348: The Evolution of The Miracle Morning

 

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community. Hey, it’s Hal Elrod. Welcome to the podcast today. Today, we're going to do something kind of special, a little bit different, the Evolution of the Miracle Morning movement. How did this begin? Where are we going? Where are we now? With the world premiere of The Miracle Morning Movie coming out, I've been reflecting a lot on how the Miracle Morning has evolved over the past 12 years from my little morning routine back in 2008 to then becoming a book and then growing into this global international community, and then ultimately, becoming kind of a worldwide movement. And so, I want to really look at that evolution. And there's a lot of what I'm going to share today that you probably don't know. Some of it you'll be like aware of but you'll hear a lot of kind of behind-the-scenes stuff that you've maybe never heard before.

 

And then I want to talk about what it's become in terms of both the individual impact that it's made for millions of people and it's making for millions of people and then the collective impact that that has the potential to create in our world, and then let's look forward to the future, what does the future hold in terms of elevating the consciousness of humanity, one person and one morning at a time, and then what's the impact that that can have on the world. So, if you are a practitioner of the Miracle Morning, I think you're going to have a great time with this. I'm excited as I was outlining this kind of going through the history of the Miracle Morning and this journey from nothing to something that's really making a big impact in the world and has by far outgrown me. This is very much independent of me even though I created the ritual, wrote the book. I was just standing on the shoulder of giants, first of all, just taking the best of the best of practices I have learned and combining them into one really simple, really effective routine. But it's grown beyond me because it's the Miracle Morning Community, millions of people around the world that I haven't met 99.9% of but yet, they're still doing this practice that's enabling them, enabling you, enabling all of us to become the best versions of ourselves.

 

And then we go out into the world as the best version of ourselves and the impact that we have in the lives of every person that we touch from our families, our spouses, our kids, our friends, our family in terms of parents and relatives but the people that we love, the people that we lead, as we dedicate time each morning to becoming the best version of ourselves. We're able to bring that version of ourselves out into the world and the ripple effect really is immeasurable. Today, I'm going to talk about what does that mean to elevate the consciousness of humanity? What does it mean? What does it look like? How do we do it? Because that's something that you've heard me talk about that before as the Miracle Morning mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity, one morning at a time, or depending on the day. Sometimes I say one morning at a time. Sometimes I say one person and one morning at a time. One morning at a time is shorter, catchier but for me, authentically, it's about one person and one morning at a time.

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal Elrod: And so, let's look back at this evolution of back in 2008 when it started as my morning routine and within a couple of months of doing this practice, and again, remember, this was not called the Miracle Morning. It didn't have a name. It for sure wasn't a book idea. Definitely wasn't a movie idea. None of that. This was just 2008, the economy crashes, started in 2007. 2008 is when I really adopted this morning practice and it was the best of these six practices, meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. Now, if you practice the SAVERS, the acronym that represents the six practices of The Miracle Morning, meditation became silence, the first S in SAVERS. Affirmation stayed the same. Of course, visualization, exercise, reading, all stayed the same. And then journaling became scribing. Again, because we needed an S to round out the SAVERS but it started out as my morning ritual. And within a couple of months, it had such a profound impact in my life in terms of the results, the outcomes.

 

I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to committing to run a 52-mile ultra-marathon even though I had never run more than a mile back in high school PE class. And the depression I was in went away. It started going away within a matter of days because I felt hopeful and optimistic and energized and motivated and had clarity that had escaped me the previous six months of this kind of downward spiral where the economy had crashed my business, have lost my house, all of those things. So, this is how it started. And I went to my wife and I shared with her that it felt like a miracle and she's like, “It’s like your Miracle Morning.” And I loved that. That resonated with me. And so, I started writing my schedule as my Miracle Morning. Then I started sharing it with my coaching clients. After I had received this profound impact at that time, I was a coach. That's primarily what I did for my work and I started sharing it with my coaching clients.

 

In fact, it was actually Katie Fingerhut, who's now Katie Haney, it’s her married name, she came to me after about two or so months after I'd started this morning practice and she said, “Hal, I've been reading about morning rituals. Do you have any kind of morning ritual that you do?” And I was chomping at the bit. I'm like, “Oh, yes. I’m so excited to tell you about this.” She was the first person I told about it. I said, “It's my Miracle Morning. It's these six practices,” and I share it all with her and she was like, “God, it sounds kind of like a lot to do in the morning, I don't know, and I'm not really a morning person but I know I think I need to make a change if I want to change my life and improve my life.” And I'm like, “Yes, that's how I felt. You can do it.” And she came back to the call a couple of weeks later and she was transformed. She's like, “Hal, I just had the best two weeks in my sales career.” I think she said, “I read an entire self-help book. I started running again.” She's like, “I feel better than I've ever felt before and it's because of this Miracle Morning.”

 

And that's when the light bulb started to go off and I went, “Well, I need to share this with more people.” So, then I started sharing it with all of my coaching clients. Then I started sharing it in interviews that I was beginning to do. Then I started recording Miracle Morning video blogs and I don't know, for those of you that were around back in 2008 following the few people that actually followed what I was putting out there, I was sharing all this stuff just in hopes it would help other people. In fact, my opening line for those early video blogs, it was something along the lines of, "Welcome to the Miracle Morning video blog.” It's the always authentic, never scripted, hair is usually messed up morning video blogs that I always recorded with my hair all messed up and stuff. I've actually I think I've taken those down off YouTube. I'm kind of embarrassed. They're pretty rough when I watch them. But anyway, I started doing all this. And then one day on YouTube and this was when like this was a real defining moment. And as I was outlining this journey, I realized that there were these defining moments along the way, such as Katie coming to me and saying, "Hey, do you have a morning ritual?” And that's what first prompted me and if she wouldn't have asked me, I don't know if or when I would have started sharing it.

 

So, that was a real defining moment was just my coaching client, Katie, asking if I had a morning ritual. And then this was a really big defining moment. In fact, when you watch the Miracle Morning movie, you'll see this part. You'll hear about this. But I was on YouTube one day and I searched for Miracle Morning because I was looking for one of my video blogs. And I came across a video that was titled Miracle Morning at Joe's and it was from some stranger that I had never heard of or met before named Joseph Diosana and he was talking about how the Miracle Morning had changed his life. He was up at like 5 AM on a Sunday morning and how to change his life. And it turned out he had actually heard about it from one of my coaching clients, Brianna Greenspan, who is actually now the co-author of Miracle Morning Art of Affirmations Coloring Book, so how things come kind of full circle, but Brianna had told Joe about it. They were like a networking group or something together.

 

And so, that's when the light bulb really went off and I went, "Wait a minute, the Miracle Morning, if it's changed my life and I wasn't a morning person, this is changing the lives of all of my coaching clients, except one. One was really stubborn. But every other coaching client went from, ‘I’m not a morning person,’ to, ‘Wow how this Miracle Morning stuff really works.’” But then it was this video from Joe where I go, "Wow. Now, like the degrees of separation, this is someone who it has transformed his life so much that he's taking the time to put it on YouTube and record a video about it. He wants to share it with other people.” And I went, "This could change anyone's life like if it works for me, my clients, and this guy, Joe, or this stranger.” And so, I decided I had a responsibility to share it with the world and I committed to writing a book. I thought that's the best way. If I write it in a book, I clarify my thinking, I get the book out there, and then maybe I can speak about it, whatever.

 

But I realized that's kind of the fundamental next step is to put it in the form of a book so that I can clarify my thinking. So, at that time, it wasn't structured. It wasn't in writing as much. It was just kind of, you know, it wasn't the SAVERS, by the way. The acronym wasn't formed until halfway through writing the book when I was frustrated trying to figure out how to organize these six practices and my wife gave me the idea. My wife Ursula said, “Why don't you get a thesaurus and see if you can come up with synonyms of the words that represent these six practices and see if you could turn it into an acronym?” And I kissed my wife on the face and I’m like, "That's brilliant. Let's see what I could do.” And I searched for different words, acronyms, and meditation became silence and journaling became scribing and then you've got the SAVERS which, interestingly enough, my wife I've realized is my muse. She is my inspiration behind my writing in a lot of ways. And the SAVERS without that piece, without that acronym, it would have been just these six practices that were not connected in this way of the acronym, I don't know that the Miracle Morning would have been as sticky for people, because I have so many people both tell me that that the SAVERS, they just go through them in their head, S-A-V-E-R-S. Okay, I did my silence now. I'm doing my affirmations. Okay, now I'm doing the visualization, right? It just makes it easy to grasp and remember and make it a part of your daily life.

 

But the other thing that I noticed is when I look in the Miracle Morning Community Facebook group, I see every day people are talking about their SAVERS probably more often. I think I did a search a long time ago for the Miracle Morning, as a term, and then SAVERS is a term and I believe there was like twice as many posts that came up that had put SAVERS in their post versus the Miracle Morning. So, that really became a fundamental piece of what made the Miracle Morning so implementable and simple for people to stick with. So, I decided I needed to write a book. And during that time, I continued to share Miracle Morning on social media, in speeches, in interviews, like anywhere that I could. And then once I finished writing the book, by the way, my goal was to write it in one year and it took me three years. And when I was down to the final draft or almost final draft, I sent it to a handful of my friends. I sent it to Jon Vroman, who is now the founder of Front Row Dads. I sent it to Jon Berghoff who's now the founder of XCHANGE. I sent it to my sister, Haley.

 

I don't remember who else. There's probably one or two other people that I sent it to and I just said, “Hey. You're my close friends. You're my family. I would love it if you would read,” I probably sent it to my parents, I said, "If you would read the manuscript and like give me feedback, where any blind spots anything, anything I'm missing, anything that I'm saying that's offensive, please help me.” And they all read the book and they gave me some incredible feedback, all of them. My sister, by the way, was one of them. She goes, “Hal, you wrote this. It's very self-helpy.” She said, "If you're in the personal development, this is right up your alley, Hal, because you are so in that world.” She said, "But for the average person, which I feel like you're trying to reach people that aren't already into personal development,” my sister said, “I think you need to change,” and she's highlighted all the spots. She goes, "You need to change this. It sounds too motivational. It sounds too self-helpy, etcetera. And so, that feedback was invaluable.

 

Let me insert a really important bonus lesson that I often forget myself so I'll share it with you in hopes that we'll both remember this and do it more often but often I put something out there into the world without getting a second set of eyes on it, and every time I do that, I almost always get feedback from people reading or listening to whatever I put out there without any feedback from that from my circle of influence first and it's usually like I've made some mistakes. I didn't consider certain people's perspectives. And so, thankfully, I got multiple sets of eyes on the book because, I don't know, once again that without the collaboration of my wife and Jon Berghoff and Jon Vroman and my sister, and my coaching clients and all these different people giving feedback on what worked for them, what didn't, what resonated, what didn't, I don't know that the Miracle Morning would have reached and impacted as many people as it has or even just the depth of the impact that has had for so many people. So, make sure that you're getting a second set of eyes on things.

 

By the way, this applies not only to your work that you put into the world but let's say you're having a disagreement with someone in your life at work or your spouse, just getting an outside perspective can be invaluable. Right now, my team, Brianna Greenspan is on my team for the Miracle Morning like the movement that I’m going to talk more about today but brotha James is on my team. I mean, brotha James, expert facilitator, musician. Chip Franks is on my team. Theresa Laurico is on my team, Nick Conedera. So, the point is the feedback from all of these people, whenever I have an idea, I share it with them, and then I get feedback and almost always the idea either I'm like, “Oh, yeah, that was a bad idea,” or very often it's like, “Oh, yeah, that's a good idea,” but yeah, there were so many things I wasn't thinking about that having that second, third, fourth, fifth set of eyes is crucial. And again, even in your own relationships, in your own life, the challenges you're having, reach out and ask for help because one conversation, I mean, I can't count how many individual conversations I've had about struggles in my life or even just ambitions or goals in my life. And it was being vulnerable, being willing to share that made a big impact.

 

In fact, I came back yesterday. I've been at the Front Row Dads Retreat for the last two-and-a-half days. And I'm going off on a little tangent here but hopefully, this is valuable for you. But I was at the Front Row Dads retreat for the last two-and-a-half days and it's a group of 24 men, most of which are entrepreneurs. There's a surgeon in the group. There's a variety of different folks but most of which are entrepreneurs that are running businesses and making a difference in the world. And the fundamental key that like makes the group work is our vulnerability and the desire to serve each other. So, meaning that everyone there is willing to say, “Hey, I'm really screwing up as a dad in this way,” or, “I'm really screwing up in this way as a husband.” And of course, the thing isn’t all about how we're screwing up. It's here's what we're doing well so we can learn from our strengths but everybody's willing to be completely vulnerable. And these guys we're hugging each other and we love each other. It's this amazing culture of support.

 

And so, that's why I'm sharing this as an example of you've got to be willing to be vulnerable and open and actively seek help if you are going to get it. And that is one element of the Miracle Morning movement is this is a very small part of it, right? Like I see myself as a very small part of this. It is the millions of people that are part of Miracle Morning and the community and in the beginning, it was the Brianna Greenspans that shared this with Joe that made a video called Miracle Morning at Joe's. It was Jon Vroman, who, by the way, Jon is the one that gave me the idea. His feedback when the book was almost done was, “Hal, do you have an online community or a forum where people that read the book that are waking up early probably the only one in their family that's getting up an hour earlier to do the Miracle Morning, are they going to have anywhere to plug in and get support, and swap routines and smoothie recipes and share ideas and apps for meditation and all this stuff?”

 

And thank God for me sharing it with Jon Vroman because I started a Facebook group called The Miracle Morning Community that literally had less than 10 people in it. It was me, my mom, dad, and my sister. It was Jon Vroman, Jon Berghoff. It was less than 10 people that first were in the group and then now we're at 200 and as of today, I think 280,000 members from over 100 countries that wake up every day and that support each other. And I'll get to that. I want to come back to that. We're going to talk about the Miracle Morning community because that is what this morning ritual has evolved into. It went from an individual morning routine to a morning routine that many people implemented to then a shared common practice that millions of people are transforming their lives with and they're doing it not in isolation. Yes, they're doing their Miracle Morning by themselves but as a community, we're all in this together and we are really supporting too.

 

So, I'm going to circle back to that here in a few minutes but, yeah, so Jon Vroman had the idea for launching that Facebook group, and thank goodness that he did. And the Miracle Morning book I mentioned, my goal was to write it in a year. I started in 2008, 2009. 2009 I think is when I started writing it. It took three years to write it and it was published in 2012 on 12-12-12, December 12, 2012. 12-12-12, I picked a date that I hopefully wouldn't forget and so far, so good. I'm able to remember the date. So, 12-12-12. And then I established my mission for that year because I started to get feedback from that we did an advanced reader team, which means is where you form like a launch team, which we're going to do for the movie, by the way. In fact, remind me to mention that at the end but we formed a launch team of people that had already been doing the Miracle Morning before the book was published because I was sharing it all the time on social media, in interviews. So, people were doing the Miracle Morning while I was writing the book and they were giving me feedback. I was taking their success stories.

 

And once as I got all these really just powerful, I guess, you'd say testimonies from people that, "The Miracle Morning changed my life in these really profound ways. I lost a bunch of weight. I overcame depression. I'm happier. I'm healthier. I started a business. I wrote my own book. I feel better every day doing this morning ritual,” like all these really profound results that people were getting inspired by me and I decided when the book published, initially, I was like, “Well, I don't know who's going to read this like I don't have an audience.” Really, I don't have a platform. People don't know who I am. So, I don't have this big ability to launch it to millions of people but I'm just committed to sharing it with as many people as I possibly can. Well, once I started to see their outcomes more and more and more when the book published, I decided to create a mission and I established the mission for the year, which would be 2013. It published 12-12-12 so going into the new year, my mission for that year was to change 1 million lives one morning at a time.

 

In other words, it was to sell 1 million copies of the book. That's how I would change a million lives one morning at a time. And that year, for those if you haven't heard this, I did everything in my power to reach that goal. That was my number one focus. I was committed to it and what that included, I launched the Achieve Your Goals Podcast that you're listening to right now, I launched that as a way to add value for my audience, for you, for my email subscribers, for our community. I wanted a way to continue to add value. So, I did 52 weekly episodes of this podcast. I did over 150 interviews on other people's podcasts. I gave 36 speeches all over the country in Canada. I was on more than a dozen morning TV talk shows like Good Morning, Sacramento, Great Day Houston, NBC’s Daytime, which is a national morning show on NBC. I traveled the country in all these TV shows. And after all of that, remember, the goal was 1 million lives, change 1 million lives one morning at a time, after all of that, after doing everything I could possibly think of to reach a million people with my limited resources, I believe that Miracle Morning sold right around 13,000 copies.

 

So, if you do the math, that's 987,000 copies short of my goal, right? The goal was a million. I got to 13,000 and I was 987,000 copies short of my goal. And if you do the math, by the way, which I pulled out a calculator, did the math, 1 million copies divided by 13,000 copies a year would take 76 years to reach at that pace to reach a million people. And so, when the year ended, people often asked me like, "Did you know this was going to reach millions of people?” And the answer is, "Absolutely not.” I had more fear and insecurity and self-doubt than I had unwavering faith at that time. It was like, “Who am I to reach a million people? And who am I to even convince people that they can beat the snooze button?” Like, when I was writing the book, I was really insecure about that. I thought, "How am I going to convince someone that has snoozed and slept in for their entire life and identified as a night owl, not a morning person, what can I possibly write that's compelling enough, that's going to get them to actually not just think about it, but actually do it, wake up earlier, do the routine, and stick with it indefinitely?

 

I thought, “I don't know how to convince someone to do that,” but I decided that I was committed to do whatever it took to change 1 million lives and do whatever it took for as long as it took. And that's such an important lesson. Again, as much as I can here, I want to pause and kind of interject these lessons that I learned on this journey. And if you're familiar with my book, The Miracle Equation, this is the living example of The Miracle Equation or The Miracle Equation is the two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable. My goal was change 1 million lives one morning at a time. That was where I call it my mission. And one of the fundamentals of The Miracle Equation is that you maintain those two decisions until you achieve the miracle, the outcome, the goal. So, it's not that you make these decisions of unwavering faith and extraordinary effort one time, but you literally make them every day. Every day you wake up, you affirm your unwavering faith. I have unwavering faith that I can change 1 million lives one morning at a time, no matter what, there is no other option.

 

I'll say that again and you fill in the blank. Instead of changing 1 million lives one morning at a time, what do you want to create in your life? Because there really is no limit if you stay committed for as long as it takes. We often give up way too soon. We set a goal for the year. We don't hit it. So, then we shift directions and do something else. Or we launch a book, we've got these high aspirations, it doesn't do what we want it to the first few months or first year. So, we start chasing the other squirrels. We do something different. But if you commit to the most important outcome in your life or all of the most important outcomes in your life, the highest priorities for you, you really can't fail as long as you stay committed for as long as it takes no matter what, there's no other option. So, again, I was affirming every day, I will maintain unwavering faith that I can change 1 million lives one morning at a time, no matter what, there is no other option.

 

And then the extraordinary effort piece, you wake up every day and you put forth extraordinary effort which is simply doing at least one thing every day. It doesn't mean you have to work 80 hours a week. It means you need to do one thing just about every day that moves you toward your miracle, toward that outcome that you're committed to. And so, every day, that's why I was doing hundreds of interviews and TV shows, and I posted on social media almost probably average of five days a week. In the community, I was nurturing the community as much as I could. It was whatever it took for as long as it took. And it ended up taking six years to reach 1 million people. And along that journey, the book was translated into 37 languages, and published by 37 foreign publishers. And then in 2014, Nick Conedera, good friend of mine, he approached and asked me about doing this movie, The Miracle Morning Movie. He said, “What if we made a documentary and we focused on all of the people in the Miracle Morning community?”

 

Actually, I want to dive into that for a minute. The Miracle Morning community, it's a Facebook group in terms of, technically, it's a Facebook group. Now, there are millions of people that are doing the Miracle Morning that aren't in the Facebook group, that aren't even on Facebook. So, to me, the Miracle Morning community, there are levels to it, right? There's a global community of people around the world that aren't on social media, that aren't in Facebook, but they're doing the Miracle Morning every day and it's impacting their life. It's impacting their families, their businesses, their communities. It's impacting their circle of influence. There's that big, large global community who I'm not necessarily in touch with. I mean, a lot were, I guess, on my email list but even that is a fraction of the amount of people that are doing the Miracle Morning. So, then there's the Miracle Morning Community Facebook Group. And as I mentioned, it's grown organically like, well, I don't do Facebook ads. Now, there's nothing wrong with that but it's really word of mouth. The Miracle Morning book and the community grows via word of mouth because people are doing it, it's impacting their lives, and then they're sharing it with other people.

 

Well, the Miracle Morning Community, if you are a member, I know most of our listeners are members and if you're not, you can go to MiracleMorningCommunity.com and that'll take you right to the Facebook group, and then you can join. And by the way, if you're not on social media, I get it. Total respect and we're looking for other ways to try to keep engaging the community but if you are in the community, you know like it's one of the most inspired, supportive like non-judgmental, loving communities online or offline that I have ever been a part of. It's really something special. I mean, to me, it's like the humanity at its finest like really the attributes, at least that for me, personally, are important of love and support and all of selflessness, all of these aspects of people elevating our own consciousness, personal development, improving ourselves, supporting others in their own improvement, all of these things are all present in that community.

 

And so that, for me, has been where I get to witness, we all get to witness the impact of the Miracle Morning because you see people talk about, “I used to be an angry person and now I do the Miracle Morning. When I do the Miracle Morning, I get present to all. I calm myself, I get centered, and I focus on the things I have to feel grateful for and great about and I put myself in this positive mental and emotional state that then allows me to be calm throughout the rest of the day. You see people sharing these profound impacts that saved my marriage, I mean, all of these things and it's just a microcosm for what's possible. And it goes back to in this thing like I want you to think about this in terms of, if you are a member, if you consider yourself a member of the Miracle Morning community, I want you to consider, inviting you to consider this. When the Miracle Morning started, remember, it started because I taught it to my coaching clients, I saw it change their life, and then I started teaching it in interviews in all these places I could and then I saw that video on YouTube from Joe and I thought, "Wow. Joe’s a stranger to me.” He heard about this from Brianna, someone that I taught it to, and now he's telling other people about it.

 

I was like, “This is incredible.” And so, what I want you to think about is this. For me, that was a microcosm of the potential of the Miracle Morning. I thought it's changing the lives of starting with me then moving on to my clients and then moving on to some people I've never met and then people that he knows that I've never met. And what you see happening in the Miracle Morning Community of this, people bringing out the best in themselves every day, every morning, becoming a better version of the person that they were when they went to bed the night before, my vision, the ultimate vision for the future is for the world to start their day this way. And now it went from 1 million lives to 1 billion lives. That's the mission that my team is focused on and that I'm inviting our community to be focused on because it's only happening via all of us. It's not like me and my little team can do all of this. We're not marketing geniuses at all like if anything, how do you nurture a community and support a community so that it thrives and then the simple thriving of the individuals in that community creates a ripple effect that now creates impact and thriving in the lives of countless people.

 

And so, the vision for the future, the Miracle Morning movement, is that 1 billion people plus start and, of course, if we reach a billion people, it will continue to reach the other 6 billion people because of that ripple effect. And for me, I'm committed to this for the rest of my life like I will do, I will keep doing everything in my power to reach and impact millions of people or a billion-plus people, elevate the consciousness of humanity for as long as it takes. And so, I do want to mention that the Miracle Morning movie, that's why the movie came to be. In 2014, which was what, two years after the book was published, my friend, Nick Conedera who is a filmmaker, he came over to my house for dinner with me and Ursula and the kids, Sofie and Halston. We all had dinner together. And after dinner, Nick was asking me for kind of some career advice. He's like, "Hey, Hal, how is the Miracle Morning reaching so many people? How can I reach that many people with my films? What should I do for my next project?” And I started asking him questions. I said, “Well, the Miracle Morning reaches people because it helps them improve their lives.”

 

So, if the movie only entertained somebody for 90 minutes but doesn't provide them with any tools for lasting change, I said, I think your reach and impact is going to be limited because once the movie is over and they forget about it, they're on to their other movies, potentially, they're not going to be thinking about it or talking about with other people but if you can create a documentary around a topic that you're passionate about and Nick's a very smart guy, I asked him, “What are you passionate about? What are some of the issues in the world that you see?” And I don't remember his answers six years ago, but he was spouting off, “Oh, I care about this and I feel like we should help millennials, and I feel like we should do all these different things.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, great idea. Great idea. You should. Maybe you do that or you do that.” And then he goes, I mean, this is literally after like an hour of talking about different ideas of what he could do for his next film. He said, "What if we did a Miracle Morning movie?” And I kind of went, “Tell me more,” and he said, “Well, what if we did a film,” where he goes, “I'm in the Miracle Morning community. I'm in the Facebook group every day.” By the way, on a side note, Nick, when he was filming his first full-length feature film, which is called Sharp, it's a comedy for millennials essentially is what it was kind of designed to be. And you can actually go watch that at Sharp-Movie.com.

 

But when he was filming that, he and his entire crew met at the film set early to do the Miracle Morning together. How cool is that? So, there was nobody more organic in terms of a filmmaker that could potentially have an idea and a vision for this film because he lives the Miracle Morning and he said, “Hal, I'm in the Facebook group every day. I see people every day like the profound impact that they're sharing that it's making in their life,” he said, “What if we created a film where we filmed the stories of all these people who the Miracle Morning is transforming their lives and then we shared your story of trying to reach millions of people and then the story is of people who were being impacted?” He said that can be really cool. And I started to get excited. And I go, "Yeah. Nick, scratch all those other ideas we've been talking about for the last hour. Scratch all those like the Miracle Morning movie, this sounds like a really cool idea.” And then he left that night and he reached back out and I kind of said, “Nick, I'm overwhelmed right now with all of the projects that I'm doing as it is. So, someday, like I love this idea but I can't wrap my head around it. Maybe someday.”

 

And he kept pinging me about it over the next few weeks and maybe months and one day he called me and he figured out how to play to what I cared about at that point with the Miracle Morning. And he said, “Hal, what is your mission with the Miracle Morning?” and I knew he knew but I repeated it. I said, "It's to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time.” And he said, "What percentage of humanity reads self-help books?” I said, “Gosh, I think it's like 1%.” I mean, it's not very many and he said, "What percentage watches television, watches films, watch movies, turn the TV on and watch something?” And I immediately got where he was going with that and I go, "Yep. In developed countries, parts of the world, I would say probably the other 99%. They don't read self-help books. They're turning on the TV every day when they get home from school or work or whatever.” And I said, “Nick, I think we have to make a movie.” And his point was that if we want to reach, if our community wants to truly impact a billion lives, if we want to reach millions and millions and millions, hundreds of millions of people, a billion people, we have to use a medium that those people are already using in the form of television, in the form of movies, computer streaming, however you digest your movies now.

 

It used to be TV. Now, it's often through the computer, on your devices, whatever. But he said, "We have to reach them through that medium.” And so, that's when I said, “Okay. We're making a film.” And then I had the vision in terms of I'll give you guys a little bit of sneak peek on what the Miracle Morning movie kind of what it entails, the original vision. I said, "Well, Nick, if it's not broken, don't fix it.” I said, “The Miracle Morning book it's impacting people. It's actually getting them to do the Miracle Morning and they're sharing with people what they know.” I said, "So, let's stay as close to that. Whatever formula I've kind of figured out for the book,” a lot of it by accident, it just kind of worked out but it was divine inspiration, if you will, but I said, "Let's stick as close to that as we can because the objective is not for me to prove that I'm a great writer or, I'm sorry, the objective is to get people to actually do the Miracle Morning, just like the book does. We don't want it to just entertain people. Yes, that's important to keep them enjoying the movie but we really want to change their behavior.”

 

And so, the next iteration was, I thought, "What if we interviewed or went out and filmed some really well-known world-famous, successful individuals in different walks of life doing their morning ritual, whether it's the Miracle Morning or whatever their form is.” I go, "In that way, the movie goes beyond the book.” Now, it's telling people, "Hey. Yeah, the Miracle Morning, great. Here's how some of the world's most successful… You're going to get an exclusive look behind the scenes, how they start their day, and how their Miracle Morning impacts their quality of life and their success.” And Nick loved that idea. I think that's a great idea. And Robert Kiyosaki, which I always paid tribute to Robert because he was one of the first well-known famous people. By the way, if you don't know Robert, he wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, which sold 26 million copies. And Robert, he's written dozens of books and a very successful entrepreneur and all these things and Robert, I met at an event, gave him a copy of the book. I was his warm-up speaker at this event. It was a GoBundance event, gave him a copy of the book thinking, "He's not going to read it. Like he's very successful. He's not going to read my little self-published Miracle Morning book.”

 

And like three weeks later, I got an email from his assistant and said, “Hey, Robert has read your book three times. He and his wife, Kim, are doing the Miracle Morning almost every day and it's changing their lives and he wants to interview you on Rich Dad radio.” And as a fan of Robert through his book having read Rich Dad Poor Dad, my jaw hit the floor. I'm like, "No way. This is like a dream come true.” And so, after the interview, I asked him if he would allow us to film him for this documentary we were creating and he said, “Yes.” And Nick and I flew out to Arizona, went to his office, filmed him and Kim, and that's kind of the birth of like, wow, this is really something. And then I started reaching out to all these other influencers and now the film features Muhammad Ali's daughter, Laila Ali, who's an 18-time undefeated world champion boxer. She’s on Dancing with the Stars. She's a mom and entrepreneur. We've got Mel Robbins, author of the Five-Second Rule. Brendon Burchard, Robin Sharma, we've got CEOs, self-made multimillionaires. James Altucher is in the film. I could go on and on. There's like two dozen of these amazing people that are in the film and then it's my cancer journey.

 

And if you're new to the podcast and you're not aware, very quickly, three years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare aggressive form of cancer and given a 30% chance of surviving, and it was halfway through filming the movie. And I called Nick, I called our director. I said the movie is off, or I'm sorry, it's on hold. I have to fight for my life right now and beat this cancer to be alive for my family, for my wife, for my kids. I could give a heck less about the movie, right? I don't care. I mean, right now that that's totally irrelevant and Nick had a different perspective and he had been making a film, right? He was the filmmaker. He was making a film about this journey that I was on to change millions of lives one morning at a time to elevate consciousness. And this was arguably the most dramatic event that could happen in the middle of this journey where I'm diagnosed with cancer, given a 30% chance of surviving, of beating it. So, he asked me if he could, as much as possible, film my cancer journey. And I was a little put off by it. I thought, "What? I don't understand. I didn't really get his vision.” And he said, “Hal, first of all, I have faith that you're going to beat this,” and he said, "Second of all, imagine capturing that so that we can share with the world how your mindset and how you overcome this cancer.”

 

And so, I agreed. I said, “Okay,” a little hesitant but I said, “Sure. You can film this,” and he filmed the entire journey, me on chemo, me at my lowest point, not a hair on my body, in the ER for days on end in horrific pain on and on and on, and the whole thing's captured. And so, when you watched the film, the first hour is the original vision of the film. It's this really profound you're watching my journey. You get to go to Paris with me to do a media tour that my publisher in Paris brought me out to. You see it from the very beginning of how the whole thing evolved, and then you get to see the stories of Mike Eaton who lost 90 pounds, obese his whole life, and he lost 90 pounds as a result of the Miracle Morning. You see the story of Aaron and Michelle Matsuoka who their mom Patty had brought them to a Miracle Morning event that we did years ago and then the kids started doing the Miracle Morning and it completely transformed their life to the point where they started a Miracle Morning club on their high school campus. And when you see their story and you actually get to go into the club at school and see like it is just profound.

 

And then you see Rister Ratemo who lost both of her eyes. She lost her eyesight. As a single mother, she lost her eyesight, her husband left her, and someone from America donated eyes to her and she had an eye transplant and she was depressed through this whole thing and she googled how to get out of depression and the Miracle Morning came up in a search. And she read the book in Kenya. Again, I don't know if I mentioned that but she's from Kenya, and we hired a film crew in Kenya and filmed her journey. So, there's all these incredible and there's more than that, but these incredible stories. Brianna Greenspan, her story of how she shares Miracle Morning with medical survivors. And then through all of that, you get to see the morning routines of Laila Ali and Brendon Burchard and Joe Polish and Dr. John Gray and you hear the science behind morning routines from neuroscientists, Andrew Hill and Dr. Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor and Alicia Bhatia, she's a naturopathic doctor. You see like it's just it's so much rich content that you can apply to your life, and then all of a sudden an hour into the movie, there I am fighting for my life and you get to be part of this really emotional, intimate journey, where my hope is and I think what will happen from those that have seen the film is it really is going to give millions upon millions of people a perspective shift in seeing that.

 

When you see that, oh, even in the midst of cancer and pain, and the fear of death, and leaving your children behind without one of their parents, all of that you get to see me talking about my perspective on cancer, that I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for every adversity that I have because every adversity, every challenge, every difficult experience in our lives is an opportunity for us to learn to grow and to become better than we've ever been before. And my hope right now beyond just introducing the Miracle Morning to people, which, yes, that's still part of it. We want to reach a billion people with the Miracle Morning but there's a whole new element to this film because of the cancer journey. In some ways, it's the best thing that ever happened to the movie because now it goes beyond the morning ritual to this perspective shift of, "Okay. Wow. As millions of people around the world right now, tens of millions, hundreds of millions are struggling mentally and emotionally, they're living with so much uncertainty right now in the world, the context of this year 2020. This film, the timing couldn't be more important to empower people to take control of their inner world despite what's going on in the outer world.”

 

And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, since COVID hit, that’s been the theme that I've come back to over and over again which is, look, don't get wrapped up in anything that's out of your control because all it does is make you feel like you don't have control over your life like you don't have control over the world. And whether that's looking at COVID-19 or the election or the economy or your fears of what may or may not play out or what's going on now or maybe it's losing a loved one to what's happened, there's so much that we don't have control over and the news is an example. If you turn on the news, think about it. Why does it cause everyone to feel so stressed and afraid? It’s because you're just literally watching things that are out of your control. Since when does the news go, “Hey, let us empower you to take control of your mental and emotional well-being. Let us give you strategies and practices and rituals and routines that will enable you to be the best version of yourself every day.” I don't watch the news that often, you guys, but I've never seen it go that direction. It's always, "Here's what's wrong. Here's what you should be afraid of. Here's what you should be concerned about. Here's what this person is doing wrong. Let's blame this political party or this or the disease, on and on and on.”

 

It is inducing fear and spiking our cortisol levels. So, this film is the opposite. This film can literally, it gives people a way to make a change within themselves first and by making change within themselves, then they're able to put themselves in that peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state. They're able to take control of their inner world so that they have the wherewithal, the mindset, the confidence, the clarity, to take actions that are within their control, to create outcomes that they want to in their life. And so, this movie, I feel like for the mental health crisis that's going on right now in our world that was already going on before COVID hit before businesses were shut down, before the economies were shut down, and we were quarantined and separated from our family and couldn't go to funerals and all of these things. And I'm not saying that I'm not trying to hyper-focus on whether what should or shouldn't have been done. I'm just talking about this is what was done. And since that, the mental health crisis, the suicide rates, I don't have the stats in front of me but I've read them in the last few months. And everything, there's a lot of fallout outside of whether or not you get sick.

 

So, anyway, I don't mean to get too far down that road. The point is that within the context of 2020, I feel like this film is needed now more than ever. In the long run, yes, it will be, it's just about the Miracle Morning for the most part. It's helping people take control having this implement this morning ritual that you've already, many of you, most of you have already practiced but the movie goes so far beyond the book that for everyone that's been doing the Miracle Morning for even years, this is going to be 90% completely new content, information, cinematography, humor, drama, and inspiration, and action. So, sorry, well, I just like got into a zone. I don't even know what I was talking about. I had a few notes here. Let me see if there's anything that I missed. By the way, I do want to mention this. If you've looked at the Miracle Morning movie and if you have a ticket, awesome. I know we've sold, I actually don't know how many tickets yet, but we've got a lot of people that are attending the premiere. I would imagine there'll be tens of thousands of people. My team wants to shoot for 100,000 people. That number scares the heck out of me. It's a big goal but regardless, just to be clear, this isn't just the world premiere of the movie.

 

So, if you go to MiracleMorningMovie.com, you can get all the details. You can see everyone that's in the movie which is kind of cool. You go see everybody that's in the movie. You can read details about the movie. You can watch the trailer if you haven't seen it and you can reserve your ticket. But just to be really clear, if you're not aware of this, the premiere is not just a movie. It's a fully immersive experience. So, it starts out with a special welcome video that I just recorded the other day for all of you, for you to kind of bring you into the movie in the best possible context and mindset to get the most out of the movie. And then the movie is an hour and 40 minutes long. When the movie finishes, we go straight into an implementation training that I also recorded the other day. It's brand new. It's never been seen before and it's an implementation training and it is both for people that have never done a Miracle Morning and seasoned Miracle Morning practitioners, veterans, if you will. So, it's both. It's, hey, if you're brand new to the Miracle Morning, here's what you do to get started tomorrow but if you’ve been doing it for years, here's how you create a new 30-day challenge that will amplify your life even further and then I give you some advanced strategies around the SAVERS that are new.

 

And then finally, you're going to get to ask me questions. There's going to be a live Q&A after the implementation training. So, this is what your ticket is for. It's not just the movie. This is going to be live 12-12-2020. It's literally live. So, if you come in five minutes late, it's like walking into a movie at the theater, five minutes late, where it's already going. For anyone that if you're going, “I want to be there but I can't be there live,” that's okay. We are going to create a window for anyone that can't watch it during the live time, there will be a window, 24 or 48 hours, I'm not sure the exact timeframe but there will be a window afterwards where you can actually still watch the entire premiere with the movie experience and the training and the Q&A and all of those things. So, if you're not available the exact time which is 12-12-2020 at 12 PM Eastern Time, 9 AM Pacific Time, and there's a little calculator when you get your ticket where you can check your time zone and all that. But this movie is the next step. As I mentioned, it's the next step in the Miracle Morning mission, which is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time, one person at a time.

 

And again, it goes back to that conversation with Nick and I, when he asked me what percentage of people read self-help books and I said 1%. He said, what percentage watch films? And I said the other 99% or 80, I don't know. It's a significantly larger amount and that's why we created this film to spread the Miracle Morning to reach 1 billion people. And the last thing I'll say, I mentioned this earlier, we are going to do a movie launch team. I'll probably be, now, I meant to do it already but this movie premiere, this launch, there's a lot of pieces to this but I do, I'm working on a Miracle Morning movie launch team. We actually did this. We formed this launch team, originally, like two years ago, when the movie was first going to come out. We didn't because I got cancer. It was actually three years ago I guess and we had 1,500 people apply for the launch team back then. So, I will be re-engaging those 1,500 and then I'll send out a new application. So, just keep an eye out for that. I don't have it ready yet but if you want to be a part of the launch team, and I'll be doing some private zoom calls and it'll be really easy.

 

It's basically you just sharing this. I'll give you the trailer, the link to upload the trailer to your Facebook, and a movie poster, just some different stuff, be able to share it and get the word out because that's how we're going to reach all the people that we're trying to reach. So, that's it. Actually, the last thing I'll share is in terms of the future, the movie is the next step but I see the Miracle Morning in every school in the world like that's part of this. Imagine if every person on the planet started their day with meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling, if they got clarity, if they were present to their highest priorities and their values to live in alignment with those values, if they put themselves in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state, I'm talking every person on the planet or let's say a billion of them, even not every person but if a billion people started every day that way in a calm, clear, peaceful, proactive state, imagine how that would transform our world as people elevate their own consciousness every day individually.

 

And by the way, I mentioned earlier that I would define that. There are different ways you can define consciousness. The word consciousness, you could define it as the essence of who we truly are. Some people call it spirit or soul. Some people measure it by the energetic force that is driving and giving life to our body. So, there are different ways to define consciousness. In terms of elevating our consciousness, I'm going to give you a practical definition. It's elevating our conscious awareness, meaning that every day when you quiet your mind and you spend time in meditation and you get clear on the thoughts that are running your mind daily, that are then affecting or running your behavior, we keep repeating these patterns, if you don't take that time, whether it's in the morning or at any time of your day to slow down to gain clarity, to journal, to meditate to visualize all these things, then you tend to just keep running the same patterns and programs day after day after day after day, every single day. But when you take that time to do your Miracle Morning or every morning ritual it is, call it what you want, then you become more aware of how your thoughts, words, and actions, the choices you're making, how they impact not only your life but the lives have everybody in your circle of influence.

 

When I in the morning and I'm meditating, I have breakthroughs about how to be a better husband for my wife or a better father for my kids. I had to have epiphanies around something I said or did yesterday that may have landed wrong with my wife and I might have defended or argued and then now that I'm in this quiet space, I'm able to get really clear on the impact of what I say and what I think and what I do. So, as each of us dedicates time each day, each morning, doing our Miracle Morning, we are elevating our own individual consciousness or conscious awareness of how what we think, say, and do impacts people in our lives, impacts our own life, our health, our mental health, physical health, our bank account, our income, you name it. That awareness, you're elevating your conscious awareness and also how your choices are impacting people but also the planet. You name it. So, if all of us start doing the Miracle Morning, we get a million, I'm sorry, a billion people practicing, and I know this isn’t overnight. This is my lifetime goal. I might not reach a billion people until I'm 99 years old or I might never reach a billion. I might die and we've reached 400,000 or whatever. The numbers are arbitrary. The purpose of a goal, if you remember, from Jim Rohn, one of my favorite Jim Rohn quotes is the purpose of a goal isn't to reach the goal. It's to become the type of person that you need to be to reach all of your goals.

 

It's the impact that you make along the way, not whether or not you hit the specific, measurable, actionable, results-oriented, time-bound goal. It's more about the journey. And so, my commitment is to do everything in my power now and for the rest of my life to try to elevate the consciousness of humanity. And I'm not waiting until I hit a certain goal to feel good about it every day, every interaction I have. Right now, hopefully, this is making a positive impact in your life in some way then that for me this is what it's about. This is what it's about. So, with all of that said, again, go to MiracleMorningMovie.com, if you want to reserve your ticket to the Miracle Morning movie and live experience and then keep an eye out for the Miracle Morning Movie launch team application, the invitation which I'll be sending out here probably in the next few days around the time of this. It might even be in this email by the time I get this email out.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Hal Elrod: So, I think that's it. That's it for today. And thank you for listening. As I was thinking about, like I said, today's podcast and just in general, I've spent so much time reflecting on the Miracle Morning and what it's become and it's so inspiring to me to see the impact that the Miracle Morning, not just the book, but the community more than anything, you listening to this, the impact that you are making in your world is elevating the consciousness of humanity one person at a time and you are that person, I am that person. Every single one of us, individually, we are that person. We are that one person that all we can do is own ourselves, take responsibility for ourselves, become the best version of ourselves, and in doing so, our life becomes a positive impact in the lives of everybody else in the world. So, love you. I appreciate you. That's it. MiracleMorningMovie.com for all the details and I'll be in touch really soon. And if I don't talk to you before, I will talk to you next week. All right. Take care, everybody.

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