336: How to Be Peaceful & Proactive When Life is Difficult

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. This is Hal Elrod. Welcome members of the Miracle Morning Community. I'm excited to be here with you today. I am at my house. I just left a vacation with my family, a little bit early for a quick vacation from the vacation. I came home to meet my filmmaker, our director, Nick Conedera, and we are working on the final touches for the Miracle Morning Movie this week. He's going to stay with me. He gets here tonight and then for the next five days, we are doing final edits. Movie’s actually done and then I watched it again after I got off chemo and my brain was clear and I went, “Yeah, there are some things I actually think we could make a little bit better and tweak.” So, the movie’s 99% done and we're finishing the last 1% this week.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: So, with that, today I want to chat with you about something that came to me the other night. In fact, it was so important when I thought of it, I wrote it down. I sent myself a text. I said this is crucial. This is a lesson that right now people need more than maybe ever. it’s pretty universal. I'd say you need this anytime but it's something that I mentioned when I give my speech, my keynote message, I say this briefly but I don't go into it kind of I say it and people go, “Hmm.” And then I should expand on it but I just kind of keep talking and go into something else. I realize that's not doing a service to the audience. So, today, you're going to get the benefit of going, “Okay.” What I should be doing is actually really diving deep into this topic. And the topic is it's really about what we've been talking about since the pandemic began, which is the one thing you have control over, your inner world, your thinking, your emotional well-being.

And while that for many of us sounds easier said than done, it's like, “I don't control. I can't just control my thinking. I can't just control my emotions. I've got all these thoughts and feelings and things that are causing me all sorts of pain and frustration and fear and suffering and all sadness, all of the things.” And I'm here today to say that you can control your thinking. And you can intentionally create your emotional state so that you can feel peaceful and happy and grateful. and be proactive in the midst of whatever the heck is going on in the world or in your life or in your family. I'm going to challenge you to take ownership of your mental and emotional well-being today. And here's the thing like I don't mean to be insensitive. So, if I'm coming off that way, I apologize. We all experienced difficult situations in life, but you have to ask yourself, why is it that the same painful event or ongoing circumstance can occur for two different people and one person is left devastated and depressed while the other, same circumstance, but the other remains peaceful and productive?

The event can be nearly identical, but the impact can completely, it could be literally the opposite from one person to another. One person may view it as the worst thing that ever happened to them and they feel devastated while the other person acknowledges that, yeah, this sucks like this is extremely difficult what I'm going through, what we're going through, but that second person simultaneously sees it as a huge opportunity for their growth and their development. And they also decide that they won't allow the painful circumstances to cause them to suffer. Somebody wise once said, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional,” and we'll talk more about that today. But whether it's a financial hardship or a global pandemic or the death of a loved one, you have to look and go, “Well, what enables some people to handle and move through life's challenges so much easier than others?” They’re so much more effectively. I won't say easier, but I'll say more effectively than others. And that's really what I want to talk about today is how can you maintain that peaceful, proactive mindset and feel genuinely good and happy and energized and optimistic even in the face of adversity, even in the face of loss, even in the midst of pain.

And so, I think that the biggest, most prevalent, most universal adversity or challenging circumstance that we can all relate to right now is COVID-19 or referred to often as the coronavirus or the pandemic, call it whatever you want, and I'll probably use those interchangeably today but we're all dealing with this crazy, unprecedented, global pandemic and depending on, well, depending on a lot of factors, but if you watch the news every day and you're watching CNN every day, man, you're probably filled with fear because I've turned on CNN and I've watched some of these networks and news shows that they get paid to perpetuate fear to get you to tune in. So, maybe that I think for many people, possibly most people, this global pandemic has caused excessive stress and fear and that's both individually like in our own lives, but also collectively. Thousands have died around the world. Millions of people are out of work and many are worried about the state of the world.

I know it's a concern for me, the state of the world, the virus, the economy, the election, loss of civil liberties. There are so many different things to think about that it can really be overwhelming. And all of this can be detrimental to our mental health, and it results for many of us, suffering. Inside we're suffering mentally and emotionally. You guys have heard me talk really openly for the last 6 to 12 months about the mental health issues that I was going through, and I've kind of alluded to this the last few episodes but I stopped taking chemo about a month or two ago and my brain came back. It's amazing. My brain came back like I’m totally back to normal. I'm thinking clearly. The anxiety and depression is gone and I'm able to come to you with the advice, with how did I get over this except for, obviously, I quit taking chemo but beyond that because for countless among us, this coronavirus pandemic, there's the other side of it.

While there are millions of people that are in fear and stress and anxiety, there are also millions of people that are at peace and that are being proactive. There are countless people that have found or decided to see this pandemic as an opportunity to slow down and connect more deeply with ourselves and with our loved ones. My relationship with my kids is the best it's ever been. We are so bonded right now. I'm spending so much time with them. It's enabled many of us to finally realize what really matters most to us and to spend time in nature. I've done more of that than ever before, to read good books, to play board games, be with your loved ones more, and just enjoy various activities that we didn't think we had time for before the pandemic, before quarantine gave us the time that we were missing to do the things that we were missing. And the reality is that there's so much we don't have control over. And that's just true. In general, right now, though, it feels, I think more so than ever because of what's going on but the reality is that always in life, there is so much that we don't have control over.

Think about how random your life's really been as much as we can try to control our life and force it and shape it and set our goals and make things happen. I met my wife. I couldn't have designed that. I was proactive. I went on some dating sites or whatever but in terms of most of the people in my life, most of the opportunities in my life, they happened by chance or divine intervention, whatever you want to call it. But the point is the reality that we have so much we don't have control over, and the problem with that, the potential problem is that feeling out of control can cause us to experience mild to severe stress, fear, overwhelm, depression, anxiety, name a challenging emotion, name a difficult state or a painful internal state. And so, so much uncertainty in the world, so much lack of control, and that perceived feeling of lack of control can cause all of those emotions.

So, the question is how in the heck is a guy or gal supposed to be happy and grateful and peaceful and proactive when there is so much to be fearful and stressed and depressed and anxious about? How is it? So, what’s the problem? What is it that is causing your suffering? What's causing your internal suffering? And I'll tell you, it's really simple for you to consider. I don't like speaking like I'm all-knowing or anything, but what I'm going to invite you to consider is that what is causing all of our mental and emotional suffering is our thinking. Our thinking is the problem. See, in order to keep us safe, I talked about this a few podcasts ago, I did an episode on how to solve all of your problems. And the premise of that was that our brains evolved as problem-seeking / creating machines. So, as a result, most people, we wake up and immediately we look for problems. We all do this, by the way, all of us, myself included, at least sometimes. Even if you're trying, even if you're proactive to not do it, it's in our nature. It's part of our primitive natures. We wake up and our brain starts searching for what's wrong in our lives and what's wrong in the world. And then once we think of something wrong, we latch on to it. And we go, we expand it and massage it and think more about it and imagine possibilities of what that could spin-off and create in our lives, more problems.

And we think about what went wrong in the past and we're worried about going wrong in the future. So, our thinking causes our problems. In fact, I'm reading a book right now. I think I mentioned this in the last couple of podcast episodes, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie. In fact, I'm going to reach out to Byron once I'm done with her book. I'm on page 215 right now. There's about 290. So, once I'm done, I'm going to reach out to Byron Katie. I'm going to ask her to be on the podcast. So, hopefully, we'll be able to do that. This is probably the top five books of all time. And before this, I was reading Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul, also in the top five to 10 books of all time that I've read, and then also Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment, also in the top 10. So, these are three of my favorite books of all time and all of them have a similar message and I think that for me, they arrived when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. They arrived in my life at the right time. I'm going to read this from the book, from Katie's book, Loving What Is.

Byron said, "Suffering is optional. Whenever we experience a stressful feeling, anything from mild discomfort to intense sorrow, rage, or despair, we can be certain that there is a specific thought causing our reaction, whether or not we are conscious of it. The way to end our stress is to investigate the thinking that lies behind it and anyone can do this by himself or herself with a piece of paper and a pen.” And then I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. She goes on to say, "When we believe our thoughts instead of what is really true for us, we experienced the kinds of emotional distress that we call suffering. Suffering is a natural alarm, warning us that we're attaching to a thought. When we don't listen, we come to accept this suffering as an inevitable part of life. It is not.” And again, that's what I want to talk about today. How you can stop from suffering. Now, I will say this. The reason I'm going to have Byron Katie on the show is this is one of the best books I've ever read, as I said, and here's what I mean by one of the best books. Best is a very vague term.

Literally, I do not think I have ever read a book that I immediately began to just live, just all-encompassing. There is not a day or probably not even more than a few hours that go by without me using what Byron Katie calls The Work. It's the four questions she teaches in the book, the work, without me using the work. I'm using it every day to whenever I have a thought that causes me stress. It might be a thought about life or about the world or a personal insecurity, a belief I have about myself, a limiting belief. There might be a thought about my wife or about my kids or about my in-laws who I just visited for a week or two. So, whenever I have a stressful thought, I immediately go in and I do the work. And I ask these four questions, and I wasn't planning on going too far into this, but I guess I should at least tell you the four questions since I am talking about it. And I'm going to go off memory because I don't have this in the book. I don't know where it's at.

So, the first question is, is it true? So, when you have a thought that is painful to you like, “Oh, this person is so lazy or this person is horrible.” You ask the question, is it true? And often your first answer is yes, of course, it's true. That’s why I'm thinking it. I'm thinking it because it's true. And then the second question, oh, I found the questions. I'm not going to mess them up here. So, inquiry, the four questions and the turnarounds. Number one, is it true? And it's a yes or no question by the way. No qualifying. If your answer is no, move to question three but if it's yes, go to question two. And question two is, can you absolutely know that it's true? Yes or no? Rarely can you answer yes to that unless it's a fact about something someone did but usually, we're dealing not so much in facts but in stories. Fact is my spouse said this thing. Story is my spouse doesn't love me. Story is my spouse is angry. Story is my spouse is inconsiderate. Story is my spouse doesn't listen to me. Can you absolutely know that they're inconsiderate? No, not really. That's just an opinion. Can you absolutely know that they're angry? Not really. They might actually be feeling fear that's expressing itself as anger. So, maybe they're not really angry. They're actually afraid but they're projecting anger.

Anyway, so the point is you look at a challenging thought that you have or a situation or event you look at, is it true? Number two, can I absolutely know that it's true? Number three, how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? And this is where you really get quiet and you go, “Hm, when I think the thought that my spouse doesn't love me or my spouse is inconsiderate, I feel stressed. I feel angry. I feel upset. I feel disrespected.” So, you want to really look at, “Hmm, what's my internal response or reaction when I believe that thought?” Because remember, my invitation for you to consider is that all of our sufferings come from our thinking and that we have the power to change our thinking and to eliminate our suffering. That's the premise here. So, number three, how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? And then number four, who would you be without the thought? And again, you get quiet. You go, “Okay. Well, if I didn't think the thought that my spouse is _____ or my child is _____ or the president is _____ or doesn't care about me or whatever it is, if I didn't think that thought, well, I wouldn't feel that feeling.” See, this all roots back to the premise that all of our suffering is caused by our thoughts.

And here's what's interesting. So, you've got to read the book like I can't do this justice. That’s why I want to have Byron Katie on the show because you have to go really deep with this. Like, when you first hear it, you're like it kind of makes sense, at least for me. But again, that's page 20 in the book that I just read to you and I'm on page 210 and I've been living this for the last few weeks and using it in every aspect of my life, and I've never felt so free. That's the objective, by the way, is freedom, freedom from the thoughts that cause you pain, but ultimately, freedom from the pain, freedom from the suffering, the internal, mental, emotional suffering. This is freedom from the mental health issues that I believe are plaguing our nation or our world, all of us, is to understand, to take ownership for and I'm going to give you guys some solutions here in a few minutes, but to take ownership for our thinking, and to take ownership for how we feel and then to take action to be proactive to choose the thoughts that best serve us.

Now, I'm going to very quickly before I give you some solutions on how to do this, I want to give you a couple of personal life examples. You've probably heard these before and, in a way, I hate talking about my own stories, probably because I'm tired of hearing me talk about it. Maybe you are too, but I want to relate these as personally as I can. When I went through cancer the last three years, it was the most difficult time in my life by far, mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, relationally, you name it. I was away from my family living in an apartment for almost an entire year. I didn't see my kids and they were four and seven and I would see them every few weeks. It was really, really, really challenging for me and I was dealing with infections and chemotherapy and feeling sick and feeling scared being afraid that I might die. It was so much, so much, and so much that was or at least felt outside of my control. But I made a commitment on the day that I was diagnosed and I shared this with my wife and I shared it with my family and I might have shared it with the Miracle Morning Community and with you guys and gals. I don't remember, but the commitment was I will be the happiest and the most grateful I have ever been while I endure the most difficult time in my life. And consider that.

Right now, I'm not in your life and chances are we've never even met and I certainly don't know what your life looks like right now. You could be experiencing extraordinary levels of success and you're on the page that I explained earlier about, you're like, "No, this has been a huge opportunity. I have loved the quarantine and this has been great for me and great for my family.” That might be you but you could also be enduring one of the most challenging times of your life to date. I have no idea. I can't know that. But still, I believe that we have more in common than we don't have in common and in terms of our mental and emotional well-being. I know from experience that enduring the most difficult time in your life which you might be right now and optimizing your mental and emotional health, actually feeling the best you've ever felt. In the midst of the most difficult time in your life, those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can choose and I'm going to give you some steps on how to do that in a minute but taking everything we've talked about today, you can choose to be the happiest and most grateful you've ever been and choose the adjective. You don't have to choose happy and grateful. You could choose to be the most peaceful and proactive which I talked about today.

You can choose to be the most loving that you've ever been, loving toward yourself, loving toward life. That's Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is, is all about not fighting with life and wishing it were different, but just loving whatever, what is. When I had cancer, I just loved that I had cancer. I was grateful that I had cancer. Because resisting what is causes us pain. You may have heard me say that before that the cause of every painful emotion that you have ever felt that you are feeling now or that you could ever feel in the future is not the thing that you think is causing the pain. It's your resistance to the thing that's causing you the pain. It's your wishing and wanting that it were different aka resisting it, wishing and wanting that it were different that causes all emotional pain. And what Byron Katie talks about is loving what is. It's the opposite. You're not resisting it. And then the opposite of resistance is acceptance. But the next level to that is actually not just accepting reality as it is, but actually loving it as it is. Even when it's challenging and when it's difficult and when it's painful, loving life exactly as it is because that is your choice. And that is your opportunity.

When I had cancer, I went, “Okay, I can hate this. I can be angry about this. I can feel sad about this and depressed about this and stressed about this and overwhelmed about this. I could feel all of those things but I don't think that serves me. I don't think it serves my healing. I don't think it serves my mental or emotional health. I don’t think it serves my family,” all those emotions I just described that many people are feeling right now. If those serve you, okay, I'm not here to tell you how to feel or how to think. I'm just offering an option. And if you want to be depressed or you want to be sad and I'm not being condescending. I'm just for as an example like to look at that. That's a choice. That's okay. And I think when you realize that, well, I do have the choice to feel however I want to feel and if I want to be angry, I could be angry. If I want to suffer, I can suffer. And you can be angry without suffering. Because if you love that you're angry and you love, you can love the painful emotions and in loving them, you actually find peace within them.

But for most of us, I think it's fair to say that we'd like to feel peaceful, a little more peace in our lives, a little more serenity, a little more calm. We'd like to feel a little less stress, a little less overwhelm, a little less chaos. And we'd like to be able to manage or optimize our emotional state and our mental state in a way that allowed us to show up every day to wake up every day and not immediately be overwhelmed with a flood of worry but to be inspired by what's possible. And it begins not with the outer possibilities with what's possible in your life, in your career, in your work. It all begins with the inner possibilities, the ability for you to wake up every day, and to be at peace with life, and events and circumstances exactly as they are. And from that place of peace, which by the way, peace is not an emotion. It's a state of being and it's emotionally neutral. It's an ever-present state of being. When you live in a state of acceptance, where you accept life exactly as it is, you give yourself the gift of peace.

And from that place of peace, that emotionally neutral state, you can think clearly, and you can make choices that serve you and that serve your family and that serve humanity. You can make proactive choices that move you forward in your life that move you in the direction of where you want to go and proactive choices that allow you to just be right where you are, and love right where you are exactly as it is. So, here's a few tips. Here are some solutions to minimize or end your suffering if you've got some of that mental and emotional suffering. And if you have a pen, I jot these down. Number one, decide how you want to feel. And I mean in writing, decide how you want to feel. In fact, I encourage you to write it in the form of an affirmation. I want to feel and I'm committed to feeling _____, happy, at peace, grateful, loving, or whatever other emotion or state of being that you truly want. But you've got to get clear. Decide how you want to feel.

And from that place, what today is all about is you get to feel that way. You get to feel however you want to feel. But if you don't decide what you want, just like any area of life, if you don't decide what you want, you're not going to get it. If you don't decide what you want to feel and commit to feeling that way, well then, your feelings, your emotions, your mental health is going to be at the effect of things outside of you. But when you decide, you choose, you create with intention that internal state that you want, that serves you. Last week or the week before, I did the episode The Path of Unconditional Happiness and it was because that week I didn't have anything prepared. And so, I read you one of my favorite chapters from one of my favorite books, which is the book, The Untethered Soul, that I referenced earlier by Michael Singer and The Path of Unconditional Happiness, it was the premise was kind of you make a vow like do you want to be happy? And if you do want to be happy, then it's a vow of unconditional happiness.

It's not, “I want to be happy but I won't be happy if things don't go according to my plan,” because then you're not really committed to being happy if that's the case. That kind of goes along with what I'm talking about right now. So, step number one here is decide how you want to feel and decide in writing. Write it in the form of an affirmation that you want and that you're committed to creating for yourself, that feeling, that internal state. It could be one word. It could be multiple words. Again, I give you a few examples. Number two, stop blaming anything outside of yourself for how you feel. Again, I would write this down. The odds are if you don't write this down, you might forget it. And then this might not impact your life in a lasting way. You might feel better right now and then you don't write it down and you forget and then you go back and then three weeks from now or three months from now, you hear this again and you go, “Oh, dang it, why didn't I actually write that down and live it, implement it? So, put it in your affirmations.

Number two, again, is stop blaming anything outside of yourself for how you feel. Remember, it is never the thing that causes your emotional pain. It is always our resistance to the thing, our non-acceptance or wishing and wanting that life were different than it is in this moment. There's nothing wrong with wishing that the life you have now were different in the future because that's real. You're not resisting reality. You're going, "Oh yeah, I want to change some things,” and I'm going to take some actions over the next few days or weeks or months or hours to change things. That's fine. But that doesn't mean that it's about accepting life exactly as it is always. And then doing things if you so choose to change the way that life is in the future, and the future could be in a minute or in a day or in a month or in a year. So, number two, again, stop blaming anything outside of yourself for how you feel.

And number three, practice daily self-care. We did an episode right a few months ago on double down. It's time to double down on your self-care. And self-care, by the way, that for me, that's the Miracle Morning. There it is. The solution, many of you or most of you, the majority of our listeners, do the Miracle Morning. That's how you find the podcast. That's it. You already have the solution. It's your Miracle Morning. And that might mean though that it needs some tweaks. It might mean that you need to tweak your affirmations. When I was going through my very first 30-day challenge that I did in May that I led the Miracle Morning Facebook Group through, my very first challenge was in the midst. I was still going through the depression and anxiety I've been struggling with. And so, my 30-Day Challenge, the first one was for me, I don’t remember the word for word, but basically to overcome my depression and my mental health issues that I was suffering from. And so, I started reading books that were in alignment with that objective.

I rewrote my affirmations to be in alignment with that objective. I visualized myself every day, feeling back to normal. I call it back to normal just because I didn't use to suffer from this stuff but feeling happy and confident and that peace and grateful and all of those things. I saw it every day. I created that emotional state in the morning through my visualization and then I just lived it throughout the rest of the day. I created that momentum first thing in the morning. So, the point is you've got to practice that daily self-care and it goes back to what I said a few minutes ago, which is taking notes, just simply writing this down. That's a form of self-care. If you write this down, write these things down, number one, decide how you want to feel in writing, number two, stop blaming anything outside of yourself for how you feel and you might put that in the form of an affirmation as well.

So, step one, decide how you want to feel. You might write down, “I want to feel and I'm committed to feeling blank, blank, blank and blank, happy, grateful, excited, confident, whatever.” And then number two, to stop blaming anything outside of yourself for how you feel, maybe you need to write that as a reminder, “I refuse to blame anyone or anything outside of myself for my internal emotional state. My thoughts and my feelings are 100% my responsibility.” So, that's an example of an affirmation. my thoughts and my affirmations are 100% my responsibility and I refuse to blame anyone else or anything else for the way that I feel inside. That's up to me. Just writing that down and reading it every day, that's a form of self-care. And the more we repeat something to ourselves, the more it becomes our reality. And I can tell you from experience because the last year of my life, I woke up every day and I wrote at my journal many days more often I've like to admit that I did not have a will to live, that the only thing keeping me alive where my kids and my wife and my purpose.

I personally if I didn’t have anybody else to live for, I had no will to live. I was at the most difficult time in my life mentally and emotionally and I practiced what I preach. I realized that my Miracle Morning and I've talked to this over the last few months, my Miracle Morning had gotten off track. It had become my mediocre morning and I revamped it. I got back to the basics and that changed everything for me. So, I encourage you to do the same.

All right. What do we have? 30 minutes. Let's do it. I think that's it. Again, I encourage you if you have anything that I said today are read from the book, Loving What Is, resonated with you, I can't recommend it highly enough. In fact, Michael Singer’s book that I read the chapter from recently, The Untethered Soul, it was a great book, but I didn't implement it or live it the way that I did with this book. I think it was a very, like a lot of books, it was a lot of these great concepts and philosophies and ideas and I went, “Wow." While I read it, it was really beautiful and inspiring and expanding but the book, Loving What Is: The Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, I use those questions every day, multiple times a day. So, I can't remember ever reading a book that I implemented and that I just truly embodied and lived while I read it in the way that I have this book. In fact, every day like I also don't remember being excited to get up and I normally don't do reading first in a Miracle Morning but with this book, a lot of days I just start reading it because I can't keep myself away from it. I can't wait. So, check that out.

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: And, yeah, that's it for today. Members of the Miracle Morning Community and goal achievers, human beings, my fellow human family, I love you, I appreciate you, and now, more than ever, we've got to elevate our own consciousness. Now more than ever, we have to show up for the people that we love and the people that we lead because people are struggling right now. People are struggling. You may be one of the people that is really struggling right now and I think that when I was struggling, the one thing that kept me going is I had a sense of purpose. I thought I'm struggling for the benefit of the greater good. In fact, that might become an affirmation for you. If you're struggling right now, I'm struggling for the benefit of the greater good. And for me, I felt, I have a sense of responsibility and this could also be an affirmation for you. I have a responsibility to overcome my challenges so that I can teach and help other people to overcome theirs. And for me personally, every challenge or adversity that I've faced, that's always been this underlying purpose that's kind of gotten me through it.

And when I was going through the depression and the anxiety, I was like, man, why is this taking so long? Like, why? Because when it started happening, I was trying to get over it every day. I'm like, “Alright, today is the day I'm going to beat this,” and then alright, this is the week and then this is the month. This is my 30 days and it just went on for like a year. I don't even know exactly how long. I have to look back at my journal entries. But the longer I endured it, I went, "Man, I guess this is really supposed to stick with me. I'm really supposed to suffer so that I can empathize with the millions and millions of people who are suffering right now because only then if I truly know what it's like to have no will to live, to be that dark in that dark of a place only by knowing that can I empathize and relate and understand what somebody else is going through on that level so that I can hopefully do everything in my power to help bring them up.”

And so, I encourage you as a fellow member of our human family, if you are struggling, I invite you, just an invitation, just a consideration to consider taking this on as you may be going through what you're going through for the benefit of the greater good and the greater good might just be your family or it might be your community or it might be humanity. I don't know. But whomever it is, even it was just for you, you deserve to feel good. You deserve to wake up every day and look around and go, “Yeah, there's a lot of things in my life that are crazy and that are painful but I'm not going to suffer today. I'm actually going to accept everything as it is. Embrace everything as it is.” And I'm going to even go as far. It might take a while to get here but I'm going to love what is. I'm going to love my life because I have that choice. Because remember, our feelings, our mental and emotional state is 100% our responsibility and no matter what's going on around us, we have the opportunity, with our intention and with our commitment and with our daily self-care, we can choose what's going on inside of us. It doesn't have to be dependent on what's going on around us.

All right. I'm really going to wrap it up. Goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning community, I love you. Thanks for listening today. I hope you got some value. If you did, please leave a quick comment below this episode. I would really, really appreciate it. It's HalElrod.com/336 is where you can leave a comment and I read them all. So, thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thanks for listening and I will talk to you all next week. Take care, everybody.

[END]