to make your skills better. And whatever this looks like, whether you serve clients directly or if you serve a boss or a business or something like that, you use your reading time to make yourself better and able to provide more value in the time that we have. Because more than ever, it’s going to be a competitive landscape and you’re going to have to get good at what you do. So again, if you’re looking for a job, read on how to find a job. I put my stuff for free out at ChipFranks.com/Jobs. Hopefully, that helps you.

 

But if you’re a business owner, then you should use your reading time to figure out how you best serve your clients right now in this time. You can read about how others are doing it really well and shadow them and find them. But that time is really earmarked for you to become a better version of yourself and reading, of course, does that. And just something I would encourage you now, no matter what the economy looks like, the basic fact of capitalism and reaching out and helping other people is true. And that is Zig Ziglar’s quotes, and he said, “You can have everything you want in life, if you just help enough people get what they want.” So, I would encourage you to figure out how to give people what they want in the new upcoming economy that we have in the new normal that we’re experiencing. So, really, that’s something I really believe that can help.

 

And here’s something else. This is the second tool for the reading. I suggest that you read as an on-demand skills-based practice, meaning that you just read what you need to read during your Miracle Morning to make yourself better. So, if you have an internet business like I do, then that’s what your reading needs to be about is how you best serve your clients and how you best get things out there for people to use or the best thing that you can do for your business in that time. And that’s an example of that. Or if you have health issues or health challenges then, obviously, you want to read about that. And something Hal Elrod does, which I really, really appreciate is he will go and research something. He googles how to do something. So, if you don’t know how to do something or skillset that you need, start by googling it, look at the how-to and read several sources on that. And then he opens up Amazon in the order several of the best books on the subject, and he just like sprinkles those books like all over his workplace, so he looks at them and he takes them in, even if it’s by osmosis or whatever, that he refers to those and he can learn pretty much any skill he needs. And that’s something I just really, really appreciate about him. That’s the second tool is the on-demand reading as we need it.

 

And then lastly, the last S on this, which is scribing. And some of you may know I’m just a voracious journaler. I journal all the time and I think that this is one of the very biggest things that we can do during this time. And especially, like right now, my heart goes out to you, if you’re feeling anxious. This is something that can really, really help. So, the first thing that I do every day and this makes such a difference in my day is something that I call active appreciation journaling. And hopefully, if you can write that down or whatever, this is really big. And you may have heard this because I did a podcast back in Thanksgiving that kind of went over it but it’s so important and it makes such a big difference in my mindset every day that I really want to pass this on to you. So, this is what you do. It is like some of you may have heard of gratitude journaling or whatever but what this is, is you going out to actively appreciate certain things in the world. I do it with the specific formats, and in the morning, I do five things and then at night before I go to sleep, I also do five things. And here’s one of the reasons why. One of my mentors, he said that anxiety and fear cannot live in the same head at the same time as gratitude. And I took that to mean that I need to get in a state of gratitude and active appreciation most of my life, so I’m not as affected by that fear and I’d encourage you to do the same. And this is what I do.

 

The first thing that I write down in my act of appreciation and I think it really helps to write, by the way, because it’s kind of like you’re imprinting on your own soul and it causes you to remember it, and you’re putting all of the thoughts and information clarified into writing with your own hand. So, I like doing it with a pen and paper journal but obviously, you do it the way that you want to do. But here’s what I do. The first thing is I am grateful for something that is really, really profound in my life and that could be anything. It could be the opportunity to reach everyone around the world from our laptop or the fact that we have language that we can communicate with each other. Or it could be something your wife or your husband or your kids did, in the fact that they’re in your life that they came out exactly like they did. I mean, those are all profound and wonderful. But here’s the thing, and this is what I’d like you to do is every day do something different. Don’t do the same profound thing every day because then it loses its power. And what you want to do and the way that the brain works on this is that you want to seek all of the blessings in your world.

 

And when your brain does that, it’s like doing a rep at the gym, and you get better and better at it and your brain gets trained, like literally rewired with its neurons to be appreciative and I have all the science to back me up on this and it’s wonderful but that’s the first thing is doing something profound. Then I do something that I could normally take for granted. The other day I was walking and I thought, “Man, I really appreciate the soles on my Vibram FiveFingers shoes.” I love those. I go out and walking out them and now it’s a great time because people don’t look at me weird because they look weird. But I was just thinking about those soles and whoever designed them, they engineered them, they created them, they went to school to figure out the best ways to do it. I really appreciate those guys. So, number two is something you would normally take for granted without this practice.

 

Then the third one. The third one is what really, it’s a stoic practice that I created and what it is, is you want to write down something you appreciate about an obstacle or a challenge or what would normally “be a bad thing” in life. For instance, on like, again, I mentioned my mother is not doing so well. She has cancer now as receiving radiation is really weak and like while she is doing that, I’m thinking, “You know what’s the good in this situation,” and you know what, it made me think about her and the life that we’ve had together and how much love she has shown me and how much she supported me throughout my life and helped me be the man that I am and just how much I cherish the time I have left with her. So, that’s one thing. And then another thing that I thought of is one of my affirmed philosophies to go back to that, and that is that our souls are intertwined with those we love throughout eternity. And when I think about that, in the affirm philosophy, I’m not as devastated about my mom passing away soon which it looks like it might very well happen. But that is what active appreciation journaling is.

 

And for numbers four and five, by the way, because I do five every morning and every night, those can be anything that you want. And it’s just a framework in your mind to do anything that you want. It could be any of the three categories before or what I’d suggest also is people that are in your life and not just the people, but specifically things about them that you really appreciate or that you love, and maybe also events, things that have happened, things that are happening or things that even will happen, but whatever you want to put in for the last two, that’s completely up to you. So, that is my biggest scribing technique for that is the one to five appreciations.

 

And then the last thing that’s that I want you to think about is a journaling question, and you can add this to your scribing and that is answer this question in your scribing. Get your journal and at the top and really big letters write: Who do I want to be through this crisis? That’s a really important question and I would love for you to take the time to journal that out and just really get it out of you. Yes, people are going to ask what did you do during the great quarantine of 2020? What did you do to help other people? What did you do to help yourself? What did you do to bless the lives of others? I mean, did you sit and watch Netflix? I mean, Netflix is great. We have family movie night, by the way, which is fantastic, and we love that. But up until 7:00, I’m working, and I’m doing stuff that hopefully blesses other people and myself and I hope that I’m being the right person through this entire ordeal. And I’d encourage you to write that down in your scribing session for your Miracle Morning.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Chip Franks: And now, my dear Achieve Your Goals listeners, I’m looking at the time here, and we’re coming up on the end. So, I hope that these tools and these techniques for each one of the SAVERS is something that you can use some things and techniques you can use to help bless your lives and bless the lives of others. And just really quickly, I’ve given you a couple of resources in this and of course, they’re listed in the show notes with it but at this point in the interview, and I’ve already talked to Hal about this, usually he asks folks, “Where can people find you?” Now, obviously, you know, ChipFranks.com, that’s where to go for me. And if you go there, I have my own specific daily schedule. It’s something I call my joy schedule that you can get when you sign up on my email list. Of course, you can unsubscribe if you don’t want to hear from me anymore, but generally, I send out just really helpful information about once a week, which I’m really proud of that really helps. So, you can find me at ChipFranks.com.

 

And I’ve wanted to give you one last thing, and this is something I believe that can really help. I have what I call the Joy Jump Challenge. What it is, and of course, this is what I do now is I help people cultivate joy in their lives. And personally, I mean, I’m biased with this. I think it’s the most important thing that we can do for ourselves is to cultivate joy and it’s the most important thing we can do for others. Because if you think about someone that you love, the best thing that they can tell you at any given time is that they are joyful in their life. And I think that is so profound and so wonderful. And joy is it’s beyond happiness and it’s something that you don’t chase. You don’t chase joy, but it is something that you can build up and that you can cultivate within you. And it is so far beyond happiness. I mean, happiness is a low standard and happiness is something that’s fleeting and often external, whereas joy is something that comes from the inside out, and you bring your joy with you. And that’s what I help people do is to cultivate joy.

 

And what I’m doing during this time, I have a $28 Joy Jump Challenge that helps people. It’s a seven-day challenge and it gives a little lesson every day and an action item, a challenge item for you to actually do because we don’t learn by just learning and doing theory and taking that in. We learn by doing. So, this challenge gives you a specific challenge each and every day and it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to actually get the lesson in and do that challenge but that $28 course I want to give that to you for free and especially during this time. So, if you go there and you can go to JoyJumpChallenge.com or also ChipFranks.com and click on my courses and it will have it there. If it says $28, it may actually say free but if it says $28, just click like you’re purchasing it and use the coupon code or the discount code AYG for Achieve Your Goals. When you do that, you will get this Joy Jump Challenge for free. And I promise if you go through it, it’s something that will help your mindsets and help you feel better about yourself, number one, and then also to help you cultivate joy and feel better during this time that we have.

 

So, I hope that that is really helpful for you and I hope it’s a blessing for you. And, folks, again, we need to sign off here but thank you so much for listening with this. It is truly a blessing to be able to talk with you and I hope that this helps you and I hope you can hear this sincerity in my voice that I want to help however I can. So, thank you for this and please be safe and then remember that you are loved and you are deserving. Thank you so much.

[END]