Episode 324: How to Create Your Own Reality

Hal Elrod: All right, here we go. Goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning Community, hey, it’s Hal Elrod and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. Today’s episode was inspired and crafted and created over the last hour. Actually, it was inspired. What is it right now? It’s almost 11 AM. So, seven hours ago on 4 AM is when the inspiration for today started. In fact, I wrote in my journal, I slept great last night and woke up at 4 AM feeling so good. You guys, I felt so good. I’m feeling really good. Woke up feeling better than I felt in a while. And so, I’ve been doing this new journaling practice and today I’m going to share that with you. Also, we’re going to end today’s episode with some exercises that I think can radically change your life. The topic of the episode today is how to create your own reality and your own reality being your experience of life. What is your reality like is your reality, is it amazing? Is it fun? Is it enjoyable? Is it beautiful? Or is it fearful and stressful and anxious? What’s your reality like right now?

 

And I think the challenge, most of us don’t create our own reality or I shouldn’t say we don’t. We all create our own reality but most of us aren’t being very conscious or intentional about the reality that we create and the reality that we are experiencing is that which is dictated by our environment. It’s a lot of the stimuli that shows up in our life that we’re not being intentional about, we’re not taking responsibility for, and it’s just we’re at the mercy of, if you will, that stimuli.

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal Elrod: So, I’ve been doing this new form of scribing, let’s start here, a new form of scribing or journaling. Well, it’s not new, but it’s new for me. In fact, it’s not even fully new for me. I’ve done it in the past but it’s new for me to do, A, I haven’t done it in a long time and, B, to do it consistently every single day. And what that is, number one, I’ve moved from digital journaling to journaling by hand. And actually, I still do both but this form of scribing is journaling by hand. I keep a journal next to my bed. And what makes this unique is not only that I’m writing by hand, which is different than I’ve been typing my journal for quite a few years but if you’ve listened to recent podcasts, I talked about getting back to the basics, getting back to what my Miracle Morning looked like in 2008. And one of the things I did in 2008 is I journaled by hand. I wrote in this journal called the Winners Journal every day, and I pulled out my Winners Journals from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, maybe even 2012. Actually, I think 2012 is when I switched to digital, but I pulled out my old journals and I was reading through them and it was refreshing to see these handwritten notes at that moment in time.

 

And talk to my good friend, Chip Franks, who you’re well aware of Chip, if you’re listening to the podcast or a member of the Miracle Morning Community, Chip is very proficient. He’s very advanced, if you will, when it comes to journaling like he’s got, I don’t even know how many now but dozens and dozens and dozens of handwritten journals that he’s kept over the years and he utilizes journaling to gain clarity, shift his mindset, and solve his biggest problems. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today or at least part of it. So, what I’ve been doing is here’s the first takeaway from today’s podcast episode is I’m going to invite you, encourage you, challenge you to start doing this journaling process, and it’s really called free writing so there’s nothing new here, but the essence of free writing and there’s a couple of nuances here that I’ll encourage you to incorporate. But is that you just simply start writing without really thinking of what you’re going to write in advance. For me, I think of what I’m going to write. I edit it. And that’s what typing allows me to do, which is unique, right? I’ll type and then I’ll go, “No, no, no, that’s not what I meant to say,” and then I’ll retype and retype.

 

Well, in my journal, I might cross it out but for the most part, it gives me more time to think through what I want to write. And I let it come through stream of consciousness. So, the nuances here, number one, is keeping the journal right next to your bed and the second piece of it is to do it first thing in the morning right when you wake up. So, what I’ve been doing is I just grab my journal, I turn the light on, I do some deep breathing to get some oxygen to my brain but I typically journal first thing while I’m in alpha, while your brain is in that state, where it’s not overstimulated, and if you do the other parts of the Miracle Morning first and not to mention, of course, if you grab your phone or anything like that, your brain takes in all these stimuli which can kind of overwhelm it and then you don’t have that clear thinking where you’re connected to higher consciousness, to God, to source, and you’re streaming, you’re channeling wisdom, if you will, almost from that place. So, that’s what I’ve been doing is first thing in the morning, grab the journal, and I just start writing and it usually starts out with just what I’m thinking or feeling in that moment.

 

So, my journal entry this morning started out with I think I read this to you already. I slept great last night and woke up at 4 AM feeling so good and then I just continue to journal. It feels so good to just feel good after I’ve been feeling so depressed and anxious. And when I say that I feel so good, to clarify what I mean, I just start writing. The point of freewriting is that you just write and you write whatever. It’s a stream of consciousness, whatever’s coming through you. And here’s the power of this, just so if you’re not sold yet on why this is even worth giving it a try, when I do this, I always, every day I end up gaining invaluable clarity and almost always end up with a really a profound breakthrough that is immediately relevant to my life and implementable. So, what is today? The 15th. So, I’ve been doing this for just about a week consistently, so every single day for a week. And my first breakthrough was around choosing inner freedom. My next breakthrough was around the type of how I need to spend or want to spend more quality time with my kids, and what specifically that’s going to look like and we’ve already implemented.

 

I’m immediately implementing these things and then yesterday was a breakthrough around my marriage. And by the end, I had clarity. In fact, I had so much clarity that I read the journal entry to my wife. I went in and shared the entry with her and then today’s breakthrough was around my mental state, my emotional well-being, if you will. And I saw an Instagram post. So, after I wrote in my journal and I got this clarity on what’s causing me to feel the way I’ve felt lately and over the last year, and if you’re feeling excessively stressed, if you’re feeling stressed if you’re feeling anxious, if you’re feeling depressed, if you’re feeling anything other than optimum. So, if you’re feeling anything other than like just happy and joyful, and grateful and blissed out and excited and enthusiastic like all those states that we want to feel, if you’re feeling anything other than that, I’m going to share with you a simple practice, an exercise that I did today that this journaling led me to. So, the journaling is the first piece of this. I’m inviting you to try this on, where you keep a journal next to your bed and first thing in the morning or after you meditate, so sometimes if I don’t feel compelled to journal right when I wake up, I will meditate first.

 

But more often than not, even if I’m not compelled to journal, it’s like last week I talked about on the podcast, how to get yourself to do the things you need to do, even if you don’t feel like doing them. Well, if I don’t feel compelled to journal, but if I start journaling, the momentum comes alongside and it keeps me going. It’s the act of journaling that generates the motivation and the drive and the enthusiasm to continue journaling. So, I always gain valuable clarity by just working through my thoughts and these entries, just so you know, so this is a journal that’s like a 6×9 journal. And on average, my entries each day have been about three to four pages. In fact, today’s was five pages, one, two, three, four, five. Five pages. So, it’s a lot of writing but the lessons are invaluable. What I always do is I end the journaling, the scribing session with an actionable conclusion. So, I’ll go through and I’ll reread the entry. I’ll circle things. I’ll underline things. I’ll highlight things or I’ll do that even as I’m writing. And then at the end, I summarize, okay, what is the most valuable lessons or actions that I gained through the journaling process today? And it’s always really profound. It’s always really profound.

 

And so, when I say profound, I mean profound in terms of it’s immediately actionable things that I can do to improve various areas of my life, my marriage, my relationship with my kids, my mental state, etcetera. Now, after I went through this process, I saw I was on Instagram. It was later after a Miracle Morning so I didn’t go right from journaling to Instagram but I was on Instagram after my Miracle Morning. And one of my closest friends I saw a post and, in the post, she said, “Quarantine is getting to me. Life is feeling like Groundhog’s Day, and I am battling anxiety and depression just about daily.” And man, can I relate to that? And maybe you can too. Or maybe you’re doing fine but someone you know and care about is struggling. Maybe it’s a friend or maybe it’s your spouse, maybe it’s one or both of your parents. So, what I’m going to share today is I think that for all of us, it’s pretty universal, the direction that we’re going today, which is really about the power of your thinking.

 

When I think about the first lesson that I learned about personal growth was at 19 years old from my mentor and it was simply about the power of positive thinking. And at that time in my life at 19, I had never heard about positive thinking like that was a new concept for me. And then I started noticing how everybody in my life was so negative. I started noticing, sorry to throw my parents under the bus, but I was still living at home with my parents, I moved back in with them, I should say after my first year of college, and I would hear them complaining, and I would go, “Man, mom and dad, you guys are so negative, like, you guys need to focus on the positive. You need to think positive.” And what I realized this morning, and I’m going to read this to you out of my journal. This was my second breakthrough this morning. My first was around my marriage. I’m not going to go into that today. My second breakthrough was around my mental state and I wrote down and I’m almost embarrassed to read this because it’s so fundamental for me like I’ve been practicing this for 20 years and I’ve gotten away from it and that’s why what you know doesn’t matter, what you learn doesn’t matter. It’s living what you’ve learned. And I have gotten away from living it. So, here’s what I wrote.

 

“I think the reason I’ve been feeling so unhappy is because I’ve been focusing on more negative than positive in my life and what you focus on, as I know, becomes your reality. Like a frog being boiled slowly, I haven’t noticed it happening because it happens so gradually but think about what consumes the majority of my thinking each day.” And this led to the first exercise that I’m going to share with you. I wrote down a list of the items that consume most of my thinking every day, and I’ll read you some of these. Number one, the fearful state of the world. I am always thinking about the world. I’m always thinking about humanity and I’m always thinking about just societies and what’s happening and, of course, if you watch the news or paying any attention of COVID-19 and the government stripping various freedoms from us, I mean, there’s a lot of really unprecedented and stuff happening right now. So, I spend too much of my time I’ve realized, focusing on the fearful state of the world.

 

The second thing is, I have fears around losing my income and going broke. And that fear stems from 2008 when I lost over half of my income, and essentially went broke and lost my house, and so on and so forth. And while I’m in a very different financial position now than I was then, like it’s a deep-rooted fear that is deep in my subconscious. Kind of like for all of us, most of our fears are developed when we were kids. We were abandoned as kids or our parents weren’t around or they didn’t show us enough love or our friends were mean to us when we were little, whatever it is, and then it creates these issues that we grow up and become adults, but we’ve still got these deeply rooted ingrained fears or insecurities from when we were children or at various times in our life. The third thing is worrying about Sophie and Halston’s well-being. So, I have a 10-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. I am constantly overly worried about am I spending enough time with them is like I’m OCD about it. I’m OCD about their wellbeing which I think a parent should be concerned with their kids’ well-being and mindful of it but I’ve realized that for me, it’s excessive worry in a way that’s not positive.

 

The fourth thing I wrote down was that I worry about every day that I think about is my anxiety and my depression and fear of that not getting better. So, feeling a little out of control with my mental and emotional state creates this fear of what if I don’t get better? The fifth thing I wrote down is my chemo brain and my inability to think. I think you’ve heard me talk about this before and you may have noticed it on the podcast, sometimes I’ll be talking. And at least for me, maybe nobody else notices it, I don’t know, but for me in my head, I’m going, “I’m not even making sense right now. What am I talking about?” But I don’t know how to pivot in the midst sometimes of what I’m saying. So, my chemo brain, the challenges, the cognitive challenges that I’ve had are a huge issue that comes up for me every day because the one thing we do every day is we think, and for me, I have a major challenge with that right now, and I have for over a year and it’s gotten worse it seems like over time.

 

Not being on the same page with some of my friends, and I have a fear that my friends are going to abandon me because I’m not quite the same positive, happy Hal that I’ve always been, and I feel like I’m a little bit focused on negative more than I have in the past. And so, I’ve got this fear that that’s going to cause my friends to not want to be friends with me. And the next thing I wrote down was stressing around the appointments in my schedule. Maybe you can relate to filling your schedule with things that you don’t want to do and then you regret saying yes to certain things. And so, for me, I say yes to too much and then that creates, I’m constantly thinking about that. And then not to mention cancer, right? That’s definitely on the list is the fact that my cancer that I had, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, it can come back. It can come back. And if it comes back, it’s very difficult as hard as it is to be the first time, it’s very difficult the second time, so it’s always like this fear in the back of my mind.

 

So, I can’t wait to share all that with you. So, that’s the list I wrote down and then I wrote down after that, I go, that about sums up the majority of what I’m focusing on right now every day. I said, “Geez, no wonder I’m struggling to be happy. No wonder I’m suffering from anxiety and depression.” And the point, the solution is that we have to shift our focus and focus on things that make us feel good, and what happens is that it’s a gradual effect that our thinking has on us. It’s not overnight. Like I mentioned it in my journal that it’s like the frog that’s in the boiling water. It starts cold, right? They say you can boil a frog. It won’t know as the temperature gets slightly warmer, slightly warmer, slightly warmer, slightly warm until it’s boiling, and it kills the frog. In the same way, our thinking, it gradually affects us in a way that it’s so gradual. It’s so that you don’t notice until you wake up and you feel different. You think different. You’re having trouble sleeping and you don’t understand why. And what it is, is it’s a habitual focus on things that cause you fear or anxiety or stress or whatever emotions you’re experiencing.

 

So, the lesson is that your mental and emotional well-being is shaped by what you focus on most of the time over an extended period of time. And I think I mentioned this last week but I’m going to share this one lesson and then I’m going to give you the exercises. We’re going to keep today’s podcast episode pretty short. But last week, I talked about the two pages that we all have to focus on. So, this is a lesson I’ve taught in my keynote speaking for over a decade. And I hold both my hands up and I say, “Look, in life, we have two pages to focus on.” Now, I look at my right hand I go, “This page lists everything you have to feel good about, everything that you have to be grateful for, everything you have to be excited about, optimistic about, everything I’m still proud of. You name a positive emotion, and everything on that page if you’re holding up your hands right now, look at your right hand, you’re holding this page, everything on that page produces an emotion, a positive emotion, things that make you feel good. And then if you look at your left hand, you look at the other side, there’s a page, we all have another page that lists everything we have that makes us feel bad. It lists all of our fears, all of our faults, all of our insecurities, all of our uncertainty. It lists everything that we have to feel bad about, everything that we have that can cause us to feel scared or stressed or angry or resentful, or worried. Again, you name a negative emotion and everything on that page lists everything that can produce those negative emotions.

 

Now, here’s the reality check. So, I always like this visual. If you’re listening right now unless you’re driving, hold up your right and left hand. And the right hand look over it, that is everything you feel good about. Look over your left hand. I’m holding my hand about 12 inches from my face. The left hand is really everything I feel bad about. And here’s the secret. Here’s the key. The quality of your life in terms of your mental and emotional state, the quality of your inner world, how you feel at any given moment, whether you feel stressed and anxious and depressed, or you feel excited and grateful and enthusiastic, the quality of your life has very little to do with which page has more on it and it has everything to do with which page do you spend most of your time focused on. Which page do you dwell on? And for me, looking at that list and just being honest, and that’s the first exercise I’m going to encourage you to do, I’m really going to ask you to do this. Make a list of the items that consume most of your thinking each day. And if it helps to focus on or to consider what are the negative like the things that you focus on each day that cause you to feel bad?

 

In fact, that might be a better way to approach it. Write down what are the things that cause you to feel bad that you focus on every single day. So, start with that list. And once I made that list, like I said, at the end, I went, “Well, gee, no wonder I’m struggling right now and I’m not as happy and joyful as I’ve always was in the past,” because here’s what I realized. I used to live this lesson to the fullest for most of my life. I’d say 95% of my attention was focused on the positive list, on the things that made me feel good and confident and inspired and grateful and excited and enthusiastic. That was my reality. Remember, today’s about how do you create your own reality. Well, that’s how you create your own reality. What you focus on the majority of the time is what creates your reality. That’s why a lot of people say, “Don’t watch the news.” Because you’re focusing on things that are out of your control, that are out there in the world, most of which are not immediately relevant to you. Not all but most of which, and therefore you feel disempowered. You feel anxious, you feel stressed out, you feel depressed. Because what we focus on consistently, most of the time, over an extended period of time, is what creates our reality.

 

So, the first thing I’m going to encourage you to do, the first exercise is to make a list, do this today, you can do it in 10 minutes. Make a list and maybe choose 10 items. I ended up with 10 on mine. Choose the 10 items or you don’t have to do 10 but a list of the items that consume most of your thinking each day, and maybe an emphasis on the negative, on the things that caused you to feel bad. What are those things? Make that list and that seeing it in writing, you go, “Gosh, I’m focusing on all these things. I’m dwelling on these things. It’s no wonder I’m not in an optimum mental and emotional state.” My friend that posted on Instagram, by the way, I commented and I said, “Hey,” I said I can relate to what you’re feeling but I’ve been feeling less and less and less anxiety and depression and feel like I’ve kind of found the cure, if you will. And so, I told her I said, “Call me. This weekend let’s talk about it. I’ll share this with you.” And that’s why I decided to share it on the podcast.

 

The second exercise I’m going to invite you to do after you’ve made the list of all the things that are consuming your thinking that don’t make you feel good, that don’t empower you, that don’t enable you to actually just enjoy the life that you’re meant to enjoy, the second exercise is make a list of your new upgraded thinking/reality. So, that’s what you can title it or title whatever you want but there’s a suggestion. I titled mine, My New Positive Upgraded Thinking/Reality. That’s what I titled my list, the second list, My New Positive Upgraded Thinking/Reality. And that list, by the way, I wrote down things like, number one, I’m grateful to be alive and I just smiled, and I felt that. Number two, I love Ursula and she is the perfect wife for me. I’m going to close my eyes and I felt that and I touched my heart, I touched my chest, and I felt that. And I’m going to encourage you to do the same. Make this list. And I’ll just give you a few more examples, some thought joggers. I love Sophie and Halston, and they are the perfect children for me. My life is always perfect. Number five, the world is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people who just want to be happy. Number six, everything will work out for the best, as it always has. Number seven, I can permanently cure my anxiety and depression by changing what I focus on and thus the reality that I create.

 

By the way, you can borrow some of these. That’s why I’m reading them for you as thought joggers, or if you completely resonate with one, write it down for yourself. Number eight, I’m blessed with family and friends who love me. Number nine, my chemo brain is what it is, and I’ll always make the best with what I have like I did with my brain damage after the car accident. You probably won’t write that exact thing down. But you might write down any limitation that you have. If you have a mental or physical limitation, instead of letting that be an excuse for you to feel bad, just realize that look, it is what it is. You can’t change what you can’t change. If it is what it is, you can make the best of it. There are a lot of people that have it worse off than you or I that make the best of it and that don’t use those limitations. Be they physical or mental limitations or logistical limitations, they don’t let that become the excuse as to why they can’t be happy, they can’t feel good. It’s, oh yeah, I have this thing. I’m in a wheelchair. I’m bankrupt. I’m whatever but I’m still going to choose to be the happiest and the most grateful that I can be in the midst of the challenges that we all face. I wrote down number 12. Oh no, I just skipped a bunch. I don’t have to read you all these. I’ll just read the ones that are relevant to everybody.

 

Number 14, I’m living the life of my dreams. That goes back to the one my life is always perfect. And remember, if you hear that, you get pissed off. You’re like, “Dude, I’m struggling right now, financially, or in this way or that.” You know, when I was in the hospital bed fighting cancer, I mentioned this I think last week, that was one of my main mantras is my life is always perfect, and I am grateful for every moment. My life is always perfect and I am grateful for every moment. I wrote down my future is limitless. I wrote down what life has planned for me is better than anything I can imagine. And the last thing I wrote down on this list, and this is based on a quote from Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, I wrote down, “The last of my freedoms is to choose my own attitude in any given set of circumstances and so I choose to live with love, joy, and enthusiasm.”

 

So, that’s the new list and I’m sure I’ll put it on my computer and I’ll put in the form of an affirmation. In fact, it started out this morning and I’ll read it every day over and over and over again, to recreate my reality anew because over the last year I’ve backslid into this negative thinking by focusing on all of the negative things and negatives a relative term, but all of the things that don’t make me feel good, that caused me fear or anxiety or insecurity or uncertainty, all of those things that has become my reality without me realizing it. And maybe for you too, you may be surprised when you take an inventory. Remember, step number one, exercise number one, make a list of all of the items that consume most of your thinking each day and especially make sure to list all of the things that you think about that don’t make you feel good, that cause you those uncomfortable or painful emotions like stress and worry, anxiety and so on and so forth.

 

And then once you do that, and that’s your reality check. And it really is freeing. It’s empowering. Like I said, because after I wrote the list, I’m like, oh, no wonder. Of course, the most fundamental lesson in personal growth and development that I learned when I was 19 is the power of positive thinking. It’s the idea that what you think about becomes your reality. What you think becomes your reality. And so, when you take inventory and you go, “Oh, I’m thinking about things that don’t make me feel good. No wonder my reality is not as exciting and great and fulfilled and fun and joyful, as it should be, or as it could be.” And then create the new list. Go, “Alright, I’m going to upgrade. I’m going to upgrade my thinking. I’m going to make a new list of things that I can focus on that are all true.” Remember, both lists are true. All the things you have to feel bad about are true. All the things you have to feel good about are true. The quality of your life internally and emotionally isn’t about which one’s more true. It’s what do you focus on.

 

Because people that are happy in the world, it’s not that they don’t have any problems. It’s not that there’s nothing on their bad list. No. There’s just as long as yours or mine. It’s that they’ve accepted the things on the bad list. They’ve learned from them. They’ve made some decisions or choices, so they don’t repeat the same mistakes if there are any mistakes. But then they go back to the positive, and focus and here’s my recommendation, because this is how I used to live and I’m gradually getting back to it. Focus 95% of your attention on the things that make you feel good, happy, joyful, ecstatic, blissful, enthusiastic, grateful. Focus 95% of your attention on the positive list and about 5% on the other list, and the only time you spend on the other list is just so you can acknowledge the things that aren’t great, accept them, and be at peace with them. And then don’t dwell there. Move back over the positive list.

 

And I know this might be fundamental, but the simplest ideas that are usually most profound and for me realizing that, wow, I’ve gotten so far away from this basic fundamental principle, to simply be intentional about what I’m focused on and making sure that I’ve got a written list of all of the things that I’m going to focus on that make me feel good. Because I think that’s our birthright to feel good, to feel joy. If we’re all trying to get into this, you know, to make it to heaven, I think that heaven on earth is what we should be after, right? Which is how do we attain that inner freedom, that bliss, that joy that state of love, while we’re here? Don’t wait until you die. Like while you’re here. And last but not least is I’d encourage you after you make these two lists, what I would encourage you to do is get a journal and, if you have a brand new one, that’s always kind of a nice thing to start with a brand new blank line to journal. If you’re like me, I have like a dozen of them on my shelf. They’re just sitting there because I’ve been typing so long and not handwriting. So, I grabbed one off the shelf.

 

And this is a great way to start it, grab a line journal off the shelf or maybe you already have one and write the list, maybe leave the first page blank or the first few pages blank because you never know when you might want to come back and create something in the front. So, I always leave the first few pages blank of a new journal, and then start though with the list of the items that consume most of your thinking each day. That’s your first list. Then the second list is your upgraded positive thinking/reality, that second list. And then number three is the ongoing exercise where I invite you to start freewriting every day, the way that I talked about in the beginning of the episode, where keep this journal by your bed, and every day I just write the date. I underline it and I just start writing. And I literally am sitting up in bed writing, and I just keep writing. And I work through my problem. It’s almost like self-coaching or self-therapy, right? I work. I go, “Oh,” and it’s amazing that as I’m writing these new paradigms and levels of awareness, and thoughts and ideas are coming, like, almost faster than I can write and I get excited because I go, “Oh, I just solved the problem. I just figured out the solution. I just figured out what’s causing what’s going on.”

 

It’s so empowering the way you gain clarity and then you come up with solutions on your own. And I think that some of the greatest wisdom ever taught, that all the wisdom that you need is already within you. When you get silent, you get quiet, you allow higher consciousness to work through you, you tap into that universal intelligence. When you do that, every answer to every problem that you have, every solution to every challenge that you’re facing, every step that you need to take to get where you want to go in your life, it reveals itself in those moments of silence. And that scribing process in the morning allows you to transmute that silence into written wisdom, giving you a roadmap to the life that you want, beginning with who you need to be, and who you truly want to be and who you truly are, at your highest level, the best version of yourself. What I’m finding is that in those moments of silence, while I’m scribing, the best version of myself emerges and I tap into that higher wisdom that enables me to understand what I need to understand to move forward.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Hal Elrod: So, I love you, guys and gals. I hope you got some value out of today’s episode. Again, you got three assignments. Number one, make a list of the items that consume your thinking every day with an emphasis on what are the negative things you’re thinking about that cause you to feel bad. Get clear on those so you can replace those. Number two, make your list of the new upgraded positive thinking/reality. That’s your new list that you’re going to utilize to replace the other list, the list of the things that you’re worried about and stressed about, that are consuming your thinking that may have caused you to develop anxiety or depression as they did for me. And number three, keep this ongoing, this free writing exercise where you keep that journal by your bed, use the same journal that you start these two lists on, keep the journal by your bed and every morning when you wake up, I encourage you to just turn the light on, keep the light even, actually, I turn on a very dim light. I have a little dimmer switch. I dim the light, so it’s not too bright. I want to stay in that alpha state which is where your brain, yeah, I’m not qualified to explain it very well.

 

But the alpha state essentially in layman’s terms is when you’re able to tap into that higher, that universal consciousness, that higher wisdom and do that every day just for seven days, commit for the next seven days that you’ll do this free writing and again, you don’t need to know. You can literally start the journal going I don’t know what I’m going to write about today. “I don’t even know why I’m doing this. Hal told me to do this on the podcast. Hopefully, something good comes out of it. Right now, I’m feeling…” like you can literally just you just start writing whatever. It doesn’t have to make sense. Nobody’s judging you. And that’s hard for me, right? When I’m journaling, I’m like, what if somebody finds this? What if somebody reads this? So, like when I’m typing it, I’m always editing ahead. So, this kind of is no filter. You just unfiltered. What’s on your heart, what’s on your mind, and ultimately, once you get those things on paper, then what’s on your soul tends to emerge.

 

So, goal achievers, I love you and I appreciate you. I hope that you will use these exercises to create your own reality, the best reality that you can imagine, the reality that you deserve, the reality that’s available to you at all times. And it’s just asking you to shift your focus, shift your thinking, dwell on the positive, dwell on that which empowers you and inspires you versus the other. And that’s it. That’s, I believe, and I’m finding that to be one of the most fundamental, yet one of the most effective strategies to improve your inner world so that you can improve your outer world. All right, I love you all and I will talk to you next week. Take care.

[END]