442: My Newest Affirmations for 2022-2023

Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate you being here. And I'm going to share with you my newest affirmations today. I'm also going to talk you through what affirmations are and give you the formula to create affirmations, but then talk to you about going beyond any formula to realize the essence of an affirmation and how many different varieties you can incorporate into your affirmations. You'll find that in my affirmations that I read to you, there are quotes and there are specific actions. There are ways of thinking, there are paradigm shifts, there are breakthroughs. I've got an email from Aubrey Marcus that I typed out word for word in the middle of my affirmations. So, you're really going to get to see affirmations from many different angles, you could say. And so, if affirmations or something that you excel at or whether they are something that you struggle with, I think you're going to get a lot out of today's episode. There's a lot for you here.

 

I will say you're going to catch in the middle of me reading my affirmations. It occurs to me that I had not ever looked at my affirmations before I read the episode through the lens of, is this appropriate to share? Because sometimes in your affirmations, just like in your journal or your diary, you keep private things there that they're for you and nobody else. And so, as I'm reading, I start to realize, "Wait a minute, I didn't review these ahead of time to see if this is appropriate,” and if I should read them. But I did. They were okay. There was nothing in there that was too secretive. I just read them word for word for you and you're going to see affirmations that I personally read. You're going to hear every day that I read, that include my goals, that include God, that include financial abundance, that include overcoming fear, that include experiencing heaven on earth, that include maximizing our impact in the world. And then last but not least, I close out with an affirmation on developing a healthy ego.

 

So, again, there is a lot for you today and I hope you get a lot of value out of the podcast, and I hope it helps you to really enhance how affirmations transform your life because I do… I don't think believe is the right word, but my personal experience has been that affirmations are the most effective form of personal development that there is because you get to completely customize them to fit what you need to remember, to think about, to do in order to become the best version of yourself, create the best life you can imagine, all of the above. So, I love affirmations and I'm excited to share this with you today.

 

Before we dive into the rest of the episode, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our two sponsors, Organifi and CURED Nutrition. First and foremost, Organifi has been our sponsor for many years now. It is a line of organic superfood blends that offer plant-based nutrition with high-quality ingredients and less than 3 grams of sugar per serving. Those are all of their parameters for all of their products. And I've even used their vanilla protein powder in my smoothie for years now and I just decided to try chocolate. I don't know why. I was always a vanilla guy. I tried chocolate. I had it this morning. I had it yesterday. I threw berries in there, a little half a banana, spinach, and some other ingredients. And it was fantastic. So, if you make smoothies, I encourage you to try their chocolate and/or vanilla protein powder or if you don't make smoothies, but you want just a quick boost of energy and protein and vitamins and nutrients, any time of day, you can take a scoop of the protein powder, stir it up in a cup of water or almond milk, whatever floats your boat, and drink it down. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal and then use the code “HAL” at check out and you'll get an additional 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. And they have stuff for weight management, stuff to help with your stress and hormones, stuff to help you with fitness, detoxing, you name it. Organifi has a ton of benefits and a ton of products to help you out.

 

And then to complement Organifi, I started recently using CURED Nutrition. And CURED Nutrition, two of their products that I've been talking about on the podcast are my two favorites. Number one is Rise, which is a nootropic that you take any time of day, but I take it first thing in the morning to enhance my cognitive ability. I take it before I do my Miracle Morning and it helps me with my Miracle Morning, my meditation, I think more clearly, helps me focus, and then that leads right into my writing time. And the other product of theirs that I love is their CBN Oil. CBN Nighttime Oil is the most potent sleep supplement on the market. It contains 30 milligrams of CBD and 5 milligrams of the minor cannabinoid, CBN, which is known to have a stronger sleep support properties than CBD. Think calming for CBD and then more of a sedating effect for CBN. So, if you want to sleep well, wake up rested, check out their CBN oil. Both of those products and a lot more can be found at CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and then use the code same as Organifi, HAL, use my name, Hal, at checkout and you'll get an additional 20% off your entire order as a listener of the podcast. And between Organifi and CURED Nutrition, it helps you to really fill any holes, any gaps in your nutritional supplementation.

 

All right. Without further ado, I'm going to read to you my newest affirmations. But before we do that, I'm going to talk to you about three steps to create affirmations that will help you achieve your goals and create the results that you want in your life.

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, friends and family, fellow human beings on this journey we call life, welcome to today's podcast. We are going to talk about affirmations. I'm going to share my newest affirmations with you, and then we're going to talk about how to create your own affirmations. This is a question that I get quite a bit. In fact, we sent a survey out a long time ago. It's been probably a couple of years, but we had 3,300 responses. And one of the questions in the survey was multiple choice. It said, “Which of the SAVERS do you have the biggest challenge with or do you struggle with the most?” And number one was visualization. That was the number one. And number two was affirmations. And it was almost a tie. It was just like a close second was affirmations. And I always find that interesting because for me and this is true for everybody, I would imagine, certain SAVERS, for me, affirmations are easier than others. Whereas visualization, I'm actually part of that top percentile. That is my toughest SAVER as well. It's the one that just doesn't jive with me as much and it really takes a conscious effort to do it but affirmations I really resonate with.

 

And the other thing that sparked today's podcast was I got a text message from a gal. Now, in case you're not aware, we now have a texting platform through Community.com and I've got about 2,000 people that I text one, two, three times a week whenever the mood strikes, share an inspirational quote or a video or whatever. I actually don't have to tell you to opt-in for that. I think if you go to MiracleMorning.com, I think it pops up at some point, but I honestly don't know. I'll try to get that info for you for the future. But anyway, I was texting and this gal text back and she said, “Hal, I'm confused. I'm using the Miracle Morning app right now and I'm going through your affirmations but they don't follow the format that you taught in the Miracle Equation book on how to create affirmations.” And so, she asked if I could clear that up. And I responded back to her and she responded via voice text, which is super cool that I can do that and just text you all with a message. But I sent her a personal message and I let her know that the way that I view affirmations is that they are in their simplest form. An affirmation is simply a reminder of something that you deem important that you want to keep top of mind.

 

I'll say that again. An affirmation is something that you deem important that you want to keep top of mind. It could be a habit that you want to instill. It could be a way of thinking. It could be a way of being. It could be a really specific action. It could be a mindset, right? You remind yourself that life is perfect as it is. I can be at peace, right? That's an affirmation. So, there is no specific format that we need to adhere to. Now, in The Miracle Equation, I did share a specific format and that was really about creating affirmations that will produce tangible, measurable miracles. In other words, extraordinary results. And that affirmation formula was, step one, affirm what you are committed to. So, whether that is a goal, an outcome or an activity, a habit, an action, “I am committed to _____ no matter what. There is no other option.” So, that was step one of the affirmation formula in the Miracle Equation book. I am committed to _____ no matter what. There is no other option. And so, for me, when I was back in sales and I was trying to reach my goals, it was I'm committed to selling X amount no matter what. There's no other option. I'm going to find a way. I'm going to give it my all until the last minute, no matter what. So, that was step one.

 

Step two was to affirm why it is a must for you. Why is it deeply meaningful? What are the reasons that you're committing to that outcome no matter what, there's no other option? And I like to usually do step two in bullet points. So, when I had cancer, I'm committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids no matter what. There is no other option. That was step one, my commitment to beating cancer and living a long, healthy life with my family. Step two, affirming why it was a must for me, why it was meaningful, why it was so important. I said, “I'm committed to beating cancer for my mom.” No, wait. Where did I start? I think it's for Ursula. “I’m committed to beating cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day. I'm committed to beating cancer for Sophia and Halston because they need their daddy's love, guidance, and leadership.” I'm going off memory here. I don’t know if this is word for word but this is pretty close. I'm committed to beating cancer for my dad because he gave up everything to save me. My dad gave up his job and moved in with me to take care of me. He dropped his whole life to take care of me.

 

I said, “I'm committed to beating cancer for my mom because she doesn't deserve to lose another child.” My sister had died when I was eight, nine years old. So, my mom had lost one child and I thought, “I cannot allow her to lose another child.” And then I said, “I'm committed to beating cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life.” And last but not least, I am committed to beating cancer for the millions of people who are themselves battling cancer or some other disease and are not blessed with the knowledge and resources that I have and therefore, I'm committed to helping them in any way that I can, something like that. So, here's the point. Step two of the affirmation formula is crucial. That's the fuel that will drive you to overcome the obstacles through the roadblocks, the self-doubt, the feelings of laziness, etcetera. I’d wake up in the morning on many days when I was on chemotherapy and I would feel like crap, I would have no motivation, no energy, and then I'd read those affirmations and I'd read them with conviction. “I am committed to beating cancer and living to be hundred-plus years old no matter what. There's no other option,” with conviction.

 

I don't read them that fast. Sorry. I hate to repeat myself to you. So, I would read with conviction. I would embody it. I would feel it. I would read it and every fiber of my being, every cell in my body would embody that truth of that affirmation. And then step two, listing off all of those reasons. I'm committed to beating cancer for Ursula. I’m committed to beating cancer for my mom, my dad, my kids. That got me like as I'm saying it now, like it fuels me. I felt energized. And that step two of the affirmations formula is crucial. That's where you feel energized. And then step three, which specific actions will you take and when? Now, in the past, I've had those as four steps. I had which actions will you take as step three? And then when will you take them as step four? But I think it's a lot simpler to combine those into one step. So, which specific actions will you take and when? When I had cancer, it was I will combine the best that Western medicine has to offer in terms of chemotherapy, while combining that with doing all the research I can to find all the alternative and holistic practices that will support my healing journey while I am enduring the consequences, right?

 

Because there's a fallout from chemotherapy, most western medicine. It's poisoning your body. And a lot of people die from chemotherapy. And so, for me, I'm going to do the best of both worlds, to the best of my ability. And so, that's an example of how that formula plays out. Now, the gal that texted me, that's what she was referring to, right? She goes, “Hal, your affirmations in the Miracle Morning app,” which I'm actually going to open real quick and so I can read a few of the affirmations that she is referring to but she said, "They don't follow that.” Oh, shoot. I don't know if I can log into the app. Yep. There we go. All right. So, I’m going to give you a couple of examples of the affirmations that she is talking about. So, here we go. The first one, “I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of everything I want in my life as any other person on Earth and I will prove it today with my actions.” So, that doesn't follow that formula at all. Not where she was confused. But again, that formula is just one way to produce affirmations. It is arguably my favorite way in terms of affirmations that are designed to help you achieve a specific goal or outcome. For me, it was beating cancer. I've used that affirmation formula with back in the day when I was in sales, my sales goals. I'm committed to achieving this outcome, this specific milestone in my sales career this year. The reason that that's important to me, it's a must for me is because, number one, I want to become the person that I need to be to create everything else I want for my life. That, to me, is the ultimate purpose to do anything.

 

So, you can continue becoming the best version of yourself, the version that you need to become to create everything you want for your life now and in the future. I'm committed to achieving that goal so that I can reach the Hall of Fame with my whatever, like all the reason, so that I can provide financial security for me and at that time, it was my fiancé, Ursula, thinking back to when I had those affirmations applied to my sales goals. And of course, you can apply those to your goals as a parent or as a spouse or your health goals, any goals you have, that formula is universally applicable to those goals. Now, the affirmations that I'm reading from the Miracle Morning app, right, I just read that one. “I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of everything I want in my life as any other person on Earth, and I will prove it today with my actions.” That's not an actionable outcome necessarily. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of being. It's a way of owning your potential and your worth. And that's crucial, right? If you don't feel worthy or capable of achieving the things that you want, then you're very unlikely to pursue those things. So, for me, again, these are my personal affirmations that I put into the app. Now, there are 60 of them and I'll prep it some more in there. Those aren't the ones I'm going to read for you today.

 

Yes, I'm reading them but I actually am going to read you my latest affirmations, which is like a page-and-a-half. And that way you can see what's the latest way that I'm formulating affirmations because they actually don't follow the formula that I just shared with you. So, let's actually dive into that. But if you struggle with affirmations, if you're one of the majority of folks that struggle with affirmations, I'm actually curious, by the way, as to why you struggle with affirmations. So, I love if you want to put that in the chat, please do. Please put that in the chat, not the chat, sorry, in the comments where this podcast is located. So, this is Episode 442. If you go to HalElrod.com/442, you can leave a comment and I will always try to answer all of the comments that get left under the podcast so we can discuss. And if you have specific questions as to, "Yeah, Hal, everything you covered in that episode was great but you didn't actually address the issue that I have or the struggle that I have or where I get hung up is with this.” So, let me know that, again, HalElrod.com/442 to let me know and we can have a conversation, a text conversation.

 

All right. I'm going to read the affirmations that I have right now. These are titled My 2022 to 2023 Goals and Affirmations. That’s a big, bold heading. And by the way, I use fonts that appeal to me and colors that appeal to me. So, this either, A, might not matter to you if you're not particularly visual, if aesthetics aren't important to you. But if they are, I don't know what it is for me like I really try to get intuitive about how do these words, these fonts, these colors, these sizes, how do they impact me? And it really makes a difference in certain even emojis. I put emojis in my affirmations, certain emojis that cause me to feel a certain way or think a certain way or impact my state in a certain way. So, what's the font I use? It's called Modern Love Caps. That's for the heading of all of my affirmations, Modern Love Caps. It's on a Mac. My 2022 to 2023 Goals and Affirmations. So, it starts with a quote. And I often will start my affirmations with a quote that based on the time in my life or where my focus is, is really applicable to me. So, this quote is from Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker is a best-selling author of he was an expert in management and he wrote this quote when he was in his nineties. So, not in the 1990s, but when his age. He was somewhere in his nineties. So, he's towards the end of his life. And he wrote this.

 

“My definition of success changed a long time ago. Making a difference in a few lives is a worthy goal. Having enabled a few people to do the things they want to do, that's really what I want to be remembered for.” So, here's an example. You go, “Well, why is that in your affirmations? That's not an affirmation. It's a quote.” Well, if we go back to the definition that I shared with you for what an affirmation is, in its simplest form, the essence of an affirmation is simply a reminder of something that you deem to be important that you want to keep top of mind. I deem that quote, that mindset, that perspective that Peter Drucker adopted when he was toward the end of his life looking back and realizing that his definition of success changed. And I don't have context to know what it changed from. I'd imagine it might have been changing millions of lives like that for me before I got cancer, I really placed more value on the quantity of lives that I touched, and I was trying to change millions of lives. And that would trump what I did at home with my family. I'm almost embarrassed to say this but it's the truth. And then after cancer, my mindset shifted more along the lines of Peter's.

 

And I go, “Wow.” I had a breakthrough one day. I realized I've been valuing the quantity of people's lives that I impact above the quality of the impact I can have at home. Because the reality is I realize I can never have as deep of an impact in someone's life who reads my book or listens to my podcast than I can with the people I interact with every single day. It was a huge paradigm shift. It was eye-opening. So, when I read that from Peter Drucker, it was a great reminder, and I want to keep it top of mind. Peter said, "Making a difference in a few lives is a worthy goal. Having enabled a few people to do the things they want to do, that's really what I want to be remembered for.” And I couldn't agree more. So, that's the first part of the affirmations. It's a quote, right? So, just as an example, it's a reminder of something that I deem important that I want to keep top of mind. It doesn't follow the formula that I taught in The Miracle Equation. And then the next part of the affirmations, it's my vision for the future. So, you can picture these, each of these affirmations, the first, the heading is bold, and then there's a dash, and then the rest of it is just normal text.

 

And I use just to give you real specifics so you can visualize. I use Helvetica size 11. So, that title, by the way, Modern Love Caps, My 2022 To 2023 Goals And Affirmations, that’s size 20 and it's this really nice like kind of a not a sky blue. It's a little deeper than that. It's like a blue-gray. And then Helvetica size 11 is the rest of my affirmations. And that's it, by the way. I won't give you any more formatting updates, but just so you know. Because I know that some of us like for me it's easier when I learn from somebody that like in an area that I'm not clear on, the more specific that person can be so that I can start with that as a foundation, I find it the more helpful it is. You know, even like the Miracle Morning I say, look, do all six of the SAVERS for your first 30 days and then you can customize it as you figure out what works with you and what order you might decide, “I want to put exercise in the beginning so it wakes me up,” or you might go, “I want to put exercise at the end because I get sweaty and I want to jump in the shower.” Only through trial and error can we figure it out. So, I find that if somebody can say, "Here's exactly how I do this,” and then I can start by doing it exactly the way that they do it, and then I can evolve it over time. So, that's why I'm giving you, you know, I'm being overly specific here with telling you fonts and colors and sizes.

 

All right. So, the next part of the affirmation, the first part really, after that quote from Peter Drucker, it says in bold letters, My Vision For My Future, and here's what I wrote. “I have phenomenal relationships with Ursula, Sophia, and Halston. We are all exceptionally happy, healthy, and prosperous. My work is elevating the consciousness of humanity, and I earn significantly more money than I need and donate 10% to 50% of my income to help people who are less fortunate beginning with my family and friends.” And the next, I have a bold heading that says My Top Goals For 2022. Number one, finish editing the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition. So, I think I've mentioned that to you all but I am doing a full-blown, updated, and expanded edition of the Miracle Morning 2. I was originally going to release it on 12-12-2022 because that's the ten-year anniversary of the original book. But I'm a little behind schedule, so it might be released in early 2023, but either way, I'm working on it. That's my top goal is to finish that.

 

Number two, put systems in place to renew and nurture my relationships with my community members. This is something that I honestly feel like I have done a mediocre job at and I apologize. If you're on my email list, I apologize. I send out the weekly podcast email but I send this to everybody like, I don't know, some people might not want the podcast email, right? I need to do a better job like serving you, asking you questions. And to be fair, this is on my what I call, one of my mentors used to call his disgrace list, which is he's like, "It's the list I've had for years. It's a list of things that I could do that I should do that would be beneficial for me to do and I still haven't done.” So, it's my disgrace list and I feel like that is high on my disgrace list. But just so you know, I love you. I care. I just got to get better at that.

 

And then goal number three, relaunch the Miracle Morning Movie for free. I just realized I didn't go through and edit this. I may have to I don't know if I'm supposed to share all this. It's all very personal. I just literally opened it and started reading it and I thought, “Oh, maybe there's some of these that I should keep private.” The reason for that is that we haven't announced it yet, but we are planning on making the Miracle Morning Movie free. You know, right now it's like $10 to buy or I don't even know, 3.99 to rent or something at MiracleMorningMovie.com but we are going to make it free because I want to get it out there just like we made the Miracle Morning app free. I want to reach more people and I want to impact more people. And so, we're trying to make these resources free. Like, the original thought was if we price them really low so that pretty much anybody could afford them, then we'll be able to earn the income to keep promoting them and generating what we need to do to sustain these things. But what I realize is that even a small amount of money is a barrier for a lot of people.

 

So, now a lot of brainstorming out with our team is like, "Okay. Let's make these things free so we can get out there. They can reach more people.” And so, the movie being free is one of the goals for this year that we’re going to do some sort of launch of that before the year is over. And then top goals for 2023, relaunch the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition. Relaunch the Miracle Life, which is my next book but I'm debating, trying to figure out if I can launch it as like an email series that you get when you buy the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded Edition because I don't want to wait another year for that book to come out. Also, published the Miracle Morning for Seniors. In case you're not aware, the Miracle Morning for Seniors is a book that I am working on with Dwayne Clark. Dwayne Clark is the founder and CEO of Aegis Senior Living. He is a fan of the Miracle Morning and a practitioner of the Miracle Morning and he reached out to me through a mutual contact and said, “Hal, seniors wake up every day and for many, if not most of them, they lack a sense of purpose.” They're not usually working towards any goals and he said, “I think that the Miracle Morning could be revolutionary for the senior community,” and he is so passionate about helping seniors. That's what his whole life is dedicated to.

 

And so, yeah, so that is one of my major goals for next year is to publish that book. So, there are three books that I'm looking at for next year, The Miracle Morning Update, An Expanded Edition, The Miracle Life but maybe as a bonus delivered over emails so you'd get like all 30 chapters delivered one day at a time. I don't exactly know. These aren't promises. These are my goals that I'm working towards. I’m trying to figure out.

 

So, into the affirmations beyond the goal. So, you’ll notice, though, by the way, that you might say, well, those aren’t affirmations, Hal, those are goals. Yes, they are. They are things that I deem important that I want to keep top of mind. That’s why they are in my affirmations and that’s why the heading for my affirmations are my 2022 to 2023 goals and affirmations because they kind of go hand in hand.

 

This next one actually was the first affirmation that I wrote when I started my new affirmations. And I don’t know what inspired this, but here you go. The bold heading, and I think for a lot of you, this may resonate, some it might not, but for some you may want to model this. The bold heading is I Am Worthy of God’s Infinite Love. It says, I am whole and complete exactly as I am. My life is perfect exactly as it is. I don’t need to do anything or achieve any goals to be worthy of God’s infinite love. I was born worthy. Experiencing heaven on earth is experiencing myself as whole, complete, and perfectly loved exactly as I am. Ohhh… that’s what I do, by the way, in my affirmations when I have like an aha moment. I always put ohhh... It’s to remind me that whatever follows was an aha moment at the moment that I was writing that affirmation or in my journal or whatever.

 

So, again, just a little peek behind the curtain. I wrote, ohhh… and consider that maybe I can only experience God’s love to the degree that I’m willing to love myself because that is how I experience God’s love. So, that was the distinction I thought interesting. It was this distinction of that maybe self-love is a manifestation of God’s love, meaning that if you can’t love yourself, how can you experience somebody else loving you? And you’ve probably heard that before that in order to really experience love from any outside source, you have to be able to love yourself. Otherwise, if you can’t love yourself, you are blocking the love that might come in. In fact, I continued to write, God’s love is always flowing like a river or water out of a fire hose. I must simply remove any blockages I have and allow love to fill me up. Hopefully, that’s helpful for some of you.

 

Now, the next affirmation is Be the Most Positive Person I Know. And I have an emoji of a happy face with eyes wide open. It says, beginning with how I engage with Ursula, get back to being a beacon of love, hope, and light, illuminating for Ursula and others. What a miracle life truly is. How blessed we truly are. Focus on shining gratitude on every experience. Radiate love. Again, I did not write these for you. These weren’t to read on the podcast. These are my personal affirmations.

 

The next one is the bold heading says Financial Abundance. And by the way, I will post these in the show notes. So, if you go to HalElrod.com/442, I’ll post these affirmations in the show notes so you don’t need to write them down. Also, there’s a transcription of this episode in the show notes as well. But I’ll post just my affirmations, you can print them out if you want or download them and model them if there was anything in here that resonated with you.

 

So, the next one, the next heading is Financial Abundance. I am committed to create financial freedom for myself and my family so that we don’t ever have to worry about money and we’ll always have everything we need to thrive. And of course, I will donate at least 10% of that money to those in need. Just so you know, that’s something that for me, I had always wanted to donate money to charity. I had this ambition to donate 50% of my income. One day, I thought I’d write a book and the cover would say 1/1. It was the idea that for every dollar that you earn, you give away a dollar kind of thing. And it was this just this mindset of like, hey, if we are blessed to be born into a scenario where we have the ability to earn income and be able to provide for ourselves because not everyone is born in that scenario.

 

I mean, in fact, I think it, don’t quote me, but I think it’s the majority of the world, or at least a very significant percentage, billions of people who are born into poverty, who aren’t blessed, don’t have the fortune that you might have or I might have to provide for themselves and their family. And so, I’ve always felt as if we’re all born into this human family, that those of us that have been blessed to be able to provide for ourselves, to earn income, etc., that we don’t take that for granted and we’re not greedy and we’re not selfish, but that we give to other people.

 

And so, when I wrote the Miracle Morning, I thought, oh, here’s my opportunity. And I wrote in the beginning, I wrote the Miracle Morning mission, and I talked about how I’m giving. And back then, I was going to give away a minimum of 10% of every dollar that I earned from the Miracle Morning. And it was my accountability. Like, okay, I’m putting this out there and I have integrity, so now, I have to do it, right? No more, I was always waiting like, oh, when I have more money, we always do that. When I have more money, then I’ll donate to charity. It was no, 10%.

 

And now, whenever I get my royalties each month from the Miracle Morning, 10% goes into an account. And then whenever I’m asked to donate to a cause or whenever I find a cause that I believe in, that I want to serve, help, whatever, I donate money to that cause for whatever that’s worth. That’s why you’ve heard me mention a couple of times in here that I do remind myself that no matter how much money I earn, I’m always going to donate at least 10% and striving toward 50%. But to be in total transparency, I have not gotten to that 50% that I aspire to.

 

These next few you might resonate with if you’ve experienced any fear around money or anything like that. So, the next heading says, Our Blessed Home. I just realize how pessimistic and fearful I’ve been about our home ever since we got it. And I’ve got an emoji of that face, like it’s kind of the– I don’t even know what kind of face that is, it’s like why would you do that?

 

As a result, I’ve taken for granted how blessed we are to live here. Now that I’m conscious of this, I choose to be deeply and authentically grateful for this home and that we get to live here. Thank you, God, for blessing us with this beautiful home. Thank you, God, for enabling us to not only afford it, but to pay for it without it causing us major financial stress. I love how comfortable our home is. I love that it has everything we need. I love that it is not too big but big enough to comfortably fit us. I’m so grateful that it provides shelter for us from the elements. I feel so blessed, God, that you would bless my family with this home.

 

So, that’s just me shifting from I’ve had a lot of stress around our home for the last year since we moved in. We spent more than I– it doesn’t matter. The point is, there was stress around it, and I realized then, I go, wow, because my thought of my home has been fearful and stressful. Like, what if we can’t afford it? What if the economy crashes and I lose my income and I lose my house, again, like I did in 2008, right? That’s always this monkey on my back that the economy is going to crash and I’m going to lose my income again and I’m going to lose my house again. I have to move in with my parents again. That happened in 2008 when I was 30 years old.

 

And so, I realized because I’ve been living in fear and scarcity around our house, our home, I haven’t gotten to actually fully enjoy it. And so, I shifted my mindset from fear to gratitude, from feeling afraid of losing the home to feeling blessed that I have a home. And reading these affirmations every day, again, this keeps this top of mind, and when this anxiety or fear comes up around, my finances or the economy or the home or whatever, I’m able to remind myself and get back in that state of gratitude for my home.

 

Here’s another one that’s similar to that. And I wrote this a while back. The subject line or the heading of the affirmation, it’s Heaven on Earth. And by the way, these are all in one affirmation. I think it’s two pages long. Heaven on Earth, and I wrote down this. I’ve been allowing all of the stressful things that are going on in the world to occupy way too much real estate in my psyche, rather than focusing on optimizing my experience of life by being grateful and joyful for all of the blessings that I have.

 

And so, my reality has become one of worry and stress and fear. And thus, I’m not enjoying my one life I’ve been given like I could/should be. I am missing out on the heaven on earth that is available to me at all times. And that I wrote, well, no more. Reread the following excerpt from Aubrey Marcus’s recent email, when will you start believing and incorporate it in this affirmation to remind me that I deserve to live in a constant state of love and gratitude and joy, trusting that God will always provide for me like he always has. And here’s the email from Aubrey. So, I just wrote this word for word.

 

Another example, it’s like taking a quote from somebody that you want to keep top of mind. So, if you’re reading a book and you read a quote, you read a paragraph that it really resonates with you. You can put in your affirmation and then you can keep it top of mind and it can shift the way you think, the way you live, the way you behave, what you do, what you don’t do, etc. So, here we go from Aubrey Marcus, no matter how many impossible synchronicities have shaped my life, I still find myself lacking faith. It’s actually kind of offensive when I think about it.

 

Imagine if you were a kid and your mom made you breakfast every single morning before school, but every night before you went to sleep, you were afraid that the following day there would be no breakfast. That would be kind of offensive to your mom. And my own lack of faith is kind of offensive to God who time and time again puts me in the right circumstance to make the next most important decisions of my life. I wonder how much happier I would be if I simply just decided to trust.

 

I’ll let that sit for a second. I read that. It resonated with me. And I think it actually informed the affirmation that I wrote before that that I had titled Heaven on Earth, realizing, wow, Aubrey’s right. I’ve been allowing, I’ve been focused on the things I’m stressed about instead of the faith that I have. And by the way, I hope this helps you understand. We’re all works in progress.

 

Like, if you’ve read the Miracle Equation, it’s all about unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. Those are the two decisions that I’ve shared will move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable. And I think that even for me, when I read an author’s book, I think, wow, they’ve mastered all of this. And in some cases, that might be true. But in a lot of cases, we’re all human beings. And so, sometimes we’re totally on point with all of the philosophies and our values. And then sometimes you get pulled away from them or you forget them, which is why I have affirmations to remind me. But I just wanted to share that with unwavering faith for me is a conscious pursuit because my faith does waver. Sometimes I forget to maintain unwavering faith. But that’s the foundation, that’s my true north, unwavering faith is part of my true north. And so, I always fall back to that.

 

The next affirmation or the next part of the affirmations. It says in bold letters, No Stress, No Fear. I should never be stressed or worried about anything. I have a great life. I do great work. I help people and live my purpose of inspiring and empowering others to improve themselves and their lives. I have a great income and I have unlimited potential to make as much money as I choose. I have money saved and I always save the money I make. I have nothing to fear and I refuse to live in fear. There is nothing to ever worry about because I am 100% responsible for my life, and my future is taken care of by me.

 

So, again, if you have stress or fear in your life, you might take that affirmation. I’m going to post them at HalElrod.com/442. And also, please leave me a comment there. Let me know how this episode landed with you. Let me know if you have any questions or let me know if you have any challenges that I did not address. And I’m not done, by the way, got a couple more affirmations to read for you.

 

All right. Oh, should I read this next one to you? Okay, I’m going to read this next one to you. I’m going to read this next one. Here we go. It’s titled Maximizing My Impact, and I often will write to myself in the third person, which you’ll hear in a second, that’s how this one is written. I write myself in the third person, if I feel like this message is being given to me by higher consciousness, by God. It’s some divine inspiration where this comes to me and it’s like the message is being given to me versus me generating it.

 

And honestly, I feel like that’s most of the messages that I get. I feel like they come out of nowhere. Like, where do ideas come from? I don’t know. They can come from, I guess, divine inspiration, from higher consciousness or God, or they could come from your subconscious based on your life experience and the knowledge that you’ve consumed over the years and the combination of those two things.

 

So, Maximizing My Impact, and I wrote, Hal, seriously, stop posting anything controversial, like that post I shared on July 7^th about cancer that got a ton of negative comments. It is detrimental to my ability to help as many people as possible. That’s why Bree tells me to stay on mission. I need to listen to her, focus on inspiring people and being a bright light, constantly illuminating, a positive, empowered perspective for others during these difficult times and empowering them to share their own light.

 

So, that was a reminder for me, right? I mean, sometimes I have thoughts that are very polarizing or controversial, and sometimes I’m tempted to share them. And what I’ve realized is that my mission is not to convince anybody of any specific take on an issue, for example, and the bigger mission. And I realize if somebody has a really strong opinion about something and I share something that is polarizing or controversial and that person is offended or triggered by that, well, now, I may have damaged our relationship and I don’t have the ability then to help that person because now, they might view me as not on the same page, that sort of thing.

 

And here’s the thing. It’s really a matter of picking your battles because if I post something without a chance to have a conversation with someone, like I’m all about standing up for what you believe in, but is social media the best place to do that? I don’t know. How many people have been swayed, have had their mindset completely done a 180 on a topic that they were convicted about because of social media posts? They’re like, oh wow, I never thought of that.

 

Typically, when you post something that’s on one side of an issue that might be polarizing or controversial, you just cause the person who believes the opposite to dig their heels in. So, I’ve realized that if I want to really help people, then that should be my focus. I need to keep that my North Star, being that bright light, helping others to see the best in themselves, to become the best, etc.

 

And the last affirmation I will share with you, which I just wrote pretty recently, the title of it is Developing a Healthy Ego. And again, these are all part of the same two-page affirmation. Developing a Healthy Ego. And I have the emoji of like the brain exploding. So, that’s another emoji I use, like these emojis or when I write the word Ohhh…, or I’ll put the SOS emoji if it’s like a real, like, Hal, pay attention. So, this is the mind being blown. This means it’s a breakthrough for me. It’s a paradigm in the way that I think about something.

 

And so, Developing a Healthy Ego is the title of this particular affirmation. And here’s what I wrote, breakthrough, I’ve lived most of my adult life under the false presumption that ego is a bad thing and that we must transcend our ego. It just occurred to me that it’s not about having no ego. As I’ve mistakenly thought and lived my life accordingly, it’s about having a healthy– and the word Healthy is in capital letters, a Healthy Ego, one that is self-confident with high self-esteem and self-love, who enjoys recognition and accolades, and yet doesn’t embody any of the negative qualities of ego like arrogance, greed, or shame.

 

And a healthy ego means enjoying and celebrating my wins and accomplishments. It’s okay to feel a sense of pride as long as it is from a place of love, humility, and gratitude. But I am allowed to see myself as a badas*. That is a trait of a healthy ego. So, from now on, start studying what it means to have a healthy ego and make that one of my highest priorities. That is the last of the affirmations that I’ll be reading to you today.

 

And so, now, I’ll just unpack this a little bit and then I’ll encourage you to incorporate some of what we talked about today into your affirmations. In terms of the last one that I wrote about ego, by the way, that was a breakthrough for me because I have, when I read– I think it was Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now was the first book I read that opened my eyes to the destructive side of the ego, the dark side of the ego. And I took it too far where I went, I don’t want to have any ego. I want to be completely without ego, where I don’t need anyone’s recognition or I don’t need anyone else to validate me. I want to be totally at peace, totally, kind of whole and complete, if you will. And I don’t want to do things because I’m trying to gratify my ego.

 

And I went so far as to just completely like ego became a bad thing to me. I went too far. Ego became a bad thing to me. And it’s been that way for– I mean, I read that book like, what, 17 years ago? Something like that. And then, since then, I read a book like Living Enlightenment by Andrew Cohen. I kept reading books about the dark side of the ego if you will. I read Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy.

 

And I became really short-sighted. I became single-minded about it. And that breakthrough I had the other night when I wrote that down was– by the way, before I share that part, what this has done is I have blocked myself from feeling happy when I do something that feeds my ego. And like I said in the affirmation, like feeling proud of myself for working hard, or I would never allow myself to feel pride or even just enjoyment over my accomplishments. I went, no, I’m about serving. It’s not about me. It’s not about…

 

And so, anyway, if that’s helpful for you to realize that ego is neither good nor bad and there’s a dark side and there is a light side, and the light side is feeling great about yourself, loving yourself, feeling good when you work hard and accomplish something, even feeling proud of yourself. Not in these seven deadly sins context of pride, but just feeling like the way you would, if your child did something and they worked hard and you were proud of them and you said, I’m so proud of you. You did great. I believe that that’s a really healthy response, and we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the things we’ve done well in our life.

 

In fact, I would encourage you, this is just a side exercise, but I would encourage you to actually take the time to write down a list of all of the wins you’ve had in your life, all of your accomplishments, all of the things you’ve overcome that you’ve achieved, that you’ve learned, everything, just write down a list of all the things that you maybe didn’t give yourself credit for, but now, allow your healthy ego to surface and for you to feel really good about yourself and give yourself the credit that you finally deserve. Think about that.

 

If you were a kid and your parent never gave you credit, never acknowledged you, never celebrated you for anything that you did, how much would that hurt your self-esteem? In fact, many of us, I don’t know that this is true for me, but I’m sure for many of us, and it might be true for me, it may have been that we didn’t get the recognition from our parents, and now, we don’t know how to give it to ourselves. But you deserve it, give it to yourself. And the more you give it to yourself, the more you’re able to give it to other people, to acknowledge other people for what they did.

 

But I think a lot of us, it’s probably easier to acknowledge other people and harder to acknowledge ourselves, probably easier to celebrate other people, harder to celebrate ourselves. And then for some of us, we don’t acknowledge or celebrate anybody. And then some of us, we got this figured out already. You’re listening, you’re like, Hal, I already acknowledged the heck out of myself and said, you might be too far. You might be on the side. You might be tiptoeing into the dark side of the ego. I don’t know. Only you know that for sure.

 

So, when it comes to affirmations, you’ve gotten a variety, today, of examples starting out with the affirmations formula that I shared. Step 1, affirm what you’re committed to, no matter what, there is no other option. What’s the outcome you’re committed to? Or what’s the habit or activity? Step 1, affirm what you’re committed to.

 

Step 2, affirm why that commitment is a must for you. Why is it deeply meaningful? List out the reasons in a bullet point style, the reasons or the benefits of what will happen for you when you follow through with that commitment. And then step 3, which actions will you take and win to ensure that you follow through with achieving that commitment, making it an inevitability that it’s only a matter of time because you’re committed to do these specific things at these specific times that will move you in the direction of the outcome you’ve committed to.

 

So, that is the first formula for creating affirmations. And then we fell back to or we landed on the essence of an affirmation which you don’t have to follow any formula. It’s just a reminder of something that you deem important that you want to keep top of mind. And I shared with you some of the affirmations in the Miracle Morning app, which are all really short, one-sentence affirmations.

 

And then I just read you two pages of my affirmations that begin with a quote from Peter Drucker that had my vision for the future, my top goals for 2022, my top goals for 2023, an affirmation titled I Am Worthy of God’s Infinite Love, one titled Be the Most Positive Person I Know, one on Financial Abundance, one on Our Blessed Home, one on Heaven on Earth, one on Maximizing My Impact, and the last one on Developing a Healthy Ego.

 

So, hopefully, this was almost a masterclass in affirmations for you because now, you know that (a) there’s really not a wrong way or right way to create an affirmation as long as it is serving to remind you of something you deem important so that you can keep it top of mind and that it can help you to embody whatever it is that you’re affirming. That’s the essence. And then, of course, you can follow the formula that I shared in the beginning and that I just recapped, step 1, 2, and 3 to really create affirmations that will serve as your navigation system to achieve specific, meaningful results and outcomes in your life.

 

All right. I think that wraps it up for today. Goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning community, friends, family, I love you. I hope you’re doing well. And if you’re struggling right now, know that doing well is available to you. While we can’t always snap our fingers and shift our outer world, our circumstances, some things we have to endure, and very often, the most painful, difficult circumstances that we are enduring serve our highest good. They enable us to develop the capabilities to overcome our challenges, be better on the other side of overcoming our challenges, and then be equipped to help other people do the same. So, whether you’re struggling right now or you are thriving, let’s enjoy as many moments as we possibly can. I strive to enjoy every moment of this one life that we’ve been blessed to live. All right. Love you all. I’ll talk to you next week.