Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. The holidays are upon us. Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago. Christmas is coming up, and even if you don’t celebrate the “holidays,” we got a new year coming up. And for 99 point something percent of the population, that’s typically a significant time where you’re reflecting on the previous 12 months you’re planning the next 12 months. And if you’re not doing those things, I’m going to invite you to consider doing those things starting during this episode. So, not waiting until January 1st to begin. And that is, I think, one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they might be thinking about the new year in December, but what often happens is we finish our current year with an arsenal of not necessarily the most productive habits, right?

So, it’s like holidays are coming up. I’m just going to cruise. I’m going to take it easy, which, by the way, I am all about cruising and taking it easy during the holidays. But I don’t think it’s an all-or-nothing pursuit, right? This isn’t a, “It’s the holidays, so I’m going to completely just overeat and overdrink and stay up really late.” Not that you can’t stay up late, but the point here is finding a bit of a balance where the premise is that if you want 2026, if you want next year to be one of, if not the best year of your life, which I can’t think of a good reason not to make every year the best year of our lives but, if that’s an aspiration for you, if it’s not, consider it. But if it is that you don’t want to wait until January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, to actually start preparing yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and logistically for your best year ever.

In fact, I could even argue that this episode is going to come out on, I think, December 17th. I can even argue like, “All right. The last 17 days have already been a sign of how you’re preparing yourself. And even if you didn’t do anything in the last 17 days that was productive, I’m sure you did. You’re a normal human being that listens to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I’m sure you’re probably working hard to finish your goals strong. But the idea is that if you want next year to be the best year of your life, I think focusing on making December the best month of your life is a high priority. And that’s always been my, I don’t know, for the last 20 years, that was a mindset shift that I think it was a mentor.

I can’t even remember who taught me this 20-some years ago, but it was, “Hey, Hal, if you want the new year, if you want the next year to be the best year of your life, you got to start acting that way in December so that you create momentum, you create confidence, you create the right mindset, you create the right habits going into the new year so that you go into the new year with momentum.” And so, actually, the best year when I was selling Cutco, which is back when I learned this, the best month of my entire Cutco career was in December of 2000, I believe. So, it was the final month of the year. Actually, I think it might have already, or might have also surpassed that in December of 2005, my last year with the company.

But the point being, my best months ever were the months of December. So, it was really hitting the ground running when the new year started. So, what does that look like logistically for you? Well, I don’t want to overwhelm you because I don’t think this is about, like I said, it’s not about an all-or-nothing pursuit either way, where it’s not about being lazy and just getting into the holiday mindset and kind of assembling this arsenal of holiday habits as I’ve called them before where you’re like, “All right, I’m going into January 1st feeling tired and bloated,” you know what I mean, versus like, “Alright, I really enjoyed the holidays. I really enjoyed time with my family. And I maintained some of my most important habits, such as The Miracle Morning, such as daily exercise, such as…”

And the Miracle Morning, what’s interesting is there are six habits in one there, right? If I were to say, if I were to separate the Miracle Morning practices, the SAVERS, if I were to say, “You maintain the habit of meditating and affirmations and visualization, and the habit of exercising and the habit of reading, and the habit of scribing,” right? That would be six really impactful habits. And the beauty of the Miracle Morning is that you’re doing all six of them, or upwards of all six of them. You might not do them all every day. I don’t do them all every day. But I do most of them. But I don’t visualize every day. That’s the only one that I don’t do every day. But the other ones, for the most part, I do most days, more often than not. But the point being that alone, the Miracle Morning is a keystone habit that stacks six really impactful habits.

So, for the rest of December, and if you’re listening to this on December 17th, the day it came out, or anytime, I mean, whenever you’re listening to this, but if you’re listening to this in December, look at how you approach the holidays, where I’ll still be doing my Miracle Morning. I’ll probably be staying up a little later to spend time with my kids and my wife. But I will still be waking up before them every day by at least an hour, if not two or three, and I will be reflecting on 2025. So, these are some of the things I’m going to invite you to consider doing here in the next week or two as you go into closing out 2025.

Reflection is the first one. I always reflect on my year, and one of the ways I do that is I just go through and I read my journal entries. That actually becomes a big part of my reading for the end of the year as I’m reading through my journal entries from the previous year. And then I often will have another piece of, like, I’ll have my journal out, and I’ll be writing things. As I’m reflecting, I’ll be proactively reflecting and going, “Okay, what are some of the things that I really did good, that I feel really good about that I want to celebrate and I want to acknowledge myself for? What are some of the things that maybe mistakes I made that I can learn from to help me make this next year the best year of my life?”

I didn’t have a perfect year. Well, spiritually, I believe every year is perfect, but that’s another conversation, another podcast episode. But how can I go into this year learning from the things that I would’ve done differently, or maybe the mistakes I made that I corrected during the year, and I want to make sure I continue those corrections, that momentum, into the new year, also reflecting on what I did well that I want to continue into the new year? So, reflection’s a big part of it. And then of course, it’s setting my goals for 2026 and planning. Now, actually, I go back and forth on this because I don’t believe there is a wrong or a right way to set goals. Now, there are such things as SMART goals, right?

Specifical. Specific, I just made up a word. Specific, measurable, actionable, (SMA) realistic, time-bound. I think that’s it, right? So, that’s your SMART goals. So, there are also different frameworks for goals, but one of my favorite ways to approach goals isn’t about the result at the end of the year. It’s really just setting a goal as a commitment to an ongoing activity. Give you an example. I used to set physical fitness goals, like I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle this year. Or if losing unwanted belly fat, you’re like, “I want to lose 10 pounds.” Great. But I stopped doing that. I just want to live healthy. So, my goals are often more about who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? What habits do I want to maintain every day?

So, one of my goals this year, though, is to write my next book, the Miracle Life. Now, that’s been on my goal list for many… I’ve been working on the book for like five years, but I’ve finally gotten clarity, and this is the first time I’m going to say this because I only got clarity the other day on this. I’ve been struggling with what the Miracle Life book is going to be. I have been very called lately towards spirituality. You may have noticed that I’ve talked about God more than normal. I did an episode a few months ago on reflecting on religion and spirituality, but I’ve been really drawn toward just exploring my spirituality and deep meditation. In fact, one of my commitments in December I’m doing a 30 for 30 where I’m spending 30 minutes in silence every day for 30 consecutive days.

I invite you to consider trying this on, and maybe you do a shorter amount, but I normally do five or 10 minutes in silence. And that’s kind of a combination of prayer and meditation. I don’t go really, really deep, though. I mean, you can only go so deep in five or 10 minutes. And so, I decided for the, literally, I think this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever spent third, and the way that I like to frame it is I’m spending 30 minutes with God, like meditation, prayer, connecting with my God, my innermost wisdom. And I do various things. I even journal during that period, where I will have a conversation in writing with God. Oh, I wish I had a journal with me. I could read what came up for me this morning when I was writing to God.

But, anyway, so I’m on this spiritual journey during the month of December, and I’m really working toward listening to my, call it your intuition. It’s that voice inside you that whispers. It’s like, “Hey, you should do this, or you shouldn’t do this.” And usually, it’s your soul. For me, it’s my soul. It’s the truest truth of my being. And very often we don’t listen to it because you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a deadline. I don’t have time for that.” I’ll give you an example. The other day, I was at the Front Row Dads live event, just a few days ago. And I found out we had pickleball. We were doing, like, they don’t tell you the agenda ahead of time. So, I found out we had a pickleball tournament, and Jon Vroman, who’s one of my closest friends, he’s the founder of Front Row Dads, we were going to be partners for the pickleball tournament.

And I was like, “Heck, yeah!” And it started at 11:00 AM. Now, I had a three-hour quarterly planning session with my team scheduled, I think, at 12:30. And so, I went, okay, so I guess I’ll play pickleball for an hour. It’ll be cutting it close. I don’t know where I’m going to fit lunch in, but I do not want to miss this opportunity to spend quality time with Jon Vroman, who I love dearly, one of my best friends, playing pickleball, something that I love to do. I love being active, and being able to do it with Jon, and doing it at the Front Row Dads live event in a tournament, where my fellow Front Row Dads brothers were all like competing with each other in friendly competition. So, I was excited.

And then I found out it was a three-hour time block that we were going to be at the pickleball facility from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. And again, my staff meeting started at 12:30. And so, I went, “Oh man, ah, I can’t let…” and I had already rescheduled the staff meeting once. I thought I can’t. And I want you to think, right, I’m telling you this story because I want you to think about in your life where this applies to you, where your soul whispers one thing, but you overwrite it with your mind, your egoic consciousness, right? So, here’s how it played out. I text Jon Vroman and Tanya, who works for Front Row Dads. I said, “Hey, you guys, I’m so sorry. Jon needs to find another partner. I already committed to this staff meeting, and I can’t let my team down.”

And I felt very conflicted about that. And I went to bed that night in the hotel, and when I woke up the next morning, this is what I find, by the way, like my soul whispers to me. Literally, it wakes me up very often. It’s a very subtle, soft whisper, but it’s usually pretty clear. And as long as I remain in silence, remain in a meditative state where I don’t let my mind overtake my consciousness, I usually get the deepest wisdom within my soul speaking to me. And so, when I woke up at 4:00 AM, just without an alarm clock in the hotel room, immediately, the message I got was, “Hal, reschedule your staff meeting. Reschedule your staff meeting. Your staff meeting could happen tomorrow or the next day or next week, but this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend quality time with your brother, your best friend, Jon Vroman, playing pickleball in the Front Row Dads once a year, once in a lifetime pickleball tournament.”

And literally, I woke up, and I grabbed my journal, and I just started like writing this out. And I call these divine downloads because it’s like I don’t think about this. It comes to me. It’s like someone telling it to me, and then I just write it down. Very often I write faster than I can even think. It’s like as fast as I can write, and I’m not thinking it. It’s just coming through me. Maybe you have this experience when you pray or when you meditate. What I wrote down in my journal I wrote down everything I just said, which is like, “Hal, cancel your meeting.” This is a message to me, literally. And I write to myself, “Hal, cancel your meeting. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” yada, yada, yada.

And then what I wrote is, “This is what your soul wants.” And it felt so real. And then I was like, “Oh, man. I sent a message on Slack to our Chief Growth Officer, Jeremy, and our Chief Operations Officer, Tiffany. I said, “Hey, team,” and I just recapped everything I just said to you. I’m like, “Hey, what came through this morning is,” and I literally wrote down my journal entry. I said, “I don’t want to let y’all down, but I really feel like this is what I’m supposed to do today. Let’s reschedule the meeting.” And they both totally got it. And actually, Tiffany responded saying, “Hal, you work so hard. I love to see you. You need to play more. I love this for you.” That’s what she said. And Tiffany’s been with me for 10 years.

So, all of that is to say one of my goals this year is, and it’s been my goal for the last few months, is to listen to my heart, to listen to my soul. I only hear it when I’m in periods of peaceful, purposeful silence. And so, for me right now, I’m spending more time in silence, 30 minutes a day minimum. Yesterday, I did 30 minutes in the morning, and then I did 30 minutes sitting outside with my shirt off so that I could get vitamin D sitting in the sunshine barefoot with my feet in the grass, so that I could ground, that I could connect with the earth, and that I could connect with my soul, through 30.

So, I did 60 minutes of silence yesterday, which by the way, I’m actually making up because the second, so funny, the second day of my 30 for 30 on December 2nd, I completely forgot because I had to leave early or something. And I realized at the end of the day, I use this little habit tracker, and I go, “Oh my gosh, I totally forgot to spend time in silence today.” And I think I did a little bit at night, but I was exhausted, and I fell asleep. So, alright. I wanted to share that anecdotal example/story of what I’m doing in December. One of the things I’m doing in December, because for me, and I mentioned the Miracle Life book that I’m writing, the spiritual journey that I’m on, I’m really trying to balance how do I make the Miracle Life a very practical book, just like the Miracle Morning is, just like the Miracle Equation is, right?

I’ve always been very careful to make every book that I write very practical, very actionable, and very results-oriented. And so, I want to make sure I do that in this next book, the Miracle Life. And the subtitle, just so you know kind of the direction, is How To Live Each Day In Alignment With What Matters Most To You. So, The Miracle Life: How To Live Each Day In Alignment With What Matters Most To You. And so, I don’t want to tell you the title of the next book, but the other day it hit me. I was working through this, and it hit me, “Hal, you have two more books to write. You’re trying to shove two different books. You’re trying to shove a deeply spiritual book into a deeply practical book. And not that there won’t be a little bit of infusion between the two, but these are two separate books.”

So, I kind of got excited, and so I’ve got The Miracle Life is the next book that I’m going to write. And the Miracle… I’m not going to say the title of the final book after that, but I’ve got a working title that came to me the other day. I’m really excited about it. And it will be a deeply spiritual book, and there’ll be a lot of spiritual undertone in The Miracle Life, but primarily a very practical, actionable book to align your life with your highest priorities so that you are truly living in alignment and you are the most fulfilled you’ve ever been. That is the Miracle Life.

Alright. Let’s close this out with some action steps for you. I could keep talking on and on and on, but I want to make sure this is as succinct as possible. So, premise of today’s episode that I want you to take away, which is what can you do each day, just one, it could be one thing, what can you do each day to be in alignment with who you need to be to make this next year the best year of your life? So, what can you do each day? What’s a practice that you can do to be the person that you want to be, that you need to be with the mindset, with the habits, the consistency, et cetera? And again, this could simply be doing your Miracle Morning each day.

And doing it with the emphasis of reflecting on, basically, on how to prepare yourself for 2026, right? Because the Miracle Morning, it can be a generic, general self-development, personal development practice to optimize your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing every day. It can be just general. But I think it’s more effective when you have a specific focus for your SAVERS, for your Miracle Morning. So, I’m inviting you to make your focus on how do I prepare to make 2026 the best year of my life. In fact, that’s the preliminary question for you to write down from this episode. How do I prepare to make 2026 the best year of my life? And this is, how do you prefer daily, and your Miracle Morning could be the answer. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just focus your SAVERS.

Focus your SAVERS on reflecting on 2025, on asking yourself what you really aspire to and desire for 2026. Spend time in silence, prayer, and meditation to really listen to your heart’s desire to get in touch with your soul, to listen to that whisper from God that’s like, “Hey, this is what you really want.” And then to make some tough decisions like I did, where I canceled a staff meeting that I had already rescheduled once, and I was worried that I was going to disappoint people. One of the books I’m reading right now is Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory. You’ve probably read it. It’s the most popular book in the world, right? And she’s like, “Hey. Like, don’t let other people’s expectations dictate how you live your life. Let them be upset. Let them be disappointed. Let them judge you, but live true to who you are.”

So, last, I’ll say it one more time. What can you do each day, what will you do each day between now and the end of the year, and beyond to set yourself up to prepare to make 2026 the best day of your life? Because you cannot wait until after the holidays. Do not choose this all-or-nothing mentality where you’re like, “I’m just going to let everything go. I’m going to let all my habits go. I’m going to stay up late, sleep in, drink, overeat, blah, blah, blah.” Like, don’t develop that arsenal of holiday habits that most people do that make them struggle to get off to a good start in the new year. Yes, enjoy all the things, stay up late, do it all, and dedicate time each day. That’s, like I said, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just dedicate time each day to preparing yourself mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually to make this new year the best year of your life, while you enjoy every moment with your loved ones during the holidays.

Alright, goal achievers. I love you so much. Thank you for listening to today’s podcast episode. If this has been impactful for you, please do me a favor. If you’ve never rated the podcast, go to iTunes and just rate the podcast. That’ll take you like probably 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes. I never ask for that, and I always forget. Every podcaster that I listen to says, “Like, subscribe, and please rate the podcast.” And so, this is probably the second time, maybe the third, this entire year that I asked you to do that. So, if you got value from today and you’re a regular listener, please do that. Please share this episode. If you think this would be impactful for somebody in your world, your spouse or your friend, or your coworker or your boss or your business partner, or whatever, share this with them.

And if not, no big deal. I don’t care. You listen. That’s why I put this on. It’s for you to listen. I hope I made an impact for you, and I hope this sets you up to finish the year strong and set yourself up with the momentum to make this new year the year that you take yourself and your life to the levels that you desire. All right, love you so much. Make it a great week. Enjoy your holidays, and I will talk to you next week.