[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today we are talking about reclaiming who you truly are. In fact, we’re going far beyond talking about it and I’m giving you two very specific journaling exercises. And I’m going to start by reading to you in the podcast. I’m going to read to you two of my journal entries, and then I’m going to invite you to model these entries. One of the entries is journaling the challenges that you are facing right now, being extremely honest with yourself about the mental, emotional, relational, financial, physical challenges. I’m going to walk you through tapping into the courage within you to be brutally honest with yourself in a way that might be uncomfortable but can be absolutely liberating.

And then the second journal entry is really in alignment with the title of the podcast, Reclaiming Who You Truly Are, because I’m going to invite you after I read an example of how I did this, invite you to reflect on you when you’ve been at your absolute best, and I’m going to encourage you to write this letter to yourself, this journal entry in the third person from someone who loves you, who cares about you. It could be God, it could be your parent, it could be a friend. It could even be if you don’t have anybody in your life that you feel like sees the best in you, it can just be the best version of you encouraging you to consider all that you’ve overcome and accomplished in your life and remind you of who you truly are.

Now, this is an episode to do while you are seated and with a journal in hand. So, ideally, you can pause the podcast as I walk you through these two journaling exercises. I break them down very specifically and give you a lot of examples. So, if you’re driving while you’re listening to this, that’s okay but it’s not going to be nearly as valuable if you’re not able to actually do the two journaling exercises. So, I encourage you to either listen to this while you’re seated and have a journal in hand or if you’re driving, just plan on being able to go back and listen to this while you can sit down and write in your journal.

All right. Before we start the podcast, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our two sponsors for bringing you this show today. The first is the Miracle Morning App. I’m going to read you a quick review written by Sarah Mestiri on July 25th. And this is in the Google Play Store. Of course, the app is available on the iPhone and also on the Android platform. Sarah says, “I love this App! I started doing the Miracle Morning about a year ago – before this app launched – and then stopped. When I heard about the app in the end of 2021, I thought this is my opportunity to get back on track, downloaded it and started my 1st 30 days challenge.

Since then, it helped me to stay consistent and progress. I love the videos and the new features added recently like Hal’s affirmations, timers, etcetera. Highly recommend it! Don’t lose a minute and go for it.” If you don’t have the Miracle Morning app yet, you can download it for free. If you have the free version and you want to try the premium version that unlocks hundreds of affirmations, hundreds of visualizations, hundreds of journaling prompts, and hundreds of guided SAVERS tracks, you can do a seven-day free trial within the free app and try the premium version for yourself.

Next, last but not least, your body is an amazing organic machine. It turns food into energy, heals wounds, supports your consciousness, and so much more but it needs the right fuel and signals to function at its best. Some of those signals include adaptogens. These are compounds that balance hormones and help you deal with the stress in a healthier way. If you’re feeling tired, these compounds give you a boost of energy. If you’re stressed, they help you return to a natural state of calm. They literally help you adapt to the stress of life. My favorite source of adaptogens, of course, is Organifi.

They create these delicious superfood blends that mix easily with water. They make it easy for me to get more adaptogens in my day like cordyceps, Reishi mushrooms, rhodiola, and more. If you’re looking for an easy way to support your amazing body, I highly recommend trying Organifi. Just head over to Organifi.com/Hal. That is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com forward slash H-A-L and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. That’s Organifi.com/Hal to boost your body and give it the adaptogens that it needs to adapt to this crazy life that we are living.

All right. Without further ado, let’s do it. Grab your journal. We’re going to talk about reclaiming who you truly are and getting in touch with the best version of you so you can bring that into your life every single day.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: So, I’m going to read you a couple of journal entries that I wrote to myself without any intention of ever sharing it with anyone else. But, hey, why not? And these are pretty vulnerable. One is kind of a struggle that I was going through and the other one is a very, it’s a note to self, reminding me who I am and what I’m capable of. And the purpose of me reading these is to help you to reclaim who you truly are, meaning who you truly are I would argue is limitless, is worthy, is extraordinary, is highly capable, is brilliant in your own way. And we tend to build up a story of who we are based on all that life throws at us, all of the challenges and setbacks and the failures, and what other people tell us we are, right?

You might have somebody close to you who says, “You’re a jerk. You don’t care about me. You’re selfish. You’re inattentive to my feelings.” And no, my wife does not say those things to me. Well, actually, I’m sure she probably has at one time or another, but that’s not where that was coming from. Just in general, right? Like, people say, “You know, you’re stupid. You’re this. You’re that.” I know that even my kids, my daughter who’s 15, when she’s not in a good mood, she’ll say things that I would never in a million years imagine she’d say, right? And just being honest with how she’s feeling.

And she told me once, “Dad, if you don’t stop nagging me and trying to micromanage me, when I turn 18, I’m going to leave and I’m going to never come back.” That’s probably four months ago, I’m guessing. And that was painful. That was painful. I had to talk myself off the ledge and be like, “All right. She doesn’t like that’s not necessarily true. She’s just really hurt and emotional.” But also I did not dismiss it. I really looked in the mirror. I really became introspective and went, “Hm, is what she’s saying, could there be truth? Am I micromanaging her? Am I being too strict? Am I acting in a way that is damaging our relationship?” I don’t ever want to dismiss that like, “Oh, she didn’t mean that.” Maybe she did. Maybe even if a little bit of her meant it and if I don’t make some adjustments, that could grow into resentment like major, major resentment.

So, anyway, not to go too far on that tangent, the point being who we truly are, we become jaded and it becomes discolored and we live into a story about who we are that may not serve us. And so, I’m going to invite you to reclaim the best version of yourself, the best version of yourself because, see, many of us think we’re on this trajectory, this upward path where we’re getting better and better and better every day, that we are continuously learning and growing and evolving. And while I’d say that’s the ideal, right, as an idealist, I’m like, “Yeah. I’m ideally growing, learning, improving, getting better and better every day.”

But there are absolutely times in my life where I take two steps forward and then I take a step or two or maybe even three or four backward and I regress. You ever felt that way? Like, “Man, I used to be so much better. I used to be smarter, I used to be faster.” Especially with aging, I used to have more energy or I used to be physically stronger. And the older I get, I wake up in the morning and I’m sore. And you ever thrown your back out just because like you moved the wrong way in bed, right? My wife is almost 40. I’m 45. And, well, she’s like, “Oh, my God, I just threw my back out.” I’m like, “Yeah, me too. You know, I stretched the wrong way.”

So, the point is that growth is not where it’s this always, always forward trajectory. Sometimes you go backwards and you regress. And so, I’m going to start by reading this journal entry. This was actually written on September 11, 2023. I don’t know if there’s any significance for me personally for that date, why it was this day that I wrote this letter. It just happened to be what I wrote in my journal. But I’m going to read this to you word for word. I’m not going to edit it and I’m going to read it top to bottom. And it’s not that long. It’s like a page and a half on a small journal-sized paper. So, I’m going to read this and as I read this, I’m reading it not for me to share my own, right? It’s not for me.

I’m reading this so that you can hopefully see some of yourself in this that you can relate. And by the way, if you can’t, then you’re just going to feel better about yourself like, “Oh, man, I’m glad I’m not going through what Hal went through.” And by the way, this isn’t the last time I’ll feel this way. As I read this letter like I’m sure I’ll feel this way again. In fact, I probably feel this way regularly or on occasion. So, a little over a year ago, here’s what I wrote in my journal:

“I’m going to be completely honest with myself and God right now. I don’t think I’m the same person I used to be. And I feel sad and angry with whom I have become since chemotherapy. I feel like it changed me significantly. I used to be such a confident, positive, stress-free, optimistic, carefree, and genuinely happy person. Now, I feel like I’m anxious, stressed, insecure, overwhelmed, depressed, generally unhappy, and I live in constant fear of worst-case scenarios.” And then in parentheses, I wrote, “(financially, the future of humanity, etcetera.) I hate what chemotherapy did to my brain and to my mental and emotional state.”

And then I went on to write:

“But wait. Could it be that all of this is part of God’s plan for me? Could it be that my above-described mental health issues were given to me by God as my next opportunity to learn, grow, and evolve, to lead by example and empower others to do the same? So, how can I overcome the challenges described on the previous page and help others do the same?”

And truth be told, this is exactly what I wrote down for myself:

“Number one, use the Miracle Morning and the SAVERS to reprogram my subconscious mind and condition my optimal mental and emotional states, combining affirmations with emotional optimization meditation. And number two, live the Miracle Equation and maintain unwavering faith in myself and God, and surrender to life the way Michael Singer talks about in the Surrender Experiment and continue putting forth extraordinary effort to serve as many people as I can.”

So, that’s the letter I wrote September 11, 2023. And I was really down on myself and I was really struggling. I’m like, “I’ve got to get this out of my head and on paper. I’ve got to vent to my journal.

And so, I would encourage you, I’m going to give you two action steps on today’s call. The first one is based on what I just did, which is pull out your journal, whether you do it now or put it in your schedule to do this. Pull out your journal and start by saying, “I’m going to be completely honest with myself right now…” Now, I wrote, “I’m going to be completely honest of myself and God right now.” I don’t remember what prompted to include God in that, but I guess that would make sense. But whatever you want to include, start with writing down, “I’m going to be completely honest with myself right now…” And then I want you to be brutally, blatantly, completely, authentically honest with your struggles right now.

Acknowledge the challenges that you’re facing in your life right now and how they’re making you feel. It’s a liberating exercise that takes five minutes or potentially less to take longer if you want. But five minutes to simply acknowledge your internal state. How are you feeling right now? And include the external forces that are influencing your internal state. How are you feeling about your finances right now? How are you feeling about your marriage if you’re married or any key relationships in your life right now? And it can be challenging. Being brutally honest with yourself is hard. You know, if there are areas of your life that you feel like are broken, acknowledging what’s broken in your life is hard. It can feel overwhelming and disheartening and sometimes even paralyzing, right?

You’re like, “Oh, I can’t believe this,” but I’ve been there too. I mean, that journal entry, it was like, finally, I’m being honest with myself and I’m putting it in writing so that I can see it and I can reread it and I can work from this place of my current reality, not the reality that I’m trying to force into existence, which is what we often do, right? We don’t want to be honest with ourselves and where things feel broken and where we’re struggling because that’s, again, overwhelming and hard and paralyzing. We want to just gloss over that and focus on the positive and where we want to go and who we want to be.

But if we’re skipping over the acknowledgement, right, it’s hard to fix a problem if you don’t acknowledge that there’s a problem or if you don’t acknowledge that there’s an opportunity of something that feels broken to you. And so, that’s the starting place. I’m going to read you another journal entry that I wrote that I’m going to invite you to follow suit. And after you write your first journal entry, and this is action step number one, assignment number one, which starts with, “I’m going to be completely honest with myself right now…” and acknowledge how you are feeling in each area of your life. You can do life as a whole but I think the more specific that we get, the better, right?

Like, talk about your feelings in life in general but then break it down, acknowledge the specific aspects of your life that are causing you inner turmoil, mental and emotional pain, stress, fear, discouragement. Like, write it all out. This is your therapy session. Write it out. Your journal is your therapist, and I’m helping you out on this journey. But write it out. And then you’ll feel a sense of freedom because all of those things are now out of your consciousness and they are on paper or on your computer, depending on where you journal. And now you can observe them. You can create separation from them. They don’t have to weigh you down anymore.

Now, they are not problems that are overwhelming you. They are simply situations that you get to decide whether or not you are going to address them, but they’re captured in your journal for you to observe and decide what you’re going to do. After you write that journal entry and you can pause right now or again schedule a time to do it later, I would encourage you to write yourself a letter from someone who loves and admires you. Okay. And this can be an imaginary person. I wrote mine from God.

All right. So, you can write yourself a letter from God. If not God, you can think of someone in your life who loves you and who appreciates you and who admires you and who sees the best in you. Now, that person could be alive. They could be dead. Might be someone who might be your grandmother who passed away but pick anyone who sees the best of you. And if you are, you know, I’d imagine there will be some people that you’re like, “I don’t know anyone in my life that’s ever seen the best of me,” and my heart goes out to you if that’s the case. You need to –this is your opportunity to step out of your current state of consciousness into a higher state of consciousness and to talk to yourself from a place of seeing the best in you.

And here’s what I wrote to myself. And actually, I did not read this ahead of sharing this with you so we’ll see what it says. I’ll try to keep this unfiltered but this is a personal journal entry, so I might have to filter as I’m reading it. So, I wrote this as a letter from God to myself but I was conscious of it. This wasn’t like… I don’t know that I was channeling this. I was just like, “No, I need to acknowledge myself.” Maybe I was channeling it. I don’t remember. I wrote:

“Hal, I love you infinitely. You are truly an amazing human being/soul. For one, look at all you’ve overcome and accomplished. Think about what that says about who you are in terms of your character, your resilience, your discipline, work ethic, and determination, all attributes I blessed you with. It’s okay/good to acknowledge that you’re special.”

And by the way, actually, I want to pause there because often we have a hard time speaking to ourselves this way. That’s why I’m giving you permission in this podcast episode to tell yourself how amazing you are, how special you are, how extraordinary you are based on everything you’ve overcome in your life, everything you’ve accomplished in your life. Right now, it might not feel that way. Right now, you might not authentically feel like, “I’m not amazing right now. I’ve been lazy and I’ve let my diet go and my habits are bad right now. And I’ve been down on myself and I’ve been yelling at my kids and I’ve been like on and on and on.” Right? Again, we all go through these ups and these downs.

I am inviting you once you’ve done that first exercise and acknowledged all of the challenges you’re facing right now in your life, both internally, primarily internally, mentally, and emotionally how you’re feeling about your external circumstances, once you’ve done that, I want you to get in touch with the best version of yourself. That’s what the second journal entry is about. I’m going to finish reading you mine.

“Possibly even more important is how extraordinary you are in terms of your heart-centered attributes like your kindness, your unconditional love of all people.” And I wrote in parentheses, “(Very Christlike). Your integrity, your selflessness, and your genuine care and concern for all people. Again, these are attributes I blessed you with. Remember, you are a child of God who was put on earth to elevate the consciousness of humanity during precisely this time in history. So, fear nothing and maintain unwavering faith and put forth extraordinary effort to co-create a better future for humanity, or at least lead them during this time, them being humanity/people. Reread the book, Who Do We Choose To Be by Margaret Wheatley, and apply it. Love, God.”

 And then I wrote:

“P.S. Everyone who truly knows you loves you. Your friends, your family, your community, the people that you love the most love you back. Feel that deeply.”

That’s my note to self, y’all. And again, I must have kind of streamed it because I can’t imagine I would write that to myself without channeling some other force, some other loving energy, right?

So, that’s your assignment. Two journal entries. Number one, acknowledge all of the challenges that you’re facing right now internally and externally. And number two, write a letter to yourself, acknowledging yourself for all of the best attributes that you have embodied over your lifetime. Maybe you’re not embodying them now or maybe at least not all of them. Maybe you’re at your lowest point right now. But one of the best ways to transform your life, right, always begins with transforming ourselves and one of the best ways to transform yourself is to define, to remind you of who you truly are, the best version of you, which you have proven throughout your lifetime. The qualities and characteristics that I wrote down, I don’t embody those every day. Definitely not but I know they’re within me. I know they’re part of who I am.

And I’ll tell you, to write that to myself, a little uncomfortable. To read it to you, even more uncomfortable because my inner critic is like, “Oh, Hal, you sound arrogant. You’re telling yourself and telling other people that your integrity and your selflessness and you’re genuine, right?” So, is that insecure? Do I have insecurity on reading that to you? Absolutely. But I have to have the courage to share that with you so that you have the courage to acknowledge yourself for how extraordinary you are when you are at your best so that you can embody the best version of yourself now. Remind yourself of who you truly are based on who you’ve been and then put that in writing and then read it.

For me, I took that and I translated it into my affirmations. I took those attributes and I remind myself of who I was and reminded myself of who I was committed to being in the different areas of my life. So, acknowledge your challenges right now, step one. Step two, acknowledge who you are at your best. And then step three is integrate that into your affirmations or just read those every day. Remember who you are so you can live in alignment with the best version of yourself. All right. Do not let this podcast go to waste. Do not turn this off and go, “Yeah, that’s a good idea, but I’m not going to do it or maybe I’ll do it.” No.

Please, I’m begging you. Do it for yourself. It doesn’t benefit me. I mean, it benefits everybody, benefits humanity when we’re at our best, but it benefits you. So, please, if you need to go back, this is a relatively short podcast episode. If you need to go back and re-listen to it, do that. But I’m telling you, if you do these two exercises, these two journal entries, number one, your challenges that you’re facing, that you’re experiencing, the way you feel, and number two, the best version of you, put them in writing, create journal entries and live in alignment with who you are capable of being because you’ve proven that’s who you are.

I love you so much. I hope this is valuable. Again, it’s only valuable if you do the thing. So, do those two journal entries. And in the comments, let me know how this exercise impacted you. I love you so much and I’ll talk to you next week.

[END]