[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today we’re talking about how to optimize your Miracle Morning. Now, let me clarify what that means and who this episode is for. If you have fallen off of your Miracle Morning, if you aren’t doing it at all but you know it’s helpful, you know that when you do it, you feel better and you start your day in a peak state and you’re more effective, but you just can’t get yourself either motivated or find the time, whatever it is, if that’s you, today’s episode is for you.

If you are someone that’s a consistent Miracle Morning practitioner and you’re like, “Nah, I’m on it but it’s kind of boring like it’s become stale. How do I make it better? How do I reenergize? How do I optimize it?” it is for you. If you’re already a Miracle Morning practitioner, you’re consistent, you’re crushing it, it is for you because this will help you take it to another level. And the focus today is going to be on two things. Number one, utilizing the Miracle Morning to optimize your mental health, because that is still the number one challenge that people are facing right now.

And then number two, how do you take your Miracle Morning and not just make it a general Miracle Morning personal development practice for generic, general widespread personal development, but actually focus it on achieving your most important goal in your life, whatever that is for you, whether it’s your finances, whether it’s your relationships with your spouse, your kids, your family, friends, or whether it’s your health, whatever your most important goal is in your life that you need to improve in an area or achieve a certain result, we’re really going to focus on how to apply your Miracle Morning and each of your SAVERS to do exactly that.

Before we dive in, I want to thank our sponsors. You know, if you’ve got a busy schedule, it can be hard to get all your nutrients on the go. Even if you had the time that you needed to juice vegetables or eat massive salads, which I have every day for lunch, you might not love the taste of dark, leafy greens. And as we all know, a lack of nutrition can lead to low energy, bad moods, and all sorts of long-term issues. That’s why Organifi makes it easy to fill your life with more nutrition using delicious superfood blends.

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And then last but not least, I wanted to remind you about the Miracle Morning App. I was reading the reviews, which I always go on and I read app reviews and I read book reviews and I want to know how people are receiving what I’m putting out there. And I really liked this review from earlier this year from Carolina Mom. She said, “The app I always needed to organize my Miracle Morning. I have been doing the Miracle Morning since 2014 and when I realized there was a companion app, it made it much easier for me to stick to my Miracle Mornings routine and also inject some fresh new variety into the routine. I love the tracker that is built in to mark off each of the SAVERS. I also love the fact that there are options to complete each of the SAVERS and combos to complete your entire SAVERS routine. This is a great tool for people just getting started with the Miracle Morning, but it’s also awesome for people that have been doing the Miracle Morning for years.”

So, with that said, I encourage you if you’re not already utilizing the Miracle Morning app, download the free version and try it out. If you are using the free version, I encourage you to do a seven-day trial of the premium version and unlock over 150 guided SAVERS practices, over 500 affirmations, over 500 visualization prompts, and a lot more. You can do that in the App Store if you’re an iPhone user or the Google Play Store if you use one of those other phones. No judgment.

All right. Let’s dive in, goal achievers. How to optimize your Miracle Mornings to achieve your most important goals.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: So, we just finished a three-day live online event with the Miracle Morning Community. There were roughly 500 members of our community and, of course, many of them are listeners of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. And one of the things that we asked members of the community on the survey is, “How often do you do your Miracle Morning?” And that was one of obviously multiple questions, but that answer kind of surprised me. I would have thought probably most people do their Miracle Morning more days than not. And it was actually people said, “Man, I’ve fallen off. I’ve been struggling.”

And I was really surprised. Not pleasantly surprised but unpleasantly surprised that, “Oh, man, people are struggling to be consistent with their Miracle Morning,” and I think I take it for granted because for me that’s just like it’s a must-do for me. My life doesn’t quite work as well as it could if I’m not doing my Miracle Morning. So, today I want to do a few things. And number one, I want to address Miracle Morning as it applies to your mental health because I did a little research recently and just actually asked ChatGPT so this isn’t in-depth research, but I asked, “What are the top five challenges that people are facing right now?”

And I wasn’t surprised at the answers because they were very consistent with when we surveyed listeners of the podcast and members of the Miracle Morning community, these are the five answers that come up for you as well. And the first answer was mental health and wellbeing. The second was financial security. The third was social isolation. The fourth was work-life balance. And the fifth, I’m not looking at my notes right now. I can’t find where I wrote those down. I forgot the fifth one. But over there, mental health and well-being, financial stress, work-life balance, physical health and fitness, social isolation and loneliness. So, those are the top five answers.

And all of those answers root back to your mindset. Like everything, your mindset, my mindset, your mindset, our mindset, it’s the foundation of our quality of life. Our mindset determines our mental health. Our mindset determines how effective we are at learning, at growing, at improving, and at taking the necessary actions to optimize all of the areas listed here, right? Work-life balance. Well, if your mindset is sharp, then you can think clearly, make better decisions. If you’re not sure what to do to improve work-life balance, of course, there are countless resources out there. You could read a book on it. You could listen to a podcast on it. You could ask ChatGPT for a few tips on how to do that.

But if your mindset is poor and you’re feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, which that’s the challenge with our mental health, right? That’s the big picture is rates of anxiety, depression, and stress are at an all-time high. And whether that’s due to economic uncertainty or social isolation or work-life balance where you’re feeling stressed, right? So, all of these things affect mental health but underneath mental health is, well, what’s the mindset that you are approaching your life with? One of my favorite books that I’m reading right now, again, and it’s like I think it’s one of the best books ever written, one of the most important books written to optimize our mindset and our mental health, and that is The Gap and The Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

If you haven’t read that, it’s again, I recommend books all the time. I think I recommended three last week, but add it to your list, add it to your shopping cart, go Google Dr. Benjamin Hardy, The Gap and The Gain, and watch a YouTube video of him explaining it. But the point is, what is the point? Where was I going with that? In terms of mental health and your mindset, right, The Gap and The Gain is essentially like you’re choosing a mindset between focusing on the gap, the gap between where you are and where you wish you were, where somebody else is or where you thought you would have been at this point in your life or where you used to be and now you’re not as far along, you’ve fallen off from where you used to be.

Whenever you focus on the gap, that significantly affects our mental health and it’s detrimental to our mental health. And we feel anxious and insecure and depressed and overwhelmed and fearful. And when we live in the gap and many, if not most of us, live there including no matter how successful you become, because even as you create or achieve new levels of success, usually that gap I called it… Before The Gap and The Gain was written, by the way, I wrote an entire section in the original Miracle Morning book that published in 2012 called Gap Focus: Is it Helping You or Hurting You? And I’m not trying to take any credit. I don’t think that’s where Ben — I know Ben didn’t get the idea from that because it came from Dan Sullivan. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

But in that chapter, in that section of the book, The Gap Focus: Is It Helping You or Hurting You? as I said, look, if you’re focused on the gap between where you are and where you want to be with a positive mindset where you’re like, “Wow. Look at how much room I have to learn and grow and improve. This is exciting. Look at how big these goals are that I can achieve,” that’s a form of gap focus that is based on a positive mindset. So, again, our mindset is underneath all of this. And if you’re focused on the gap in that positive mindset where you’re excited to close that gap, to take steps forward, to learn, grow, evolve, become better, achieve more, that’s positive, right? That serves your mental health.

But for most of us, gap focus is the opposite of that. It’s the way that Ben Hardy talks about in The Gap and The Gain, which is we’re focused on the gap between where we are and some ideal that we have in our mind. And that gap between where we are and that ideal creates feelings of inadequacy and depression and stress and fear and anxiety and all of that. The gain on the other side of it, being in the gain is when you’re simply focused on the gap between not where you are and some ideal that you have of how things should be. But you’re focused on the gap between where you were and where you are and how far you’ve come and what you’ve overcome, and what you’ve learned and what you’ve accomplished along the way.

So, when you are gain-focused and not gap-focused but you’re living in the gain, you feel fulfilled. Part of being the gain is focusing on what you’re grateful for. You feel grateful. You feel accomplished. You feel a sense of self-confidence because you’re not looking, you’re not measuring yourself against this unachievable, imaginary, unrealized ideal. How things could have been, should have been, or how they should be. No, but you’re measuring what you’ve already overcome and accomplished. And in doing so, that nurtures your mental health. That’s a positive mindset.

So, where I want to take this for the rest of the episode or we’ll probably go in a few different directions, but where I really want to go with the episode is I want to share with you some specific strategies on how to utilize the Miracle Morning in a way that really serves you and the SAVERS, of course, which are the engine that drives the Miracle Morning but in a way that you might not have heard before. You might have heard before but you forgot. You’re not remembering it. It’s not top of mind. You’re not implementing it.

And that, for me, even as I spoke about this because yesterday I did an interview with Adair Cates at XCHANGE that co-hosted this live event that we ran for a community. And she interviewed me after the event for about an hour asking me kind of a bunch of advanced strategies, “What are things that you do with your Miracle Morning that maybe weren’t in the book or you don’t really talk about much or kind of that are advanced and that you’ve learned over the last 15 years?”

And here was a big one and a big one is that rather than the Miracle Morning being merely a general personal development strategy, where you wake up and you diversify your focus across many different areas of your life or just generally generically, you just meditate for the sake of meditating. And then you read affirmations that maybe they focus on many areas of your life and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’ll get back to that, and then you visualize the day, what’s going on today, and then maybe you go exercise and maybe you read a book that isn’t necessarily related to your most important goals in your life right now. It might just be a book that somebody recommended, like me, right? I’m always recommending books to you. And then you journal what you’re grateful for, right? Nothing wrong with that.

But here’s what I want to invite you to try on for the next week and ideally the next 30 days and beyond. Again, you may have heard me say this before but I would challenge you to ask and be honest, “Are you doing this?” And the idea is that rather than a general personal development practice being the Miracle Morning in the SAVERS that you really focus on one area of your life at a time and that you focus on when I say one area of your life, I think it’s even more important to call it a goal like you focus on a measurable, meaningful outcome or improvement that you want to achieve or that you want to make in your life. And you focus your SAVERS on that outcome.

And one of the answers in the top five things that people are struggling with right now, of course, is financial stress. And whether that’s due to a personal decision that you made or didn’t make, something out of your control, such as getting laid off or your industry, changing and your business suffering the consequences, or just general economic instability. It also could be rising living costs, right? There’s a lot of different factors and variables that can lend themselves to financial stress for all of us. In 2008, that’s how the Miracle Morning was born, right?

It was born because the economy had crashed. It was what’s known as the Great Recession, which is the worst recession in my lifetime, at least since I was old enough to remember. I think in the early 80s, right after I was born, when I was like two years old, that might have been. I don’t know how that compared in terms of recessions. But anyway, the 2008 Great Recession, I lost over half of my clients, half of my income. I could not pay the bills. I began living on credit cards at the time that I had the idea for the Miracle Morning. I was $52,000 in personal credit card debt, and that went from 0 to 52,000 in six months.

It was like $8,000 a month that I was putting on credit cards just to be able to survive and putting food and gas and utilities and I’m just living on credit cards because I wasn’t making enough money to pay the bills. I stopped paying my mortgage so I lost my house, right? And probably you may know the story, so I don’t want to go too in-depth but you get the idea. Like, I was in a really bad financial place. And because of that and I want to stress this, if you look at all five of these challenges, mental health and well-being, work-life balance, financial stress, physical health and fitness, social isolation and loneliness.

Because of my financial stress, my mental health and well-being, they were affected in a very detrimental way. I was very depressed and overwhelmed and scared and stressed. My work-life balance was completely out of control because I was so scared that all I did was work all the time and I didn’t work effectively. I wasn’t getting progress. I was losing more clients and losing more income but I had no work-life balance. I was totally out of balance working all the time. And when you’re in a financial deficit, when you’re financially stressed and you aren’t making enough money to pay your bills, it’s pretty normal to get out of balance and not take care of yourself, not engage socially, right, which social isolation and loneliness is another one of the five. That for me was absolutely true.

I didn’t have time to hang out with friends. I had to figure out how to make money. I didn’t have time to. The other one being health and fitness. Well, I was in the worst shape of my life because I canceled my gym membership because I couldn’t afford it. And I told myself, “I don’t have time to exercise, I have to make money and I’m going to buy the cheapest food that I possibly can because all that matters right now is making money.” So, you see how all of these are linked together. And I’m specifically focusing on the financial stress piece and how that can affect your mental health and well-being, your work-life balance, your physical health and fitness, and your social isolation and loneliness. And so, for me, in 2008, it was absolutely the truth.

Now, here’s my point. Here’s where I’m going with this. That time when I created the Miracle Morning, I had a very specific goal. I had lost over half my income and so I needed to get it back, which meant I needed to double my income as soon as possible. That was my goal. And so, my Miracle Morning wasn’t focused on spirituality and my marriage, which I was actually not married. I was engaged at the time, but my relationship and it wasn’t focused on my kids. I didn’t have kids either. So, that would make sense. But the point was my Miracle Morning wasn’t focused on eight different areas of my life. It was focused on one. It was focused on figuring out how to increase my income.

And so, the first book that I read is called Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. And that the context of that title is how to book yourself with clients so if you’re a service-based business, I was a coach at the time, I did life and business coaching, I would imagine it would apply to if you’re a real estate agent or if you own a lawn mowing business, right, where you provide a service. You don’t sell products. You sell a service that you provide for clients so you need to book yourself solid with clients. That was the context. So, I bought that book.

Well, here’s the thing. Before the Miracle Morning, my mindset was a mess. I was depressed and overwhelmed. I had lost all confidence because nothing that I was trying, none of the success things, the strategies that I had used in my previous career in sales, none of them were working. Nothing worked. I was losing money, losing clients. It was like I felt like I was in quicksand and it was so depressing. My mindset was in the gutter if you will. So, I bought the book, Book Yourself Solid, right? That was the R in SAVERS. That was my reading. Silence, the S in SAVERS, every day I would meditate to calm my nervous system, to lower my cortisol levels, physically lower my cortisol levels to lower the feelings, the experience I had in my body and in my emotions of being overwhelmed and stressed.

So, I utilize meditation to essentially improve my mindset by removing the stressors or at least minimizing the stressors that were affecting my mental health and well-being and my mindset, right? So, the meditation practice, and at the time I did not know the meditation I use today, which is Emotional Optimization Meditation, and a quick crash course on that. If you don’t know what that is, I go in-depth, of course, in the new edition of the Miracle Morning, the new book. But it’s essentially where other than calming your mind, like a mindfulness meditation, where you just observe your thoughts, you observe your feelings, the idea is to elevate your consciousness.

So, again, I’m talking about a mindfulness meditation, which is one of the most, if not the most common form of meditation. And there are many offshoots of that meditation. You can do different forms of mindfulness meditation. But the point of it is, the objective, the benefit is that you are calming your mind and your nervous system by observing it without judgment. So, you observe the thoughts, “Oh, man, there’s a stressful thought. Okay. I’m not going to resist that thought. I’m not going to create a secondary emotional response to that thought, like guilt or shame or resistance. I’m just going to be at peace with that thought as it comes up.”

So, this is what I was doing back in 2008 was a mindfulness meditation. Now, today, I combine that with emotional optimization meditation, which could be called mindset optimization meditation. In hindsight, I actually kind of wish I would have called it that in the book because the acronym is MOM. You rely on mom. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. But emotional optimization meditation is once I’ve done my mindfulness meditation for a few minutes in the morning and observed the thoughts and emotions that are coming up, and that way I’m aware of what’s going on in my mind, my body, my emotions, my consciousness.

Okay. Now, I know I have an idea of what’s naturally arising, and so I utilize emotional optimization meditation to choose, to consciously choose the optimal mental and emotional state that will best serve me right now, and right now might mean at this time in my life right now. Like, big picture right now I have been stressed so I really need to choose an emotional state of being at peace. And by the way, most of us are chasing happiness but I’m going to invite you to consider a maybe more effective state is just being neutral, just being at peace. Trying to go from depressed to happy is a further jump than depressed to at peace. And once you nurture an emotional state of being calm and at peace, you cultivate that state of inner peace from that place.

Once you have that foundation laid, which isn’t from one day, it’s like you go to the gym, not one day to get in shape. You’ve got to keep exercising day after day after day, and gradually you see significant improvement and growth and change in your physical body. Well, same thing in your mental, emotional, and spiritual body from a daily mindfulness meditation practice. And then moving into that emotional optimization meditation is now you’re going from, “Okay. I’m observing my thoughts to I’m going to choose the state that would best serve me today and then I’m going to cultivate that state.” So, in 2008, I was primarily using… I was using probably a little bit of that without having a name for it but it was mostly just calming my nervous system with a mindfulness meditation.

So, the point is, as I’m reading this book, Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port, if I’m reading that book from a gap mindset from, “I’m not enough. I’m not capable enough. I’m not as talented as these people in my industry. I’m failing. I’m struggling. The things I’ve tried haven’t worked,” if that’s the mindset that I approached to what I learned in that book, I would have come from a place of fear, inadequacy, and a lack of self-confidence. And I would likely not have been very effective in implementing what I learned. So, I utilized my Silence practice every day, my meditation, to start to optimize my mindset.

Now, the second of the SAVERS, of course, is affirmations. Now, affirmations for me are the most effective form of personal development, of the most effective practice in the SAVERS. And why is that? Because affirmations allow you in writing, to articulate, specifically, the thoughts, the beliefs, and the actions that you need to embody in order to move your life forward. So, now, the formula that I use for affirmations is step one, affirming what you’re committed to. So, I was committed to doubling my income. That was step one. I wanted to go beyond that, because doubling my income just got me back to where I was before the economy crashed, but that was like, okay, let’s get back there so that I can get my head above water and pay my bills. And then I can look at the goals that I had before the economy crash of like, I want to actually grow my business and start other businesses and so on and so forth, and increase my income. It’s like right now, I just want to get back to where I started.

So, I was committed. Step one in the affirmations, affirm what you’re committed to. Step two, affirm why it’s a must for you. What are the reasons, the meaningful, crucial, important reasons and benefits? That step two is you’re affirming why you’re willing to do whatever it takes, so that on the days that you don’t feel motivated, which in 2008, other than my Miracle Morning, my day to day was so stressful because I just felt, like I said, I was in quicksand, sinking and not growing. And so, the affirmations reminded me of what I was committed to, why it was a must.

And then step three, affirming which actions you’re going to take and when you’re going to take them. For me, it was reading Book Yourself Solid and then scheduling time throughout the week to implement everything I was learning. And how often do we fail to do that? How often do we read a book, but we don’t schedule time to implement the lessons? We just read the book and we mark it up and we intend, we have great intentions that one day, one day, I’m going to do all this, right? I’m learning all this, and this is great. This is going to change my life or my business or my marriage.

But if we don’t schedule time to implement what we’re reading, then the odds are we won’t implement it. We’ll just close the book. All that wisdom and those strategies that could have transformed our lives will stay safe and tucked within that book. So, for me, it was scheduling time. That was the third step in the affirmations is I will read this book and I will schedule time to implement it.

And it was like one hour a day, I think, five days a week. I don’t remember. It’s been 15 years, 16 years. But I think that was what my commitment was, is like, I’m going to schedule an hour a day, five days a week to implement what I’m learning in this book. And then, by the way, the book that soon followed that was called Multiple Streams of Coaching Income. And that led to me launching a group coaching program that more than doubled my income after I had already doubled it. So, I mean, it was totally transformative.

But the point is, it was using my SAVERS. Now, the V, of course, in SAVERS is for visualization, and that’s where I want to sequence these together for you. Visualization is where you mentally rehearse yourself doing the thing that you need to do today to move toward your goals that you just affirmed. So, you affirm what you’re committed to and why, you utilize silence to get into an optimal mental and emotional state to be able to feel confident and motivated and compelled.

And this is gradual. It’s not like on day one, you go from I’ve been feeling, like for me at that time, I had been depressed for six months. I had felt inadequate for six months, incapable for at least a few months, and increasingly so as time went on. And the things I tried were not working. And so, when I started my Miracle Morning, I was excited on day one, but I still had to combat a lot of negative self-talk and a lot of limiting beliefs, as you and most of us, that’s part of the process is we’ve got to overcome years or decades or a lifetime of negative self-talk, limiting beliefs. We all have them. Even if you are a world champion athlete, you still have negative self-talk and limiting beliefs that you have to com– I don’t want to say combat, you could say that, but to overcome, to contend with, to work with, right?

I think that it’s important that you don’t look at them as these enemies, but hey, these are just part of who I am. They try to keep me safe. I’m not going to judge them. That’s a big part of that mindfulness meditations. I’m not judging my negative self-talk. I’m not judging my limiting beliefs. Now, evaluate them. And words are an interesting thing because somebody can say, no, you’ve got to judge them because you’ve got to make– no, evaluate them. That’s a better word, in my opinion. Evaluate your negative self-talk, and if it is impacting your actions or your lack thereof.

So, in that mindfulness meditation, I would get myself into a better mental and emotional state. And then I would visualize myself, I would mentally rehearse myself doing the things that in step three of my affirmations, you’re following along, right? Step three is affirming which actions you will take and when you will take them. And then when I get to my V, I’m visualizing myself taking those actions while utilizing my affirmations to get myself in a peak mental and emotional state, which I’ve just done during my silence. Like, I’m trying to connect these to you, so you see how they all kind of sequence together.

And that’s why you don’t have to do them necessarily in the order of S-A-V-E-R-S, and on certain days, that is how I do them. In fact, more often than not, I start the day with meditation, but some days, I’ll pull out my affirmations to get clear on what I’m working towards so that when I ask myself what would be the optimal mental and emotional state for me to be in right now, right before I meditate, in that state, I’ve utilized my affirmations to inform what I’m trying to accomplish in my life, the one most important thing, so that my emotional optimization meditation, it’s purposeful. It’s like, oh, yeah, well, this is the state I need to be in because this is what I’m trying to accomplish right now.

And then I move into visualization, which is visualizing myself in that state, mentally rehearsing, doing the thing I need to do today. And the example I usually give is when I was training for an ultramarathon, which was 2009, I think, yeah, 2009, I would affirm that I was committed to running the marathon, why it was a must for me, and which actions I was going to take, which by the way, the actions I was going to take, in fact, I’ll tell you the affirmation right now, I am committed to running 52 consecutive miles on October 29, 2009, no matter what, there is no other option. That’s step one.

Step two, this is a must for me because training for this marathon, this ultramarathon, and completing it will enable me to develop the mindset and the behaviors that will then enable me to achieve anything that I want in my life, right? So, for me, I believe that the marathon wasn’t just about the marathon, it was about becoming the person I needed to be developing the mindset and the qualities. I thought if I could go from hating running and never running in my life to training and running 52 miles consecutively, I could do anything. That was my belief and that was my why. And the second why is I was raising money for the Front Row Foundation charity.

And then step three, affirming which actions you’ll take and win in order to follow through with my commitment. I will read The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer. That’s the book that I was reading to figure out how to train for this marathon. I will read The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer and I will follow the training plan to a tee every day whether I feel like it or not. So, that’s a real-life example of how my goal of running 52 miles, and you’re going to apply it to any goal, of course. I focused my affirmations on that goal. And this, by the way, was a year after I started the Miracle Morning, doubled my income, just to put it in the timeline in perspective. It was a year after I started Miracle Morning, and my income was in a great place.

And now, I was like, wow, I’m going to set a huge goal. It’s to do this thing I’ve never done before, run this marathon. And so, I was reading a book, my R. I would meditate in a state of confidence that at that time was probably more of a general meditation, it was like, but I would utilize my visualization to mentally rehearse going for a run each day, which I didn’t like doing. I wasn’t a runner. But I would visualize going for a run and get myself into a peak mental and emotional state. And when I would see myself getting dressed to my running clothes and heading out the front door, as I imagined opening the front door and looking at the sidewalk, I would recite my affirmations during my visualization one more time.

As I had my eyes closed, I pictured the sidewalk and I would smile and take a deep breath and I would say, I am committed to running 52 miles on October 29, 2009, no matter what, there is no other option. This is a must for me because it will enable me to become the person that I need to be to create everything else I want for my life. And in order to do that, I will follow The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer to a tee whether I feel like it or not. I’m speaking it faster now. And I would then visualize going for that run.

What’s the power of that? The power is I’m mentally rehearsing something that I don’t particularly enjoy doing. In fact, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do it. And so, I want you to think of what does this apply to in your life. What are the actions that maybe you’re paralyzed by fear right now, right? We’re talking mindset. We’re talking mental health. We’re talking financial stress. Like, we’re kind of combining all of these, plus work-life balance, physical health, and social isolation are kind of on the fringe of today’s episode.

But what are the things that you need to do? And maybe it is your Miracle Morning, by the way. Maybe just literally, you’re like, if I just got back to Miracle Morning, like I’ve fallen off of it, if I just got back to it, that would be a foundational daily practice that would help me optimize my mindset, nurture my mental health and well-being, and clarify the actions and affirm the actions and visualize, mentally rehearse the actions in a peak mental and emotional state, and read the books that would teach me what I needed to do to improve this area of my life. So, maybe the Miracle Morning is that thing for you. For me, it’s foundational. It’s like without my Miracle Morning, I don’t optimize my mindset in the morning and then I end up reactive throughout the day versus creative and proactive first thing in the morning.

So, what are the actions for you based on the most important or an important? The word most sometimes creates a lot of pressure. Like, what is the most important? I mean, yeah, my finances are not in a good place, but I have kids, so I can’t say my finances are the most important, right? So, an important area, an area of your life that you really feel like it needs help, it needs attention, it needs improvement. It could be your marriage. It could be as a parent. I drove my daughter to school this morning. Oh, she just texted me. What did she say?

Anyway, Tiffany on my team sent me a song called– where is It? It’s by Darius Rucker called It Won’t Be Like This For Long. And he basically talks about his daughter being a newborn. And it won’t be like this for long. She’s crying and keeping up all night. And then she goes to school and doesn’t want to get dropped off. And he says it won’t be like this for long. And then eventually, now, she’s in high school and she doesn’t want to hang out with him anymore. And then she leaves the house. And I was literally crying this morning. It was really emotional. Why did I bring that up? Oh, there’s something I was tying that into. Forgive me, I forgot. All right, let’s keep going.

So, the E, of course, in SAVERS is for exercise. And that’s not necessarily related to achieving your most important goal unless you’re talking about your fitness goals. Now, it is related in terms of when you exercise consistently, not only does it, do you feel good, right? You feel good physically because you’re moving your body. You are exercising. You are getting blood and oxygen throughout your entire body, including to your brain, which gives you more mental clarity. So, when I say it’s not related specifically to a goal, what I meant is like, you don’t make more money directly because you exercise, but you make more money because you exercise because it improves your mindset, it improves your physical energy level. You have more mental clarity. You think better and you’re more effective for everything else that you do.

Then, of course, the R, reading, we already talked about, reading a book on the area of your life that you want to focus on and improve right now more than anything else. And then the final S in SAVERS for scribing and writing down of my to-do list today. Look at your to-do list as you’re transitioning from your Miracle Morning until your work day. Look at your to-do list and go, okay, I’ve got 20 things on this to-do list. And human nature is to gravitate towards the easy things on the to-do list, checking off the boxes of why I answered my emails, I responded to those text messages, I straightened up my office, I read. It’s really low-value tasks that trick you into thinking you’re being productive when you’re really just being busy, but they’re really low on the totem pole of high-value tasks.

And so, I look at my to-do list and I go, what’s the number one thing that I could do today that would move my income? Or that was in 2008, depending on what area of my life I’m focused on that would allow me to achieve that goal, that outcome. What’s the number one thing that I can do today that will make the biggest impact? And it’s usually the scariest thing, the most out-of-your-comfort zone thing. But if you commit to that first every day, and then I usually pick my top three, okay? What’s the second most important high-value task?

And there are some days, by the way, where I have to get other things done that might not be high on the list. But if you can 80/20 it, where 80% of the time, more often than not, by the way, that’s four out of five days a week. If four out of five days a week, you are doing your highest priority task, first, you’re going to see radical improvement in your productivity. In fact, if right now you’re not doing it at all, you’re putting it off at all, let’s start with one day a week. If one day a week, you can focus on your highest priority task that will move the needle in your business or your life or your work or whatever area of health, whatever area of life matters most, one day a week. It’s always important to take baby steps. So, I don’t want to take you from 0 to 4 days a week, maybe at 0 to 1 or 0 to 1 hour, but the point being that you’re using your scribing practice to simply clarify your priorities in writing so that you can increase your productivity.

And here’s the thing. All of these SAVERS together improve your mental health. When you are on point with your SAVERS, it improves your mental health. You optimize your mindset every day and you nurture your mental health and well-being. And so, for me, in 2008, by focusing all six SAVERS on increasing my income, I don’t really know any better, right? I just created this practice and I’m like, I just got to make more money right now. So, that’s what I’m going to focus all of my energy onto. And I think these six practices will help me to become the person that I need to be quickly to increase my income and create the life that I want.

And within two months, at the height of the Great Recession, I doubled my income. And that’s an important timeframe to understand because we’re in that again right now. And that’s creating a lot of this economic uncertainty for us as individuals and collectively. But if I did it, you can do it. If I was at rock bottom in 2008 and I was depressed and scared and in the worst shape of my life, physically, not exercising, I wasn’t reading, I wasn’t growing, I wasn’t doing anything, I was working ineffectively all day long until I could not stare at my computer screen anymore, which was usually around 8 or 9 o’clock at night. I’d work from morning till night ineffectively. I was probably mostly just answering emails and bouncing around and again, being busy but not productive. That’s when it started.

And then with the Miracle Morning, within two months of starting my day with these six practices, but not generically focused, focused on a single outcome of doubling my income, it happened in two months. And then a year later, I focused my Miracle Morning on running an ultramarathon, and I was able to do that. And then seven years ago, I focused my Miracle Morning SAVERS on beating cancer, all six of them. And within two months, I was in remission for a cancer that I had 20% survival rate.

So, my point in all of this, and there’s a few different points, but I want to, if you are not doing the Miracle Morning, if you’ve fallen off, like many people I mentioned in the beginning when we surveyed our community, I was unpleasantly surprised that, oh, wow, a lot of people are struggling to be consistent with their Miracle Morning. They’re not doing it anymore at all. They’ve fallen off completely. They want to get back on or they’re inconsistent or whatever it is. I want you to consider that when your Miracle Morning is not generically focused on just a general personal development practice morning routine, when it’s not just generally focused, but it is targeted, these six practices are all pointing toward your most important goal in your life that matters to you and would mean the most to you and would improve your quality of life more than anything else.

And there’s probably more than one area of life that’s important to you. But if you ever heard me tell the story and I won’t go deep into this, but in 2005, when I focused on my number one goal being my goal with my sales goal at Cutco by focusing all my energy on that number one goal, and then all the leftover energy went into writing my first book, getting in the best shape of my life, meeting my future wife, launching my speaking career, every single one of the goals happened, but it was because I was really clear on my highest priority. And by doing that, that forced me to be really disciplined and organized and consistent because that’s what I had to be to achieve that one primary goal.

And because I was being those characteristics of disciplined, consistent, motivated, self-accountable, all of those characteristics, they spilled over to the other areas of life, right? I think, actually, I don’t know if I agree with this quote, but there’s a quote. It says something like, if you want something done, give it to a busy person, right? Now, depending on the context of how you take that, the idea is that if someone is busy, like they’re always getting things done, then give it something to them and they’ll find a way to get it done because of the characteristics that they have. So, again, busy in a negative connotation, we’re talking about being productive. So, I guess that’s a much better way of saying it. If you want something done, give it to a productive person, not a busy person. Give it to a productive person, meaning someone that knows how to prioritize the things in their life that matter most and direct their energy toward the highest, most valuable outcomes that they have predetermined mean the most to them.

And so, utilizing your Miracle Morning SAVERS toward a specific, predetermined, valuable outcome, whether it’s doubling your income or running a marathon or beating cancer or writing a book or being a better parent or saving your marriage, whatever it is for you, whatever it is for you, by focusing your SAVERS on that one practice or that one goal, not only does it help you achieve it, it’s going to improve your mental health and well-being because you are going to feel clarity. You’re going to feel like you have a purpose. If you’re focused on eight different things at once and you’re trying to apply your Miracle Morning to all eight or generally, just to do a Miracle Morning for the sake of doing it and maybe feeling better or whatever, then you’re going to feel most likely overwhelmed and unclear and like you have lack of direction and lack of purpose.

So, focusing on this one area will not only help you achieve in that area, but on a day-to-day basis before you get there, before you achieve the goal, it’s going to immediately improve your mindset, which is the underlying determining factor on all of the decisions that you make that will improve your mental health and well-being, your work-life balance, your financial stress, your physical health and fitness, and your social isolation and loneliness. So, in conclusion, I’m inviting you to choose one area of your life. And this is an invitation that I’m sure I’ve given you in the past, but we need to be reminded of the things that are important, that are valuable.

So, choose one area of your life, and then take tomorrow or today. You could do it at some point today. I would just say take tomorrow’s Miracle Morning, but you’re probably better off to actually put some energy and thought into this today, like for at least 30 minutes, right? And think about, okay, what’s the one area of my life right now that if I focus on improving that one area, it would require me to develop the qualities and characteristics, the mindset, the behaviors that are necessary to achieve not only that goal, but all of my goals? So, what’s the one goal that I’m going to focus my SAVERS on?

And then I want you to find a book on that topic. I mean, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a podcast. I personally think having a book, having something in writing that you can underline and you can read and you can take notes on and you can write, like you can revisit, you can go back to is invaluable. Can you learn something from a video or an audio? Absolutely. Is it as easy to note what you want to remember and revisit it? Unless you’re taking notes while you’re watching or listening, not so much. So, for me, a book is much more solidified and effective because it’s in writing.

So, choose a book that will help you in that one area and then ask yourself, just go one by one, grab a piece of paper, your computer, and ask yourself, how can I apply each of the SAVERS to this one area of my life? For silence, what’s the optimal mental and emotional state that you need to be in to effectively move forward in that area of your life? What are the affirmations? Step one, affirming what you’re committed to. Step two, affirming why it is a must for you. What are the reasons? Step three, affirming which actions you will take and when, applying that affirmations formula to that one area of your life. And then visualizing yourself, doing the thing.

Remember, sequence these together. Use silence to get in an optimal emotional state. Use affirmations to clarify your priorities and what you’re committed to and what you need to do. Visualize yourself doing those things while you revisit that optimal state that you generated during your silence. Then go do some exercises to get yourself in a peak physical, mental, and emotional state that exercise provides. Read the book that gives you the strategies to improve that area of your life and then pull out your pen and scribe your highest priorities today, the most important thing you need to do today, your number one needle mover that will move you in the direction of the thing that you just dedicated your Miracle Morning to.

With that, I hope you are re-energized, recommitted, and I encourage you to do this for the next 30 days. Commit to a 30-day challenge based on that number one goal that you are directing your SAVERS around. And it doesn’t mean you neglect your other goals. It means that you get to them after you have followed through with (a) your Miracle Morning and SAVERS, and then (b) the actions that you need to take that you’ve just affirmed to move yourself forward toward your most important goal. And then the leftover time is when you work on the other goals in your life.

All right, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, friends, I love you. I hope that was helpful for you. It was helpful for me. I’m like, all right, I got to go walk my talk. I’m going to go make sure that I’m doing this because I do it generally, but like all of us, I fall off track. I get distracted. I pick up a new book, and now, I’m not reading the one book that I needed to read. And so, yeah, so this is a good reminder for me as well. All right, again, I love you and I will talk to you next week.

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