Afford Anything - Your Blueprint for Life's Toughest Challenges, with Hal Elrod

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

#480: The death of a sibling. Being declared dead after a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Suffering financially during the Great Recession. CANCER. Today’s guest, Hal Elrod, has battled all of these tough challenges. His little sister passed away in his mother's arms. Years later, Hal was hit by a drunk driver, broke 11 bones, declared dead, and once revived, learned that he might have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. (He eventually regained his ability to walk.) And after that, he was slammed hard in the wallet during the Great Recession. But he's a fighter. He needed to develop practices to build his resilience. So Hal created “The Miracle Morning,” a morning routine practice that gained massive popularity when he released it in 2012. The six-step Miracle Morning routine is coined S.A.V.E.R.S. -- silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing (writing). The routine became wildly popular, in part due to its flexibility; Hal explains that time-crunched people can start this as a six-minute routine; dedicating just ONE minute to each of these six steps. Over time, people can see the positive changes that this makes, and expand the time they allot for this. The routine is now the subject of a documentary, also called the Miracle Morning, available on Prime Video. Midway through filming, Hal was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and given a 30 percent chance of survival. He let the cameras roll as he coped with his diagnosis in real time. He joins us on this podcast to describe that experience, and to talk about the practices that he's used to stay productive in the face of grief, severe injury and cancer.  He talks to us about: the powerful Five-Minute Rule that helped him recover from a nearly fatal car crash the six most popular personal development practices of the successful specific tactics you can harness to create YOUR most successful life. As we move into the New Year, many of you are setting goals and resolutions. Hal describes specific, actionable tactics that you can use to build scaffolding and support around your new goals. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode480 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy New Year's 2024. With the start of a new year, so many of us have goals. We have resolutions. We have dreams. There are things that we want to accomplish in 2024. Because when we look back at where we were one year ago at this time and we compare the lengths that we've gone through in the past year, we see how far we've come, how much we've accomplished. And we know that we want to build on that in the year ahead. And yet, when we say, we've come, how much we've accomplished. And we know that we want to build on that in the year ahead. And yet, when we say, new year's goals, we often do so with the assumption that everything is going well, that we're healthy, that we're happy, that we're safe, that our families are doing well. And based on that assumption, based on starting from a baseline of things are good, we often then want to improve and see if we can level up, see if we can become better than before. What happens when things are not good. What happens when we are dealing with grief, with loss, with illness, with injury? How do we develop resilience so that we can continue to achieve our goals, to improve our lives, to become better versions of ourselves? How can we do that even in the face of turmoil

and tragedy, today's guest, Hal Elrod, has specific actionable tactics that can help us through this. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, to any limited resource that you need to manage. And that opens up two questions.

First, what matters most? And second, how do you make decisions accordingly? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today's guest, Hal Elrod, has endured his fair share of hardships.

He has lived through the death of a sibling. He lost his little sister when he was very young, when they were both young. He later in life was in a car accident that left him with 11 broken bones and that actually left him technically dead for a little while, for a short while. When he awoke from that car accident, the doctors told him that he may never walk again, that he might have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He got through that, in part highly motivated by the thought of not wanting his parents to have to lose a second child. And after that, he endured very, very severe financial distress during the Great Recession. He'll describe all of that in this upcoming interview, which is going to start in a couple of minutes.

Now, in order to develop resilience and continue pushing through, despite everything that was happening, he developed a morning routine that he dubbed the Miracle Morning. And that morning routine, which he shared in a book that he published in 2012, became wildly popular. It became a huge international bestseller. And also even became the subject of a documentary, which is also called The Miracle Morning. You can find it on Prime Video.

As he was shooting that documentary, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Hal Elrod has had to, in times of injury, in times of illness, in times of grief, has had to develop specific tactical, actionable practices that give him the fortitude to continue moving forward. And he shares those with us in this upcoming interview. So I hope that you enjoy it. And I hope that from this interview, you take away specific actionable information that can help you as you try to pursue your goals, your vision, your resolutions for this new year. Hi, Hal. Oh, it is so good to see you. It is amazing to see you too.

I want to jump right in. There are four major inflection points in your life, one of which had you done. doubling your income during the Great Recession. And that inflection point happened when you were 29. I want to get to that story. But, you know, these four major inflection points, they happened when you were age 8, age 20, age 29, and age 37. And each of these points has absolutely fundamentally changed the trajectory of your life and created lessons that everyone listening can benefit from. Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about what happened when you were 8. Yeah, I woke up on one Saturday morning to the sound of my mother screaming from her bedroom.

And she was saying, oh, my baby, my baby. And at first I thought she was playing with my baby sister as I was like groggy waking up. And then I sensed the like the terror in her voice. And so I ran across the hall and she was performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on my 18 month old sister, Amory. And so again, Amory was just a baby. and she had been breastfeeding her and her eyes just glossed over while she was breastfeeding her. And I called 911. I ran to the neighbor, you know, did everything that my little eight-year-old abilities could do.

And that morning she passed away. You know, it was devastating for our family, of course. It was me, my mom and dad, and then I had another sister who was just a year and a half younger than me. What I learned, though, is I watched my parents take this tragedy and they went through their grieving process, of course. But within about six to 12 months, my mother was leading a support group for other parents who had lost children. So she had turned her pain into purpose and was serving, you know, and helping other people with what she had gone through. And of course, there was some healing in that for her. My dad within roughly the same time period, he started a fundraiser for Valley Children's Hospital, which was the hospital that cared for my sister and attempted to save her life.

And so me and my other sister that was still living, we raised money for this hospital every single year for the next, I think, 10 plus years and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the hospital. So I didn't know it at that time at eight years old. I didn't know how to process what happened. It was all very confusing for me and dealing with death at such a young age. But what seed was planted from my parents is that when you experience tragedy in your life, when you experience adversity, that if you can find a way to help other people get through their adversity, there is power in that, there is healing in that. And then as we go to these other inflection points,

I realized not at the time, but looking back that, oh, that seed that was planted from my parents, that lesson that I learned watching how they helped other people would really set the tone for what I did with every future adversity that I've ever faced. Wow. Let's stay on this one a little bit because it's difficult to imagine at the age of eight and your other sister was six. Yeah. Right?

She was a year and a half younger. did you fully understand what death was? Here's what I know. And this came from a therapist, actually, a few years ago doing some unpacking of my childhood and her asking me a lot of questions. And what happened, the morning, that morning, I had called 911 and then I called my dad. He was working at a grocery store. And he rushed home. And my mom and dad went in the ambulance with my sister.

And then our neighbor friend, my friend, who I went to church with, school with, his mom took me. They just figured I didn't need to be at the hospital. My parents figured it would be better to be over there. And so I thought that Amory was going to be fine because I thought, oh, she's in the ambulance. That's what ambulance is do. They are going to save her. It's going to be fine. And about two hours later, my dad called and my friend's mom gave me the phone.

And he, the first time I heard my dad cry, I think. He said, Amory's in heaven. And again, at eight years old, I don't, I don't think I fully could comprehend death and what that meant. All I know is what I said. And not to my dad, but when I walked out back into the living room to greet my friend and his mom, Janine, I got really upbeat. And I said, hey, guys, guess where Amory is?

And I can remember Janine's face. I remember her like looking sad and furrowing her brow, like because I think she knew already. And I said, she's in heaven. Isn't that great? And so it's another thing. If I look at how I've responded to my adversities through that, it was in that moment, I both developed a superpower and also the shadow side that every superpower has. The superpower was, oh, whenever I face adversity, if I find the silver lining, if I find the

positive, focus on the positive, I don't have to suffer. But this shadow of that is I didn't develop my emotions fully as I grew up. I never ever fully allowed myself to experience painful emotions until much later in life, which is where the therapist came in and unpacking all of this and understanding where at eight years old, I formed this way of responding to challenges by just focusing on the positive and it alleviated the confusing emotions that, an eight-year-old was trying to understand and reconcile. Like, how am I supposed to feel about this? I'm never going to see my sister again.

What? I don't understand, you know? So, yeah, so again, it was, it really, though, helped me, you know, to deal with the other stories that we're going to share the other challenges that I faced in a really positive, proactive way. And then that also helped me do what my mom and dad did, which is like, oh, because I'm able to move through these challenges in this positive way, I can now use my, my knowledge, my superpower, my experience to serve other people and help them with this.

How did your other sister respond? Did she also develop that? That's a great question. I honestly don't remember. And I would imagine at six years old that she was probably sad. But I don't remember. I do know that she's far more in touch with her the full range of emotions, you know, throughout her lifetime than I was.

It took me until I went through my cancer journey, which we'll talk about. to actually get in touch with the pain that I had kind of suppressed for most of my life. Does your mom still run that support group? She doesn't, but she helps people. In fact, she's in the other room right now. She's visiting us. And I just had my friend, he's a filmmaker. He made the Miracle Morning movie, the documentary.

I just hired him to make a mini documentary about my mom. And I just saw the first cut of it yesterday. But she is basically, she's the definition of one person can make a change. And she donates blood every week. She sits with people that are dying in hospice. She volunteers. Yeah, she is the epitome of someone living in alignment with her values and helping as many people as she can. That's beautiful.

Thank you for sharing. And I'm glad she's in the other room. I'm glad she's visiting. She's probably listening. Tell us then, let's fast forward from the age of eight to the age of 20. Yeah. You're 12 years old. at this point and you're an adult now, you're a young adult. What happened? So I was a sales rep for

Cutco Cutlery. I had started a career a year and a half prior at age 19 and I had quickly become one of the top sales reps in the history of the company, which was for me a departure from a very mediocre childhood. I was like, I never got good grades. I wasn't an athlete. I was, I never really was exceptional at anything. I had really found my niche. I was just, because I was just enthusiastic. And I was like, wow, this product's amazing. Check this out. And a year and a half into my career, I was giving a speech at a conference. And that night, driving home in my Ford Mustang, my first new car that I had bought three weeks prior, a drunk driver got on the freeway going the wrong direction, 80 miles an hour headed straight

at my car. And I don't remember seeing the headlights coming at me. I don't know what I thought. Or if I even comprehended what was happening. But I was. My car was head on by a drunk driver at 80 miles an hour. And then the worst was yet to come. My car spun off the drunk driver and the car behind me teaboned me. It crashed into my driver's side door at 70 miles per hour. And the left side of my body was absolutely destroyed. I broke 11 bones instantaneously.

My leg broke in half. My arm broke in half. I shattered my elbow. I severed the nerve in my forearm. I almost completely lost my left. ear, my eye socket was destroyed, and the ceiling buckled and it sliced a V in the top of my head. It took the paramedics and the fire department almost an hour from the time of the crash to use the jaws of life and cut the roof off. And when they did, I bled to death. And my heart stopped beating.

I stopped breathing. I was clinically dead at the scene of the accident. And they rushed me onto a Metavac helicopter, pumped blood back into my body, used the defibrillators to shot me back to life, gave me oxygen. And I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes. And then thank God they didn't give up because they revived me. And I was airlifted to the hospital. I spent six days in a coma. I flatlined twice more. So I was in very critical condition. And when I came out of the coma six days later, I was told that I had permanent brain damage and that I would never walk again. And so at 20 years old, to be told, you're never going to walk again. And not to mention, I had no short-term memory. I mean, my poor parents had to keep retelling the story of what happened

me because, you know, I would fall asleep, wake up and go, where am I? Why am I, what's happening? Why am I all bandaged up? Why am I hooked up to these monitors? About a week after the crash and processing what happened, I implemented something. believe it or not that I had learned in my Cutco sales training. And it's called the five minute rule. And it simply states that when something goes wrong, it's okay to be negative. It's okay to feel sorry for yourself. But there's no sense in dwelling on something that you can't go back in time and change for an extended period of time. And doing so only creates suffering. In fact, I wouldn't have been able to articulate at the time. But later, I realize that every painful emotion,

And if you're listening, please tune into what we're talking right now, this five-minute rule. This is really valuable. And what I'm about to say, every painful emotion that we have ever experienced is self-created by our resistance to our reality. In other words, it's the degree that we wish or want something we're different that is out of our control, past, present or future that creates the emotional pain. If you go, no, why is there traffic? I wish there wasn't traffic.

I can't be late. I need to be. you're creating the emotional pain and you think it's the traffic you think well i'm upset because they're traffic you go wait the guy next to us in his car is running just as late as you he has the same negative consequence when he arrives there that you do but he's totally at peace how is that possible it's because he's not resisting reality he's completely at peace and accepted the fact that i can't change that there's traffic so i might as well be at peace with it so that i can enjoy this one life i've been blessed to live. Six days after the coma, I went, I can't change that I was hit by a drunk driver,

that I broke 11 bones, that I have permanent brain damage, and that I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, but I can choose to be the happiest and the most grateful I've ever been while I endure the most difficult time in my life. And I'm here to share with you the two are not mutually exclusive. We've been conditioned to think, we feel good only when good things happen, but we feel bad when bad things happen and we're not really in control of how we feel. And what I realize in that moment is no, we get to choose how we experience every moment of our life, including the most difficult ones. And I'll put a bow on this story by saying a week after this mindset of me deciding I'm at peace with what I can't change, but I decided I'm going to maintain faith that I might be able to walk again.

Who knows? I'm going to pray that I can walk again. I'm going to visualize walking again. I'm going to meditate in that state of being fully healed while I'm at peace with it may not work but I'm at least going to give it a shot and a week later the doctors came in with routine x-rays and they said we don't know how to explain this how but your body is healing so quickly that we're going to let you take your first step today in therapy and that day I took my first step three weeks after you know I broke all those bones I took my first step and you know the rest is kind of history as they say it's one thing to understand what you've just said at a cognitive level, right? Everything that you've just said, intellectually, I get it. Intellectually, I agree. But how were you able to feel it?

A week before I took my first step. So back up in time a week. Okay. So I've been out of the coma for about a week and I don't know if I were going to walk again. The doctor's called my parents in for an update and they said, we want to give you an update on how. Physically, he is stable now and he should be with us for a long time. Because at that point, they just wanted me to live, right? They didn't care if I was in a wheelchair. I mean, that was secondary for them. It was like, we just want our son alive.

I mean, my poor parents had already lost a child. Yeah. The doctor said, physically, he's stable, but mentally and emotionally, we're concerned that Hal is in denial or he is delusional because he's always happy and smiling and telling jokes to make us laugh. And they said, that's not normal. and they said, we want you to go talk to him and find out how he's really feeling. So my dad came into the hospital room.

I didn't know what this conversation was about. And he said, Hal, the doctors are a little concerned. They said, it's not normal that you're so positive right now. They said, you should feel sad, scared, angry, or depressed, or all of the above. They said, that's normal. And they believe that you can't handle your reality. So you've just checked out and you're just in la, la, la, land, pretending everything's okay. And I don't know if he said this, but essentially it was that eventually I was going to have to face reality.

And if I didn't do it in a safe environment in the hospital with the therapist, I might turn to drugs, alcohol, suicide, or some other escape from my reality. And my dad said, Hal, how are you really feeling? It's okay to feel sad, scared, angry, and depressed. And I went inside and I really sat with it. Am I sad? Am I scared? Am I angry? Am I depressed?

And I looked at my dad and I smiled. And I said, dad, I thought you knew me better than that. He said, what do you mean? I said, remember I live my life by the five-minute rule? He said, remind me of what that is again. I said, oh my gosh, I've told you this so many times. You'd be so much happier if you would listen to me and just apply this. But I said, it's okay to be negative and not for more than five minutes.

And in my cut code training, I was literally taught to set my timer for five minutes when something happened and, and give myself five minutes to fully feel it. And if you're listening to this, this is how literally try this out today. Try it out for the next 30 days. Set your timer for five minutes. I go, oh, I'm so mad. I'm so this. I'm so that. Fully feel your emotions.

Don't suppress them. Don't deny them. Don't deflect. Fully feel your emotions. And I had done this for a year and a half. And Paula, I'm going to share what a lot of people are probably thinking. It's what I thought when I first learned this. Dude, you've got to be kidding me.

I'm not going to get over something in five minutes just because I set a timer and it goes off. If I'm upset, I'm upset. And the first time I used this, it was like two days into my sales career. I had driven like 45 minutes this appointment. And she left a note on the door saying, we don't want any of your knives. Don't call back. I'm 19 years old. I'm trying to reach these goals.

It was, that was really upsetting for me, right? So I set my timer for five minutes as soon as I get back in the car. And I'm like, I can't believe she did that. How rude. She could have called me. She had my number. And I'm stewing over it. And the timer goes off after five minutes.

And I'm still upset. And I go, I hit the snooze button, snooze. I go, I'm still upset just as I thought five minutes is not enough time to get over something. And but here's something. So I felt validated, but the most profound. thing happened within about a week or two of doing this five-minute strategy. And by the way, I've shared this with tens of thousands of people. I've received thousands of emails. If you try this the way I'm describing it, it will change your life. So within about a week

or two, I remember it was Sunday morning. I woke up. I was trying to hit my goal for the week. And I was $2,000 away and orders were due the next morning. This was my last chance. And the odds of selling $2,000 in a day, not very good. Like that's a big day, right? The biggest set we sold was $750. So I'd have to sell three of them on two appointments, not very good odds. Go to the first appointment, but I'm like, I'm going for it. I'm positive. Go to the first appointment. She doesn't buy anything. And now I'm like, okay, set my time over five minutes, you know, but I'm like, how am I going to sell $2,000 on one appointment? That's nearly impossible. I go to the last appointment. the woman buys three sets, one for her, one for their vacation home, and one for her mom.

And I hit my goal. And I'm on cloud nine. And I call my manager, my mentor that taught me the five-minute rule. Jesse, and I said, Jesse, I just sold $2,300. I hit my goal for the week. I'm so excited. He said, Hal, not only do you hit your goal, that makes you the number one rep in the entire office for the week. You are number one.

We're going to recognize you. You're going to get an award at the meeting on Wednesday. on and on. And again, for an insecure kid that never accomplished anything amazing in his life, I'm calling my mom and dad. I'm celebrating. I am so excited. That night at 9.03 p.m. My phone rings, and it's the woman and she cancels her order saying her husband came home and he got really upset that she bought all the knives. Now, again, at 19, I just had like the high point of my life and it was just taken away. And I'm devastated. And I set my time. timer for five minutes. Oh, okay. What am I going to do? I can't believe she canceled her order.

Oh, she would have loved the knives. I can't believe she did that. What am I going to do? And all of a sudden, I start to answer the question. I go, well, all I can do is accept this. I can't change it. All I can do is accept it and wake up tomorrow morning, make calls and just try to make up for it this week. And all of a sudden, I start to like, I'm resolving this thing I can't change. And I pick up my phone and I have four minutes and 32 seconds left. and I go, wait a minute, what's the point of dwelling on something for the next four and a half minutes and being upset over it when I can't change it and being upset doesn't change it. It doesn't do anything. It's just causing myself to suffer. Why not just say those three words, can't change it. Now, release the attachment, the resistance, and just be at peace with it and go watch TV and enjoy the evening.

And so that's exactly what I did. And so my answer to your question of, yeah, you might get it intellectually, but how do you actually do it in real time when you're facing those emotions and that adversity? You start practicing the five-minute rule now. And you might need 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. You might have to snooze that five minutes multiple times. But every time you do, you are elevating your consciousness to a place of awareness that goes, oh, I'm in control of my emotions.

If I could get over them in 20 minutes, I could probably get over them in 15 and maybe even in 10. And then in five, right? And then you just felt hard to realize that we are in control of our emotional state. And so after I did that for a year and a half, that prepared me for this extraordinary adversity and the mindset that went, I can't change that I was in this. horrific car accident, and if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I'll be the happiest, most grateful person that anyone's ever seen in a wheelchair because I'm in a wheelchair either way and I will not let the unchangeable aspects of my life determine the one thing that I get

to choose, which is my attitude and how I feel about things. Wow. So what I'm hearing is practice. That's it. Yeah, that's it. Practice the behavior and eventually the feelings catch up with the behavior. Yeah, and I'll just tell this real quick. I had a woman, I gave a speech about this, and she emailed me a couple weeks after the speech,

and she was 27 years old at the time, and she said, Hal, I saw you speak a couple weeks ago. And when you started saying that every painful emotion we ever experienced is self-created, she said, I got really angry because my dad committed suicide when I was 17 years old. And I've spent the last 17 years depressed over my dad's suicide. side. And I felt like you were telling me it was my fault that I was depressed. She said, but I got that little can't change at wristband. I don't have these anymore, but I used to give out these can't change at wristbands when I spoke at colleges, you know, probably 15 years ago. And she said, I wore it. And every time I started to feel sad about my dad's death, which was just habitual,

I would look at it and go, oh yeah, I can't change it. Maybe I can be at peace with it. She said, the last 10 days is the first time in 10 years that I learned to be at peace with my dad's death. And yesterday I got a permanent tattoo and she sent me a picture of it of the words can't change it as an acknowledgement that I will never allow myself to feel emotional pain over my dad's death or anything else I can't change. And she said, I've decided to replace those old horrible feelings of depression and sad. and anger and with gratitude. Now when I look at my wrist, can't change it, I decide to be grateful for my dad's life, that I was his daughter, that nothing will ever change that. And I realized that if this woman could go from being depressed over her dad's suicide for 10 years to being completely at peace with it in, you know, in a week or two, then you and I, we can apply the same philosophy,

be the same mindset, the same five-minute rule and can't change its strategy to the challenges that we face that have maybe caused us to be upset up until this point. But now we can move beyond that. And it starts one five-minute timer at a time. That must be surreal to see someone get a tattoo of something you've said. Yeah, I've got a folder on my computer now. I think I have 17 can't change it tattoo pictures in that folder, which is wild. The holidays are right around the corner. And if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course,

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but many things for our customers. Big Bank Muscle, FinTech Hust. That's your commercial payments a fifth-third better. This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the help they need when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be Doubled, that means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca. slash giving Tuesday. How long did it take the full recovery? How long did it take until you were walking?

So unbelievably, I mean, they told me I'd be in the hospital for probably six months to a year. And they said I would, of course, never walk again. I took my first step three weeks after the night of the accident. and then four weeks later, I went home with a walker. So I left the hospital seven weeks after the night of the crash. And I actually went back to Cutco. And then I got back to work against doctor's orders. Something inside me wanted to get back to work.

And I was standing on stage two weeks after I got out of the hospital as the number, I think six rep out of a thousand reps at the conference for a two-week sales competition after I got out of the hospital. Wow. Yeah. That's drive. That's drive, which actually is a perfect lead in to what happened when you were 29, because at the age of 29, you doubled your income and you did so in the middle of the Great Recession. Tell us that story. So, yeah, it sounds glamorous, but the way it started was the recession began creeping as it's happening now, right? And I was kind of in denial of, I had never been through recession. And my business. was on the upswing. I was a business coach. I was coaching salespeople and financial advisors and

entrepreneurs. I had hit Hall of Fame with the Cutco company about a year and a half prior. And so I left. I wanted to start my own business. And my business was on the upswing. I think I had grown from zero to $80,000 my second year. And so things are going great. I had bought my first house. I was engaged to be married like life was the best that had ever been. And all of a sudden I start losing clients because the recession impacted my clients. And they're going, hey, my business is slow. I can't afford coaching. And I go, okay.

And then I lose one after another, after another. And in a six month period, it was this downward spiral where I lost over half of my coaching clients, therefore half of my income. I could not pay my bills. I started living on credit cards. I went from being a Dave Ramsey, debt free, you know, paid the credit cards off every month person to within six months, I had $52,000 in personal credit card debt from zero to $52,000, so about $8,000 a month or so. And I couldn't pay my mortgage so my house was

foreclosed on by the bank. So I'm figuring out where I'm going to live, ended up moving back in with my dad. And I got really depressed for the first time in my life because I applied, can't change it in the five minute rule, but I had never applied it to a declining, worsening circumstance where it got worse and worse. Like when I came out of the accident, it was like, okay, that's the low point. Now I have to go up and improve and heal and grow. But in 2008, it was like, wait, is this the low point? Oh, no, it's not. I lost two more clients this week. Wait, is this the can't change it? Is this the low point? And I was not mentally or emotionally equipped to handle that. I didn't know how to handle that.

Episodic versus chronic. Yeah, yeah. Great way to frame it. Exactly. I called a friend for advice. I hadn't told anybody. I was just, I was suffering in silence. I finally reach out to my friend John. And I say, John, I am financially distraught. I don't know what to do. It's getting worse. It's been getting worse for six months. Give me some advice. And he said, I want you to listen to this Jim Rohn audio. I said, is it on how to make more money? He said, no. It's on how to become the person that you need to be to change any aspect of your life. I go, I was hoping for a quick fix to my financial issues, but okay, I'll listen to this audio.

So I listen to this Jim Rohn audio and a single quote, and I'm going to ask everybody, I'm going to encourage you to write this down if you can or timestamp it and come back to write it down. But this quote changed my life. It was the catalyst that changed my life faster than ever thought possible. In fact, I give Jim like half the credit because the Miracle Morning was born out of this philosophy. Jim Rohn said, your level of success, and I apply this to every area of life, your financial success, your health, your relationships, your mental health, you name it. So your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And when I heard that, I quantified it immediately for whatever reason, just automatically.

I went, okay, what level of success do I want on a scale of one to 10? Well, level 10, I think that's human nature as we want to be as happy and healthy and wealthy and in love as we possibly can. Everybody, there's this innate desire and drive toward level 10, the best life can be. The next question was, well, if my level of success is not going to exceed my level of personal development, I got to ask myself, what's my level of personal development, as in what am I doing every day to become the level of success? level 10 version of myself that is capable of creating and sustaining the level 10 success I want in my life. And the answer to that question was, I'm at like a two or a three. I'm doing very little

every day to become the level 10 version of myself. In fact, I'm sleeping until the last possible minute. I'm depressed. I hate waking up every morning. I'm going into a stressful environment. my work is stressful, my finances are stressful, my relationship is stressful because I'm a mess. I'm not the person that my fiance first started dating. Like, I'm a mess at this point. And so the epiphany or the thought was, I need to go figure out what I'm going to get online. I'm going to figure out what are the world's most successful people do for their personal development. I'm going to combine the best personal development practices to create the ultimate

personal development ritual. And theoretically, if I start doing that every day, that should enable me to become, go from being at a two or a three, to a level four, five, six, like to get better and better every day. And as I get better, I should become more capable of turning my financial situation around. This was the theory.

And I was looking for one or two practices, Paula, and I went home and I googled. I had been on a run listening to the audio. and I just Googled, what are the world's most successful people do for personal development? And things like, what do millionaires do and billionaires do? And what do wealth people do? I was trying to figure out, like, you know, attack it from different angles. And I was looking for one or two practices, but after about 30 to 60 minutes, I ended up with a list of six.

These are the six most timeless, proven personal development practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries. And two challenges I face, number one is I'm like, none of these are new, like meditation, affirmations, visualization, reading, journaling, exercising. Like, these aren't new and we've been conditioned to think we need new. It's got to be something cutting edge, never before seen. So I started to almost dismiss them. Then the next challenge I faced was, which is the best? Like I can't do all of them, which is the best?

and I almost threw in the towel and then thank God, and I really do believe this was a God thing. I got this moment of clarity where I went, okay, wait a minute, rather than dismiss these because I've heard of them, how about I consider that the world's most successful people attribute their success to one or more of these practices, and I'm not doing any of them consistently. That's first. Number two, rather than pick one or two, what if I did all of them? What if I woke up tomorrow an hour earlier, even though I was not a morning person? I just determined I'm so busy during the day.

And if I were to do these first thing in the morning, it would get me off to a peak start where my mental, my physical, my emotional, my spiritual capacities, I could start at a peak level every morning so I'd be better throughout the day. And I thought that would be the ultimate personal, development ritual. And so that night I googled how to meditate because I really didn't know how to meditate.

I googled how to do affirmations because those felt really cheesy to me like how am I going to affirm. I'm amazing. I'm a I'm wealthy. I'm right. So I googled these practices and here's a really important piece for people. If you're in a position right now where you're struggling and maybe you were like me where the only escape from problems you have is your bed at night. I think, I don't know if you've been there before, but that was me where every day, I just counted down the hours before I could hug my pillow and feel like I was safe for six or seven, eight hours. And then I woke up and I just struggled through my day again. But that night, I wasn't going to bed in that state. I felt excited for the morning.

I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve where I was like, wait, this could be it. When I do this every day, like I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow, but I think I'm going to feel a heck of a lot different than I do now. The next morning when the alarm went off, I didn't even hit the snooze button. I jumped out of bed. I ran into the living room and I didn't know how to do these well, but I looked at my tab on my computer. Okay, how do I meditate? And I sat there and I meditated and my mind was racing and I'm like, I suck at this. But I still felt centered and calm.

And I was like, okay, that's a really nice. way to start the day. Then I pulled out some affirmations that I read and then I went through the, I went through all six practices. And by the way, let me give a quick framing for people. These are known as the savers. This is the acronym for these six practices. S-A-V-E-R-S. That's silence, prayer and or meditation. A is for affirmations. V is for visualization. E is for exercise. R is for reading. And the final S is for scribing, which is a fancy word for writing or journaling. As Robert Kiyosaki said, Hal, before you wrote the miracle morning, every successful person on the planet swears by at least one of the savers.

He said, but I had never heard of anyone that did all six of these ancient best practices. One of them will change your life, but he said six of them creates miracles. He said, you name the book correctly. And so after I did this practice for two months, I more than doubled my income. and we can unpack how I did that specifically, because I think there's certainly value in that, especially with this recession. I went from being in the worst shape of my life

to committing to train for a 52-mile ultramarathon because I hated running, and I thought, what better way to grow and evolve than to commit to do something that is so far outside of my comfort zone that I have to become a different version of myself to be able to do it. And last but not least, and maybe most importantly,

my mental health did not take two months to improve. It improved on the very first day because I went from feeling hopeless to feeling that if I do this every day, if I start every day with these six practices and start the day with this much energy and clarity and motivation, it's only a matter of time before I become the person I need to be to turn my life around. And two months later, it worked. And I told my wife, it felt like a miracle. And she goes, that routine is your little miracle morning.

I go, yeah, Miracle Morning, I like that. And then, you know, eventually it became a book and so on and so forth. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe. But this time, why not look a little further? To Dubai. A city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures, to museums that showcase the future, not just the past.

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The most wonderful time of the year starts at Simons. You've described how in the morning you go through a series of practices that center you. It centers you mentally. It centers you spiritually. It centers you physically. How then did you approach this chronic problem of losing your clients in the middle of a recession and needing to turn your fortunes literally around? Yes. The first thing was mindset. And this was where my affirmations really helped. I affirmed that the economy is not in control of my financial situation. I am in control of my financial situation. That might seem simple. You could almost overlook it.

But that paradigm shift is monumental. It is consequential to take 100% responsibility for your financial situation. Because if you say it's the economy, again, you have no control over the economy. You only have control over what you do. So that's the first piece is that mindset shift and going from, you know, blaming to complete responsibility. The second thing I did is I went on Amazon.com and I looked for a book that would give me strategies to get more clients. And the book I landed on is by Michael Port. It's called book yourself solid. It's for service-based businesses that want to get more clients. So I thought,

I'm not going to make this up on my own. I'm going to take a proven system and I'm going to implement that. So I ordered that book. And that gave me strategies to ask for referrals. different ways to scale my business, to go from one-on-one coaching to group coaching, all sorts of different strategies. And then there was a way that I sequenced these savers, these six practices known as the savers, I sequenced them. So every morning I would start with silence. I would meditate and I would do so to lower my cortisol levels. There's over 1,400 scientific studies that show the physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual benefits of meditation. But you lower your stress levels so that you can think clearly so that you can gain insights

that you don't get when your mind's racing and you're stressed out and you're in this flight or flight mode. Like most of our best ideas come when we're in the shower, when we're falling asleep at night, when our mind is resting. And so intentionally starting your day with people. purposeful silence, whether it is prayer or meditation. For me, it's a combination of both. That is an optimal way to allow yourself to gain the clarity that you need to move forward and to put yourself in an optimal mental and emotional state. In the new Miracle Morning

updated and expanded edition, I teach something I call emotional optimization meditation, which isn't in the original book, but it's something that I do now where I identify what's the optimal emotional state that I need to be in that would serve me today and what I need to get done and what I need to accomplish. And then I meditate in that state. So I create those new neural pathways and kind of hardwire that, if you will. Then I used my affirmations. I mentioned one of them, but I went beyond that. And I followed three steps to create affirmations. Number one, what are you committed to? That's number one. Affirm what you're committed to. In life, get what you want. I want to make more money. I want to get out of debt. No, I'm committed to

generating X amount of dollars, increasing my revenue by this month, right? Get very specific on what you're committed to. Step two, why is it a must for you? For me, it was a must for my wife. We were, she was pregnant. It was our unborn child. Right. So I was really clear. I had meaningful reasons that compelled me to do whatever it took. And then number three, which specific actions will you take and win? So that formula, I affirmed what I was committed to, why it was a must for me, and which specific actions I was going to take and win. And that could be as general as I'm committed to reading this book and then scheduling 60 minutes a day to implement what I'm learning.

Think how simple that is. If you want to improve your marriage, there's a book for that. You want to be happier? There's a book for that. Whatever you want to do, there's a book for that. But you also need to optimize your mental and emotional well-being. and create space and reinforce your level of commitment in order to follow through. So all of these savers support each other.

And the last one is visualization. I won't go into all of these. We don't have time. But the last one is scribing. At the end of my miracle morning, I pull out my journal and I write down a few things. Number one, what am I grateful for? I want to really put myself in a state of gratitude for my life. That helps me realize that there's a million things I could be stressed about.

but I'm going to put myself in a state of gratitude. Number two, what's my top priority today? So I look at my to-do list and I ask myself, what is my top priority today? Because the two-lilers might have 15 things on it. It often does. But I ask myself, what's the one that, like in that case in 2008, what's the number one thing that is going to move the needle in terms of my income, in terms of growing my business and getting more clients?

And then number three is, is there anything, that I need to be at peace with before I enter my day. So is there anything I'm holding on to, any stress, any conflict from yesterday, any fears for the future? And by writing it down and getting it out of your head, it allows you to transcend that stressful state. So that's an example of how all of the savers, we didn't cover exercise and visualization,

but you get the idea, you use all six of them and focus them like a laser toward whatever. your most important outcome or outcomes are in your life. And again, within two months of doing that and following what I was learning in the book and optimizing my state every day and taking action, that's how I doubled my income in 2008. And so just to recap really quickly, so Savers, S-A-V-E-R-S, the morning routine that you implemented is silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing, which is just a fancy word for writing. Yeah, but the J or W would have made the acronym weird, right?

Saberja or Sabra. So yeah, so thank you thesaurus for that one. And then in terms of what you are scribing or writing, it's three things. What are you grateful for? What's your top priority for the day? And what do you need to be at peace with in order to start your day? Yep. We only have a few minutes left.

I want to get to the fourth inflection point in your life. We've talked about the, you know, major events in your life that happened at the age of eight, at the age of 20. And then at the age of 29, when you, when your home was foreclosed on and you lost all of your clients during the Great Recession while your wife was pregnant, right? take us then to age 37, the fourth and most recent major inflection point. Yeah, just when you think, I'm like, all right, I've had enough. I'm ready to just, you know, live an easier life. At 37 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night struggling to breathe. And after about 11 days of having my lung drained of about a liter of fluid every other day at the ER

and going to multiple hospitals for testing, it turned out my heart was on the verge of failing and my kidneys were failing and my lung, of course, was collapsing. I was diagnosed a very rare aggressive form of cancer. It's called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So it's a blood cancer that attacks your organs and causes them to shut down. I was given one to three weeks to live. If I didn't start chemotherapy immediately, I was very hesitant. I didn't want to do the chemotherapy, just because it's very hard on your body, of course, it's poison. And many people die from the chemo. but the best holistic doctors in the country said that was my best shot of living. And so I decided to do it.

And with a seven-year-old daughter at the time and a four-year-old son being told I had only a 20 to 30 percent chance of living, it was the hardest time in my life for sure. And I started out feeling afraid. What if? What if I die? What if I leave my kids without a dad? and I very quickly realized that that fear is not serving me. And so I crafted affirmations. Step one, what am I committed to?

I'm committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old, alongside Ursula and the kids, no matter what, there is no other option. And I read that over and over and over with such conviction that it became my reality. And I literally just fear wasn't there anymore because I just repeated it so many times that I embodied it.

I felt it. I believed it. I'm going to beat this cancer, no matter what there is no other option. Step two, why is it a must for me? I had five reasons. I'm committed to meeting cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day.

I'm committed to being cancer for Sophia and Halston, my kids, because they need their daddy's love guidance and leadership, and I want to watch them grow up. I'm committed to being cancer for my mom and dad because they already lost one child and they don't deserve to lose another. one. I'm committed to being cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. And last but not least, I am committed to beating cancer for the millions of people who

are themselves battling cancer or some other disease and may not have been blessed with the knowledge and resources that I have. And I have a responsibility to heal so that I can help them heal on their journey. Those five reasons for me, Paula, were so compelling that When I felt like giving up, when I was so sick from chemo that I didn't want to keep going, when I was exhausted, I would read those and I was willing to continue. It got me to keep going one more day. And you can apply this formula to every goal in your life, every role in your life, everything that you want to change or improve or accomplish.

And then step three, I just had a list of, okay, I will do chemotherapy, but I'm going to maintain the mindset that it is healing my cancer, but my body is strong enough to survive it. And I embodied that belief. And then I had a list of every holistic practice that I was committed to doing. I read books every day. I focused all six of the savers on the only goal that mattered to me at that point, which was to beat cancer and to survive. So every day, I meditated in a state of complete healing. I read that affirmation's formula every day. I visualized, every cell in my body, which when you see a cancer cell under a microscope, it looks very different from a healthy cell. So I visualized healthy cells in my body. I visualized walking my daughter

down the aisle so that I was embodying this belief that I was going to be around for a long, long, long time. I exercised every morning. I read books on natural, holistic ways to beat cancer. and I journaled every morning what I was grateful for, what I was committed to that day, my highest priority. And if there was anything stressful, which there was a lot, that I needed to be at peace with so that I could move forward throughout my day. And I really believe that my savers, my Miracle Morning saved my life because I was in remission within about two months, far sooner than the doctors thought I would be. I still had to undergo three years of chemotherapy, which we'll save that for the next episode because that was another horrible ordeal. That was like the fifth situation. But yeah, but I'm grateful to say that I'm alive.

And I really believe it's because of the miracle morning. You know, I posted on Twitter a photo of your book a couple of days ago and said that I'm reading it and that I'm going to talk to you in a few days. someone reached out. Shout out to Eric at Eric Henson 71 and wanted me to ask you this question. Eric asks, does the savers regiment need to be in the morning in order to be effective? I love this question. The answer is no and yes. And here's what I mean, because I get this question a lot, right? Like, couldn't I do the savers like at night after work or in the afternoon? Yes, these six practices will benefit you any time of day. will benefit you whenever you do them. However, the benefits are both immediate and lasting, meaning when you meditate in the morning, you lower your cortisol levels, therefore you lower

your stress. You create space for new ideas and clarity. You want those benefits first thing in the morning so that you can optimize your day. When you read your affirmations, you are directing your conscious mind toward what you are committed to, why it is a must for you, and which specific actions you are committed to taking today that will move you toward the outcomes that you're committed to. Again, you wait until the end of the day. You're missing out on that clarity and those reminders being top of mind first thing in the morning. In the book, I teach a very unique or I don't know if it's unique, but it's not taught usually when it comes to visualization, not just visualizing the end result, like, you know, crossing the finish line, winning the championship, whatever.

I teach you how to visualize yourself performing at your best today, whether it's for your family, whether it's at work, whether it's for yourself. I teach you to visualize, essentially mentally rehearse yourself performing at your best today so that when it's time to actually step into the office, engage with your spouse or your kids, or, you know, open up your computer and get to work, you've already gone there in your mind and your body and your spirit. So you are far more effective throughout the day. Exercise. Robin Sharma in the Miracle Morning movie, there's a documentary that features many people. Robin Sharma is one of them. He says that the benefits of exercise have been proven to last for 13 hours after the initial exercise.

Right. So you actually generate energy in your body that benefits you throughout the day. You don't want to miss out on that. When you read something in the morning, you gain ideas that you can apply during the day. And then last but not least is scribing. If you journal using the technique that I teach, right, one of those techniques is looking at your to-do list and clarifying, what's the number one thing I'm going to do today? And is there anything I need to let go of today that I'm stressed about, right?

All of the benefits of the savers, doing them in the morning is crucial so you can show up at your best. every single day. Right. So ideally, if you do it in the morning, you have the benefits of it for the rest of the day. But if you can't do it in the morning for any reason, then doing it at some point later in the day is better than not doing it at all. Absolutely. And there's two things.

I've been asked for years, how, do you have an evening ritual? And I was always kind of embarrassed because I'm like, not really. I just like kiss the kids and go to bed, you know? But I started to realize in 2020, I went through a six-month period of sleep deprivation. It was, I think it was from chemotherapy. I don't know for sure, but I've been on chemo for three years, and I just stopped sleeping. My brain just kind of went out of whack. And after six months of sleep deprivation, I was a mess, and I relentlessly researched

how do I turn this around? And now when I speak, I always ask my audiences, how many of you have trouble with sleep and it's over half of the hands that go up? And so I shared, there's a chapter in the book called The Miracle Evening where I share seven things I do, a seven-step evening ritual to prepare you for restful, I call it blissful bedtime so you can go to sleep, even if life is stressful. What do you do to let go of those things that are weighing on your mind at night so you can free yourself to actually just go to sleep feeling good so you can wake up feeling good?

If there's one thing that you do in the evening that stands out, what is that? what's the top evening thing? Yeah, it's to flip the switch. And flipping the switch is to have, it starts just with an intellectual acknowledgement to go, okay, wait a minute, when I lay down to bed, not even just lay down to bed, like for the last, you know, hour in the evening as I'm winding down toward bed, my friend Michael Bruce, Dr. Michael Bruce is the sleep doctor. He calls it landing the plane.

You've got to land the plane, right? You got to, you know, gradually land the plane. And so flipping the switch is acknowledging my only objective at. bedtime is to prepare my mind and body for peaceful, restful sleep. Therefore, every thought and every action as I approach bedtime must be in alignment with my singular objective, which is to go to bed, to fall asleep. Here's the thing. If you just rely on your mind, the monkey mind, it can be very difficult.

It's why I love affirmations because you get to design the thinking. that serves your highest good. And so the bedtime affirmations are before bed. It's you read these affirmations that remind you of, here's my singular objective. I'm going to let go of stressful thoughts. I'm going to replace them with grateful thoughts. I'm going to go to bed saying,

thank you God for my life. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for this bed. Thank you for this pillow. I just fall asleep every night, just feeling grateful for everything. in my life. And I find that your last thought before you fall asleep is almost always your first thought in the morning. Or I should say your emotional state as you drift off to sleep

is almost always the emotional state you wake up and go to bed stress, wake up stress. Go to bed grateful and peaceful and feeling safe in your bed. Wake up feeling grateful and peaceful and ready to take on your day. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Well, we will end it here. Are there any final thoughts that you want to share? I'd invite everybody to check out Miracle Morning, right?

Miraclemorning.com. You can watch the movie for free. It's a documentary that has the morning routines of, you know, Mel Robbins and Robin Sharma and Brendan Burchard and Lewis Howes and world champion athletes like Layla Ali. And it has my cancer journey because I was diagnosed. noticed halfway through filming the documentary. And my director just kept the cameras rolling. It's a really inspiring film that you can watch with your family.

It's free, Miraclemorning.com. You can download the free Miracle Morning app. And then, of course, the new book, it's the Miracle Morning updated and expanded edition. I wanted to make sure it really helped every person to start their day in an optimal way so that they can become the person that you need to be to create everything that you want for your life, whatever that looks like for you.

Thank you, Hal. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, regardless of what happens to us, the way that we feel about those experiences makes a massive difference in the way that we process what is happening in our life. Hal talks about some of the things that he has endured

and discusses how the way that he perceives what's happening around him, even and especially the moments that are most painful, that choice that he has in how to perceive it gives him the ability to control what happens downstream within his life. Every painful emotion that we have ever experienced is self-created by our resistance to our reality. In other words, it's the degree that we're we wish or want something we're different that is out of our control, past, present, or future that creates the emotional pain. We've been conditioned to think we feel good only when good things happen, but we feel bad when bad things happen. And we're not really in control of how we

feel. And what I realize in that moment is, no, we get to choose how we experience every moment of our life, including the most difficult ones. I can't change that I was hit by a drunk driver, that I broke 11 bones, that I have permanent brain damage, and that I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, but I can choose to be the happiest and the most grateful I've ever been while I endure the most difficult time in my life. So that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, Hal emphasizes the crucial importance of personal development, because we can work on developing technical skills, right?

We can get educated on accounting or investment analysis. We can learn all kinds of skills. But if we don't do the inner work of understanding ourselves, we will never experience the success that we're striving for, the success that we're capable of, right? This applies, well, actually, we'll let him describe all of the arena. us that it applies to. Jim Rohn said, your level of success, and I apply this to every area of life, your financial success, your health, your relationships, your mental health, you name it.

So your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And when I heard that, I quantified it immediately for whatever reason. Just automatically I went, okay, what level of success do I want on a scale of one to 10? Well, level 10, I think that's human nature as we want to be as happy and healthy and wealthy and in love as we possibly can. Everybody, there's this innate desire and drive toward level 10. The best life can be. The next question was, well, if my level of success is not going to exceed my level of personal development, I got to ask myself, what's my level of personal development, as in what am I doing every day to become the level 10 version of myself that is capable of creating and sustaining the level 10 success I want

in my life. So key takeaway number two is the importance of personal development. It is not time away from work. It is in fact time spent facilitating your work. Finally, key takeaway number three, Hal talks about how he developed the savers routine, silence, affirmations, visualization. exercise, reading, and scribing or writing. He built this after researching the practices of the most successful people in the world. And he has found that spending an hour on these activities has been proven time and again to positively impact people's lives. These are known as the savers. This is the acronym for these six practices.

S-A-V-E-R-S, that's silence, prayer, and or meditation. A is for affirmations, V is for visualization, E is for exercise, R is for reading, and the final S is for scribing, which is a fancy word for writing or journaling. And so after I did this practice for two months, I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life to committing to train for a 52-mile ultramarathon because I hated running and I thought what better way to grow and evolve than to commit to do something that is so far outside of my comfort zone that I have to become a different version of myself to be able to do it. And last but not least, and maybe most importantly, my mental health did not take two months to improve. It improved on the very first day because

I went from feeling hopeless to feeling that if I do this every day, if I start every day with these six practices and start the day with this much energy and clarity and motivation, it's only a matter of time before I become the person I need to be to turn my life around. And two months later, it worked. Now, if you don't have an hour in the morning, start with six minutes. Start with one minute per step and build from there. Something is better than nothing. And starting is often the hardest part.

So start in the lowest friction manner possible and then expand from that point forward. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Hal Elarad, the creator of The Miracle Morning. Thank you so much for tuning in. And again, happy New Year's. You know, the new year is a natural, fresh start. And I've heard people criticize the idea at an intellectual level. It's an academic exercise, right? people will sometimes say, well, what's so special about January 1st that couldn't be replicated

on June 14 or September 8 or October 22? In theory, sure, any date is no different than any other date. But people are symbolic. Any new change, whether that's the turning of a calendar year, whether that's a birthday, any type of turning of the page, ending of one chapter and moving to the next chapter, is a natural marker for renewed motivation. And that renewed motivation can, if harnessed properly, form the building blocks of habits. To quote James Clear, who is a former guest on this podcast and the author of the book, atomic habits. James Clear says, and I'm quoting, we don't rise to the level of our dreams. We fall to the level of our habits. We don't rise to the level of our dreams. We fall to the level of our habits. And what that means is that when we experience this rare burst of motivation,

which often tends to happen only a couple of times a year, New Year's, birth, days, maybe a graduation or some other type of milestone event, when we get this annual, semi-annual burst of motivation, this is the moment to harness that into the formation of habits because it is those habits that will carry you through the next 366 days. It's a leap year. So, decide which habits you want to gel this year. Choose one or two incredibly clear, incredibly specific ones. Create an environment that is conducive to the formation of habits, eliminate friction,

and make the pursuit of those habits your identity. By doing so, and by focusing on consistent action rather than on outcome, You can end this year in a far better place than you started it. For support and health, join the Afford Anything community. It's absolutely free. Affordanything.com slash community. There you will find like-minded people who are willing to support and encourage and cheer you on and offer advice every step of the way.

Again, completely free. Affordanithing.com slash community. Also, make sure. that you're subscribed to our show notes. Affordanything.com slash show notes. We'll have some big announcements coming out this year, including an international trip, which we are planning with the Afford Anything community.

We'll be making that announcement by email, so make sure that you're subscribed to the show notes, affordanything.com slash show notes. We're also thinking about rolling out a new course this year. In fact, I'd like your feedback on it before we put the polished prototype together. So again, all of that, we will communicate first via email and you can subscribe to our updates at afford anything.com slash show notes. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this community.

I look forward to everything that we will accomplish together in the upcoming year. My name is Paula Pamp. This is the Afford Anything podcast. And I'll catch you in the next episode.