Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Start Your Day Right (even if you're not a morning person) with Hal Elrod

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Dr. Mindy reveals how incorporating Hal Elrod's morning principles became a game changer in her life. With Hal's SAVERS principle (a powerful acronym guiding quiet time, affirmations, exercise, visualization, and reading), he sets the stage for an enriching and productive day. The best part? Hal unveils a six-minute plan, perfect for those with packed schedules who still crave the benefits of a purposeful morning. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep213. Hal Elrod's mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity, one morning an international keynote speaker and the author of 12 books, most notably The Miracle Morning—which has sold over 2 million copies, been translated into 37 languages, and is practiced daily by hundreds of thousands of people in more than 100 countries—he's doing exactly that. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I am bringing back to you Hal Elrod. So I brought you Hal last year to talk about his incredible concept and his wildly successful book called Miracle Morning. One of the reasons I wanted to bring him to you last year was the morning time for me has been a game changer. When I really dialed in my morning time, everything in my life changed. and he has some incredible strategies and hacks on how to set your morning time up so that it feels effortless.

Well, he has some updated ideas about the morning, our whole morning experience, and he's put in a new book. Again, it's called Miracle Morning. He's releasing it. It's out into the world. You can pre-order it now. And some of those new concepts are really time efficient. So in this episode, we talk about a principle that he shares with us called Savers.

And it's an acronym that he uses to guide himself in his morning time that allows him to make sure that he's getting some quiet time. He's leaning into affirmations. He's getting some exercise. He's visualizing. He's reading. It's a really a beautiful way to come at stimulating your brain for an author. awesome day, and as you'll hear, stay all the way through, that he talks about you can do this all in as little as six minutes. And that was what I needed to hear because like you, I have a very

packed day. And when I look at all the goodness that I could bring into my life in my morning, pretty soon I'm looking at hours of time, which I like. It's nice, but not really efficient over time. So he has a six-minute plan now that we can all benefit from. Plus, he talks about an app with some visualizations in there and ways to guide you. So Hal Elrod, he has made this very simple for us, and I'm excited to share his teachings with you. The last thing I'll say is one of the things I love about Hal is he's so positive. He is a can-do person. And when you get around can-do people, you can't help but start to take on their mindset. And I can tell you that going into this conversation with Hal, it's been a busy morning,

there's a lot on my plate, and it felt like just another to do on my list to interview him today. But when I sat with him for the last hour, I'm leaving this interaction with Hal more upbeat, feeling more vibrant. And that is the power of our mindset. When you are around people that train their mind for joy and possibility, they can't help but rub off on you. And to me, I'm always thinking global.

So if we can take even a few of How's principles to make ourselves a more joyful, more fulfilled, more passionate, more purpose-driven human, we don't just win, but everybody everybody around us wins. So Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning, I am so excited to share this with you. Enjoy. Hey, Dr. Vindy here, and welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and

take your power back. This is the podcast for you. Enjoy. You may or may not know this. I am literally obsessed with my morning time. I feel like every goodness that has happened in my life is because of what I do the first two hours when I wake up. So I am so excited to have you back. And I want to unpack why this is such a magic time of the day. So let me just start by saying, welcome. And why do we need to get up early and change our life in the morning? Well, first, Wendy, we're kindred spirits because my morning is everything for me too. In fact, I get teased a lot. I always leave dinner parties early and birthday, but I leave everything early.

Yeah, you too? Okay. And be like, why you leave? Now they know, right? But when I was first doing the New York morning, like, wait, it's only 8.30. I'm like, I know it's past my bedtime. I'm like, this is totally me. This is totally me.

I am not the person you invite to a party if you want me to stay till midnight. Yeah, but I'm sure all your friends know by now, right? Like, it's not a secret anymore, right? Yeah, yeah. So, all right, so here's why mornings are crucial. First and foremost, the reason that I think mornings are a challenge for most people is because we were conditioned as children. We only woke up when our parents forced us to. Otherwise, we'd stay sleeping.

It's an important piece to understand for people that are listening. They're like, I'm not a morning person. So I don't even want to hear why mornings are important because that doesn't apply to me. Saying I'm not a morning person, it's like someone that has never run before. Like, yeah, you're not a runner if you don't run. But the big thing is when we were growing up, our parents forced us out of bed to get ready for school. And you think about that, your brain,

while it was developing as a child, you were naturally resisting and resenting, waking up in the morning. And whenever you were given the chance, you slept as long as you possibly could. And then like for most of us, when I turned 18 and I left for college, I'm like, cool, I'm going to schedule my first class to start at 11.

So I can stay up on, right? And so if you understand, that that's actually why most people, the majority of society, says, I'm not a morning person. It's not that you're not a morning person, it's that you have an unconscious resistance, and of course, you can overcome that. And that's a big part of my book is like, teach you to do that. But why is the morning crucial? That's the important part of understanding you can overcome the limitation. I'm not a morning person. But how you start your day is arguably the single most important decision that you make because it sets the tone, the context, and the direction for the rest of your day.

In other words, if you start your day by putting yourself in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state right after waking up, you're able to show up better at your best for yourself, the people you love, people you lead. So it literally impacts your relationships, your health, your motivation, your discipline, your fitness, your finances, every area of your life can be improved by simply making some shifts in the morning. So that has definitely been my experience. I want to poke a couple holes in this idea that we trained ourselves for the morning and that it starts the day right because I'll tell you two things. One, I agree about the training part, but I also am curious if some people are more prone to have a circadian rhythm that thrives at night as compared to the morning. Like, do we know anything about circadian rhythm and genetics? Where do those two come together that maybe some people are just more night out?

and not morning people. Yeah, which leads me to the second question, which is what my family is. My whole family are night owls. So the only challenge that I have with my morning routine is that it now takes me out of relationship with my family at night. I can't watch a movie with them. And, you know, they want to eat late.

I don't want to eat late. So it's a piece that I've been really wrestling with. So I'm curious your thoughts on those two nights. So, yeah, I've had in-depth conversations about, I mean, I've obviously done research, but I've had end-up conversations as well with my friend Dr. Michael Bruce, you know, Michael, the sleep doctor. Oh, yeah. So he's known as the sleep doctor. Yeah. And he's argued that there are certain predispositions. Unlike you, I'm not a researcher. I'm more of an experiential learner, right? And not just my experience,

but I go, okay, for example, the miracle morning has helped millions of people, 72% of who said they were not a morning person before they read the book. And now they swear by it. So to me, it's like, all right, if two million people, the majority of them, shifted from saying, I'm not a morning person. And if they had read research that says, oh, I'm predisposition, no wonder, but they were able to change it. And I'll give you one specific example of Pat Flynn. You know, Pat Flynn, he hosts a smart passive income podcast. So Pat's one of my favorite people. And when he interviewed me, gosh, eight years ago, he started the interview by saying, how I'm not a morning person. In fact, my kids wake me up in the morning by, you know, that's how I wake up. They're my alarm clock. You know, he has these small children. They're adults.

durable and they shake him awake. Daddy, daddy, wake up. And I go, how am I going to convince Pat to the, he should get up to an alarm when his children wake him up? And at the end of our session, he said, Hal, I've believed I'm not a morning person, but I'm willing, what you're saying makes sense. I might be missing out on the level of productivity because I am subscribing to a limiting belief that says, I'm a night out. He goes, I get my best work done at night. But I'm not starting the day in a peak way. So he said, I'm committing for, I'll do the miracle morning 30 day journey. I'll give it a shot. And now, you know, it's been, what, eight years later, he still, the Miracle Morning is a part of his life. It completely shifted. And according to him,

he said it quadrupled his, quadrupled his productivity. So my answer to your question is, I've read research on both sides. I don't know. I just know that I've surveyed hundreds of thousands of people and 72% of Miracle Morning practitioners around the world answer the survey question, I never believed I was or could be a morning person until I read the book. So again, to me, it's just a large sample of research that it's like, well, if it worked for 72%. Yeah, who knows? Yeah. I want to address that really interesting point for a second because this is something that shows up in the science world a lot, is when we have neuroscience, like when we look at how Dr. Bruce would be looking at sleep and the way that he analyzes this, if you're looking at,

at it through a scientific lens, we have to remember that science is, it is not reality. It has, you're, you're looking at one aspect that you're pulling out and you're trying to measure. Yeah. So to me, it gets us in the ballpark. It's something we should be curious about. The second thing that, and this has been a real pet peeve of mine recently because we hold science up on this, on this platform and we go, if science says it, it must be true.

Yeah. But if you know research, you understand that that is a very fabricated environment that you have put somebody in to manipulate and to see one aspect of their health. Which leads me to the second thing that you said, which I think is really important, is the experiential. And I recently heard, you know, we talk a lot about the N of one where it's like, try it on yourself, figure out what works for yourself. but I recently heard something called citizen science studies where they are taking a group of people and they're saying we want to test this and do it in the cleanest way we possibly can and see if our theory is accurate. What I just heard that you said is you did a citizen science observational study.

You took all these people and you said, okay, how many of you weren't morning people, how many of you became morning people, and what was the result? And that's how I see what you just said. And I think it's profound. I don't want it to be lost in the in the conversation of science. Yep. I love that you pointed that out because I think you're exactly right. And I'm not a scientist. But I think you can, you know, there's obviously almost all science. There's a lot of it with both sides of the issue. Right. So it's like, well, which science is correct. I'll tell you that for me something that was was really eye opening when it comes to waking up early is or I shouldn't say, well, it's related. When I was done. diagnosed with cancer. So this was seven years ago. I was given a 20 to 30 percent chance of surviving. And my wife was terrified because she received that data and took it as truth, as law. And I think that science can create a lot of limiting beliefs for people because they hear a statistic. They hear some data point and they go, oh, that's me. So therefore, that's it. For me, I decided

there's a 100% chance that I will be among the 20 to 30% of those that survive this cancer. And I think I want people to not dismiss. We can call that individual science, right? It's like, well, yeah, science says that I'm predispositioned for this or that or I'm now the whole of this group of people. This is what they experience. But guess what? It undermines the mind-body connection that is unique every individual. And so, again, it's that experiential.

you know, component of like, I was diagnosed with cancer. I said, I will beat it. When I was in my car accident told I would never walk again, I'm like, no, I'm going to walk again. again. I don't care what the doctors say. They might be experts in quote unquote medicine or whatever they study, but they're not experts in me.

And I want anyone listening. If you have any sort of physical ailment, any disease, any mental limitation, any limitation that's been put on you by other people, I want you to consider that no one is an expert in you, only you. And there have been, call it a miracle, call it whatever you want, right? But there have been countless human beings that have defied the logic of doctors to create miraculous results. And if you choose, I believe that all of us have that ability. I love that. And we need to point out something we said before we came on on this podcast together. How you and I may be the two most excitable humans on the planet, especially when we're talking about something we love. So I get

told all the time, like, why are you screaming at me? I'm like, because I'm so, what I'm so excited about is the human body. And what you just said in its ability to heal is just incredibly beautiful. Yeah. Before we dive in to all the miracles you can create in the morning, I do have this burning question of, well, how do I deal with this if I'm out of a relationship now with my family? Yes. And everybody's a night owl and I've committed to the morning. You are asking the right person because I deal with the same exact thing, right? You know, it's kind of like the mom guilt, dad guilt. Like I've got, you know, it's the same thing.

And here's what I would say. I mean, here's a perspective. This is all perspective. But for me, I'm at my best for my family when I do my morning, my miracle morning. Right. And so it's kind of like anything in life. Nothing is perfect, right? So take the person that, you know, stays up at night and watches TV, but they're not

able to work on themselves. They're not able to read the books on parenting or whatever or being a better spouse. So for me, it's just, it's like most things in life where it's a tradeoff. And I've kind of, I've made peace with that, that dad guilt, if you will. And I just make sure, I think that it's just making sure that I spend quality time with my kids and with my wife. Right now I'm in book launch mode. So I would say I'm not doing a great job of that. But overall, in the big picture, it's making sure that I'm getting that quality time in.

And so, and it's also this. Another place that I made pieces, you know what? that evening time that I'm missing out on watching TV with my kids, a lot of that is my ego wanting to get that quality time and not just have my, you know, where like now my wife's getting it and I'm not getting it. And so is she developing the relationship that I'm not? But I actually went,

you know what? That's her special time with the kids. And so that for me was really helpful is to go, oh, I'm just as long as I make sure I make sure I get my time, she can have that evening time. And it's, I think it's best for everybody.

Yeah. Okay. So that leads me to the magic question, which is what happens in those early morning hours for our brain? What should the routine look like? What's happening there that makes the rest of our day so productive? Yeah. So, you know, the miracle morning for me was born out of necessity. It wasn't a book idea, right? Back in 2008 when the economy crashed, I crashed with it. And I heard a Jim Rohn quote. This is what gave birth to the miracle morning. Jim Rone said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. So my epiphany was, I need to go figure out what the world's most successful people do for their personal development. And I need to create not just like a little, a little personal development. I was so desperate to change my life. I thought, I'm going to combine what the world's most successful people do into the ultimate personal development ritual. And at first, it wasn't even in the morning. It was just like, that ended up being like the time that made the most sense. I wasn't a morning person, but I thought if I start every day in a peak, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state, that would set me off theoretically to make

every day a great day. And so I woke up that first morning and the six practices that I combined are organized in an acronym, savers. It's silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing, which is a fancy word for writing or journaling. Those are the six practices of the Miracle Morning. And so sequencing those where you start your day in silence, So that's your meditation or your prayer. For me, it's both. But being able to calm your nervous system, lower your cortisol levels, right? Put yourself in a peak state and listen to that wisdom that you can't hear when you start

the day by grabbing your smartphone or opening up your laptop and diving right into work. Right. Our greatest ideas come during those periods of peaceful, purposeful silence. And real quick, the article that got me to implement meditation in 2008 and make it part of the Miracle Morning was called Fortune 500 CEOs that swear by meditation. I might be off a word or two, but that was the theme of the article. And that was an epiphany for me. It was a paradigm ship because I went, wait, I thought of meditation as like monks in a monastery, but these are Fortune 500 CEOs saying their biggest breakthroughs that led to their incredible financial growth in their

companies were during their periods of meditation. In fact, Ray Dalio, who's a billionaire, right, he says that that's the number one kid is financial success. So I was like, well, I've got to try that. And then affirmations felt really goofy to me the way that I had learned them. But I saw a video of Ellen DeGeneres interviewing Will Smith. Now, this was pre-Cris Rock slap Will Smith. So, you know, different connotation when you heard the name. He's still an amazing human.

We can't throw him out. He's still done some extraordinary things. I agree. I agree. Yeah, one bad moment does not make a bad human being. Yeah, it doesn't wipe out what he's created. I agree. His mindset we would benefit from.

At that time, he had like the number one movie in the theater. His TV show, Fresh Prince, was a top show. And he had a platinum selling album. And Ellen said, Will, how are you so successful at everything you do when, you know, you came from a middle class family in Philly. And to paraphrase what he said, he said, I learned how to do affirmations when I was 15 years old. But the way that he talked about them was different than I had heard. He said, I wrote down in the form of an affirmation.

what I wanted in my life, what I was committed to in my life. And then I wrote down the qualities that I needed to develop, who I needed to be to create what I wanted. And then I wrote down what I needed to do each day to become that person to create that life. He said, I simply started reading those affirmations every day, living in alignment with them. And I became that person, developed those abilities and created that life. And I was like, that makes so much sense.

And so I'm going to all be to pause, but those are two of the practices, the S and the A in the savers that lead to an optimal morning. So in that, what I hear is it's the visualization power mixed with the clarity of what you want to create in your life. And can you take that visualization practice and meditation practice and put it in the middle of the day and get the same impact as if you do it in the morning. I love that. It's a really good question. And the answer is yes and no. It's yes in that all of the savers, any of those practices, like I didn't invent the savers, right? I mean, these are the world's most successful people for

centuries have attributed their success to either the books they read or the meditation practice or their affirmations or their visualization. But the thing is, the benefits of those practices, is they're accumulative. Every day over and over as you meditate, right, you gain more ability to gain clarity. As you read affirmations that affirm your commitments, you become more committed as you visualize. You get more, you know, so on and so forth.

You exercise, obviously, you get stronger, build stamina, build mental clarity. The books you read compound as well. However, the benefits of all of the savers are immediate and for the hours after you do them. So, for example, when you meditate in the morning and you lower your cortisol, and you gain clarity on how to make this your best day,

you don't want to miss out on those benefits throughout the day. When you visualize, and I teach visualization in the book very different than most, I guess you'd call it well-meaning self-help gurus teach visualization, which is just to visualize the outcome. Like make the vision board or see what you want, make it a clear picture in your mind. That's only half the equation.

You have to visualize yourself in a form of mental rehearsal, doing the thing that you need to do today while putting yourself in a peak mental and emotional state so that when it's time to do the thing, you're compelled to do it. It's how you overcome procrastination because it's what athletes do. The world's best athletes mentally rehearse themselves

performing at their best before they step onto the court or the field and we should do the same before we step in front of our family or into the office, etc. So the exercise that you do, I'll quote Robin Sharma, in the Miracle Morning documentary. I love Robin. Who doesn't love Robin? He's one of the sweetest, most brilliant human beings on the planet.

So Robin, author of the 5 a.m. by the way, I've learned a lot from, but the Miracle Morning movie that he was in, paraphrasing what I said, I'm sure I'll misquote him, but he said, the benefits of exercise have been scientifically proven to last for as long as 13 hours after the initial exercise. So the point is, you can do the savers,

you can do the Miracle Morning in the afternoon evening, but you will have missed out on the clarity and the energy and the motivation, right, that you would have gained first thing in the morning because how you set your start your day again, it sets the tone, the context, and the direction for who you are when you show up to the rest of the day. So brilliantly said, and I want to talk about visualization for a moment because I have been reading self-help books since I was a kid. In fact, I was just telling somebody the other day that the very first self-health book I read was the inner game of tennis because I was a tennis player. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And at 10 years old, I read the inner game of tennis. And it was all about what's going on in your mind that is creating the outcome of the match. And so I started visualizing at 10 and thinking through like, okay, this is what I want the match to look like. and I spent years doing this. I was missing one key component that I recently changed, and it completely changed the outcome of what I was manifesting in my life. And you just said it. It wasn't that this is the goal I'm going for.

It was, this is the person I need to be in order for to be a vibrational match to that goal. So instead of keeping the goal outside of me in my morning, morning time, I would say, okay, I want to attract this in my life. What would it feel like if I have that right now? What if I already have that? Who would I be? And where I applied this to that just blew me away was three months before we pitched Fast Like a Girl to all the publishers. Every single morning, I sat and did a visualization. It was actually a Joe Dispens of visualization. And he has, he says, who do you have to be to attract this goal and what do you need to let go of? I had a very specific number of what I wanted as an advance for Fast Psychic

Like a Girl. And it was way bigger than I, you know, I had ever received in my life. And do you know when Hay House gave me the deal? It was that exact number. Wow. Wow. So I want to make sure, like this is why I wanted to bring you back because the morning is magic.

There's so much there. But on the, when we, I love the savers idea on the V, we got to make sure that we are, we are saying what would it feel like today? And the morning is an incredible time to go, okay, let's say I want a new house. Or I want a raise at work. When you're in that morning time and I'm curious if you do this, could you ask yourself, how would I operate? How would I think? How would I act to others if I already had that so that we don't keep it separate from ourselves? Let me, I'm going to get very tactical right now. And what you just said would be another layer. To me, that'd be almost step three on the two-step process that I teach in the book, right?

So new Miracle Morning edition. The, so step one is visualize your ideal outcome with emotion. So, so that's not to be discounted because what that does is when you see what you want and you really, you see it vividly, you get excited about it, right? That, that, that fuels the fire to make it a reality. But here's the problem. you leave it at that, it's actually counterproductive because you're tricking your subconscious to thinking that it's a foregone conclusion independent of any effort on your part. Right? You just go, your brain goes, oh, yeah, it's just, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. Well, how do you know it's going to happen? Oh, I visualize it. Well, what do you do beyond that? Well, nothing, but I just, I've seen it so clearly I just know, right? So the second step in visualization to me is the most

important part. And I'm going to share with you a real life example of how this works for me. So it's to visualize, again, visualize yourself doing the thing you need to do today, picking up the phone to make cold calls, opening your laptop and typing on it to write the book that you're writing, right? Or even engaging with your family in a loving, playful way. It's mentally rehearsing the thing you need to do today and then while doing it at a peak state. So here's the example. When I started doing my miracle morning, I started asking myself, what does level 10 success look like in every area of my life? Meaning, on a scale of 1 to 10, what would my level 10 fitness be? My level 10 finances, my level 10 relationships, my level 10, you know, mental health.

Like what would level my personal growth? Level 10 in every area. And I started setting what I called level 10 goals. So in fitness, I had two friends that had run 52 mile ultra marathons. I hated running. I still hate running, in fact. And so one of my friends had asked me to do a marathon with him. I was like, no, I'm not a runner.

I've never run more than a mile in high school PE class and I hated it. So I'm not going to run. I couldn't even imagine running 26, you know, a normal marathon little on 52. But I then went when I was setting the goals, wait a minute. My friend that asked me around that ultra marathon, that would be a level 10 goal. Now, it was really naive. I started smaller, but whatever. I committed publicly to raise money for this charity.

So here's how I did this. In fact, I'm going to bring in the other savers. I call this sequencing the savers because it's you're leveraging different sabers to turbo charge to accelerate how effective and how quickly you get to a goal. So my goal was to run 52 miles on October 29, 2009. Here's what I did. First, I meditated in an optimal state of confidence that I could actually complete that goal.

I would get myself in a state of confidence. I would set the timer for five or 10 minutes and I would meditate in that state. And I would hardwire a level of confidence to do this thing that I had never done before. Then I would read my affirmations following three steps that I teach in the book. Step one, what are you committed to? Step two, why is it a must for you? Step three, what specific actions will you take and when to ensure you follow through? So step one, I'm committed to completing 52 miles on October 29, 2009.

No matter what, there is no other option. Why is it a must for me? Step two, I'm doing this to become the person that I need to be that has capabilities to create everything else I want for my life. So I wasn't doing it to run the marathon. I was doing it to become a version of myself. Yeah. Yeah. And then step three, which actions will you take and win? I will read the book, and that was part of my reading, the R in Savers is reading. I will read the non-runner's marathon trainer and I will follow the training plan to a T in order to prepare myself to run the marat the ultramarathon. That was the affirmations part. Now the vision.

visualization part. I printed off the finish line of the specific marathon that I'd be running so I could see it. I would close my eyes, but I'd only spend about a minute. Like this is how well-meaning self-help gurus teach visualization. That was only a minute of the practice. It was like, okay, I see the finish line. How will it feel to have 52 completed miles behind me? That's going to be incredible. And I would just sit in that state. But the most important part was the second step in visualization. I would visualize seeing through my own eyes, by the way, this is important. I get this question a lot. Do you see yourself like a movie where you're watching yourself from like another camera? Or do you see through your own eyes? No, it's seeing through your own eyes. And I would visualize my cell phone going off at 7 a.m. on my coffee table right in front of me where I was doing the Miracle Morning because that's

when I committed to run. And I would visualize picking it up and turning it off, not snoozing, not procrastin, not procrastinating, no, turning it off and going into my bedroom and getting dressed in my running clothes and then walking out to my front door through my living room and I would see my hand reaching the door knob, kind of like one of those first person shooter games where you see the hand reach out, opening the front door, staring at my sidewalk. And then I would recite my affirmations one more time while I had my eyes closed and I was picturing the sidewalk. And I would say, I'm committed to running 52 miles on October 29th.

I'd say it was such energy and enthusiasm. Then I'd go through step two and step three of my affirmations. I would get myself in a peak mental and emotional state while I pictured the sidewalk. And that got me excited to go for that run. And then let me close this out by telling you how this played out in real time. Mindy, when the alarm on my phone went off at 7 a.m. And for anybody listening, I want you to think about when it's time for you to do that thing that you're scared to do because of fear of,

a failure or it's out of your comfort zone, whether it's going to the gym or, you know, again, getting on the phone to call prospects, whatever it is. When the alarm went off at 7 a.m., human nature for me would have been, eh, I'll run tomorrow. Right? And one missed day turns into two. But that is not what I visualized. It's not what I mentally rehearsed. So when my alarm, my phone went off and you can apply this to every area of your life, it was almost like I was a robot in the best possible way. I turned it off. I went into my closet. I got dressed in my running clothes. I headed out the front door when I opened and saw the sidewalk, opened the front door and saw the sidewalk, I was flooded with the emotions that I had mentally rehearsed, you know, 30 minutes before. And I went for that run. And I believe

if it wasn't for my miracle morning, I do not think I would have completed that marathon or I would have shown up, but I would have not run the 500 miles of training that would have enabled actually complete the marathon. It was because of the miracle warning and specifically that visualization practice. Okay, so I have two questions on that. That was a beautiful example, by the way. And I have so many thoughts as you were talking. One is, and I'm going to play devil's advocate here for the person that is like, that's a lot of work. Yeah. That is a lot of work to get your butt out of bed and out running. And is there an easier way to do that? And is there an easier way to do that? So that would be one.

And then one of the hurdles I found when I set up too many have to, it's like you got to get up. You got to say the affirmation. You got to do is that when I don't do it, I feel really bad about myself. And then I'm now creating resistance and everything we know about law of attraction is the minute that resistance is there, now you're not pulling what you want to you. So why is that seems like a lot of work. And how do we overcome if we don't do it the way you just said it?

And now we're creating resistance because we set we set too many half-toes like power yourself up, write the affirmation. And you don't do all of that. And now you're out of congruency with yourself. I love these questions. And this is something that because I used to be the all or nothing guy. Right. And when I started the miracle morning, I was in a very disciplined state.

And whenever I would teach it, I'd go, wake up 60 minutes earlier. do all six of the savers, right? It was this all or nothing. And, you know, having now engaged with hundreds of thousands of, like in the Miracle Morning Facebook group, the Miracle Morning community, there's 350,000 people. So we get countless questions and real life examples and, hey, I'm struggling with this. How do your affirmations? How, I have, I work the night shift.

I have a newborn, right? You name it. There's almost no question around this practice I haven't heard. And so the first one that you asked is, like, this is, it's too challenging, right? So in the new edition of the Miracle Morning, there's a chapter called customizing the miracle morning to fit your lifestyle. And there's also a chapter called the six minute miracle morning. So here's the point. The savers are completely flexible and customizable. So you can do them in as little as six minutes. And that's not a hyperbole. That's literally where you do one minute for each of the

savers. And so I'll just walk you through that in 30 seconds. Imagine you set your timer for 60 seconds. and you just have silence. You start your day doing nothing. It doesn't get easier than that. Maybe you pray. Maybe you meditate. Maybe you do breath work. Maybe you do nothing.

You just, oh, 60 seconds to not even, to do nothing. And then you pull out your affirmations, right? And in the Miracle Morning book, there are affirmations. You can print off free downloads. I mean, there's a whole bunch of options, whether you wrote your own or you're using the ones I gave you. But you just pull out your affirmations. And for 60 seconds, you read these affirmations that remind you,

that you are just as worthy, deserving, and capable of everything you want in your life as any other person on earth, right? That really optimize your mindset. Reading the affirmations reminds you how blessed you are. There's all these beautiful affirmations that focus you on what matters to you. Then you close your eyes and just visualize your kids coming out of the bedroom and you greeting them in a really playful state, right? It's about doing what makes you feel good toward the things that really matter to you. Then exercise. You literally for 60 seconds, you do 60 seconds of, you know, jumping jacks or walking in place or or stretching. Then you pull out a book and you read a page and you get a brilliant idea that you can apply. Then you, you scribe, you write down what you're grateful

for. In as little as six minutes, you've completed this really simple, beautiful practice. And once you do that, over time, you can build on it and make it longer. You can also adjust the order and do exercise first so you don't fall asleep on the couch, so on and so forth. And the last thing I'll say on this is when I give a speech on the Miracle Morning, and this is still the number one thing I speak on, I used to end it by saying, all right, 60 minutes earlier and six savers, now I say, hey, let's make this really, really, really easy for you. Okay, if you want to wake up an hour earlier and do all six sabers, you can.

I'm not going to tell you not to, but for most of you, just set your alarm 10 minutes earlier and do one of the savers. And if someone's never read the book, they'll literally wake up 10 minutes earlier and they'll just do the R. They'll just read the Miracle Morning. And when you get to the chapter on silence, you add silence into your next miracle morning.

And then the next day you add affirmations. And so over like a week or two, you've gradually built a miracle morning from 10 minutes to maybe, maybe it's still 10 minutes. Maybe it's 15 or 20. Maybe it's 30, right? But you really ease your way into it

so that it doesn't feel overwhelming. I love that. And I love the conciseness of the savers in six minutes. So, and let me tell you why I love it, because one of the strategies that I have found difficult is that when I'm home, I've got that morning routine dialed in. It is my anchor. It emotionally sets me for the day. But then I travel and everything shifts. And I've learned that if I don't get that morning time, when I'm traveling, I feel literally out of my body. I feel like I lost my center, ungrounded. So you've just offered me something new to add to my morning time is if I can do a six minute, you know, silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading and and scribing. And I can do them in little chunks like that.

Yeah. I think what I want to offer everybody is a way. of really seeing that as an anchor you can carry with you wherever you go. Yeah. Is that what you've seen with your community? Yeah. Well, and to be really clear, this was not, none of the Miracle Morning book was a book idea. So, right?

So from the practice, it was my own practice in my own life. But then the six minute savers, same thing. That wasn't a book idea. It was, I was probably writing the book, but it was in my own life where I realized that most of us have an all or nothing mentality where it's like, if you like to work out for 30 minutes, but you only have 18 minutes, yeah, I'll just do the gym tomorrow. I'll skip it. Right. And I kept noticing myself, because I liked a 60 minute miracle morning, I kept noticing myself just skipping it if I couldn't do the full thing. And I remember, I can literally picture the day.

There's one day. I only had 15 minutes so I had to leave the house, but I was like, I wasn't in a great state, like mental and emotional state. I'm like, I need my miracle morning, but only have 15 minutes. I go, wait a minute. What if I did one minute for each of the just like set the timer let it run out set the timer let it run out right and so i tried it and i sat there in silence i was like oh i feel a little calmer and then i pulled out my affirmations and i only got through like one or two of them but i was like oh yeah these are my top priorities right now okay i can do this and then i visualized doing the one thing that day that was the most important i did the 60 seconds of jumping jacks which got the blood flow into my brain i felt awake right and i want to say this

too so i did all six sabers and here's how i thought about it i go i feel like i just got 70 to 80% of the benefit of a full-blown Miracle Morning in one-tenth of the time. There's not a lot of things that I could say that's true for. And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, we created the Miracle Morning app, and this was like years in development because it was the most requested thing in our community. But the beauty of it now is like when you go into the app, there's a free, it's a free app. And there's an 11-minute guided Sabers practice. So you literally wake up and so if you're on the road, Mindy, hit play.

And you don't have to even think about it. And it walks you through all six of the savers in 11 minutes. Thank you for doing that because that will make, you know, you go to a new time zone. You're a little out of it. But I have learned that if I can carry my morning time with me, I'm now anchored. It doesn't matter what town I'm in. Totally. So talk a little bit about the new book because your first book sold millions of copies. And I know as an author, sometimes you write a book and you're like, I wish I had said something. or you know as a growth mindset person you're always learning something new so what's new in this book why did we why did you upgrade it or redo it what tell give me the why behind it and this this is it if you're watching the video right those are the update and expanded edition and if you look out it's a lot thicker than the original 70 new pages of content two brand new chapters the miracle evening which is your strategy your bedtime strategy for blissful bedtime and better sleep and in the miracle life which is

your path to inner freedom. And then I added 25 pages just to the savers section. So there's a ton of, there's emotional optimization meditation. There are templates where I walk you through creating affirmations for every single area of your life. And to your point, as an author, like, I go back and I would read the original and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. Like, I can't believe, I literally was like, I can't believe sold millions of copies. Like, this is embarrassing. It's the worst when you go there. I'm embarrassed the people are reading this because I was so tone-de-depth and blind in 10 years ago. So it's been 11 years since the book came out.

So to your point, like, I do the Miracle Morning every day. I better be evolving, you know. So I literally went through word by word by word. And I kept the structure the same. The chapters are the same. But I rewrote and improved almost every single page of the book. I added 70 pages of new content. And so my goal was that if you're brand new to the Miracle Morning,

it's going to be even better at holding your hand. maybe from the place of like, I'm not a morning person and I'm so not a morning person. I don't even want to read the book because I don't know if I want to become one, right, like to the place of where, okay, I'll give it a shot. Okay, I'll do the 30 day journey. And then you'll be like the 72% of miracle morning practitioners that it's not a lifelong practice and they never thought they could even be a morning person. But then I also wanted it to be like, if you're a longtime miracle morning practitioner,

I want to teach you, you know, let's refresh the basics, but let's learn advanced strategies to take your meditation practice, your affirmations, your visualization, all of that to the next level and beyond. And I would say as a morning person, I need that because some mornings I get up and I, and what I do is I meditate, I visualize and I read. And then I actually do another one. I connect with people that matter to me. So I have a, I use a system, a walkie-talkie system on my phone where I literally have like four people every morning. I'm like, good morning. How are you? Here's what's going on with me. Just sending you a high vibe message. I love that. And sometimes I lose my way. Like I get sort of like, okay, what do I do now? So I find getting out of that

morning vibe can be really hard. And sometimes you get bored with your morning routine. You're like, I need something new. So I love that you've put that new, that new 11 minute or 6.1,000. minutes in the book and then 11 minutes in the app. Is that correct? Okay. So talk about the app for a moment because if I if I go straight to the app, I can get this 11 minute. Will it make as much sense if I don't have the book? Yeah. Well, I mean, the book's going to teach you how to do it. The app is just going to guide you through it, right? And that 11 minute track, I'm sure eventually you'll, you know, like if you do it every day, you'll probably be like, all right, it's like the same track over and over is a little boring. But the Miracle Morning book, I think I think there's a few parts of it. Like

whenever I meet people at events that I'm speaking at, usually it's not just the practice that changed their life. It's the perspectives in the book, right? So I mentioned earlier when I was 20 years old, I was hit head on by a drunk driver and found dead at the scene. And I talk in the book. I share that story and how I was able to not just walk again, but maintain an optimal mindset in the midst of the most difficult circumstances in my life. And then in 2008, I experienced the financial crash like millions of Americans. And I was able to double my income in more than two months. because of the Miracle Morning. I literally created the Miracle Morning

because I was in such a bad financial position. I felt I needed to become a better version of myself to turn my financial situation around. And it happened so quickly in two months during the 2008 Great Recession, the day I remember the moment in the hall, I saw my wife, I said, sweetheart, I signed on two more coaching clients today.

We've doubled our income since I started this miracle morning, no, sorry, since I started this morning routine two months ago. I go, it feels like a miracle. And she goes, it's your miracle morning. I said, I like that. And so that's how the miracle morning was born, right? It wasn't a book idea. That's when I realized, oh, I need to start teaching this to other people, so on and so forth.

So the point is, the book, it's as much the mindset that it will teach you from the stories and the paradigms and the perspectives that I think will make the biggest difference. But then the app, a lot of miracle morning practitioners said, hell, why don't you have an app? I would love to, like, journal on the app and have guided meditations and guided visual. visualizations and affirmations prompts. So the app is literally, it facilitates all of the savers. There's a built-in journal. You can create your own affirmations.

You can track all your savers, and it helps hold you accountable to follow through with your 30-day journey, essentially, and do the Miracle Morning. So I feel like the book really is the foundation. There's also a movie. If you go to Miraclemorning.com, you can watch the free movie,

download the free app, right? And then you can get the book wherever books are sold. So yeah, you know, interesting, with the savers, you don't have to do them in an order. Can you flip them around or they're just an acronym to help you remember? Yeah, that's what I'm, that's what I'm saying is that the mirror, the chapter in the book on customizing your savers to fit your lifestyle. A, you don't have to do all of them. That's another thing, right? I always encourage people when you're new. Like it makes so much sense when you read the book. It really holds your hand and then it gives you a really simple day by day process that you kind of customized to fit your lifestyle. but I always say, hey, I encourage you for the first 30 days, do all six of the savers. Whether you do it in six minutes, most people do 30 minutes, you know, 30 to 60 minutes. When I talk in the book about probably one of the most important chapters is it's called the six, sorry, the five-step snooze-proof wake-up strategy on how to beat that snooze button. Because that's one of the biggest challenges is like, well, I liked it the snooze button

and I sleep as long as I can. How do I beat that? So a lot of it is, it's this psychology and the different ways of looking. it waking up early, why you would do it, how you would do it, right? It's like there's so much the nuances to take you from, if you just learn any tactic, if you don't have the mindset in place, it's really hard to implement the tactic, right? Yeah. And I'll tell you the way I'm going to use your book is I like the idea of opening it up. You're so good with motivation, reading a page or two pages and then going into silence. So I have found that,

really helpful to read the thing that is going to give your brain a little bit of juice and kind of go, I hadn't thought of that. And then sit and just let your mind quiet and see what pops up. So and I have like in my in my office at my house, I've got a stack of books sitting right next to my meditation chair. And that's exactly what I do is I, I'm like, which one do I want to pick today? And I pick it up. I read of two pages. And then I say, I go into my meditation, set a timer, and then after my meditation, I'll actually do some visualizations of like, what do I want to create my life kind of things. So I love that you kind of have come at this from every angle. Yeah, well, and yeah, you know, going back, going with off what you just said and then back to the question of can you customize the savers.

So I do the same thing. I really, my miracle morning is very intuitive, right? Like so in the beginning it was more like S, A, V, E, R, you know. And now it's like if I wake up in the morning, for example, and I give this recommendation in the book, you know, but it's a simple tip, but I say, you know, if you wake up and you're groggy and you're like, I just, I don't want to like, I'm not, I want to go back to sleep, I'm not feeling it. I will immediately move the E for exercise to the front.

And I will just stand up and I'll do 60 seconds of jumping jacks. And in 60 seconds of jumping jacks, you're breathing heavy, your heart rates up, the blood's flowing. And that brain fog that you woke up with, that is gone. Right. And sometimes I will journal. If I'm feeling stressed, like in the book, I teach a three-step scribing process. The first step is, is there anything that I need to let go of right now? Right? Is there, what is there a stress that's on my mind that's in my body? Was there a conflict yesterday? Is there something I'm, I'm scared of or afraid of? Like that and I can't, it's just, it's in the back of my mind. It's in my subconscious. And it's preventing me from being fully present. Once I write it down, ah, It's gone. It's out. Now I can set the journal to the side and I can fully engage in my savers because I know that it's out of my head. It's on paper. And I can go look at it at the end of the miracle morning or as I transition into my workday.

I love it. I love it. Well, Hal, you know, I think we need massively motivating people out there writing books, talking, cheerleading us. Because if you don't, the world is slanted more. towards complaining negativity. And, you know, when I look at some of the people like Robin Sharma and Tony Robbins, I put you in that same category. I leave an interaction with you, and I feel unstoppable. So I want to encourage everybody to get this book and just thank you for constantly being a cheerleader for all of us for our lives, because we need that. We need that. And I'm so grateful for you keeping upbeat when many of us want to go low. So thank you for. that. You are so welcome, Mindy. Thanks for having me. Thanks for this opportunity. And thank everybody listening. And I appreciate you. Yeah. And how do they get the book? Because the book is if you,

if you don't have the book, I mean, I've got the old book. I'm getting the new book. And and then how they get the app. Yeah, wherever books are sold, you can get, you know, most people buy their books on Amazon. You can buy the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, Walmart Target. It's actually interesting. This is the first time it's ever been traditionally published. This is a self-published book for 11 years. And now you can actually buy it before it was only Amazon. Now it's wherever books are sold. I can say that for the first time in my life. And I encourage everybody, please buy the book. Thank you so much for that support. I know it will change your life like it has for millions of people. And go to miracle morning.com. That's the hub for everything Miracle Morning.

You can watch the Miracle Morning documentary for free. And that has Lewis Howes, Mel Robbins, Robin Sharma, Robert Kiyosaki, Brendan Bershard, Layla Ali. I mean, all these world-class people are featured in that movie sharing how they start their day. And then you can download the free app at miracle morning.com. You can join load the Miracle Morning community or join. I think I said join load. I mixed. You can join the miracle morning community for free also,

the Facebook group at miracle morning.com. So that's the hub for all the freebies. And then if you order the book, anywhere books are sold. Thank you so much. Amazing. Okay, I have to finish up with my last question. Yes.

Which is, what's your superpower? What is your superpower that you bring to the world? Oh, there's two. One is inward, one is outward. So, or I guess they're both outward. So my, but I'll share one. The one superpower is I feel like God has gifted me an ability to manage the most challenging circumstances that I think, you know, could be devastating for a lot of people, you know,

being hit by a drunk driver told I would never walk again, being given a 20% chance of living after I got cancer. But he blessed me with the right people. my life and the right resources and something about me. I don't know what it is, where I was able to take all these life, life-threatening challenges and turn them into perspectives and practices that can help anyone transform their lives. I love that. I love that. I am so fascinated by people's superpowers because I think we all have a unique gift that we bring the world. We just don't highlight it enough. And, you know, what I heard in that is the pain, pain to purpose. You had a lot of

suffering and you learned a lot. Now you're turning around and teaching all of us. So Hal, thank you so much. I loved this conversation and thank you for, again, being a cheerleader when we need one. So I'm so grateful for you. Thank you. I love you, Minnie. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends. and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.