513: The Miracle Approach to Making 2024 Your Best

Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and thank you for being here today. I think you need a lot of value because I was in flow. Again, this message is coming from higher consciousness. I don’t know where it comes from, but it just comes through me, if you will. And I hope that’s not too woo-woo for you because today’s a practical, actionable message about how to make 2024 the best year of your life. And we just came off the Miracle Year Live Event last week.

 

And today, I want to follow up on that event and go even deeper into some of the topics that we covered there, how to combine the Miracle Morning, the Miracle Equation, and the Miracle Life to literally guarantee 2024 is your best year ever. Now, how can you guarantee it? You guarantee it by creating criteria, which we’ll talk about at the end of today’s episode, so make sure you stick around for the whole episode. We’re going to circle back to how to guarantee 2024 is the best year of your life by creating criteria that you are completely in control over as opposed to letting it be left to chance. Like, well, if everything goes according to plan, it’ll be the best year ever. No, you take control of making this your best year ever.

 

Before we start the episode, I want to take just a minute to thank our two sponsors, two sponsors that they add value to my life every day because I take their products. The first is Organifi, making the highest quality, organic whole food supplements. I’ve been loving their mushroom gummies. Now, I know it sounds weird. Usually, you don’t hear those two words together, mushroom and gummies. They’re called, I can’t pronounce it, is it Shajiti? If you go to Organifi and you type in mushroom, you’ll see this.

 

But they give you energy. I take them in the morning. I just love the taste. At first, they were kind of weird. It’s hard to explain, may even do the best commercial right here. But hey, look, regardless, if you want to improve your health, whether it’s through the mushroom gummies that Organifi started making a few months ago that I am loving, in fact, I just ordered another shipment, or it’s their daily protein powder, I used that this morning, the Vanilla Protein powder, or it’s they’re Red Juice, which has ingredients like beets and different things that increase your nitric oxide uptake so that you can work out longer, have more endurance, have more energy in the afternoon, you name it. The health benefits of Organifi are plentiful, and I enjoy them every day.

 

Head over to Organifi.com/Hal, that is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and then just look around. Look, you can shop by benefit by the way. You can go, all right, I’m going to shop by benefit and you can choose weight loss, you can choose sleep, you can choose your, I think, mental or cognitive ability, right? You can shop by benefit. So, that’s why I encourage you to do it. I’ve never shared that before. You can go to the Organifi website, Organifi.com/Hal, shop by benefit, and then you can see which products they have that can help you with whatever your health goals are. And then use the discount code Hal, H-A-L, for 20% off your entire order.

 

And last but not least, I want to thank our sponsor CURED Nutrition. CURED Nutrition is like Organifi’s cousin, and I utilize their products in conjunction with Organifi. They also make whole food supplements, and my favorite of their supplements, I’ve talked about it before, I talk about in the Miracle Morning book, the new edition, it’s their Nighttime Oil. Their Nighttime Oil, which is a combination of CBD and CBN oil, it helps your body relax. And the CBN oil has a sedative effect so that you fall asleep and stay asleep. I want to give you one piece of advice, use less. Less is more, meaning, if I take a lot of the Nighttime Oil, I have trouble waking up in the morning. Not trouble waking up, but I’m like, it makes me sleep so well that I just want to keep sleeping. I want to stay in bed. I learned that the hard way by taking too much of it.

 

Now, the good news of that is that it goes further when you take less. So, I literally take, it’s less than like one milliliter. It’s just the tip of the dropper. Start with a little and increase it. So, start with a little and increase it up every day until you find the right amount. If I take too much, I have trouble waking up, but no matter what, I sleep like a baby. And right now, I found the perfect ratio where I just take a little bit of that Nighttime Oil, and it makes me fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling well rested.

 

And then, last but not least, they also put their Nighttime Oil in capsules. It’s called Night Caps. And that’s the perfect amount for you already rationed out. And again, I take one Night Cap instead of two. I think the serving size is two, but I take one. And that for me is the perfect amount and it makes it go twice as long, right? So, it costs you half as much because you can extend the use of the Nighttime Oil or of the Night Caps. To get those products and many more, head over to CuredNutrition.com/Hal, that is Cured, C-U-R-E-D Nutrition.com/Hal, and all the links are in the show notes as well.

 

All right. Without further ado, let’s talk about how you can guarantee that 2024 is the best year of your life, how you can literally create tangible, measurable miracles this year. Let’s go.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello friends, welcome to the podcast today. It is December 20th when you’re listening to this, but I’m recording this on December 13th, a week beforehand. What does that mean? Well, a couple of things. Yesterday was the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition book release, which is exciting. And just to give you an update on the numbers going into the week, as of today, we pre-sold 9,000 copies of the book, over 9,000 preorders. So, thank you so much to our Miracle Morning Community, to the listeners of the Achieve Your Goals podcast, to you. Everybody who preordered the Miracle Morning book, thank you so much. My goal was 10,000 copies. We got somewhere over 9,000. I don’t know the exact number yet, but so right in that range. And I could not have done that without you, of course. You’re the ones that are ordering the book and sharing it with people that you love.

 

So many of you, I saw selfies yesterday because if you preordered the book, for most people, it arrived at their door on publish date, which was the 12th, yesterday. And I saw a lot of people, selfies of your books. But the cool thing was seeing selfies, I mean, every selfie was amazing, but it was really cool seeing people holding selfies with 10 copies and saying, “I can’t wait to give these out to my friends and family,” or five copies or three copies or whatever. And it was so cool to see not just all of you getting the book for yourself, but for a lot of people going, wow, this is an amazing gift to give to my friends and family and my loved ones and my employees or my clients or friends or whoever. And so, it’s really amazing to see just the spirit of like, hey, this Miracle Morning thing changed my life. And I want to share this new edition with other people. So, thank you for preordering the book. Thank you if you gifted the book. Everybody, I’m so appreciative of that.

 

Tomorrow is the Miracle Year Live Virtual Event. No, I’m sorry, that’s tomorrow in real time. So, for you, that would have been a week ago or six days ago. December 14th is the Miracle Year Live Virtual Event. It’s challenging sometimes, like, in my brain, recording this, going, when is this coming out? What are people going to be caring about? Like, sometimes I record a podcast and I forget, oh, wait, this is coming out like the day after Thanksgiving. And I forgot to talk about being grateful because like, today, I’m not thinking about Thanksgiving. I’m thinking about something else, right? So, anyway, that’s my own personal issue, and you should not have to deal with that and I should get better at that.

 

What are we talking about today, though? How to have your best year ever? Because I am preparing for tomorrow, the Miracle Year Live Virtual Event. And I am sure many of you, I think we have 800 people registered for that so far, so many of you listening to this may have been at that event. And I was anticipating, okay, it’s going to be December 20th when you’re listening to this podcast, or at least that’s when the podcast is being released. What’s important to talk about? And I thought, well, we’re going into the New Year. I mean, and I haven’t done, like, How to Have Your Best Year Ever, which I do that annually. Every year, I talk about how to have the best year of your life.

 

And I usually talk about it from different angles. I look at different approaches in how– because there’s a lot of ways, infinite ways you could look at how do you approach making any time frame in your life the best? How do you make it the best day, week, month, year of your life? And what I wanted to do today is as I was going into the event, preparing for the event on Thursday, and I was thinking, okay, if you were at that event, how do I make this applicable where I’m not duplicating what I talked about at that event? And then I thought about, okay, well, if you’re not at that event and you really need the best setup for next year to make this your best year, well, I don’t want to leave things out just because you might have heard them.

 

And so, here’s where I landed on what to talk about today. For the live event, a lot of what we did, I’m going to speak as if it happened because it will have happened and I know what we’re going to do. So, a lot of what we did last Thursday is it was the work. It was the reflection on 2023. It was evaluating your wheel of life and where your levels of life satisfaction are right now in 10 key areas, your finances, your career or your business, your health and fitness, your fun and recreation, your mental health and happiness, your contribution and impact, your family and friends, your partner/love, and your personal growth and your spirituality. Those 10 areas of life, evaluating where you’re at so you can get a clear picture on, okay, I’m at a 4 here, I’m at a 7 here, I’m at a 5 here. I have room to grow. Where do I want to get by the end of this year? How do I want to evolve? From what level I’m at now, where do I want to take my level of life satisfaction?

 

And then we spend time reflecting and acknowledging. I mentioned that already. We went into a lot of planning for your 2024 goals. So, then we identified your mission, anyway, on and on and on. My point is, a lot of what we did on last weeks of Live Miracle Year Event, and again, if you were there, you were part of this. If you weren’t, this is a part of the process that you want to implement in your own life. But it’s the work, it’s like the planning and the reflecting.

 

And the reason we spent a lot of time doing that during the event is because that’s the part where often that doesn’t get done. If you go to an event and have your best year ever, you might just learn about it. Like, hey, here’s what you need to do. You need to set your goals, you need to make a plan, and then you go home and you don’t carve out time to do those things, right? And then maybe, you learn about it, but you don’t actually get it done. And so, during the event, we wanted to get it done.

 

Well, the last part of the event, of the agenda is what I call assembling your tools. So, talking about the Miracle Morning, your practice for personal development, the Miracle Equation, your process for goal achievement, and the Miracle Life, your paradigm for personal fulfillment, and what I realized is that I don’t know that I’m going to be going as deep on those topics as some people might want me to. I’m looking through what we have planned and I’m thinking, man, that might be an area where people go, I wish you would have gone a little bit more in depth on how to assemble the Miracle Morning, the Miracle Equation, and the Miracle Life, how to combine those. So, that’s what I’m going to do today.

 

So, for the next, however long we go for, 20, 30, 45 minutes, I’m going to go really deep into that because I already know that I have about 20 minutes carved out to go into that during the agenda for the live event. So, there’s going to be a lot of room to go deeper to elaborate on those three tools. And so, I want to do that today so that whether you were on the live event last week or you didn’t go to the live event, I want today’s episode to really serve you. And so, we’re going to unpack these.

 

So, the Miracle Morning, again, that’s your practice for personal development, right? And many of you, if not most of you, practice some version of the Miracle morning. You might not do it perfectly. You might not do all of the SAVERS every single day and you don’t have to. In fact, last week, I interviewed– no, sorry, that will be next week. Brianna Greenspan will be on the podcast and she’s one of the original Miracle Morning practitioners. I literally taught it to her in 2008 when she was a coaching client before it was ever a book idea, and it transformed her life in a radical way.

 

She had a chronic, debilitating illness that caused her physical limitations such as fatigue and seizures, and that created limiting beliefs that says, I can’t, I won’t, I don’t want to, I’m not strong enough, I’m not capable. And now, she has multiple companies. She is the Miracle Morning Director of Education, leading the Miracle Morning into schools across the country, namely New York City, and inspiring tens of thousands of educators, principals, teachers, and students to transform their lives in the school, in the classroom setting.

 

And so, Brianna talks about how her Miracle Morning, it’s very fluid. Every day, she starts with the question, I forgot the exact question, but it’s something along the lines of what do I need today? What would best serve me today? And then she gets quiet and then she simply does the SAVERS that day that she feels intuitively that she needs to show up at her best, that would best serve her. And some days, all she does is meditate. Some days, all she does is read a book. Some days, she’ll do all six. Some days, it’ll be a six-minute SAVERS. Some days, it’ll be a 30 or 60-minute SAVERS.

 

So, the point is she’s very non-rigid, structured, and repetitive every day. Her Miracle Morning is different every single day. And so, in terms of the SAVERS, how do you apply those to serve you? And that might not be like Brianna, that might be like I do the SAVERS every single day, 30 minutes a day or 60 minutes a day in order, no matter what. I’m much more like that. I’m much more, I like to do the same things every day now. And although that’s not fully true, I don’t do all the SAVERS the way that I used to. I’m actually more like Brianna now, now that I’m saying this out loud for my identity in most areas of my life, I’ve always been very structured. Not always, but since I was in my late 20s and started the Miracle Morning.

 

But my diet is very structured. My Miracle Morning is typically structured, but much less so. It’s much more like Brianna’s now that I’m really thinking this through. It’s kind of evolved to be a little more like Brianna, where I’m not doing all six of the SAVERs in the same order every single day. I’m probably averaging four, five a day, I’m doing most of them, but they vary. If I’m tired in the morning, I’ll do exercise first. So, the point of this, though, I want to start high level and then I want to get granular. The Miracle Morning being your practice for personal development, that’s what enables you to become the person that you need to be to create the results in your life.

 

Now, the Miracle Equation, it is your process for goal achievement. Now, in case you’re not aware of the Miracle Equation, or if you are, but if, let’s say, you’re not familiar with it, it’s made up of two very simple decisions that are simple in their explanation but that are very rare in their execution. Meaning, very few people, I would argue that the world’s, the most successful, the most fulfilled, the most accomplished, like people that are performing at a very high level, they make these two decisions consistently day after day after day. In fact, it’s how they show up to their day. It’s how they show up to their goals through the things that they are committed to.

 

And these two decisions, again, simple in their explanation but very rare in their execution, they are arguably what makes or will make the difference for you or for me or for anyone in whether or not you achieve extraordinary results, a.k.a. tangible, measurable miracles, right? That’s why I call it the Miracle Equation. It’s the formula, the two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible, which is where everything exists, everything is possible, but we don’t pursue that which is possible. We only pursue that which is probable. So, these are the two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable.

 

Probable is where we go, okay, I think there’s a chance I can achieve this. There’s a probability here. I’m going to dedicate some time. I’m going to invest some energy because I believe that there’s a probability, right? Anything’s possible. But we don’t pursue that which is possible. We pursue that which is probable. And so, the probability then turns the possibility into something that you’re going to take action on. The two decisions, when you make these two decisions daily over an extended period of time, it turns the probability into an inevitability. And the two decisions are unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. The event last week, you heard that. I want to really unpack those today. And I want to go in depth on how you maintain unwavering faith because it is counterintuitive.

 

Normally, our faith wavers based on our results, right? Our faith wavers based on our results. When you have good results, you’re like, oh, yeah, I’ve got faith, I can do this. It’s going well. I’m on track. But if you’re not on track, your faith wavers, and self-doubt takes over and you go, oh, I don’t know if I can do this. I’m not super confident here. I’m not feeling it. And so, maintaining unwavering faith is crucial. And if you study the world’s most successful people, whether it’s an inventor, someone that brought a product to market, like the iPhone, or whether it’s an athlete who won a world championship and the game, the championship game, they were down in the last minute of the game and it didn’t look like there was any chance.

 

But the miracle maven, that’s what I call a person that lives the Miracle Equation, the miracle maven, someone that actually lives by these two decisions, unwavering faith, and the second is extraordinary effort. We’ll get to that in a second. But the miracle maven says, “Give me the ball. I have unwavering faith that in the last minute of this game, I can score the points that we need even though I might have missed the last six shots in a row. I’m having an off night, but I’m a miracle maven. I live by the Miracle Equation.” They might not use that language. Probably, they don’t unless they read the book, The Miracle Equation. They don’t use that language, but it’s how they operate. And that’s what the Miracle Equation is. It’s me putting language to realizing that this is what the world’s most successful people do. They maintain unwavering faith that they can achieve their goal until the last possible moment, even when it doesn’t look likely. And they put forth extraordinary effort until the last possible moment, regardless of their results along the way.

 

So, that champion, bad game, bad night, it doesn’t matter. I have unwavering faith. Put the ball in my hands. I will win the game. I can make the shot. When the rest of the team or the average person, the average player, and no offense to average, but just an observation, the average person goes, “I’m scared. I don’t.” I’m this person a lot, by the way. I’m the average person a lot, like, unwavering faith, I have to use this equation because human nature for me is fear, is oh, my gosh, it doesn’t look good. I’m not on track. I don’t…

 

I’ve had to use the Miracle Equation to battle my own human nature, my own limitations, my fears, my self-doubt, my insecurity during this book launch. In fact, I’m looking at it right now. You can’t see this because I’m not on video, but I’m holding it in my hand. It’s a full-page printout that says TMM 2.0, Miracle Equation. TMM 2.0 is shorthand for The Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition. It’s a lot to write, so I just put TMM 2.0 in my own notes. But I’ve got this sign. It’s really beautiful. It’s got great font and it’s different colors and I’ve got a emojis. TMM 2.0, Miracle Equation. It reminds me because I forget, because I’m human like you, unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort until the last moment equals NYT bestseller.

 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve done the bestseller list. Sometimes you reach your goal, sometimes you don’t. But I’m maintaining unwavering faith and I am putting forth the extraordinary effort that this is a possibility until the last possible moment, no matter what. If I hit the goal, great. If I don’t hit the goal, great. It doesn’t matter. To me, remember, the purpose of a goal is who you become. That’s a Jim Rohn philosophy that I abide by. Some goals you reach, some you don’t. But if you maintain unwavering faith and give it everything, you have extraordinary effort until the last possible moment, and you’d really give it your all to reach a goal, who you become, the mindset and the capabilities you develop from that process are invaluable. Invaluable. And you take who you become into the next goal. And if you approach every goal you set with the Miracle Equation, you consistently become a more capable version of yourself. And now, you achieve bigger goal after bigger goal after bigger goal. Or you get closer and closer and closer until you finally make the goal or the dream happen. Unwavering faith until the last possible moment.

 

An extraordinary effort, by the way, let me define that for you. It doesn’t mean that you’re a workaholic. It doesn’t mean that your whole life is out of balance and all you do is work, 60, 70, 80 hours a week. That’s not what extraordinary effort means. Extraordinary effort, I define it as consistent effort over an extended period of time. Consistent effort over an extended period of time. We are playing the long game here, right? Life is not a sprint, it is a marathon. It is a marathon.

 

My team reminded me that a lot during this book launch is, Hal, you’re hyperfocused on the book launch. But remember, the original Miracle Morning book took six years to reach your goal of reaching a million people. It was a marathon. The new edition, it’s no different. This is just a better, new and improved edition of the original book, but the mission is the same. And it’s a lifelong mission.

 

And so, extraordinary effort, again, consistent effort over an extended period of time. And remember that when you finally get to the point in your life that you’ve been working so hard for so long, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner. We think, oh, I need to get there now. I’m not where I want to be. I’ve got to get there. We feel this urgency, which is there’s a health to the urgency, but it’s not healthy to live your life in a state of feeling like you’re never good enough, far enough along where you want to be. That could be really unhealthy. And I struggle with it. You probably do too, especially with comparison, right? You look at other people, oh, man, there’s so much further along than I am. I do it all the time with people in my industry. In every way, I’m like, oh, their stuff looks better than me. Oh, their videos are so much more polished than me, oh– on and on and on.

 

Oh, they’re doing so many more social. I don’t like having to still post on social media every day, y’all. I don’t like that. It’s stressful. I just want hang out with my family. I don’t want to have to, what social media post do I have to put up? I need to do more content, right? I do it all the time. But the point is that over extraordinary effort, consistent effort over an extended period of time is you’re playing the long game. This is living your life as a whole. And yes, it’s helpful to set short-term goals, annual goals, quarterly goals, monthly targets. Get clear on what do I want to accomplish this week? What’s my number one focus for this day? Yes, that’s all important. It’s crucial. But understand that you’re playing the long game. And when you finally get to the point in your life that you’ve been working so hard for, for so long, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner.

 

And I often point back to that goal I had when I published the Miracle Morning. It was sell 1 million copies. Well, it was change 1 million lives one morning at a time. And that was to sell 1 million copies in the first year. That was my goal. And at the end of the year, you probably know the story, I sold 13,000 copies. I was 987,000 copies short of my goal, which was it discouraging? Absolutely. I’m like, oh, my gosh, I failed miserably. But I dusted myself off and I went, okay, my goal is to change 1 million lives one morning at a time. Maybe my time frame was off. Sometimes, our time frames are off. That’s usually it.

 

And that’s why I say, this makes your success inevitable. When you live by the Miracle Equation, your success is inevitable. It just might take you longer than you initially anticipated, but you eventually get there. If you live your life with these two decisions where you maintain unwavering faith and you put forth extraordinary effort over an extended period of time, that is where your success moves from, again, possible to probable to inevitable.

 

And for me, because I lived by the Miracle Equation for year one after the book was published and I didn’t even get close to my goal, year two, I was still 97% short, year three, I don’t remember the exact and, after that, I kind of lost track because I was not attached anymore. I’m like, “All right, I’m obviously not going do this in year one. Didn’t do it in year two. I’m not going to worry about doing it in a year. I’m just going to keep giving it everything I have, maintaining unwavering faith, putting forth extraordinary effort until the last possible moment, regardless of my results.”

 

And it took six years. After roughly six years, the Miracle Morning reached over a million people. And that’s when I realized, oh, when I finally got to the point in my life that I had been working so hard for, for so long, I didn’t feel inadequate. I didn’t feel like I failed. I didn’t wish that it had happened any sooner. Instead, I went, oh, it was supposed to take six years. It was almost like a little looking up at God and going, got it. I know there’s some, I don’t know the exact quote, but something along the lines of like God laughs at your time frame or whatever, and he’s got his own or something like that. I know I butchered the heck out of that one, but you get the idea, right, that like, you don’t realize how long it’s going to take or when it’s supposed to happen.

 

And there may be a bigger plan involved in place. Because here’s the thing, often for you to get to the goal that you’re reaching, you sometimes have to meet certain people along the way that are part of you reaching that goal. They’re part of the miracle. And for me, I had to meet Mike Koenigs at a mastermind dinner who then introduced me to– actually, I take it back. I had to back up. I had to meet John Lee Dumas. I forgot who introduced me to John, but somebody introduced me to John Lee Dumas, the host of Entrepreneur on Fire podcast.

 

Then John invited me to an entrepreneur dinner where I met Mike Koenigs. Then Mike Koenigs introduced me to his agent, Celeste Fine, who’s been my agent now for seven or eight years. Then we actually turned down every publishing offer that we got. None of them were the right deal. We got 13 offers, turned them all down, or maybe met with 13 publishers, got nine offers, whatever, something along those lines. And then she introduced me to the foreign rights agent at her company and that foreign rights agent got us in. Now, we’re in 30 with– no, I think it’s over 40 now, 41, 42, I’ve lost track but foreign publishers. And the Miracle Morning became the number one bestselling book in Korea and in Brazil. I couldn’t have planned that. Like, you follow? This is important. This is a really important part of this process, right?

 

The Miracle Equation, the miracle is a part of it because it happens. It’s a process of co-creation between you and God and other people. And there are resources that will come to your aid that are part of your journey that you can’t predict and you can’t foresee. There are people that will come into your life that are part of making your goals, your dreams, your miracles a reality. And you can’t plan on those people. You’ve got to focus on what you can control.

 

And for me and for many people that know the Miracle Equation that have lived this and, again, even those that don’t, but that have lived it because that’s how they show up, the world’s greatest athlete that maintains unwavering faith and put forth the extraordinary effort until the buzzer sounds and wins the game in the final seconds, they’re living the Miracle Equation. The inventor, I mentioned earlier, that brings a product to market, that gets their product denied by investor after investor that just doesn’t see the vision, but that inventor, that creator maintains unwavering faith that they’re going to find the right person at the right time. They put forth extraordinary effort, even though they face challenges and obstacles and they have to deal with their own self-doubt and their own fear and their own insecurity, but they maintain those two decisions until the timing finally, it all comes together. And their tangible, measurable miracle, they go, oh, it was supposed to take this long. I had to meet this person in year one that led to this relationship in year two that led to this opportunity in year three. And now, finally, I’m here.

 

But I want you to think about the opposite of these two decisions and this is how, and I don’t say this with judgment, again, an observation that I would imagine you could relate to and I can relate because this is my nature. Without the Miracle Equation, I don’t have unwavering faith. I live with, I’d say, consistent fear, right? What if? What if I fail? Oh, my gosh, I’m not on track. Oh, my gosh, this isn’t looking good. Oh, my gosh, I don’t feel motivated today. What if I don’t feel motivated tomorrow and the next day and the next day? How am I going to muster up the energy to do the things that I need to do to achieve my goals? My faith wavers every day, which is why I have to maintain unwavering faith. And by the way, the way I do that is with an affirmation or what I call a miracle mantra. It’s reminding myself I am committed to this outcome, no matter what, there is no other option. That’s the first step.

 

Step two, why is it a must for me? I’m committed because I’m doing it for my family, I’m doing it for my wife, my kids, me, my community. I’m doing it as an example for any human being that I ever might be able to inspire to reach their goals. I owe it to those people, my family, my friends, my community, humanity. I have a responsibility. This is my own belief. My own purpose in life is I have a responsibility to fulfill my potential, both for myself but in service of others because only when we fulfill our potential can we help other people do the same.

 

If you’ve ever seen me give my keynote speech, that’s my final slide. It shows me and my wife and our kids, Sophia and Halsten, and there’s a quote. It says, “The greatest gift we can give to those we love and those we lead is to fulfill our potential so that we can help them fulfill theirs.” I believe that wholeheartedly. And so, that’s my mission. Not my mission, my purpose in life is that, it is to achieve, to become, to fulfill everything that I possibly can, my limitless God given potential, and then pay it forward and share it with you, “Hey, this is what I’m doing. This is what worked for me. The Miracle Morning, it worked for me. I doubled my income in 2008 because of the Miracle Morning. Let me share it with you so you can change your life.” “Hey, the Miracle Equation, it’s how I’ve achieved every extraordinary goal I’ve ever set. Here’s how I did it. Here’s how it works. You can do the same.” By the way, do you see a pattern? Like, that’s my life’s work. That’s how it works.

 

Very rarely am I teaching you something. I mean, everything I do, I’ve learned and assembled all of this from other people. I didn’t invent the SAVERS. I mean, the acronym, maybe, but I didn’t invent meditation or affirmations or visualization, those aren’t new, right? But in general, for me, it’s like trying to learn as much as I can to fulfill my potential selfishly. Selfishly. First and foremost, putting my oxygen mask on first, I got to take care of myself. I got to work on myself so I can feel my potential. And then, oh, all right, I figured something out. Now, I can share this with those I love and those I lead and humanity so I can help them do the same.

 

And that’s where the Miracle Morning and the Miracle Equation were born, wanting to figure out how to do it for myself so I can help you do the same. And that first decision, and we’re going to go on the Miracle Life here in just a second. But that first decision, the Miracle Equation, unwavering faith, how do you maintain that? You have to have it in writing where you will forget. If you don’t have your miracle mantra in writing, your affirmations, affirming what you’re committed to, affirming why it’s a must for you, and affirming what you will do and when, and the reason I didn’t go on a lot of detail on that, I mean, that’s the Miracle Morning affirmations formula. That’s in the Miracle Morning book, in the new edition.

 

In the new edition, in fact, I elaborated, if you haven’t read it yet or got the book, I mean, I elaborated, I gave you templates. I walked you through how to create your Miracle Morning affirmations for every single area of your life. Number one, affirm what you’re committed to. Number two, affirm why it’s a must for you. And number three, affirm which actions you will take and when. And if you follow that affirmations formula, it reinforces your unwavering faith in your commitment to follow through, in your ability to follow through because you are committed. You know why and you know exactly what you need to do. And you repeat that to yourself every single day so that it is top of mind.

 

And the only way that you can fail, the only way you can fail to reach your goals that you are affirming, that you’re committed to is to be out of integrity. It’s either not read your affirmations or to not live in alignment with your affirmations, which is to be out of integrity. But if you want to make it easy on yourself, you simply draft the affirmations using the formula taught in the Miracle Morning book. I just gave it to you. Number one, I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. What’s the outcome you’re committed to? What’s the activity? The behavior? The process? That’s the blank. I’m committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option.

 

Number two, it’s a must for me because I’m doing it for myself for these reasons, I’m doing it for my spouse for these reasons or this reason, I’m doing it for my kids for this reason, I’m doing it for my family, my parents, whoever, my company, the people I lead, people I love. Why? What are your immediate reasons? And then, number three, in order to follow through, I will do these things at these times, right? The commitment to lose 10 pounds, I’m going to run for 20 minutes today, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or five days a week or whatever it is.

 

But that’s how you maintain unwavering faith is you recite your affirmations with conviction every single day so that you are affirming what you’re going to do, why it’s a must, and what actions you’re going to take. And that’s how you reinforce that faith. And the extraordinary effort, again, consistent effort over an extended period of time, you’re just doing the thing that you’re affirming, right? Step three is what you’re going to do and when. You’re just doing the thing. It’s that simple. And you see how you’re tying in the Miracle Morning, your affirmations, which to me are the anchor of the Miracle Morning, A for affirmations, also A for anchor. A for anchor.

 

In fact, I’m going to write that down. Give me one second. I might share that tomorrow during the event because it’s the first time I fully made that connection, A for affirmations and A for anchor. I’ve said that before that the affirmations are the anchor. Let me write that down. Okay, so you might have heard this twice. All right. So, where was I going with that?

 

All right. Let’s talk about the Miracle Life. This is not a book yet. It is a chapter in the new Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition, the new book. It is a 22-page, robust chapter. But this is the next phase in my work. This is the next book that I’ve been writing for the last two years, writing very loosely with just pages and pages of notes. And it’s all disorganized, just concept, basically.

 

What’s the Miracle Life? Well, there are three components. It’s the ABCs. I shared this on the event, but just for those listening that don’t know, I want to share these as well. The A is for accept reality exactly as it is or if you like the word life, I went back and forth in the book on how to phrase that, except in fact, in the book, I said accept life exactly as it is. What does that mean? Well, you’ve heard me talk ad nauseam about this. It’s the five-minute rule. It’s the can’t change it philosophy. It’s the idea that the source of all of our emotional pain is resistance. To the degree that we resist reality determines the degree of emotional pain that we feel. Think about it. You hit traffic, right? You go, “No, gosh, dang, I’m going to be late.” And you resist the traffic. You wish the cars would go faster. You wish you had left earlier.

 

Wishing and resistance are two sides of the same coin, wishing something were different, that can’t be different is resisting reality that causes all of your pain. How do you know that’s true? Because the guy next to you, the gal next to you in their car, they’re running late to the same meeting. They’re going to have the same consequence you do. Yet, they got the music up and they’re smiling and they’re happy, they’re singing. And you go, “Wait, why is my coworker in the car next to me, why are they happy? They’re just as late as I am. And I’m frustrated, I’m stressed out.” The difference is you’re resisting reality and they’ve chosen to accept it exactly as it is.

 

They realize, “I can’t change that I’m late. I actually left earlier, but I didn’t. I can’t change it. So, I’m stuck in this car for the next 30 minutes in traffic. I can either resist reality and make myself miserable and stressed out, probably take a few years off my life. Or I can enjoy every moment of this one life I’ve been blessed to live. I can enjoy every moment in this 30-minute car ride that I’ve been gifted.”

 

Same exact circumstance. One person resists reality and creates emotional pain for themself. The other person accepts reality exactly as it is, accepts life exactly as it is, and they’re maybe not happy that they’re late, but it’s more powerful. They’re at peace. They’re at peace with their reality because they’ve chosen to accept it. And you can make that decision every single day in the little things like traffic or the big things like a divorce or a death. I’m telling you, from my own life experience, when I was told I would never walk again, again, you probably know this, repeating myself, if you’re listening, I can’t assume that. Some people are listening to the first podcast episode they ever heard on this podcast, so welcome, because you heard it, right?

 

When I was hit head on by a drunk driver and broke 11 bones and told I would never walk again, this is when I learned this lesson or when I applied it at the most difficult time in my life. I went, “Oh, I can’t change that I was in a car accident. And if the doctors are right and I never walk again, the only logical choice I have is to accept my life exactly as it is and be at peace with it so that I can be the happiest, most grateful person that you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair.” You can apply the A in the Miracle Life formula, accept life exactly as it is to every aspect of your life to be at peace with every aspect of your life, even the most difficult.

 

And once you’re at that place of peace, you can go to the B in the ABCs of the Miracle Life. And that is be grateful for each moment. Be grateful for each moment. And by the way, you could also say be grateful for every experience, especially the difficult ones. It’s not as easy, but it’s crucial. The more difficult the experience, the more gratitude can transform that experience into something that you not only endure, but you actually enjoy, and maybe you don’t enjoy it. That might be going too far depending on the experience. But gratitude, it’s the key that unlocks the door to happiness, to joy.

 

And again, this isn’t just concepts that I’m teaching you out of a book. This is real life experience. So, when I was in the hospital with cancer, you may have seen the Miracle Morning movie. If you haven’t seen the documentary, I encourage you, you can watch it for free at MiracleMorningMovie.com. But there’s a scene in the movie where I am bawling my eyes out because the nurse stuck me in my nerve with chemotherapy on accident. She meant to inject it into my spine and she injected it into my nerve. And it caused the most painful, horrific, I can’t even describe the pain to you. For 11 consecutive days, I had the most horrific migraines I’ve ever had in my life.

 

And I asked my dad, I was probably on, I don’t know, day 2 or 3 or 4, I don’t remember the day. I don’t know if four stands out. It was four days into these migraines, round the clock. Nothing worked. OxyContin, morphine, nothing worked. And I said, “Dad,” I was bawling and I said, “Will you turn on the camera?” And he said, “Hal, why? Why do you want to record this?” I said, “Because I’ve been recording videos of my positive mindset during this cancer journey and encouraging people, but I want it captured. This is the most difficult moment of my entire cancer journey so far, and I want to capture this.” I didn’t know it would be in the movie because I didn’t even know they were making a movie at that point. Maybe we were, I don’t know. But anyway, I didn’t know this would be in the movie. I mean, I was in so much pain, I wasn’t thinking straight.

 

And I gave my dad the phone and I told how much pain I was in and I said, “This doesn’t change my mindset, my attitude that I am grateful for every moment, including this one.” And did that mean I was enjoying it? Hell, no. No, I was in so much pain, I would have given anything to stop the pain. However, I couldn’t change the pain in that moment, so resisting it only amplified the pain. You might want to write that down. Resisting your pain only amplifies your pain. That’s both physical and mental and emotional pain. So, I didn’t resist. I accepted my life. This is the moment I’m in.

 

And I chose to be grateful, as difficult as that was. And it’s not like it was gratitude that I was enjoying. I wasn’t like, “Ah, I’m grateful.” When I go to bed at night, that’s how I go to sleep every night, just drifting off, thinking about what I’m grateful for. And it feels really nice. I was in too much pain to feel nice. But the point is when you can be grateful for your challenges because you know that they make you stronger, like, the more you can endure a challenge, you can make it through, you can be at peace with it, you can find the purpose in the pain and be grateful for that purpose, be grateful that you’re having an opportunity to endure something that you’ve never endured before. Doesn’t mean you’ll want it, doesn’t mean you like it, doesn’t mean you enjoy it. But if it’s happening and you’re in the midst of it, you can either think about it, you can either just fight it, which that resistance creates, it amplifies more pain, or you can be at peace with it. You can accept it and you can choose to be grateful for this one life you’ve been blessed to live, the lessons that you’re learning, right? Every challenge is an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to become better than you’ve ever been before.

 

And so, I encourage you to apply gratitude. Again, it’s the doorway. It’s the key that unlocks the door to happiness and to joy. The more grateful you are and, by the way, I want to say that the example I just gave may not have been the best example, say, in full transparency as I’m saying it because it’s not as relatable and it’s hard to maybe understand. You go, I’m not going through physical pain every day. And some of you are, by the way. So, some of you are like, “Oh my God, okay, I’m going through, I have chronic pain, Hal, so I’m going to try applying that. Got it.”

 

For those of you that don’t, though, I just want to say this, on a daily basis, having a gratitude practice where you experience gratitude, this moment is perfect. My life might be challenging, my life situation, my bank account, my relationship, my marriage, but this moment, I can find gratitude in this moment. Y’all, my eyes are closed right now. I’m finding gratitude in this moment. And you can do the same. You can find gratitude. You can be grateful in each moment. And think of it this way. In each moment of your life that you consciously choose to be grateful and you give yourself that gift of experiencing gratitude, that’s a great moment. And in any moment where you’re not grateful, you’re complaining, you’re amplifying the negative in your life, the bad, the pain. You’re amplifying it. You can either amplify the good, which is what gratitude does. Resistance amplifies the pain. Gratitude amplifies the good. That’s it.

 

And let’s go on to the C, the C of your Miracle Life, the ABCs of the Miracle Life is to choose your optimal state of consciousness. Now, gratitude is a state of consciousness. It’s also a feeling. So, the way we’ve been talking about it for the last five minutes, being grateful for each moment is a state of consciousness. What’s the difference? Well, gratitude is an emotion. And I think I put this in the new book, if I’m not mistaken. Little G, I say gratitude with a little G is a feeling, right? Like, I feel grateful. Like, okay, I feel grateful, sure. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a very positive thing.

 

Gratitude with a big G is a state of consciousness. What’s the difference? Well, one is a temporary feeling. The other, state of consciousness, is a way of experiencing every moment of your life. Gratitude is a state of consciousness, and it’s one of many, we’re going to talk about more. But that’s the state of consciousness that I’ve been in for the last five years. And so, what that’s enabled me to do is to, when I was at my lowest point in the hospital, in tears, in pain, I was able to be in that state of consciousness that is gratitude that lends to experience each moment of my life.

 

And by the way, in the new Miracle Morning edition, which you may have already, if you don’t, you can buy it wherever books are sold. But the new edition, there is a Miracle Life affirmation. So, if you’re like, okay, the ABC is like, I’m getting this concept, but it’s kind of hard to grasp, I get it. But the new Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition, the Miracle Life affirmations are in that book, as is a link to download them so you can have them printed out. And it encapsulates in the form of an edited, fine-tuned affirmations how you can apply these ABCs to your life.

 

And here’s the last thing that I want to say, when it comes to assembling your tools, the Miracle Morning, your practice for personal development, the Miracle Equation, your process for goal achievement, and the Miracle Life, your paradigm for personal fulfillment, 2024 is coming up and it’s the next year that we’re facing, right? And here’s the thing, facing that’s weird, so next year that we’re entering into.

 

And here’s my advice for you on how you can make this the best year of your life. Do not make your criteria for this year and whether or not it’s a good or bad year based on things that are out of your control. The way you can guarantee that 2024 is the best year of your life is to set it up so that the criteria on how you judge your year is based solely on things that are in your control. So, for example, it’s not based on what happens to you. It’s based on how you show up. In fact, it’s based on three things we talked about in the Miracle Year Live Event last week. Number one is who you become. That’s the Miracle Morning enables you to do, become the best version of yourself every day, or at least a better version of who you were when you went to bed the night before by engaging in your practice for personal development.

 

The second thing you can control is how you show up every day. And by applying the Miracle Equation, unwavering faith and extraordinary effort every single day, you’re not going to be perfect. There’ll be days where you falter, of course. That’s part of the unwavering faith is that it will waver, but you bring it back by reading your affirmations every day to remind you that you have faith in what you can accomplish and that you’re committed to putting forth that consistent effort over an extended period of time so you can control who you become, you can control how you show up.

 

And then number three is the Miracle Life, gives you the ability to control what you experience by choosing to accept life exactly as it is, be grateful for each moment, and choose your optimal state of consciousness. And if you assemble these tools this year and, by the way, you don’t have to get this all right on day one, right? Give yourself a few weeks, like, okay, I’m going to really get my Miracle Morning dialed in this week, my SAVERS. Okay, great. I’m going to then really focus on that Miracle Equation.

 

And by the way, we have episodes of the podcast. If you don’t have the Miracle Equation book, you can go and, of course, you can get the book, but you can go back and listen, go to MiracleMorning.com/podcasts and search Miracle Equation. I’ve done multiple podcast episodes where I went far more in depth than I did today on the Miracle Equation. But you can apply that to your life, and then the Miracle Life so you can choose what you experience. You can choose inner freedom to be at peace with the things you can’t change, grateful for everything you have, and being in an optimal state of consciousness so that you can really enjoy this one life you’ve been blessed to live.

 

And if you apply these tools consistently, not perfectly, but consistently over an extended period of time, as in throughout 2024, I believe you have the ability, you are in control of making this the best year of your life. And you deserve nothing less and neither do the people you love and the people that you lead. So, let’s all lead by example. Let’s all show up at our best every day, become the best version of ourselves, and experience the best that our life has to offer, this one life we’ve been blessed to live. It’s a gift. It’s a miracle. Let’s enjoy it. I love you so much, and I hope you enjoy today’s episode. And I will talk to you next week.