Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Do This Every Morning And Change Your Life - Hal Elrod on "The Miracle Morning"

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Hal Elrod (@halelrod) is an entrepreneur, podcaster, author and motivational speaker. His bestselling book "The Miracle Morning" has been translated in 37 different languages and has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. He talks about the 6 essential habits to add to your morning routine that will change your life, he also discusses how he came up with the idea for "The Miracle Morning", why he started his podcast called "Achieve Your Goals" and much more! For more info on Hal Elrod visit: http://miraclemorning.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blen! All right, my friends, welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CVV Chris Van Fleet. So good to have you with us as we dive into a conversation that could actually change your life. Hal Elrod is the author of the book, The Miracle Morning. It's sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide, and his story is just amazing. He'll get into it more, but this idea of how you spend the first few minutes or the first hour of your day, I mean, it's not an exaggeration.

If you actually think about this and start doing this, it will, in fact, change your life. You can find Hal on Instagram or Twitter. It's just his name at Hal Elrod. You can find me, just my name, at Chris Van Fleet. And you can find out more about Hal on his website, halelrod.com. Or you can also go to Miraclemorning.com. They're both good. I also go to my website,

Chris Van Vleet.com. You can find all of our previous episodes on there. Alda Hodges is our fan of the week. Thank you for leaving this review on Apple Podcasts. It says, very helpful, exclamation mark. Thank you so much. I listen to your podcast every day. It's my motivation.

Well, I appreciate that. I know you're going to be very motivated by this one. And by the way, I read one review from Apple Podcasts on every single episode. It's my way to say, thank you. So just if you have an iPhone, Leave a few words on there. We'll shout you out on the show.

And it's free, of course. I know there's some shows that are like, yeah, pay for a shout out. Like, no, you don't have to pay. Just leave a few words. By the way, also, if you have Spotify, we just hit 700 ratings on Spotify. So if you happen to be listening on Spotify, please go in there, click those stars. It would be so, so, so appreciated. All right, are you ready?

I love this conversation. I know you will as well. please welcome Hal. Hal, it's so great to have you on. Chris, like I said, this is my first interview in a long time, so I'm excited. It's like I got, you know, it's like I'm a kid again. It's fresh. It's new.

So, yeah, thanks for having me on, man. It'll be like riding a bike. There you go. I'd imagine it will. You are one of the most positive people that I've ever connected with. And I love that because your positivity is so infectious. Have you always been this way? Yes and no. I've always been this kind of energetic, you know, ever since I was a kid, somewhat, I guess, a positive energy, if you will, but I didn't learn about the concept of positive thinking and optimism until I was 19. And my mentor at 19 taught me about positive thinking. And I went home to my parents and I realized I'm like, wow, you guys are so negative. You know, in contrast to what I'm learning about like focusing on the positive, you guys are complaining like,

A lot, you know. And so that was really the shift where it went from being. It might have been a part of my unconscious, just, you know, way of being. I don't know. But yeah, when I was 19 and I learned about positive thinking, that's when I started creating, you know, written affirmations and deciding, hey, this is who I'm going to be. And I wrote, I remember I saw the document. I ran across it the other day that I wrote when I was 19 called, I think it was like my most important areas of self improvement, right? And I had like, and the first one was I'm committed to being the most positive person that I know. Literally, that was the first one. And, you know, there was other words about integrity and helping others and this and that. But, but yeah, that document I started to live into.

And here we are today. Look, most people go their entire lives without a coach or a mentor. What made you decide at 19 that you wanted some guidance? Yeah. So I was pursuing my, my dream at the time, which was to be a radio disc jockey. I had. I had been on a radio show when I was 15 years old. My sophomore year of high school, I got to host a radio show every Thursday for three hours. And after too many complaints, it was like an old country Western station

and I was playing hip hop. And all the regular listeners called me, go, who the hell is this kid every week that's playing rap music? Like, get him off. So didn't get invited back. But the dream was born. And I started my own mobile DJ company. So anyway, I was pursuing that when I was

19. After my first year of college, I got a job at a, you know, a more major, you know, FM radio station, 97.1 FM down in the, in, in central California. And a buddy of mine, Teddy Watson, who I went to college with that first year, he had been trying to convince me to sell kitchen knives, Cutco Kitchen Knives. And he worked for Cutco and he was like, howl you'd be so good at this. It's, you know, the, the knives sell themselves. They're a great product. If you just bring your enthusiasm and I'm like, how, Teddy, like, stop. I'm a DJ. I got no interest in being a salesperson. And I ended up, I was with him one day when he went to his office and I met his manager, Jesse Levine, who became the mentor that I referenced earlier. And Jesse really positioned the opportunity of direct sales where I could set my own schedule. I could create my own, like I could earn as much as I want. There was really no ceiling to my potential or my income. And I decided to give it a shot. And so that's how it became Jesse. You know, I I didn't know that my boss, I mean, bosses in the past were never mentors to me, right?

It was like usually you didn't like your boss. They were kind of jerks, whatever. Jesse was different. And I went through a three day training with Jesse, three, eight hour days of training. And during that, like by the end of that, he was like my favorite person on the planet. I go, this guy's incredible. Like, he is so positive. He's so, you know, just, I just love this guy's mindset.

You know, he treats everybody so well. He talked about integrity being like the most valuable asset that we. have as individuals to be able to live in alignment with our word. And he said, if you can, if you value your integrity at the highest level, meaning you simply do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it without question. He said, you can literally speak your life into existence. And so it was lessons like that that, you know, I latched on. And Jesse, I talked to him two days ago. It's been, you know, what, 20 years since I started with Cutco, 22 years. And he was in my wedding, one of my best friends. And still, you know, still to this day,

probably the most valuable mentor of out in my life. I think that people see success like you, like that you have achieved. And they go, well, that's great for how, but that's not possible for me. And I think that we see this a lot in the world that we live in. We see the finished product. We see Tom Brady or Oprah Winfrey or LeBron James or whoever.

And we don't see the process along the way for them to get to that point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've always shared, it used to be a big part of my speeches as I would just talk about how, what a mediocre kid I was, you know? Like we all, we all know, I said this to my daughter the other day. She's 11.

And we all, there's those people that have always been good at everything they do. Right. You know, we all went to school with someone that like they, they got great grades and they were good looking and they were popular and they were the star basketball or, you know, tennis player, whatever. Like they were good at everything. And it was and it was kind of the kid where any teacher or person that they're like in their life goes, man, they're, like, they're set. They're going to be really successful. And I was not that kid. You know, I was a C student at best. I actually, I held one record in high

school. I set the, it was my senior year, I think. I set the hours for the most detention. Any student had ever gotten in a single year. It was like 179 hours. And, and congratulations. Yeah, right? Like, you know, I was, so I was not a world beater. And I also, I wasn't that popular. I got boldlyed a lot. You know, I think I was, I was more the average kid. And I was, I feel like I was mediocre. And it was on my second day of Cutco training when our, my mentor, Jesse Levine, told the training class, there's probably 20, 30 of us in that class. And he just talked about the records. You know, this is standard every week. You know, it says, hey, we have these company records. It's called your fast start. The first 10 days that you that you want

out of training, you have this opportunity and these incentives to earn all sorts of, you know, prizes and recognition and this and that. And, you know, he said at this level, you win this. And if you sell this much, you, you know, he'd go up into higher and higher and higher and higher. And he got to the highest level. He said, if you break the record, which is $12,000 and, you know, change, whatever it was, which had just been set like three weeks prior by a girl who lived 90 minutes south of me. I was in Fresno, California. And she had been in Bakersfield, to California. And I don't know exactly, Chris, what it was inside me because this had never happened ever. But something inside me went, wait a minute, why not me? If she could do it,

and she lives in Bakersville, right? So it's not like I'm comparing like she was in Beverly Hills, you know, selling to Richby. It's like she lives in Bakersville. Like, no offense, but, you know, Fresno and Bakersfield are kind of like cousins, you know, it's like, and if you're not familiar with those areas, right, they're just, they're known. Like, I think, Fresno had a nickname as the armpit of California, right? Wow. I love that. I lived there for a long time.

I thought it was great. I wouldn't agree with that. But anyway, just for me, I went, if she could do it, why not me? And I really want to like kind of pause and emphasize that because it goes against the grainer of what you just said, which is most of us create separation between us and successful people like, oh, they're better than me. I'm not good enough. I'm not qualified.

I don't have the experience. I'm too young. I'm too old. We find some excuse to limit ourselves. And I think one of the most valuable paradigms that we can live from is that it's really a more building on the anything as possible. It's if any human being has ever done a thing, that's just evidence that we can do it too. They were born without any experience. You know what I mean? Like, you know, they went on their own journey. And like you said, usually we didn't get to see the hard work, you know, that went into that. I love there was, there's that, that phrase, it takes 10 years to be an overnight success. Sure. And I forgot it was on the Ellen DeGener. This was probably 10 years ago, but it was on the

Ellen DeGeneres show. And I forgot who, it might have been Will Smith or I don't know. No, no, it was some actor that like they were nobody, no one knew who they were. And then they have the number one movie in the country, right? And then they were like the top. And she goes, man, you came out of nowhere. like, nobody knew who you were and you're an overnight success. And to paraphrase their response, they said, Ellen, I've been busting my butt for over 10 years getting kicked out of auditions, not getting parks, sleeping in my car, broke as a joke. Right. You didn't see the struggle and the hard work and the commitment and the overcoming of obstacles. And I think that's it for most of us, when we encounter an obstacle, right? We're excited. We're going to go for it and then

we fail or we have a setback. I think most people, they read too much into that and they go, oh, I guess I'm not meant. I'm not. It's, it wasn't, you know, I tried, I failed, whatever. But those that succeed, it's like I tried, I failed. So I picked myself up and I tried again. And then I failed again and then I did it again, right? Over and over and over. And the last thing I'll say on that is I said this once in an interview about the overnight 10 years being an overnight success. And it was to Mike Canigs, and Mike said, Hal, I guess that begs the question then. What are, what are you believe in enough? What are you committed to?

Or what do you believe in enough that you're willing to commit 10 years of your life to it? Until you see success. Yeah. And most people, I think it's like, I'll try this. If it doesn't work, I'll try something different. And they just keep either giving up or switching gears. And then they never give themselves a chance to compound the lessons from the mistakes and the failures and the setbacks. to finally accumulate into who they need to be to achieve everything that they want.

And I think so much of that is driven by identity. You're willing to put in the 10 years of hard work if you identify yourself as an actor, as a football player, as an author, whatever, insert in the blank here. And I think there's a lot of people that might look at your story with the success that you had with The Miracle Morning and go, Hal Elrod, overnight success with this book. Sure. Well, and I actually, I want to talk, that's a great point. I want to specifically the point of identity. I actually have a different line of thinking on this. There is, I'm a big believer in affirmations, although I think that they're taught wrong for the most part. You can't just say, I'm amazing or I'm a millionaire. And you're like, you've got to align your affirmations with reality. Like I'm committed to becoming is a lot more effective than I am something that you don't actually believe that you are. That's powerful. Big believer in affirmations. But, you know, but. I'm a lot of way. I'm a lot more effective. But But here's the thing about identity. I actually, I think I'm living proof that you can actually be insecure and afraid and not fully believe in yourself and still do the things you need to do to be successful.

In fact, to a fault, I've almost hung on to the insecurity that I had as a kid, some of it unconscious, but some of it's some of it conscious because I want, I always want to be able to relate to other. people. I almost don't want to transcend all of my insecurities because I want to be able to say, hey, I'm afraid too, but I still did it anyway. I was insecure. I didn't actually think it would happen, but I did it anyway. And to your point about the Miracle Morning, I've had people ask me, was this your vision? Like, did you know that because, you know, the Miracle Morning, I self-published it. And it sold, you know, 2.7, 2.8 million copies now. It's translated in 37 languages. And I don't say that to brag at all. But when people say, was that your vision? Hell no. My vision was I created this morning routine in 2008 that got me over the financial collapse, you know, and got me through

depression and all, you know, and all these things. I had, I had lost my house. I was living on credit cards. And I created this morning ritual that enabled me to become the person that I needed to be to create what I wanted for my life. And it happened during the declining economy. So the, the outside world didn't get better, but I just kept getting better. And, and, And it happened so fast. I called it, I said it felt like a miracle. My wife goes, this is your miracle morning. I go, yeah, I like that.

So it was really, it was kind of organic how that came about. I shared it with my coaching clients at the time. And I saw such amazing results in their life that I went, okay, if this, if this miracle morning thing changed my life and I wasn't a morning person, if it changed my client's lives and like 90% of them were not morning people, this could change the world. It could change anybody's life. And so I felt a sense of responsibility to share the Miracle Morning with as many people as I possibly could, and I still do. But that's why I wrote the book. It wasn't, I know this is going to be a success. I'm going to sell a million copies.

Like, not at all. It was I, and I believe for all of us that we owe it to those that we love and those that we lead, which would ultimately be humanity, to fulfill our potential so that we can help them fulfill that. fill theirs. And so I wrote the book, published the book. And, you know, yeah, I had, you know, occasionally I would have an idea of like, what if like this, you know, became a bestseller or whatever? But my default was that insecurity was like, yeah, who's going to read this? I'd be writing it. And I almost, it took me three years to write that book. And I kept giving up going, no one's going to read this. I suck. I've got writer. I can't think of it. How am I going to convince me to wake up early on and on and on and on and on? So the point is if you're listening to this, you don't actually have to have to establish the identity that you are a champion. You are a world beater. I think that you have to borrow that identity from others and go other people have shown that you can go from nothing to something. And even if you feel like nothing, you can borrow confidence from them and evidence from their success going if another human being has overcome fear, insecurity, self-doubt,

trauma, abuse, to become successful and make an impact in the world, then so can you and I. You and I both share the same dream that we wanted to work in broadcasting at a young age. And I ended up, I worked in television radio for most of my career. I went to school for communication studies. And what I did a lot of was I read a lot of bios. Like even just, you know, one paragraph bios or Wikipedia entries. So I would go, okay, I'm 18, 19, 20, whatever I am right now. where was this person at when they were at my stage of the journey?

And that helped me so much. Beautiful. Yeah, I think it's so true. And, you know, if you, you talk to successful people and you ask them what it was like, you know, and you usually get. In fact, you still see, I mean, you see really successful people that say I'm still nervous as hell before I got on stage. I'm still afraid I'm going to fail. I'm still afraid, you know, I think that we're all, I don't know who said it, but somebody said that, you know, we're all 14 years. old's and 40 year old bodies or, you know, 30 year old bodies or 20, whatever it is.

I think that most of us still care. Like as a kid, you develop, you know, hardwire this identity as a child. And I think that, you know, I don't know, I still feel like I'm 20. I still feel like that. You know, I still, I still find myself those insecurities from, you know, not being good enough in high school and getting picked on and not being with a popular group. Like that still shows up. Like I go to an event, you know, and I'm, I'm, you know, with my peers.

and I'm like, oh, who am I? You know, I'm like, I don't belong here, you know, right? And then usually what'll get me out of that is someone that I admire will come to go, oh my God, I read the Miracle Morning Howl it book changed my life. And I'm like, what? You did? Like that, what? Okay.

All right. Okay. You know, right? Like, I guess I can stand a little taller, you know? How much pushback do you get from people who go? This sounds like a great idea, this Miracle Morning, How? But I just don't have the time to do it. Yeah.

I don't, I think that I get that a little bit. I think I get even more, you know, I'm not a morning person. And so I was asked once that during an interview, they said, what percentage of the miracle morning community? Because again, it's millions of people in over 100 countries. It's a significant sampling of people. Yeah. What percentage of those people were already mourning people when they read the book?

So it was kind of just like, oh, okay. Instead of starting by checking email, you know, or checking social media, I'm going to meditate, do affirmations. visualize, exercise, read, journal. That does sell. I can buy into that. I'll give that a try, right? So what percentage were already morning people?

It was just shifting what they did in the morning. And then the question was, and what percentage were, you know, had that limiting, what I would call limiting belief and said, I'm not a morning person. Like, I don't, I can't do this. I don't want to do this. And I did not know the answer to the question. So we surveyed our community, which at the time was in, you know, hundreds of thousands.

And I was pleasantly surprised, 72% of, of the Miracle Morning community said they had never in their life been a morning person before they read the book. They didn't believe they were. And many had said they had tried and they had failed. You know, like, I tried waking him early. I did it for a week. And then, you know, but now I'm on day 642 of the Miracle Morning or whatever. And I think in the book, there's a chapter called the six steps news proof wake up strategy. And I think it's the shortest chapter in the book. It's like four pages, but it's the linchpin because it teaches you, okay, even if you're not a morning person or if you've never been one, here's some logistical things you can do to make it easy

to wake up and meet the snooze button. And I'll just, I'll share right now the, what I believe is you have to move your alarm clock across the room as far as you possibly can. And the majority of us keep our alarm clock within arm's reach on the bedside table, right, on the nightstand. And when the alarm goes off in the morning, we've all been there. You know, you turn. turn it off without even waking. Like you just reach over, fumble, turn it off,

you know, and then maybe you wake up late or an hour. You're like, oh, what happened? The alarm did go off. What? Right.

We don't even, we're unconscious when we decided to turn it off. Or even if we wake up and we go, we were thinking about it, oh, it's 630 or whatever. Usually those first few moments when you open your eyes, your self-discipline is like on a scale of one to 10.

It's like a two, right? Like you have no willpower. Yeah. But if you have to actually get up out of bed, throw the covers off of you, stand upright, take a deep breath, walk across the room to turn off your phone or wherever your alarm clock is, right? You're significantly more awake and your willpower is much stronger. So for me, I keep my alarm in my bathroom. And now it's just an unconscious ritual.

I get up, walk, turn it off. It's right next to my toothbrush. I rinse my mouth out, brush my teeth. I have a full glass of water sitting there. And that's actually another step in the ritual is you drink that full glass of water as much as you can because you've got to rehydrate. Otherwise you're going to feel fatigued. And yeah, so that along with, you know, a handful of other steps, you've got to set yourself up for success by kind of hacking, you know, your rituals and routines. And if all you're doing is reaching over to turn the snooze button off, you're probably going to fail at getting out of bed most of the time.

What did your morning routine look like before you found that? Miracle Morning because I would imagine it will align with a lot of people who are listening to it. And what does your routine look like now? Yeah. Yeah, before the Miracle Morning, I mean, there was no intention to the routine. It was the alarm went off and I would usually hit the snooze button, you know, two or three times and wake up at the last possible minute. And I want to say this real quick. If that describes you, if you're like, yeah, yeah, that's what I do, right?

Think about something for a second. Like all of us want to have an extraordinary life. However you define that, right? You want freedom. You want success. You want, you know, however you define freedom and success. But I would say that I don't know a person that doesn't want those things in their, in their definition. When the alarm goes off in the morning, think about that.

That's life's first gift to you. It's also life's first opportunity. It's also life's first challenge, right? alarm's going off. What am I going to do? And if you think about hitting the snooze button, doesn't even make sense. It's like you're saying, yes, I want extraordinary life, but not as bad as I want to just lay here unconscious for nine more minutes, right? And then nine more and then nine more.

And then also in a 30 minutes gone by, you could have meditated, journaled, read, you know, done some things to put yourself in a peak physical, mental, and emotional state so that you could be at your best to take on the day. And that you could grow and learn and evolve and become a better version of the person you were when you went to bed the night before. And to me, that's what the miracle morning does for people is those two things. It puts you in a peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state first thing in the morning so that you are at your best to take on the day and optimize the day. And the second thing it does is it enables you, it gives you time to evolve, to evolve into a better version of who you were when you into bed the night before.

And if you do that every day, every day, become a little better, a little better, a little better, right? All of a sudden, you become the person that you need to be. You develop the qualities, the characteristics, the mindset, the habits that you need to embody to, to, create, achieve, experience everything that you want in your life. And so my morning routine now, again, if I hit this news button, wake up usually at the last possible minute and then do what, you know, I pretty much woke up when I had to be somewhere, do something or answer to somebody else. And again, I think that's for most people, that's it. Like you literally, when do you set the alarm? You look at your schedule. You go, okay, when do I have to be up? Right? Where?

When do I have to be somewhere, do something, your answer to somebody. Okay, I'm going to set the alarm clock with enough time to snooze three times before I have to be up, you know, right? And then you're frantic jumping, you know, rushing out out of bed. You don't have time to put yourself in that peak state. So that was my routine beforehand. It was a non-morning routine of procrastination. That's another way of putting it, right, hitting the snooze button with procrastination. Now, I wake up without an alarm now.

So I used an alarm for many years and then I just started diving into how, you know, I met someone that said, yeah, I don't use an alarm. I just tell myself before bed what time I'm going to wake up. I get, I set a really clear intention and they said, you know, 95% of the time, it works. So I was like, I'm going to try that. And I Googled how to wake up without an alarm. I, you know, read some different stuff. And so I wake up without an alarm. I typically shoot for seven hours of sleep. I try to go to bed by 9.30, I wake up at 4.30. I have kids. I have a wife. So often I end up getting. to bed at 10, 10.30, I wake up at 5.30. So I always just set my intention to wake up seven hours after whatever time I'm falling asleep. That's when I commit to wake up. And then I do the Miracle Morning, which is made up of six practices. So first when I wake up, I drink a full glass of water. I rehydrate. And then there's two things I do for my physiological

optimization, which is I make a cup of green tea. And for those of you that are coffee drinkers. I drink coffee on Saturday and Sunday. It's kind of like my treat. However, green tea has L-theonine. And L-theonine, I'm not the scientist or the biologist who fully explain this well. But the layman's terms is L-theonine balances out the effects of caffeine. So it's kind of like you have the energy from the caffeine and the L-theonine keeps you from crashing, gives you a real calm, balanced, smooth energy. So I start with a cup of green tea. And for the those of you that are like me and you want quick results. I actually found this.

It's called Peak P-I-Q-U-E. You find it on Amazon or their website, the website, peak.com or whatever it is. But Peak Tea, it's ground-up green tea leaves. And you can actually eat all different kinds. There's black tea, whatever.

But I get the Jasmine green tea, and it's in a little packet. And it's organic green tea. You literally just put it in hot or cold water. It takes two seconds, and I drink that. And it's like 40 milligrams of caffeine. And then I go eat a full scoop of coconut butter.

And the reason for that, it's kind of like the bulletproof coffee idea that our brain gets, you know, fat is fuel for our brain. And so I want to start today with a little bit of caffeine and some fat. So I did a big, I drink that green tea, have a big scoop of coconut butter. So that's why I start the day. And then the Miracle Morning itself is based on six practices. And these are organized in an acronym, Sabres. I call these the Life Savers, but the acronym is.

S-A-V-E-R-S. So if you're taking notes, you can jot that down. I would jot it down vertically. So the first S is for silence. I'll say what they are and then I'll go through them real quick. Give kind of like a plenty of each. Perfect. The A is for affirmations.

The V is for visualization. And the, sorry, the guys at my gate. I've got to give them the gate. Let them in. I can help you. He is for exercise. Oh, you're good. Beautiful.

All right. Good stuff. That's right. You just listen to the book again. R is for reading and the final S is for scribing, which is a fancy word for writing, but I, you know, I needed something to finish the acronym. So the final S worked out perfect. And I love that it became scribing because you don't have to, you know, it could be journaling. It could be writing out your goals. It could be, you know, writing after. I mean, there's a lot of different forms of

scribing. So the first S, and by the way, let me say this, you can do these in any order. You can do them in any length of time or for any duration. So most people do a 60 minute miracle morning. And like my first miracle morning, I did 10 minutes of each of these. It evolved to where I do 20 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of exercise, and then five minutes of the other four. So again, just you can really customize this to fit your preferences. Sure.

The S for silence is that's your meditation or your prayer time. If you think about it, starting the day in peaceful, purposeful silence, it lowers your cortisol levels, right? your stress levels. It allows you to gain mental clarity. It allows you to start your day in a really peaceful way. And for me, that meditation is where I get my best ideas, right? You can call that tapping into, you know, collective consciousness, infinite intelligence, God, wisdom, whatever you want to call it. But that is where I get my best ideas. And I do keep my journal by me throughout that because very often, as I'm meditating, something profound comes up and I pull out my journal and I write it down.

So that's the silence. And if you're new to meditation, and by the way, that could be your prayer time as well. But if you're new to meditation, I would start with get a free meditation app. Just go to the app store type in meditation. Go to YouTube. You could literally type of meditation or you can get specific. Go meditation on gaining confidence. How to meditate on or meditation for losing weight.

Meditation for, I mean, you name it. There's a meditation on it. And there's every length too. You could type in eight minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want a two-minute meditation or whatever it works for you. So your meditation time, the A for affirmations, I mentioned this earlier, but I'm not a fan of affirmations the way they've been taught for, you know, I don't know, decades, which is just tell yourself that you are something that you want to be, but you don't currently believe you are and then trick yourself into believing that you're that thing, right? You know, and the popular one is, I am, you know, I'm a million minute, right? or I am, it's this I am statement followed by something you're aspiring to.

But the problem is, we're all smart and the truth will always prevail. Meaning, if you say I am blank and the blank you don't actually believe or you're not that thing yet, like I am a millionaire, but you're financially struggling. But you're subconsciously going to reject it. You're going to go, I'm a millionaire. And it's like, dude, you're not even a thousandaire. No, no, no, no. Stop doing my affirmations, right?

So I believe you have to align your affirmations with truth. and I like to make them actionable so that they actually get you to do the things that will make you become or move you toward what you're affirming. So I'll give you an example. Here's three steps to create affirmations that really will produce results. Number one, affirm what you're committed to. So don't say I am blank if you're not blank yet. Say I'm committed to becoming blank. I'm committed to becoming a millionaire.

I'm committed to losing 20 pounds. I'm committed to find the person of my dreams. Don't say I'm married to the, like they literally, we've, we're taught, I am married to the person of my dream. Like, if you're not, then you're not. Don't, don't try to trick yourself, but be committed to it. I'm, because we get what we're committed to. So I am committed to blank, no matter, and I always add in, no matter what,

there is no other option. Second step of the affirmation is you've got to affirm why it's deeply meaningful to you, right? That's where you, that's where you fuel your desire and your drive to do whatever it takes, to follow through with that commitment. So I'm committed to blank. And then step two, because I'm committed to blank because. And then you have, you know, it could be one reason or it could be a bullet point, you know, four reasons that you're because I want to provide financial freedom for my family.

And I want to live the life I always wanted. And I want to donate a million dollars to charity. Like, you know, we're sticking with that financial affirmation. And then step three is affirm what you're committed to doing and when. So, so you've affirmed what you're committed to. You've affirmed why it's crucial for you, why it's so meaningful. Now the rubber meets the road when you get clarity on what specifically you're committed to doing. Oh, so good.

And when you're going to do it. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So again, I'll give you one example. When I had cancer, I was, I was diagnosed with cancer about five years ago. I just, I've been cancer free for about three years. Amazing. Congratulations.

Thank you, brother. Thank you. Yeah. I was, I mean, it was touchy. It was a very rare aggressive cancer. My heart, kidneys and lungs were failing. I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. You know, and my son was seven,

my daughter was seven, son was four. So it's like, it was really, it was scary, right? And, you know, and the thought of I could die and I could leave my family, that entered my mind every day. The way that I overcame that, that I managed that was, I am committed to beating cancer no matter what, there is no other option. I'm committed to beating cancer for my wife, because I promised her forever in a day. I'm committed to beating cancer for my kid, Sophie,

and Halston because they need their dad's love, leadership, and guidance. I'm committed to being cancer for my mom because she already lost one child and doesn't deserve to lose another. I'm committed to being cancer for my dad because he gave up everything to save my life. I'm committed to being cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. And I'm committed to beating cancer for the millions of people that themselves are battling cancer or some other disease and don't have. the resources that I've been blessed with and need my support. And so those were the compelling reasons.

And when I felt afraid, those were so compelling that I'm like, I'm not going to die. There is no other option. I'm going to beat this. I embodied it with every fiber of my being. And if we want to achieve amazing things in our life, that's the level of embodiment that we need for the commitment that we're making, the reasons why. And then last but not least is you've got to affirm, what are you going to do? And for me, I combined the best practices of Western medicine.

You know, I did the chemo. I didn't want to, but it was kind of like, it was do or die. And, but then I did every holistic practice known to man. I read every day. I watched documentaries. And I did acupuncture. I did supplements. I juiced.

I did ozone sauna. I did lymphatic massage. I did coffee inamas. Like, you name it. I did every holistic practice I could combine. So I did everything I possibly could. And, you know, it was, you know, call it a miracle, whatever, but I was able to beat the cancer when most people don't.

I think it's so important. A lot of people know what they want to do, but this is so important to take it to that next level. A lot of people don't know why they want to do these things. And I think that this is so great to add that into the affirmations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to be clear on the why and the what, you know, what are you going to do? And then the V for visualization, you know, visualize not only what you want. Like don't just see the end result and crossing the finish line, which is what we've been taught by most self-help gurus. You've got to visualize the activity for the day. So see yourself crossing the finish line of the marathon.

But then spend even two, three, four times as much, you know, spend a minute visualizing the finish line. But then spend a few minutes visualizing yourself lacing up your running shoes, heading out your front door, hitting the pavement and visualize yourself with a smile on your face, especially if you're like me and you hate running. and then and visualize your create an emotion, a compelling emotional state that will lead you to go out that front door when it's time to go for a run that day. Visualizing the daily activity while in an ideal emotional state is infinitely more effective than just seeing the finish line. The E for exercise, you don't got to go to the gym in the morning,

but get five, 10 minutes of, you know, do jumping jacks, pushups, crunches, pull up, so I just go for a walk for me. I alternate between weight training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I just go for a bike ride down to my park, which is a couple miles away, shoot hoops for a while, come back, get some cardio, right? So I make it fun and it, you know, I don't take, it doesn't take a lot of time. The R for reading, not a lot to that, just, you know, read five pages of a book every day, 10 pages of a book every day, and anything that you want to improve. You want a better marriage? There's a book for that. You want to be happy? There's a book for that. You want to make more money?

There's a book for that, right? the final S for scribing, I write down every day three things I'm grateful for. And then I look at my to-do list and my goals. And of the dozens of things on those lists, I ask myself, what are the three most important things for me to get done today that'll make the biggest impact in my life and or my business and or my family's life? And I write those down and I star the most important thing for me to do. And I'm not allowed to do the others until I've done the most important thing. And so it's a really short, simple scribing process, but it both puts me in a great state because I'm getting present to all that I have to be grateful for. And I'm getting really clear on what am I going to do

to create everything I want for my life. And so those are the savers. And again, you can do them in any order. You could do them in six minutes, one minute each. If you're tight on time, you could do them in 30 minutes. Most people do a 30 or a 60 minute version. And you don't have to wake up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. to do it. You just start your day with those practices. I love how you talk about in the book, how we have the ability to do, have, and be anything that we want. And I feel like you are living proof of that. You've had very specific goals of the things you wanted to do, whether it's with writing a book, being a very successful author, being a very successful speaker, being a great husband, being a great father. You've been very specific and you've been able to do have and be all the things that you

on. Yeah, you know, it's, thank you for that. I appreciate it. And I think that in case people aren't aware, I don't know that we've even talked about this, but I just, I just want to mention a couple of things. When I was 20 years old, so I'd been in that sales position for a year and a half, I gave a speech at one of our conferences and driving home that night, I was in a brand new Ford Mustang. My first new car, I was very proud of it, you know, is I bought it with my own money, worked really hard. And three weeks after I bought it, driving home, I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour. And I was then broadsided by a second car in my door at 70 miles an hour, my driver's side door. And instantaneously, I broke 11 bones, ruptured my spleen,

punctured my lung, and begin losing a lot of blood. And 50 minutes later, 5-0, almost an hour later, when the paramedics, I was in a coma immediately, but when they pulled me out of the car, I bled to death and my heart stopped eating. And I came out of a coma. seven days or six days later to be told like I didn't know any of this happened of course and I wake up and I'm like what where am I? Why am I in the hospital? And they go, Hal, you've been in an accident. You suffered permanent brain damage. You broke 11 bones. You're probably never going to walk again. Right. That was the prognosis. And it's hard for anybody to take. But but something I learned from my mentor is that there's no value in wishing you could change something that's in the past. the only logical decision is to accept life exactly as it is in this moment and then make the best of it moving forward.

And so I went, okay, I can't change that I was in a car accident. If I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life. If I can't change it, I can't change that. So what can I do? And I decided if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I'll be the happiest, most grateful person that anyone's ever met in a wheelchair because I'm in a wheelchair either way. And I think that for all of us, that right now, Chris has been my, the last year or so, it's been my, my personal self-work. And it's also what I talk about a lot on my podcast, the Achieve Your Goals podcast, is what I would call inner freedom or I would call it true freedom, which is how can you gain the ability to be completely in control of your inner state, regardless of what's going on in the world? And right now we're in a pretty, pretty volatile world.

in my lifetime, I've never seen anything like what's going on in the world from, you know, from government overreach to divisiveness between, you know, political part. I mean, you name it. I just, it's pretty crazy. And you, if you're listening to this, you have your own version of what you're finding to be crazy in the world right now. And for me, more important than ever, when when the outer world becomes, grows ever more chaotic, it's that much more crucial. for us to take control of our inner world. And so even in the car accident, I went, I'm in control of how I feel. And so I'm going to be the most positive.

And by the way, the doctors thought I was in denial and or delusional because they actually called my parents in one day. And they said, we're concerned with Hal's mental health. He's always happy and grateful and laughing. And this isn't normal. Like your son, we're telling him he's never going to walk. This was like right after the, you know, two weeks after the accident. We, you know, we're telling me he's never going to walk again.

He's got broken bones. And he's, you know, we think he's. He's checking out of reality. You got to bring him back in. And when they talked to me and they brought that up, I go, no, you guys, I'm not checking out. I'm fully present to what happened. But I can either be depressed about it or I can be happy and grateful because I have that option.

I live every day not focused on what I can't change because that's, that's a waste of time. All my energy is focused on what I still have, what the future may hold, what I'm grateful for. The people, I go, mom and dad, you guys are here taking care of me. Half the, you know, a bunch of the people in the world wouldn't have that blessing. I am blessed to have two mom, you know, parents that love me. And so, anyway, just I think that the lesson is accept all the things that you cannot change. Unconditionally. Stop putting energy into wishing that something in your past didn't happen.

Don't suffer. So many people are suffering over things that happened in their past, whether it was five decades, ago or five minutes ago. It's like it's in the past. The only logical choice we have if we want to be a peace and be happy is I accept everything exactly as it is. So many people are living that story, living the story of something that happened to them a year, five, 20 years ago. And it's unbelievable that they do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, I think that it's realizing that happiness is a choice and you have that choice to be happy. And the biggest obstacle to being happy, in one word, is resistance.

It's when we resist our reality and we wish and want something to be different that weren't different, right? Your spouse is leaving you, right? You know, they just filed for divorce. And we let that, that makes us, we were distraught. No, why? How could you do this? Don't leave me. And even if you're not saying that to them, you're saying it, you know, to the universe.

You're telling yourself that. And it's like, we've got to deal with reality. Anything else is delusional to wish and want that things were different than they can be. I wish that somebody else got elected to office. I'm so mad that this person got elected. It's like, why are you putting mental and emotional energy into something that's completely out of your control? And it's amazing that when you become aware of that, you start to realize, wow, most of the time when I'm upset, it's over something that's out of my control. And the one thing you can control is whether or not you resist your reality and you wish it were different or you completely accept reality as it is and then make the best of it from there.

Control the controllable. It's a quote that has stuck with me for a long time. I want to be super respectful of your time, Halen. This has been amazing. And your book is so life-changing. Your book, S, plural. What's the best way for people to connect with you? Miraclemorning.com is probably the best spot.

You can contact me through there. You can, you know, all the books are there. The movie, the Miracle Morning documentary came out last year. And you can find that on the website, Miraclemorning.com. You can also find if you scroll down, I invite everybody to join the Miracle Morning community. It's a Facebook group with over 300,000 members from over 100 countries. And that's just organic. We don't like run Facebook.

We've never tried to grow the group. It's just people that have read the book and practice it. And it's one of the most inspiring, supportive online communities that I've ever seen. And yeah, so go to Miraclemorning.com and you can find everything there. Well, this is part of my morning routine. I know it's a part of yours as well, but I end every conversation talking about gratitude. So for you, hell, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? Great question.

I am grateful for my family, first and foremost. I went jet skiing with my son today. His first time ever, he's eight years old, and he was all nervous and scared, and he had a blast. So that was great. So my family lighted me up. I'm really grateful for life. I think that for all of us, we've been gifted this life.

And I don't know anybody that is without struggle. I don't know anybody that's perfect. But I think that every day that we get to wake up, and to live this life and not because it's going to turn out or have, you know, that every day is going to go the way we want it to. But it's like, hey, wow, today was was totally not what I expected. It was really challenging. But man, I'm going to grow from this.

I'm going to learn from this. I'm going to continue to be better every single day. And then I would say the last thing that I'm grateful for is our ability to choose how we experience every moment of our lives. Life might be difficult, but we can choose to enjoy it, embrace it. And for me, I have a big, big giant picture of like a lake. And it just says, in big letters, enjoy every moment when you walk into my house. And that for me is it is.

I just, I try to enjoy every moment that I possibly can. I have thoroughly enjoyed this house. So I know you haven't done a lot of interviews in a while, so I appreciate you making time for this one. I'm just grateful my internet didn't cut out. We moved out to the country, and I wasn't sure. We're all good, yeah. Good work, Chris. Hey, man, you ask fantastic questions and your authentic brother.

I really appreciate this. I appreciate the kind words. And thank you again for your time, Hal. You got it. Well, there you go. I hope that inspired you to at least think about how you spend the first few minutes or the first hour of your day right after you wake up. I'm sure you've heard it before.

But win the morning, win the day. Uh-huh. Take a screenshot. tag us on social media. Let us know what piece of knowledge, what little nugget from this stuck with you the most, and tag us so we can share it as well. Hal is at Hal Elrod. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And you can get the Miracle Morning. I really recommend it at either Miraclemorning.com or grab a copy on Amazon. And I'll leave you with a quote from another great book, one of my favorites, The Alchemist. When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen. in their lives every time the sun rises.

That's so good. Be great. Be grateful. Have an amazing weekend, and we will see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do with rapid fire takes.

So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain. and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it, but get up in here.

The Jim Rome Show podcast. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.