We often think of success as accolades and accomplishments (and that’s part of it), but true success is a spiritual pursuit. It’s not just about earning more money or achieving new goals; it’s about enjoying the journey, making an impact, feeling fulfilled, and living in alignment with the person you aspire to become.
As we jump into 2024, many people in our community are making resolutions and planning out the year. So, I thought it may be helpful to take a closer look at the word “success” and what that really means.
In this episode, I also walk you through Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and expand upon each to share my own insights and experiences. I hope this episode will help you become a better version of yourself and expand your perspective to live a more meaningful life and accomplish any future goals you set for 2024 and beyond!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Anything you want to overcome or accomplish has probably been done by someone else
- How your beliefs and affirmations shape your reality over time
- To receive, you must first give
- Helping others leads them to help you in return
- Avoid unnecessary stress by accepting that some things take time
- The quality of your thoughts directly influences the quality of your outcomes
- Goals are temporary, true growth is a lifelong journey
- The more effort you put in, the luckier you get
AYG TWEETABLES
“You should enjoy the journey to achieving your goals rather than be fixated on the outcome or the goal itself.”
Hal Elrod Tweet
“The spiritual side of success is you've got to maintain unwavering faith that you are unlimited and you can do anything you put your mind to, but it requires you putting forth extraordinary effort and maintaining that faith for as long as it takes, knowing that it might take you longer than you wanted it to.”
Hal Elrod Tweet
THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Organifi makes the highest quality nutritional products, which are made from whole food ingredients (not synthetic vitamins) that I enjoy nearly every day, and have for many years. Visit Organifi.com/Hal, and use the code HAL at checkout to get 20% off of your entire order. I hope you find something there that you love! :^)
Rise by CURED Nutrition is a natural supplement made from CBD, Lions Mane and Ginseng (among others) that helps boost energy, performance and cognitive function. There’s no caffeine, no jitters and most importantly, no crash. Visit CuredNutrition.com/Hal and receive 20% off of your entire order. They have tons of other products as well, hopefully you’ll find something that works for you. :^)
RESOURCES:
- Ep# 506: How To Ask For Help When You Need It Most
- Amber Vilhauer
- NGNG Enterprises
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams by Deepak Chopra
- Nick Santonastasso
- Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders
- Dave Meltzer
- Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours by Noah Kagan
- Noah Kagan
- Jamie Kern Lima
- Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life by Jamie Kern Lima
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Copyright © 2023 Miracle Morning, LP and International Literary Properties LLC
Hal Elrod: Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and it is 2024, y’all. This is our first episode of the New Year and I’m excited for the topic. We’re talking about the spiritual side of success, something not often talked about. And yesterday I did a 75-minute interview with Amber Vilhauer, the founder and CEO of NGNG Enterprises. She interviewed me. It was for a very select group of her clients. And toward the end of the interview, she asked a question that interviewers often ask at the end, which is, “Is there anything else that you want to share with us before we wrap up?” And suddenly I launched into a five-minute inspirational message that I would say came through me, if you will, about how I believe success is it’s ultimately a spiritual pursuit, at least the kind of success we really want where we’re not just achieving accolades or earning a lot of money.
That can be part of it but it’s where we’re doing it in a way where we really feel fulfilled and it feels easy and it feels like it’s in alignment with who we are and how we want to show up. It doesn’t feel like I’m pushing and grinding and working and I can’t stand it because I’m trying to get a paycheck. I love this. It feels good the way that I’m approaching and achieving success. And as I finished this message on spirituality and success, Amber’s reaction was, I don’t know, she was kind of speechless. It was, “Hal, wow, I’m blown away.” So, as I was considering what I could share with you today that would add the most value as we’re beginning the new year, I thought I would expand on my little five-minute rant from yesterday and the topic or the title, The Spiritual Side of Success, is what came to me. And then as I was preparing for today’s episode, I googled the spiritual side of success. I often do that, right, to get a little extra insight or clarity or ideas to incorporate into anything I’m sharing with you.
And the first thing that came up in the Google search was a book by Deepak Chopra titled The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. In fact, there were numerous articles on that book. So, I read the articles and I realized there was a ton of overlap in alignment with what I was going to talk about and Deepak Chopra’s framework, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. So, today it’s a blend of me sharing Deepak Chopra’s seven spiritual laws, elaborating on each, sharing my own insights and perspective and real-life experiences and results, and the connection between success and spirituality. I think you’re going to absolutely love it. That’s my hope. At the end of the episode that I recorded, finished it 5 minutes ago, it felt like, “Wow, I channeled this.” It was exactly what hopefully you right now listening need to take this year and make it your best year.
Before we dive into the content, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our two fantastic sponsors who bring you this show every single week and help you have your best year ever, best life ever, because the first is Organifi, making the world’s finest, high-quality organic whole foods supplements. And everything from I take their Focus product in the morning, which is 1,000 milligrams of lion’s mane with coffee bean extract to help you optimize your focus. Then I take their organic vanilla protein powder with my smoothie every single day and I take half the dose so it lasts me twice as long. You might want to implement that tip. Then I take their Red Juice before I work out to get my blood flowing and help me get bigger pumps and have more stamina and energy during my workout. And then there’s a lot more products. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ at checkout. Whether you want to lose weight, have more energy, sleep better, Organifi has a solution for you at Organifi.com/Hal.
And then last but not least I call them Organifi’s cousin because they’re a whole food supplement line but they don’t compete with Organifi. They really complement Organifi and they use CBD oil in almost all of their products and CBN oil for their sleep products, which help me get a good night’s sleep every night and that is CURED Nutrition. If you want to improve many of your, well, your sleep is the biggest thing, I love their Night Oil for sleep and their Night Caps, which is the same blend but in a capsule form when I travel. And it helps me get a great night’s sleep after suffering from chronic insomnia for far too long. If you want to get a better night’s sleep, head over to CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and use that same discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.
Without further ado, let’s talk about the spiritual side of success combined with Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success to set you up to make this not just your best year but your most fulfilling year yet. Enjoy!
[EPISODE]
Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, goal achievers, and members of the Miracle Morning community. Thank you so much for listening today. This is the first episode that I have recorded since the Miracle Morning book launch. The launch week, I should say, has passed, and I am grateful to say that we impacted well over 10,000, looks like 15,000 lives in terms of getting the book in the hands of 15,000 people, and I am so grateful for your support. It means the world to me. As a bonus, we were recognized as the USA Today’s national bestseller list, so we were on the bestseller list, which that’s fun but, for me, it doesn’t matter that much. My wife’s like, “Why aren’t you more excited?” I go, “I’m excited that we had 15,000 plus people buy the Miracle Morning, Updated and Expanded Edition and I know that’s going to transform their lives. I know it’s going to impact the lives of the people in their life, their family, and their friends, and anyone whose life they touch because that’s the ripple effect when we dedicate time to becoming the best version of ourselves.
And ultimately, for me, the launch team that I worked with and if you were on the launch team, you know what I’m talking about, the Miracle Morning Messengers launch team. And that was probably the most fulfilling part of this experience. So, we had probably a little under 200 people that were on the launch team that were on the calls every other week and then eventually every week we had a call. And it was so just inspiring, I guess is the word, feels fulfilling, gratifying to see some of the most dedicated Miracle Morning practitioners really show up and want to share the message, share the new book, support, selflessly serve. I mean, it was really, really inspiring. And then hearing the stories of Miracle Morning practitioners that were on the launch team of how the Miracle Morning transformed their life or how they shared it with their family member when they were in their darkest time, it changed their life. It helped them. It saved them, I mean, on and on and on. And if you’re a miracle practitioner, you have your own experience, right, how the Miracle Morning not just the book but the practice, maybe more so the practice has impacted your life. So, I just want to thank you. I wanted to celebrate and acknowledge just take a minute here to do that. Thank you so much for being a part of the Miracle Morning community, elevating the consciousness of humanity one person and one morning at a time.
And today we’re going to talk about the spiritual side of success. And the first thing that came up, I was preparing for the message and I thought usually if I think of something to talk about a message, a title, if you will, like today, it was the spiritual side of success. And I googled the spiritual side of success, as I often do. And the first thing that came up was a book by Deepak Chopra titled The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. And you may have read that book. I have never read that book but I clicked on some links. I read some articles, I took some notes, kind of the Cliff notes, if you will, of that book. And that’s not what I wanted to talk about today but I wanted to address it because as I was reading through the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success as outlined by Deepak Chopra, I resonated with a lot of these, and some of these there was definitely overlap with what I wanted to talk to you about.
So, I’m going to go through these. I’m going to just read like a sentence or so from any one of the articles that I potentially came across or from the book, maybe a quote, and then I’ll just expand on it from my perspective because I would imagine that’s why you listen to this podcast for a little bit of my perspective, not just me reading other people’s perspectives but, of course, the interviews I have on the podcast, you get to hear perspectives from brilliant people. But I’ll share with you here are the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and then I’m going to basically take what I talked about in the introduction, and that is the 75-minute interview I did with Amber Vilhauer in the last 5 minutes where I went on kind of that rant that inspired channeled speech, if you will, about how success is ultimately a spiritual pursuit. And that was what inspired today’s podcast episode. So, I will kind of close with an extended version of that, and a lot of that will come through I think as I go through these seven spiritual laws as outlined by Deepak Chopra.
All right. The first law from Deepak is the law of pure potentiality. What does that mean? Well, the law states that you are unlimited and can achieve anything you set your mind to. I absolutely believe that. And of course, there are limitations, at least in my perception, physical limitations. If you’re five feet tall, I don’t know if you can dunk a basketball, right? I don’t know. I think there are physical limitations but I think we’ve seen, you know, I have a friend, Nick Santonastasso. You may know Nick. If you don’t, find him on Instagram, on Google, on YouTube. Nick Santonastasso is one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. He was born without limbs, essentially. He has one arm and then he is missing the other arm and he’s missing his legs, yet he wakeboards behind a boat, he drives a car, he lifts weights. He does just about anything, he dances, but anything you would think that somebody with his physical limitations might not do, right?
So, I hesitate to say that there are limitations but now he’s probably not going to dunk a basketball but I wouldn’t put it past him like he’d find a way. He wakeboards behind a boat. Maybe he could dunk a basketball. I don’t know. But here’s my point. Just for all the skeptics I always want to address, “Well, no, but there are limitations. You know, Hal, you can’t do anything and everything.” I got it. But again, the law of pure potentiality states that you are unlimited and can achieve anything you set your mind to. And so, here’s how I would look at that and approach that is if you’ve read The Miracle Morning, the original edition, the new edition, I talk about one of my favorite affirmations addresses this, and it’s that I am just as worthy, deserving, and capable of anything I put my mind to. Or I think the way I phrase it is anything another human being has done and I will prove it today with my actions. And I phrase it that way because just about anything you could ever dream up doing has been done by someone else.
And I know what you’re thinking, how that’s not true. You know, people break new barriers every day. Absolutely. But let’s just start small. Let’s start with, hey, if you want to lose 20 pounds or 50 pounds or 80 pounds, there’s someone that’s done that. If you want to make $1 million or $10 million or $1 billion, there’s someone that’s done that. If you want to have an extraordinary marriage or even take a marriage that is on the brink of failure and you want to turn it around, there’s someone that’s done that so just about everything you could want to do to overcome in your life. You know, for me, I wanted to beat this really rare, aggressive form of cancer. And I started with the belief that there are 20% to 30% of those that get this cancer that survive it. And so, I’m deciding that there’s a 100% chance that I will be among the 20% to 30% of those that survive it.
And I want you to think about something. If I hadn’t decided that, like that belief didn’t exist inherently, it wasn’t like anyone gave that to me or told that to me. In fact, the belief that was given to me was, “Hey, you have a 20% to 30% chance of surviving. That’s it. Very grim odds. You’re probably going to die.” That’s the belief that was handed to me. And you may have had limiting beliefs that were handed to you by someone else or you may have limiting beliefs that you developed over time, maybe through an experience. Maybe you tried something and you failed, and now you have a belief that goes, “Oh, man, I’m a failure,” or, “I can’t do that thing because I just proved that even if I try, even if I give my all, I still can’t do it.” So, you might have limiting beliefs that you developed but you are responsible for choosing the beliefs that best serve you.
And the law of pure potentiality again states that you are unlimited. Now, that’s only true if you decide it’s true but think about how different you will approach your life if you choose to develop the belief to embrace, to embody, and to develop and nurture and foster the belief that, yes, you are unlimited and you can achieve anything that you set your mind to. And the best way to do any of that is in writing, by the way, like that’s where it starts. If you don’t put this in writing and I’m talking about like right now, like pause this, grab a piece of paper, you should take notes. You should take notes. I forgot there’s a phrase that says like the memory is the shortest pencil or I totally butchered that like I usually do but something along those lines, right? That like don’t count on your memory to remember something, especially when we’re going to cover seven laws here. I just realized with how much in-depth I’m going with these laws. That’s probably going to be the bulk of the podcast. But essentially, you decide if that is a belief that you’re going to embody and nurture over time so that it becomes your reality. Write that down.
What you affirm becomes your reality. And when you affirm a belief every day, “I am unlimited,” I can do anything. And if you have unlimited belief, which you do, we all have an arsenal of limiting beliefs that says, “I’m not worthy. I’m not capable. I don’t know if I could do this. I’ve failed in the past, on and on and on. I’m not deserving of love. I’m not deserving of success. My life is never going to get better. I’m in such a dark place. I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been in such a bad place for so long.” Right? I have nurtured every single one of those limiting detrimental beliefs that I just rattled off and I’d imagine that you have most of them as well, if not all of them. So, you have to choose the beliefs that will best serve you, serve you internally in terms of your mental and emotional well-being, and serve you internally in terms of what you attempt in your life, what goals you set, what you’re willing to try, and if your belief that you’re unlimited and can achieve anything you set your mind to, then you will approach your life, A, you’ll feel empowered, you’ll feel empowered to do great things. And, B, you’ll actually approach. You’ll set out. You’ll actually take action to do the things that you might be scared of. But if you believe you’re unlimited, then you’re going to be willing to take unlimited chances or pursue unlimited opportunities. So, that’s the first law of spiritual success, according to Deepak Chopra, which is the law of giving. No, sorry, that’s number two. The law of pure potentiality. And again, it’s a law that you have to embrace, you have to nurture, and do it through daily affirmation.
The second law and I love this one, this is the law of giving and receiving. This law teaches that to receive, you must first give. And if we bring the Miracle Morning into this, when you give of yourself first, so when you focus on, well, I should say give to yourself and of yourself, you open up the possibility of receiving from others. And this is one of my favorite quotes. In fact, this came up in my conversation with Amber yesterday. I forgot what she asked exactly but my answer was it’s that Zig Ziglar quote, “You can have everything in life that you want if you’re willing to help enough other people get what they want.” You can have everything you want in your life if you’re willing to help enough other people get what they want. And I had a really powerful realization a few years ago. I went to my wife first. I said, “Sweetheart, I just realized something. Every dollar that we’ve earned, all of our financial security, everything that we have, it’s a result of helping somebody, right? It’s not like I made some…”
And by the way, no judgment if you’re a stock trader on this example I’m using, but it’s not like I flipped and moved some stocks around. And maybe that helps people, I don’t know, right? But that’s not how the money was made. I thought it feels really good to think that in 2004, I read a book called Love is the Killer App, and Tim Sanders talked about giving, about helping other people, about adding as much value as you possibly could. And I left that book with my first purpose in life, and it was to add as much value to the lives of other people as I possibly could. And I started doing that. However, I started doing it on my terms, meaning I kept finding reasons I didn’t want to do it, right? Like, I would add value when I felt like it, when it was convenient for me, when it was someone that I wanted something from. Right? You know, I’ll add value because maybe I can get something back. And what I realized is I’m not living a very pure purpose. I’m not living a very pure purpose. My purpose is it’s conditional. In a lot of ways, it’s selfish. Like, I’m trying to add value so I can get what I want and it didn’t resonate in my soul.
And so, I modified the purpose with one word that I put on the front of it. Instead of my purpose being to add value to as many people as I possibly could, my purpose became to selflessly add value to as many people as I could. Selflessly was a reminder that I want my purpose to be pure. I want to add value whether I feel like it or not. I want to add value whether the person I’m adding value to can do anything for me in return or not. I want to genuinely live a purpose of service, of serving humanity, of serving my brothers and sisters and fellow human beings. And keep in mind, this was a shift for me from living, I would say mostly selfish life. And I was, what, 25 years old at the time, living a mostly selfish life to wanting aspiring to be selfless but it not feeling like it was a calling in my soul but I was a selfish person. And the way that we are for most of our lives is the way that we are meaning if you’ve been a certain way for years or decades and this is true for everything from our values that we live by to our habits that we live by, right?
If you snack at night and you’ve been snacking at night before bed for the last five years or ten years or your whole life, it’s hard to change that. It’s hard to break that. If you had a certain value where you’ve lived with a scarcity mindset, you valued like being scared like clinging to every resource you can and not being abundant, that’s hard to shift, right? It takes time to shift your values or your mindset. And so, for me, I was like, I want to be selfless but I am selfish. At least I should say, yeah, be careful there. What you affirm, right, becomes your reality. I have been selfish in the past up until this point but I want to be selfless. I want to live in alignment with Deepak Chopra’s the law of giving and receiving. I never heard of that at that time but essentially, I wanted to be more of a giver. I wanted to serve. And so, I wrote that down as my purpose and I started reading it every day and I started living in alignment with it.
And I remember the moment that, by the way, how I lived in alignment with it a couple of ways. Number one, I set my goal that year to have the best year in my sales career because it was my last year selling Cutco Cutlery, and I was planning on moving on to be an author and a speaker and kind of pursue my dreams. It was my last year, so I thought, “I want to go out with a bang. I want to have my best year ever and really finish strong.” And the reason for that, by the way, was to become the person that I needed to be to achieve my future goals. Meaning I felt like I had settled for mediocrity throughout most of my sales career. And again, mediocrity not compared to other people because I was one of the top sales reps for Cutco. But as I define mediocrity in the new Miracle Morning book, it’s how you compare to your potential. And I felt like I had always settled for less than my best. I felt like I had never really fulfilled my potential and I wanted to do that. I wanted to develop a level of discipline that eluded me for my entire life up until that point and have my best year ever so that I could become a better version of myself.
And so, as soon as I developed this purpose, I thought, “Well, if I have my best year ever, that goes back to just it’s all about me. It serves me. How does it serve anybody else?” And at first, I went, “Well, what if I make my goal about how many customers I can help?” And I genuinely focus not on how much money I can make or my ranking, and that I could be one of the top sales reps and get recognition that builds my ego and feeds my ego. I thought, “What if I focus on serving my customers, like really selflessly adding value for them and making sure that I’m not doing it to reach my goals?” Not that I can’t be part of it. You can be selflessly selfish, meaning it’s okay to know that helping others will help you but it’s what’s the intention? Are you helping others because it will help you? And no judgment. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I’m just asking food for thought. Are you helping others so that you can get what you want?
Or are you helping others knowing that if you really focus on helping them not for your own selfish reasons, again, nothing wrong with that, just offering a perspective, but if you focus on serving for the essence of serving, like doing what’s best, and here’s how that shows up differently. That shows up differently where if you’re with a customer, I’m using that as an example, with a customer and I say, “Hey, if I’m doing it for me, I’m helping them because I really want to hit my goals.” The underlying motivation is selfish. If that’s it, then I might push them into buying more of the product I’m selling, a bigger set, right? Because I want to hit my goal for the week. And if I’m $2,000 away and we have a $2,000 set, and I’m focused on myself, then I’m going to push them to get that set even if it might not be the right thing for them. Whereas if it’s the opposite, where I’m genuinely focused on serving each person, each opportunity, every moment, I’m focused on selflessly adding value to the lives of every person I can, then here’s what I would do differently.
Rather than push them into a bigger set than maybe they can afford or is right for them, I would do something very differently. I would look at the bigger picture and I would go, “Look, even if I don’t reach my goal for this week, that’s part of the spiritual.” To me, the spiritual pursuit of success is you’re looking at the bigger picture. You’re approaching your goals and success not just for the day or the moment or even the week or the month of the year but you’re in this for your life. You’re looking at the bigger picture. You’re always saying, “I’m going to live in alignment with my values and I’m not going to stress over whether or not I reach any individual goal,” because I go back to Jim Rohn’s way of looking at goals, which is the purpose of a goal is not to reach the goal. It’s who you become in your pursuit of that goal, giving it everything that you have until the last possible moment. You become a better version of yourself with the skills and the habits and the mindset and the qualities that you need to achieve every goal you set in the future.
In some goals you reach, some goals you don’t. But back to this example, right, I would look at the bigger picture and go, “Look, it’s about serving people at every turn and I’m going to serve this customer and I’m going to sacrifice my goal this week. I may not reach my goal but I’m doing what’s right. I’m living in alignment with my value of selflessly adding value.” And what I found is that when you live that way and this is where it gets a little woo-woo but this is where the spiritual side of success, this is really what I talked about yesterday and I’ll talk about more today. I really close with this message most likely but I’ll touch on it here and that is that when you live in alignment with your values and you genuinely, specifically the value of service of you call it selflessly adding value as I do, you can call it serving humanity. You call it keeping the best interest of every party at the front of your mind. Call it whatever you want, right? But you can also just call it doing what’s right. Meaning I’m going to do what’s right in this situation, what’s right for all parties involved. I’m not going to selfishly do what’s right for me if it might not be right for other people, right?
Yes. Try to find the win-win in every situation but what I find is that when you focus this way in the scheme of things, the universe conspires to help you reach your goals. And I found this, I started this, what, in 2004 is when I started living this way, and it’s now 2023. So, for the last 19 years or so, and we don’t have time in this podcast episode but I could share countless examples, example after example after example of how this holds true, of how by selflessly adding value for other people, it always comes back. It’s always come back. And I’ve achieved goals beyond what I ever thought possible. And I could say with integrity that for the last 19 years, and I’m not perfect, I mean, sometimes I get selfish. I’m a human being, right? We all, whatever. But this is at the forefront of everything that I do is how can I selflessly add value to the lives of every person that I meet, even if I fall short of a goal? And so, that’s the second law, the law of giving and receiving.
And it leads into this next law, which I think there may be a lot of overlap, and we need so much time on it but the law of karma or cause and effect. So, this law states that every action has a reaction. What you put out into the world will come back to you. So, I’m just going to tie this into what we just talked about. When you selflessly add value to the lives of the people, as Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything that you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And so, what we just talked about is that from a practical sense, when you help other people, they want to help you back. They want to serve. And I remember an example, that year that I was trying out my best year ever in Cutco, I realized that for this to be in line with my purpose and selflessly add value, I’ve got to help other people have their best year in Cutco.
So, I formed a weekly call where I led 20 of the top sales reps in Cutco, all of my colleagues and peers and friends, and for free. I didn’t get paid a dime for it. It took a lot of time. There was a lot of times where I don’t want to do the call. I’d say more often than not I’m like, “I don’t want to do the call again. Like, I just wanted to relax.” It was every Sunday but at the end of that year, we had more sales reps achieve the highest levels of sales in Cutco that were all on that call. And when I wrote my first book, Taking Life Head On, in 2006 is when it published, I called the, I forgot his title, but my friend John Cain, and he is an executive for Cutco, I said and I was really nervous like, “Hey, John. My first book’s coming out and I don’t know if you might want to. Like, if you could buy a few copies for like the top sales reps or something.” And it didn’t even cross my mind that there was any correlation, that he was even thinking that I had led that call for the last 52 weeks. He said, “Hal, are you kidding me?”
And I’m going to paraphrase what he said, not a direct quote but he said, “You have added more value for the company, for the sales rep, something like that than as much value as any person, any other rep in Cutco history.” He said, “I’ll buy.” “How many books?” And he was like, “Uhh,” and he said, “We have our conference coming up, our national conference. How about I buy 500 copies for every sales rep at the conference?” And I was thinking he might buy like 50, maybe 100, like 500 copies and he goes, “You can come if you want to come speak, talk about it, whatever you want. Whatever you want.” And that’s where I realized the practical law of karma that when you focus on adding value for other people, then when you need support, people are like, “Heck, yeah.” And I just had that happen again with the Miracle Morning book launch. I have focused on selflessly adding value for other people and they were like, “Hal, yes, we want to help. We want to get this message out there. Let’s get the Miracle Morning out there. Let’s change lives.”
And a lot of people were doing it too because the Miracle Morning had changed their life and they wanted to share but a lot of people told me, “Hal,” and I feel weird saying this because this isn’t like I’m bragging. I’m just telling you what people said. They’re like, “Hal, you’ve helped me so much or you’ve helped our community so much that we want to help you, like not just help the Miracle Morning. We want to help you.” And I don’t know why it’s hard for me. Maybe I have feelings of self-worth or trauma from being a child. I don’t know. But it’s hard for me to accept help from other people. It’s very difficult. In fact, a couple of months ago, I did an episode on how to ask for help when you need it most. You can go look for that if you want to listen to the episode because I was struggling to ask for help from you, from our Miracle Morning community, from the people in my life that I could have asked to buy books from me.
And I was struggling because I struggle with I don’t want to burden people. I don’t want them to feel obligated. I don’t want to seem selfish, on and on and on. I get all these all this stuff, same stuff that you probably have, right? If you want to listen to that episode on how to ask for help when you need it most, it really unpacks how to do that. I’ll give you steps on how to do it. Go back. I don’t know what episode it is. I’m not looking at it but go to MiracleMorning.com/Podcast and then you can just type in “How to ask for help” and you’ll find that episode. But that is a good one if you struggle to ask for help, I think we all do or most of us do, and we need it. So, the law of karma or cause and effect, again, it states that every action has a reaction. So, what you put into the world will come back to you. So, if you selflessly add value to every person you possibly can, it will come back to you. And I am living proof of that.
The next law, this is the fourth law is the law of least effort. Again, this is from Deepak Chopra from his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.” And I was not intending on utilizing these at all. I just happened to find them when I was doing a little research for the episode and I thought, “I can’t leave these out. These are really good.” All right. The law of least effort. This law teaches that nature works in harmony and that you should strive to do the same. In nature, you don’t see the trees using a lot of effort to come into bud and then blossom or grow to be 50 feet tall. Right? We have a thousand oak trees on our property. They don’t have to struggle and strive, right? You don’t see the seasons exerting a lot of effort to change or the birds fly, the grass grows and the acorns become mighty oaks without breaking into a sweat. So, within nature, nature’s a great example for us to look at because everything just happens with a sense of grace and ease.
And so, that is for all of us. I want you to think about something. And by the way, I struggle with this. The last three months I’ve told you on the podcast, I was so stressed out and overwhelmed at the book launch. So, this is advice I’m giving and I need myself. I’m taking it myself. But here’s the point. I felt so much pressure during the book launch. I felt pressure and pressure is really an emotion and every emotion is self-created. Okay. I’m going to say all of that again and I want you to take that to heart. I want you to write that down. Pressure is an emotion, just like fear is an emotion or anger or you name an emotion that causes you inner turmoil. It’s an emotion. So, pressure is an emotion and emotions are self-created. So, think about it. I was creating pressure because I wasn’t obeying this spiritual law, the law of least effort. Now, this spiritual law, you think about it, to me, it’s looking at this other side of the coin and realizing that painful emotions are self-created. And if you can acknowledge the cause of anything and be aware of it, then you can catch that cause before it becomes the effect.
You can go, “Oh, I’m creating pressure for myself.” And by the way, this is easier said than done, which is why my Miracle Morning every day was so crucial. And every day I wouldn’t feel pressure. I’d start the day with the miracle Morning and I would spend time in silence and I would remind myself, right? I’d read my affirmations sometimes or do the silence or both. It was like, “Hey, Hal, stop putting pressure on yourself. This book launch doesn’t define you. The Miracle Morning isn’t defined. The movement isn’t defined by how many books you sell in the first week or the first few weeks. It really doesn’t matter. The Miracle Morning has changed millions of lives via word of mouth, not because you were pushing and didn’t like forcing and trying so hard. That’s not how the Miracle Morning changed millions of lives. Kind of like the oak tree, it just happened with grace and ease from Miracle Morning, from readers and practitioners that were like, “Hey, have you read this book? This practice is changing my life. You should do it.”
Yet here I am pushing and fighting and trying so hard and putting all this pressure on myself. I was not obeying the law of least effort. How do you obey that? You have this in writing. You remind yourself that, “Look, life’s going to do what life’s going to do.” And for some people, if you have a spiritual belief, your religious belief and I can’t quote the Bible verse but there’s, I’ll paraphrase, the idea that God has his own timing. We think we’re on our time and our times are all stressful and pressured and there’s never enough time. We’re not far enough along and it’s taking too long. We’re not where we want to be. And there’s like a meme, God’s up there laughing like, “Dude, chill out. It’ll happen. It’ll happen.” And you need to remind yourself of that every day. You may have heard me say this before. I often end interviews when someone says, “Hey, is there one more thing you want to share?”
I usually say, “Yeah. Stop causing yourself so much stress to get where you want to go faster than it’s going to happen,” meaning most of us wake up every day. We have this stress, this urgency, this fear. I’m not where I want to be. I’m not getting there fast enough. And the lesson is that when you finally get to the point that you’ve been working so hard for so long, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead, you have perspective and you look back and you go, “Oh, it was supposed to take that long. I had to meet that person at the end of year one that led to that other relationship in year two that opened up that opportunity in year three that led to me meeting that person in year four. Oh, like my goal of selling a million copies of The Miracle Morning in year one, I sold 13,000 copies.” That means I was 987,000 copies short of my goal. It’s a 98.7% failure rate. That’d be like if your goal was to earn $100,000 in a year and you ended the year earning $1,300 just for perspective, right? I barely, barely scratched the surface of that goal.
And I was a little disappointed but I was also like, “Okay. I’m willing to give this as long as it takes.” And at the end of six years, we finally reached that goal. So, the law of least effort is just remembering in the moment that, look, things are going to happen when they happen. I’ll do the best I can but I might as well be at peace with the pace that I’m on. I might as well enjoy every moment while I maintain a healthy sense of urgency. Sure. But a healthy, underlying, healthy sense of urgency where you wake up every day and you do one thing that moves you forward but you don’t grit and stress and push and cause yourself, I mean, think about that. We’re literally taking years off our life when we do that. And I do it more often than I should. I succumb to that during this book launch. And every day the Miracle Morning would remind me but then halfway through the day, when I got 17 text messages that have come in that all need me to respond, and I had 38 emails come in. I mean, this is like every single day.
And my publisher needs something. My team needs something. I forgot the law of least effort, and I was frickin stressed out, right? And then thank God for my Miracle Morning, though, because if it wasn’t for the Miracle Morning, it would have compounded day after day after day. But for me, every evening during my Miracle Evening as I drifted off to sleep, which that’s a chapter in the new book, The Miracle Evening, part of the new Miracle Morning, Update and Expanded Edition, but every evening I would be at peace and I would fall asleep feeling grateful and peaceful. And every morning I’d wake up and I’d do my miracle morning and read my affirmations. I’d visual, I meditate, I’d feel really peaceful and great. And thank God I bookended my days with the Miracle Morning and the Miracle Evening because otherwise, I would have fallen apart because in the middle of the day I was more stressed than I should have been.
All right. Onto the next law, the law of intention and desire. The law of intention and desire, that is law number five. Now, this law states that your thoughts and feelings create your reality. And you may have heard it said this way before, what you focus on will expand in your life or the way I like to say it, what you affirm becomes your reality. And even if you don’t affirm it in a written affirmation, whatever you think to yourself is something you are affirming to yourself. Again, your thoughts and feelings create your reality. Think about if you think something about someone, you think an angry thought. You think that person is terrible. Well, now you’ve created your reality that that is a terrible person, and then that informs your feelings toward that person. Or if you feel anger toward that person, it creates a reality of anger toward that person. So, again, the law states that your thoughts and feelings create your reality. And that’s why affirmations are my anchor for my Miracle Morning. They’re the anchor of the SAVERS.
They’re the most important part to me. They’re the most effective practice because I’m able, in writing, to design the thoughts and the feelings that will best serve my highest good in every single moment. And I read those every morning. And yes, like I said, I’m not perfect. Sometimes during the day, if I’m overwhelmed, that can get the best of me but at least I’m able to anchor in every morning, “Oh, yeah, this is what I’m committed to. These are the thoughts, the feelings, the actions, the behaviors, the emotions that I’m committed to fostering and nurturing and embodying in my life so I can be at my best for myself, for the people I love, the people I lead. This is it.” Those affirmations are the anchor for my quality of life. They remind me, “Hal, this is who you are. This is what you’re capable of. This is what you’re committed to.” And I’m telling you, I would encourage you to utilize your affirmations the same, to remind you of who you are, what you’re capable of, and what you’re committed to.
And of course, in the new edition of the Miracle Morning book, there’s a slightly different formula to that. It’s what are you committed to? Why is it a must for you? And which actions will you take and when? But those are just different formulas of affirmations. There’s no one wrong or right way to do an affirmation but I encourage you to consider what I just said. Who you are, you are limitless. Remember the first spiritual law, the law of pure potentiality. Say that ten times as fast. The law states that you’re unlimited and can achieve anything you set your mind to. That should be something you affirm every single day. You should affirm the thoughts and feelings that will create a positive reality for you. In fact, in the new Miracle Morning, Updated and Expanded Edition, in the final chapter of the book is The Miracle Life, Your Path to Inner Freedom. And in that chapter, I give you the Miracle Life affirmations. Those affirmations are designed to optimize your thoughts and feelings.
And here are the ABCs of the Miracle Life, just a real short synopsis so you know what to expect. A, accept life exactly as it is and you have a guided affirmation that walks you through exactly how to accept life exactly as it is so that you don’t create unnecessary emotional pain. The B in the ABCs of the Miracle life is to be grateful for each moment. They walk you through how to do that. And the C is choose my optimal state of consciousness. So, again, intentionally, the law of intention and desire is you got to intentionally choose the thoughts and the feelings that best serve you because those are what create your reality, and what you focus on will expand in your life.
And the last two laws from Deepak Chopra’s book, I want to give credit where credit is due always and that book is called The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and the law of detachment. This law teaches that detachment from the outcome of your actions allows you to live in the present moment. So, you should enjoy the journey to achieving your goals rather than be fixated on the outcome or the goal itself. And there are two ways to approach this. For me, two ways that help you to do this. And number one is to think of Jim Rohn’s philosophy that the purpose of achieving a goal and the purpose of setting the goal in the first place is not to reach the goal. It’s to develop the abilities that you need to achieve every goal or any goal you set and some goals you reach, some goals you don’t. But the growth is the only thing that lasts forever. Who you become is what lasts forever. So, if you understand that, “All right, I’m going to set a goal and I’m going to give it everything I have.” And I understand that whether or not I reach the goal is secondary but who I become, that’s primary.
The growth I experience, the habits I develop, the mindset I develop, the obstacles that overcome, and the resilience that that instills within me, all of those qualities and characteristics will serve my highest good to become the best version of myself to achieve whether or not I achieve this goal, I’ll become more capable of achieving every goal I ever set. That is the purpose. And I remember, for me, when I was in my car accident and the doctor said I would never walk again, this is the conclusion that I came to. I went, “Okay. If I never walk again, I will be the happiest, most grateful person that anyone’s ever seen in a wheelchair,” because I will never let my unchangeable circumstances, and think about that, if the outcome that you desire doesn’t happen, this is what we’re talking about. The law of detachment says, “I’m not going to let whether or not I reach the outcome, I’ll give it everything I have. Absolutely.”
And for me, that was the first part was I will give everything I have to walking again. I will heal my own body as best I can through my prayer and meditation and I’ll go to therapy and I’ll do everything I can to walk again. So, I’m committed to the process but I’m not attached to the results. If I never walk again, I can still choose to be the happiest, most grateful person that anyone’s ever seen in a wheelchair. And you can choose the same. You can choose to be committed to the process. That’s how I define this law, by the way, the law of detachment. It’s being committed to the process, to giving it everything you have to reach the goal but not being attached to the results. Not being emotionally attached to the results. Meaning you go, “Look, I’m going to give everything I have and if I get there, awesome. And if I don’t, awesome.” And the thing is that’s a decision that you make, just like the beliefs that you choose to uphold, such as you are unlimited and you can achieve anything you put your mind to. That’s a choice. It’s a belief. It’s not inherent.
And the same with this law of detachment. You have to consciously choose. I’m going to be detached. And if you’ve never been detached to outcomes before, like I said earlier, that will take some reconditioning. It’s not you snap your fingers and go, “Oh, cool. Hal said it so now I’ll never be attached again.” No. You have to practice these ways of thinking. You have to practice the spiritual side of success. You have to practice the seven laws of success. How do you practice them? Number one, you revisit them. They have to be in writing. You’ve got to revisit them, and then you’ve got to try them on and implement them. And you might try and you might fail. You go, “Dang it. I was attached to that or I am attached to that,” and you go, “How could I not be attached to that? What would it be like if I just let go of my attachment?” You might go, “That feels weird. I’m not used to that but I see the value in that. I see the value in not being angry over things I can’t change because being angry doesn’t change them. It just makes me angry. Being upset, frustrated, depressed, not in a clinical sense but just experiencing fostering inner turmoil over things I can’t change, that seems like a waste of my energy. Instead, what if I chose to be at peace with things I can’t change?”
And I’ve done plenty of episodes on how to do and that is part of that Miracle Life chapter in the new book, which you may already have the new book, right? If you want to fast forward, by the way, you can go to the Miracle Evening chapter. Somebody asked me this the other day. They go, “Hal, do we need to read the entire Miracle Morning, Updated and Expanded Edition before we go to the Miracle Evening and the Miracle Life? Like, will they not make sense unless we read the rest?” I go, “No. They’re like bonus chapters. You could just skip. If you’re struggling with sleep, you can skip straight to the Miracle Life chapter or the Miracle Evening chapter. If you want to learn how to accept life exactly as it is and be grateful for everything and choose your optimal state of consciousness, you can go straight to the Miracle Life chapter. So, little bonus tip there.
All right. And the last law, the law of Dharma. D-H-A-R-M-A because that might not be a word that you use a lot. I definitely don’t. This law states that your purpose in life is to find your unique gifts and share them with the world. Find your unique gifts and share them with the world. And when you live in alignment with your Dharma, you will find authentic success and fulfillment. Because think about the person that’s making a great salary and they hate their job. They are stressed out over their work. And this year for me was challenging because I decided to try something that I had tried in the past and I had failed but it was while I was undergoing chemotherapy. So, I thought maybe I failed because I was sick. I was sick from the chemotherapy. My brain was not working. And yeah, it doesn’t work like it still doesn’t work quite as well as it did before cancer but maybe I can do it. I’m going to give it another shot. So, this year, I built a team. I hired a team. I went in debt to do it but I gave it another shot and it didn’t work out.
I shouldn’t say that. I am so grateful for my team. It did work out exactly as it was supposed to but what it taught me is managing a team is not my strength. That is not my strength. It’s not using my unique gifts. And so, our team is we’re not completely disbanding but basically, we’re kind of going to go back to our own islands and everybody will work on their own island. And rather than me trying to lead the team, it was really a stressful year in that regard. And so, I realized, what are my gifts? My gifts are what I’m doing right now. It’s communicating. So, whether I’m communicating by writing something, a blog or a book, whether I’m communicating by recording a podcast or doing an interview, or my favorite, which is giving speeches, those are my unique gifts to give to the world. And so, that’s what I’m going back to. I’m going back to my unique gifts because when I live in alignment with my Dharma, I find authentic success and fulfillment.
Now, what is that for you? What is that for you? And I would imagine that either you know because part of your life right now feels good and you enjoy it, you feel like you’re really contributing, using your gifts. And maybe that’s being a parent. Maybe that is working in your garden, right? Like, my wife she never realized how much she loves taking care of animals and growing food and this and that. Like, she’s thriving on our little ranch that we have. She never knew that. But she found she’s like she’s so fulfilled. She found her thing using her unique gifts. And now I realized, “Wow. My unique gifts have not been fully utilized this year.” I mean, yes, I did all the things. I did podcasts and interviews and all that but I spent a lot of my time doing things that weren’t using my unique gifts, trying to manage processes and people and this and that. And so, I’m really excited to, ah, it feels liberating to focus on my gifts. So, that is the law of Dharma.
All right. Let me close this out. I covered most of what I wanted to cover within that structure of Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. But let me just say this. I believe that success is a spiritual pursuit, is a spiritual game. And I really believe that when you, this is where it gets a little woo-woo, but I have 23 years of experience to back this. And I was on a call with Dave Meltzer this morning doing an Instagram or not a call but an Instagram Live. And Dave Meltzer believes I was hearing him talk for like 5 minutes before I joined the live. I go, “Dave, I feel like I was listening to myself. We’re so aligned.” And he absolutely abides by the spiritual laws of success. And here’s the simplest. I’ll give you a couple of simple ways to sum it up. One is the harder you work, the luckier you get. That’s a really simple way to put it. And you can look at it from a spiritual perspective, which is like when you really commit to something, the universe or God or fate, whatever you want to call it or believe in or whatever it is for you.
And to me, I don’t think you have to know what it is like if you’re like, “Well, I don’t know that it’s fate or I don’t know that it’s God.” To me, things like gravity works, whether or not you know how it works or even if you believe in it. Like, even if you don’t believe in gravity, it still works, right? So, the point being, I’ve found that when you commit to something fully until, and that’s an important word, the word ‘until’ meaning you give it everything you have for as long as it takes. When you do that, I find that the universe that God comes to your aid miracles happen and that you achieve things that you never imagined possible. But if you don’t maintain unwavering faith, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, and extraordinary effort, I call that the miracle equation, you maintain unwavering faith for as long as it takes to achieve your goal and you put forth extraordinary effort, which is simply consistent effort over an extended period of time for as long as it takes to achieve your goal, I found that you cannot fail. It eventually happens.
Like for me, I maintained unwavering faith and extraordinary effort that I would walk again. And three weeks later I took my first step. I maintained unwavering faith and extraordinary effort that I could sell a million books. It didn’t happen the first year. In fact, I was 987,000 short. It didn’t happen the second year but I kept maintaining unwavering faith and extraordinary effort while dealing with disappointment and discouragement. You follow that? I was disappointed and discouraged at the end of year one and at the end of year two and at the end of year three, and then I start getting momentum. I’m like, “Okay. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that this changing 1 million lives one morning at a time, I think it could happen.” And it took six years. And like I said earlier, when I got to the point I’d been working for so hard for so long, I didn’t wish it would happen sooner. I go, “Oh, it had to take six years. It had to. I had to meet my agent that led to the foreign rights deals that led to these books in Brazil and UK and Japan and China reaching people overseas. All of it had to happen.”
All I could do was maintain unwavering faith before the extraordinary effort and be patient and be peaceful. And that’s what I’m inviting you to do. That is the spiritual side of success, is you’ve got to maintain unwavering faith that you are unlimited and you can do anything you put your mind to but it requires you putting forth extraordinary effort and maintaining that faith for as long as it takes, knowing that it might take you longer than you wanted it to. Then that lottery winner that won their million dollars on day one but they lost it all and then became broke because they didn’t develop the skills they needed, the knowledge they needed to maintain financial success. But that another person that was jealous of the lottery winner because they had to work to achieve their goal, it took them a long time. But over that time, like Jim Rohn said, they developed the qualities and the characteristics they needed to sustain the success they wanted. And now, years later, the lottery winner wishes they would develop those skills because they don’t have them and they can’t sustain the success that they want.
But the person that gave it everything they had for as long as it took and it might have taken longer than they initially wanted, they became the person they needed to be to continually create and sustain the success that they wanted in their life. That is the spiritual side of success. And I’m inviting you to live that this year. And the Miracle Equation, by the way, unwavering faith and extraordinary effort, and that is a book, by the way. And I’m not trying to peddle books here but The Miracle Equation, that is the book where I really dive in for 200-plus pages on how to maintain unwavering faith and put forth extraordinary effort. But again, you don’t need the book if you apply what I talked about in this episode and I encourage you I know it was a lot. You might want to go back and re-listen to it, take notes if you were driving or on a run or something. But I hope, I so hope this was valuable for you.
And I love you. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today and every week. The Spiritual Side of Success. We’ve got a lot of episodes coming up. I’ve had some interviews. I just did an interview with the author of Million Dollar Weekend, Noah Kagan. That’ll come out on January 31st. I did an interview with Jamie Kern Lima, the author of Worthy. That’ll come out on November 28th. So, we got a lot of great interviews coming up. And in between, I’ll be recording these solo episodes for you. And again, I love you so much. I really do. Thank you for being a part of my life and allowing me to be a part of your life. And let’s keep living our best life and fulfilling our unlimited potential so that we can help others do the same. All right. Talk to you next week.