Kind: captions
Language: en
we all want to fulfill our potential
and sadly most people don't and i
believe that it's because this is what
we want in our lives this is who we are
[Music]
hey everybody welcome to impact theory
our goal with the show and company is to
introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on
your dreams
all right today's guest is the
best-selling author of miracle morning
and one of the highest rated keynote
speakers in america his book has sold
more than 600 000 copies worldwide has
been translated into 27 languages and
his teachings are being practiced by
more than 500 000 people daily in more
than 70 countries
but all of that almost never happened at
the age of 20 he was involved in a
catastrophic drunk driving accident that
was so violent it ripped his car in half
and actually took his life his heart
stopped beating for a full six minutes
and over the next week as he lay in a
coma he died two more times after seven
surgeries and just six days to repair
the extensive damage he sustained
including 11 broken bones he finally
stabilized but doctors warned that he
may never walk again but not only did he
walk again through sheer force of will
he ended up running a 52-mile ultra
marathon and recovering fully
but just as everything in his life were
finally humming along he found himself
near death once again this time it was a
very rare very aggressive form of cancer
that took him from symptom-free to the
verge of multiple organ failure in just
days he immediately began a brutal
chemotherapy regimen and once again
through discipline of thought and action
saw his way through and back to health
but just surviving is not his mission he
wants to help others thrive as well and
his unique ability to teach the lessons
he's learned are allowing him to do just
that so please help me in welcoming the
man whose book has over 2 000 5 star
reviews on amazon the hall of fame
business achiever hal elrod
yeah you as well dude
very excited to sit down and talk and
what's crazy is even all the madness
that i talked about in the intro i
didn't get to cover one of the crazier
parts which was what happened when the
economy went bust in 2008 you lost like
half of your income and had to fight
your way back from that yeah and i want
to understand like the thing that really
seems incredible about you is your
ability to regulate your emotions to get
back on track and to keep pushing
forward so what was that like in that
moment you said that you were depressed
or close to depression how did you
restabilize so i was 20 when i had the
car accident and a year and a half
before that i had started a career in
direct sales and i learned something in
my training from my manager called the
five minute rule and he said that when
you're out there in the in the field
you're gonna have disappointment you're
gonna have rejection you're gonna set a
goal for the week you're not gonna hit
it you're gonna hit it and then have the
order cancel like he's like you're gonna
deal with a lot of stuff it's a
microcosm for life
and he taught us what he calls the five
minute rule he said so when things go
wrong we have a rule it's okay to be
negative but not for more than five
minutes give yourself five minutes set
your timer on your phone he would
literally teach us at the timer you get
five minutes to [ __ ] moan complain cry
vent punch a wall whatever and after
five minutes
you take a deep breath and say three
really powerful words can't change it
and it's simply an acknowledgement that
i can't change what's already happened
so there's no value in wishing it were
different
and essentially i learned through
reading eckhart tolle and things through
years after that
every negative emotion that we have is
self-created
by the degree of resistance that we have
to our reality whether it's past reality
whether it's happening right now or
whether it's even a projected future
reality that we're afraid of
and so in the span of five minutes i
woke up i was told i would never walk
again united 11 broken bones
permanent brain damage and i went well
can't change it
and the doctors thought i was delusional
because i was so happy
and i told my dad i said dad there's two
possibilities number one the doctors are
right and i'll never walk again
and i said and i've already just
imagined that possibility okay i'm in a
wheelchair the rest of my life i
promised dad because my parents were
concerned the doctors were concerned i
said i promise i'll be the happiest
person you've ever seen in a wheelchair
because i'm in a wheelchair either way
i'll be happy i'll be grateful
why be miserable just because that's my
unchangeable circumstance and i said the
possibility number two is i will walk
again and i don't even know if it's
possible but i do know that that's what
i want so i've accepted the worst case
scenario i'm at peace with it and all of
my energy is going into walking again i
think about it every day i visualize it
i pray about it i talk about it imagine
it and a week later the doctors came in
with routine x-rays
and they said we don't know how to
explain this but your body is healing so
quickly
we're gonna let you take your first step
tomorrow and that was three weeks after
the accident it went from like never
walking again and i'm thinking maybe
like in a year not in three weeks and
then i took my first step the next day
so i share that kind of back story
because
every adversity that i've had since then
i'm able to leverage the lesson of hey
if i can't change it the only
intelligent choice i have if i want to
be happy is to accept it
2008 was hard it was actually harder for
me to deal with in the car accident
and i think the reason is the car
accident was the worst thing i'd imagine
happening to me happen
and then it could only really get better
from there like i was in the hospital i
woke up from a coma it's like okay i'm
gonna heal over time right
with the economy when it crashed
it's like i lost a couple clients well
i'm delusional first of all right like
there's a fine line between optimism and
delusion you probably cross it too
sometimes right but i but i would people
be like you know you're worried about
the economy i go i create my own economy
i don't watch the news i don't pay
attention to it right and i guess it you
know i'm losing client after client
after client after client because they
were affected by the economy they
couldn't pay me
and after i lost my first client i went
oh man can't change it five minute rule
all right that's a bummer man i've never
lost a client
and then within a matter of weeks i lost
you know about a month i lost half of my
client half of my income couldn't pay
the mortgage and so i got really scared
and really depressed like the can't
change it thing wasn't work because it
just kept getting worse and worse and
worse and worse and worse like this
downward spiral so yeah and that's
that's when
i did some google searching i was just
simply trying to figure out what are the
world's most successful people doing
that i'm not doing
and i kept coming across morning rituals
and morning routines but i went i'm not
a morning person like what else do they
do like where's the night owl like
success plan right
and um
i finally saw
one i remember the headline but it
caught my attention and i went i got to
read this and i dove in and this was
2007 so morning like morning rituals now
or everybody talks about them they're
all over the place they weren't quite as
prevalent and i realized that it was the
one thing that most of the world's most
successful people had in common and then
i went okay i'm going to wake up an hour
earlier tomorrow and start a morning
ritual then the question was what am i
going to do during that hour to really
maximize it i want it to be the ultimate
morning ritual so i ended up
continuing down my google searching and
came up with six it was meditation
affirmations visualization exercise
reading and journaling and i went which
of these is the one thing i should do
which is the best which is going to
change my life the fastest and the
epiphany happened when i went
what if i did all of these
what if i woke up tomorrow i did the six
most timeless scientifically proven
personal development practices in the
history of the world that you know for
centuries they've been working for
people and the next morning i woke up
even though i wasn't a morning person
did all six and i went from being
depressed and scared to like my mental
and emotional i was at a peak i went wow
if i start every day like this
it's only a matter of time and it was
less than two months that i
doubled my income decided to run that
ultra marathon that you'd mentioned um
and it felt like a miracle i told my
wife i said sweetie this is like a
miracle she's like it's like your
miracle morning i go yeah it's my
miracle morning so i started writing my
schedule it's my miracle morning it was
never a book idea and the light bulb
went off that i went well if this is
changing my life and i wasn't a morning
person and it's changing all of my
clients lives and none of them were
morning people
this could change the world like i have
a responsibility to to to get this
message out there oh man it's such an
extraordinary story when you were
telling that you said something that
really caught my attention and that's
the the duality of
i accept that i can't change it and
there's something that i really really
want so maybe i'm never gonna walk again
and i i can come to peace with that but
over here i'm thinking i'm praying i'm
visualizing about getting up and walking
um and i know that you've used that in
other places in your life how do you
maintain that duality how do you talk
about that to other people because to me
i've always told people you have to be
able to hold two conflicting ideas in
your head like it is and i
i don't remember where i heard this but
that one of the hallmarks of real
success is the ability to do that um and
hearing you talk about it when the
stakes are as high as i may never walk
again um the first time i heard somebody
that had that much on the line um talk
about that duality tell me a little bit
more about that and and how you manage
that yeah and you mentioned how do i
talk about that or teach it right like
when i'm brought in i'm brought in every
keynote that i give is the miracle
morning it's always like a ceo that read
the book and he's like you got to come
teach our sales team or staff or
whatever right so that's why i'm brought
in for 10 years as a keynote speaker i
was telling my accident story and
teaching this lesson of the power of
accepting what you can't change and
giving yourself the gift of emotional
what i call i call it emotional
invincibility right and it's where
you're invincible from any emotions
controlling you and you're in control of
your emotions and so
um i talked about how yeah what you said
the duality where
the more we want something usually
the more disappointed we are when we
don't get it right
or devastate right the more we want it
right it's that spectrum of if you
really are like you want it more than
anything in the world then if you don't
get it
you're deficit you're suicidal i mean
you're right and so um i think that for
me
what a it takes practice now we say this
to the audience they go how many of you
think this this is really a powerful
idea it makes a lot of sense but it's
easier said than done and everybody's
hand goes up like yeah this is crazy
right like yeah i get it but i don't how
i can't do that and it's because
we're not addicted but
we're simply we've programmed ourselves
over our entire lives the way we respond
to adversity is the way we respond to
adversity right so for example traffic
is usually a low level of adversity if
you're running late and you leave late
because you woke up late or kids were
get whatever it was you hit traffic
what's the response normally frustration
i'm stressed i'm frustrated right and we
literally spend
the entire drive so let's say it's
normally a 30 minute drive to work and
it takes us 45 or whatever because of
traffic you live in l.a right you know
it better than anybody
but we spend that entire 45 minutes
literally killing ourselves right being
that we're stressed out we're tense
we're frustrated we're riding the car in
front of us like does that work does
that that doesn't move them right you
know and i realized that so people think
well i'm upset because of this thing we
always have something to point to of
course i'm angry look at what she did of
course i'm sad look at what i lost of
course i'm frustrated i need to be at
work in a half an hour and this is going
to take me 45 minutes right we think
it's the thing we always point at the
thing and when i realize it's it's never
the thing it's our resistance to the
thing so when i i was like anybody i hit
traffic and i'd be frustrated or upset
or you know mad at myself that i left
late or mad at the person that made me
late or whatever
and then i went wait a minute
i actually used to have these wristbands
that said can't change it that i used to
give out to high school students after
my speeches and i'd be driving and i
would go i'd see my wristband i'd go
oh yeah wait this applies i can't change
traffic
i take a deep breath and i would just go
i'm going to enjoy the ride like i'm go
and i would turn the radio on and enjoy
and so all of a sudden traffic had zero
control over my emotional state
and so whether it's
traffic or it's being in a horrific car
accident we are completely in control of
our emotional state and the the key that
unlocks the door to emotional
invincibility if you will is acceptance
it's accepting it and so
let me let me
wrap this up answering your question of
how do you get there for me it was logic
i went okay i can't change that i was in
a car accident it's kind of like what i
said with the wheelchair thing right so
if in a wheelchair the rest of my life
i can either be miserable in a
wheelchair and blame the wheelchair and
the drunk driver and the car accident
and all that that's why i'm miserable
right that the victim mentality i
thought that that's no quality of life
and so i think for any of us we go well
yeah i don't want to be stressed out in
traffic so virtually the only choice we
have if we don't be stressed out or
or
depressed or you know and i'm not
talking clinical depression that's a
different state but um right is to
accept
our circumstances unconditionally that's
why i called emotional inventability
that's when you get to that point of
where you've accepted everything that's
ever going to happen to you and you've
made peace with it before it even
happens when it happens you're like oh
okay this sucks worst thing that i could
ever imagine but i can't change it so
i'm not going to like
problems are difficult enough to move
through and overcome why add emotional
turmoil to those problems it doesn't
help you get through the problem in fact
it simply makes it harder it takes
longer or it prevents you from solving
the problem altogether because you're so
emotionally engaged in it you can't see
you know the sun shine through the
clouds
yeah now that makes so much sense and i
think having that emotional resilience
is is
life-changing now you said something
that i think is really powerful and that
is when you're dealing with people that
really want something it's the thing
they want most in life or they're about
to lose something and it's the thing
that they're most terrified about losing
what do you say about
still allowing yourself to want
something believe in it even though
the more you invest in getting it the
more you think about it people can feel
like the farther i'm going to fall like
the more people i tell i'm doing this
the more people i potentially embarrass
myself in front of when it doesn't
happen how do you help them deal with
that potential fear of embarrassment or
failure or just outright disappointment
i think that if you like if you go to
the age-old adage everything happens for
a reason
um i believe that's true but not the way
that we've been taught or conditioned to
think right usually most people that's
used in a circumstance where something
terrible happens right you lose
something or right away everything
happens for a reason it's gonna be okay
you know you're like screw you and your
reason
um so to me it's it like because people
think it's predetermined right or they
look up to the heavens and they're like
why why did this what did i do to
deserve this right like they're
searching for a reason outside of
themselves and it's really just
perpetuating the victim mindset
versus
i believe that everything happens for a
reason but it's 100 percent
our responsibility to choose the reason
and so i think that if you can go into
any endeavor pursuing it knowing that if
i fail at this and and on a side note
you know the book failing forward by
john maxwell if you've read that right
but that was a huge game changer for me
where i went you know almost every
successful person failed at something
that they really worked hard for they
were striving for they might have
committed their entire life to
and then they failed
and then they learned and grew from it
if they if they chose to do so and then
they achieved something even better
right you know every relationship that
ends
creates a space for a new relationship
right every venture that comes to a you
know screeching halt
creates space for a new venture so so
i'm not saying that it's easy and you
might need the five-minute ruler and if
you need five days to like you know and
and by the way i don't think negative
emotions like you call them negative i
don't think they're negative meaning
there's value in all emotions you know
if if i were to lose a loved one i would
grieve and i think it's healthy to
grieve right if a man accosted my wife
i'd probably pull anger out of my pocket
and right get a little right you know i
mean so so there's definitely value i
believe in all emotions but the
difference is
is whether the emotions are controlling
the person
right because they they think they don't
understand they think it's the thing
that's causing the anger and because of
the thing that's out of their control
the anger's out of their control
right so i think that once you take full
responsibility for your emotional state
no matter what's going on around you
it's always about what's going on inside
of you yeah i really like what you said
about things like that one being a
choice and two that you're creating
space rather than that oh the ending of
relationship means that you're going to
have another relationship which is not
always the case but it does create the
space for you now to act in accordance
with what you want to get something new
and different but then what you were
saying about
looking outside yourself looking to the
heavens why did this happen to me
it's a pretty strong impulse and i have
to say in hearing your story i was like
i might have thrown up why is this
happening to me when you got diagnosed
with cancer it'd be one thing if you
lived like a you know if you're doing a
bunch of drugs you're smoking
eating terribly but you weren't
you had if i remember right read a book
about how to eat for anti-cancer
benefits and had been doing that for
years when you were diagnosed with
cancer
why didn't you say
why is this happening to me
i mean i definitely said that but with a
smile on my face i was like god what in
the heck am i supposed to learn like i
already died i had like i had my big
life-altering thing
what could i possibly learn from another
one um and a lot you know uh ended up
being the thing but i will tell you this
yeah there was no emotional pain in fact
so i was diagnosed because you had
accepted life before it happened
exactly yes um and uh and now and and to
be fair like i have a new book coming
out i talk about this a lot there's a
little chapter called emotional
inventability and i talk about this and
i say look i had an unfair advantage and
that i had like for a major
the cancer thing where because i was
able to look back and go
the car accident was the best thing that
ever happened to me
um because of who i became by overcoming
it right by my moving through it with a
positive attitude and all of that um and
also became my life's work talk to me
about fear like it i i have a
um from an emotional standpoint i'm i
will put myself in the almost
emotionally invulnerable
position like i've spent an inordinate
amount of time on that yeah
but i would have to process through some
real fear even if it was just okay now
what happens to my wife what happens to
my family so how did you
deal with that
here's an important piece of this is
when it comes to accepting all things
that you can't change death is one of
those things
so i made peace with death a long time
ago and and i think that death is a big
fear for all of us and to me it i've
gotten to the point where i realized it
doesn't even make sense for that to be a
fear for for anything that's inevitable
or that you can't change
right that there's no point in in in
resisting it and wishing it weren't
going to happen
and the way that i look at death is it's
the other side of birth and we don't
fear birth
right but birth and death are both just
as inevitable and there are two sides of
the same coin that is life right
but oh man i it's that's the one thing
i've heard you say where i was like
and and i'll say why
birth gives death takes or such is my
perception right now and maybe you're
about to give me a breakthrough and i'm
so [ __ ] open to that you can't
imagine but like
the the thing that
that i really want to understand like
how you've dealt with it internally is
that that um what and maybe i'm
packaging it wrong when i say it out
loud but that sense of i want something
so badly and thusly i am terrified to
lose it
and the the wanting
is so powerful and so important and so
beautiful
that i know i don't want to give that up
but yet it creates the fear it is the i
mean like the old buddhist notion of
life is suffering because you want
things because you want things and you
may not get them because you want things
you may lose them like the love for
child i imagine i'm not a parent i
imagine is transformatively profound
but it [ __ ] sucks you in dude and it
gets you to the point where now like
right now i'm not afraid to die except
for my wife legitimately for myself and
whatever like i i won't say that i'm not
bothered but it's like not a grand fear
of mine even though i talk a lot about
living forever that's me moving towards
something not away from i don't i'm not
moving away from death i'm moving
towards the things i would be able to do
if i could live forever
but dude
the thought of having kids or the
thought of leaving my wife behind that
[ __ ] makes me emotional yeah and so
i really want to know
like how did you process through that
because
in there
somewhere
is is a breakthrough for me if nobody
else yeah so that was the hardest thing
like i said because i've made peace with
death i was imagining my wife and my
kids losing me um and especially my kids
like the the most important thing in my
world in my life
is that i can influence my children in a
positive way to set them up for a great
life right
um and so that that i might not have
that opportunity was the the hardest
thing to deal with i think that part of
it is
i didn't spend a lot of time on thinking
about that right so that's the thing is
people that have a lot of fear
you're thinking about the things that
you're afraid of right you don't have
the fear of and if you're not thinking
right if you're not thinking about the
thing you're afraid of but as soon as
you're thinking about your the fear
comes up
so for me um i use affirmations a lot
too that's one of the miracle morning
practices affirmations and affirmations
i think have a kind of a bad rap you
know like stewart smalley you know i'm
good enough i'm smart enough and people
like me and then they're taught by like
a lot of self-help pioneers is like lie
to yourself if you want to be a
millionaire just say i am a millionaire
over and over and over until you believe
it right but
we're if we know the truth you're like
i'm a millionaire you know your brain's
like dude no you're not right you're
like shut up i'm doing my affirmations
right like so the point is
the way that i view affirmations is they
simply direct your focus on wherever you
want your focus directed so you can
literally like a computer program you
can go okay what are the beliefs that i
want to focus on so they expand inside
of me even the thoughts that i want to
focus on what are my values what are the
behaviors that i need to embody right so
so you read these affirmations every day
and you're programming yourself to live
in alignment with that program that
you've designed right
so i had these my anti-cancer
affirmations which i still have um i use
those to manage my mindset right so if i
have a fear
i will look at what's the opposite of
the fear what's possible so i could die
yes
does focusing on that i might die and
dwelling on that and right and thinking
about that and going down that rabbit
hole and most people live they live with
their fear that's where their focus is
so they're consumed by fear
right for me i go oh yeah this could
happen and that's
that's not what i want to happen so i'm
going to accept it make peace with it
and then i'm going to put all of my
energy into what i want
and affirmations smear the best way to
do that because if we if we if we leave
our brain up to
whatever it's up to dude it's like you
know it's like a pinball bouncing around
it's like negative thought negative
thought negative thought positive
negative thought negative right and so
we can't trust our brain you know until
we've conditioned it right but so if
someone's consumed with fear right
utilizing affirmations every day that
you combat the fear
give me the examples of your anti-cancer
affirmations i think there's
statistically sadly a lot of people
watching this that are battling cancer
right now
and it might be particularly useful
before i share that i want to say
because for people battling cancer i
want to share what i did
um that's different than most so i'm
like you said i had watched a
documentary called healing cancer from
the inside out like i don't know five or
ten years before i got cancer and i
lived an anti-cancer lifestyle see i was
like how am i getting cancer like a
plant-based diet i you know i don't
understand so i went to my my oncologist
when i was diagnosed and my my my lung
was collapsed my kidneys were failing
and my heart was on the verge of failing
when i went to my oncologist and that
was like what happened from healthy to a
week or two later
and
i said hey i'm not big on chemo i view
it as poison it's very toxic i would
like to you know heal my cancer
holistically and i've been doing a lot
of research on that can you support me
in that
and he said hal i appreciate that you
want to do that but he said you're
you don't have a cancer that you don't
have that luxury you've got about a week
to live if you don't start chemo maybe
maybe a few days he said look a week you
were healthy now your heart lung and
kidney is all on the verge of failing he
said this is one of the most aggressive
fast-acting cancers and you you
literally have a few days maybe a week
and i thought it was a scare tactic
right i was like you know like in my
head like kind of middle finger like uh
i don't know
let me i said give me 24 hours let me go
home and i'll find out the truth all
from google
and
so i i consulted dr google right and
basically found out that oh
he wasn't exaggerating so i found out
that was true so i basically almost you
know against my will like everything my
values my beliefs i i had to go get
chemo it's the most intensive
chemotherapy regimen uh to my knowledge
that there is and so that even made it
harder and
it's a 20 to 30 survival rate
so i go so you so you're going to put
this poison in me
and i have a 20 to 30 chance of
surviving and the side effects on one of
the chemos in particular so i had acute
lymphoblastic leukemia the side effect
was may cause leukemia and so what i
ended up doing
uh because i felt like my hand was kind
of you know arm was forced i had to do
the chemo so here's what i did though
and i think this is what not only saved
my life i mean the chemo i believe
definitely saved my life but my symptoms
and it was it was i went it was hard but
i had less i had
an easier time than a lot of people that
were getting one hour of chemo a month
when i was getting you know 70 or 80 or
100 whatever it was
and
is what i did is i did everything
holistically that i would do if i
weren't doing chemotherapy so and and i
didn't you know and i had never found
anyone that really had done that it was
usually either or um but so i did coffee
enemas right there's nothing no effort
more extraordinary than you know
sticking a tube in your butt um i took
like 70 supplements a day i did you know
my diet was it was already on point so i
just kind of you know kept added juicing
and some other things um i did ozone
saunas i did acupuncture i mean you name
it right i did everything i could and i
combined the two and like when i asked
my oncologist hey chemo's really toxic
to your liver and some people get a lot
of disease from that what should i do to
detox and he'd be like uh you know we
give you a saline flush it's fine right
so so they the the medical community
they're not they don't learn anything
except what's in the textbook that they
go to school for and so um so for me i
did every you know i googled how to
detox your liver right so i'm taking
milk thistle to detox my liver and the
coffee enemas detox my liver and you
know and all of these things so i just
want to share that because like you said
people watching might have cancer or
know someone that does anyway so sorry i
got
far down the road really really
interesting and another thing along
those lines that um i want to talk about
is you said that obviously you kept your
mindset the way you've always kept your
mindset you're very positive you knew
what you wanted you had affirmations but
you said those work when you're not like
just doubled over into agony but in the
days you're doubled over in agony it
basically knocks you for six how did you
deal with those days how did you bounce
back rebuild your mindset
so here's what's interesting is when we
i experience negative emotions right and
the difference is what do you do with
that emotion right so the emotion isn't
the problem
it's what do you do with it and so what
one thing that i've learned and it's
really powerful and i didn't i i learned
this practice in the last few years in
fact it was a cancer lesson i don't know
but um it was that when i have a
negative emotion you know you wake up
and you feel depressed i'm like
what well like i feel just horrible i
feel i have no confidence today and i
don't know why right like hormones or
something's going on right
and what i realize is that it's not that
emotional state
that's the biggest problem for most
people myself included
it's
what we do with that state and we
usually judge it and we get we get
afraid
why do i feel this way
and the problem is human beings we're
not good at at space like creating
understanding
um like what's the word spatial
awareness in terms of time we think the
way we feel is just how life is right
like is this all encompassing like oh my
god this why do i this is how i'm going
to feel the rest of my life like we
don't understand no this is temporary it
might last a day it might last five
minutes like don't make a big deal out
of it right that's that's the most
simple way i could put it don't make a
big deal out of it so when i had
negative emotions with cancer i just
didn't make a big deal out of it i go
this is temporary so when you feel in a
negative state
simply just remind yourself it's
temporary and even just smile go man
this sucks
hopefully it's not too long that i feel
like this because i don't enjoy it but
don't don't give it a lot of importance
don't give that that temporary emotional
state
a significant amount of significance
right just go this is temporary i accept
it you know whatever and so yes i mean
there were a lot of hard day and there
were days where um you know i mean i had
this infection where my entire face
swole up like the elephant man my eye
was completely shut i had horrific
migraines um you know when you're in
physical pain you know i mean i'm like
anybody i i wasn't super positive i was
like but but i was positive it's like
it's always be as positive as you could
possibly be even when you're going
through the most difficult time in your
life and that was the thing with cancer
with the car accident and that's the
lesson for everybody
is that we can choose to be consciously
choose to be first you accept what you
can't change and then you go what
emotion would best serve me and i think
more often than not it's gratitude and
happiness for the most part or optimism
you know as an emotion but we can be the
happiest and the most grateful we've
ever been while we are going through the
most difficult painful scary time in our
lives
and it's and it doesn't and here's the
thing it just makes it that much easier
it doesn't mean that it doesn't suck
but it means that you're not letting the
fact that it sucks completely control
your emotional well-being you're going
this sucks
you know but i'm going to make the best
of it
how do you talk to your kids about this
man because how old are they
uh my right now they just turned nine
and six so when i got cancer that was
which i actually just had my two year
anniversary being diagnosed about a
month ago so they were four and seven
and how do you talk to them about that
how do you try to give them mindset
around
what you went through how to think about
it for themselves my daughter her she
went right when we told him i had cancer
and the way that we you know told them
is hey i have i have cancer um and uh
some people die from cancer but i'm
going to do a lot of things that those
people don't do right you have to
explain a way that a child will
understand you know um and i said i'm
gonna i'm i actually have a plan i'm
gonna do a lot of things that most
people don't even know about that are
gonna make it so that i'm gonna beat the
cancer like i have no doubt in my mind
and they're like oh okay and then my
daughter goes to school like the next
day
and she says my dad has cancer you know
she's telling people her classmates and
her friend goes oh my my grandpa died
from cancer you know and so she's like
oh my god right so
uh so yeah but that was that was the
whole thing was
kind of just maintaining my mindset
which is
so i have this thing called the miracle
equation i i came up with when i was 20
when i was in sales and it was to break
a record that i had a very limited
amount of time and it felt like doing it
would be a miracle it was like
pre-miracle morning it's just a
coincidence that i guess i like the word
miracle i don't know but it's just a
coincidence that there's even a
correlation um
uh but it is my new it's the book that's
gonna come out next year so i've been
working on it um but here's the miracle
equation
and it's it's how you create miracles
which and when i say miracle right i
don't mean partying red sea or biblical
miracles but i mean extraordinary
results that are beyond what you even
believe is possible
right
um
it's really simple two components
unwavering faith and extraordinary
effort and if you if you if you if you
break down any person in history
yourself included that has accomplished
extraordinary results beyond what they
maybe as children or whatever point in
their lives even imagined possible right
i'm sure you with you know quest and
stuff you've done you you're like i
can't believe this is like i do how did
i you know i can't believe this happened
right
but every single person they those were
the two common denominators they
established faith
that they could accomplish something
that they had never accomplished they
had no evidence in their past that they
were even capable of it right so they
just when i don't know that's why it's
faith right it's out on a limb like i
can do this i don't know how but i can
do this right i'm go i'm committed i'm
going to do it and then the faith the
unwavering piece is that most people
even if they like start out that way as
soon as they hit an obstacle a failure
as we talked about right the faith
waivers they're like oh
never mind i guess
i thought i could do this but apparently
not right so the faith goes out the
window the second piece extraordinary
effort most people as soon as the faith
goes out the window the effort follows
right behind it because it's like what's
the point of even trying if i don't
really believe i can do it but every
person that's had that's created
extraordinary results that's changed the
world that's become you know
financially free whatever the result is
they they established faith that they
could do it the faith was unwavering and
they put forth extraordinary effort
until and the operative word underlined
the word a circle the word until until
they got there we're programmed in the
past
and we need something in writing to
program us based on what we want for our
future
yeah that's pretty extraordinary man
what do you think is like the key trait
that you have that has allowed you to be
successful to build this mindset like
what's that foundation because i know a
lot of people um
they love what you're saying dude
they're in like they buy into it but
like
there's it's like they can see the
ladder but they can't reach the bottom
rung like what's that like foundational
trait that you cultivated in yourself is
it optimism is it something that simple
or i'm glad you asked the question
because
like
i
i view myself as a lazy person
i view myself like i have so many
insecurities i i don't view my and i'm
like really using affirmations to keep
trying to see myself as different in
fact the other night i had this epiphany
actually it was last night it was last
night at the hotel
getting ready for this i had the
epiphany that i go and i wrote and
anytime i have an epiphany it goes into
like this this affirmation app that i
use right so that i can again can't have
a thought and go oh it's a great idea
and then fall asleep and forget it you
know so my epiphany was i still view
myself as this 20 something year old kid
who was trying to make it who wanted
people to accept me who was trying to
who really loved all people but felt
like i didn't know how to get that
across so people like thought i was a
you know punk 20 year old kid or
whatever right so so the point is right
like i still
deal with all sorts of insecurities and
you know so i just want because i meet
like i saw david goggins right i was
watching his interview you know and i'm
like this guy's from a different planet
like
i don't have anywhere close to his
discipline or will you know um so part
of it is i've been put in circumstances
that i that i had you know it was either
like right fight or flight you know what
am i going to do
um i've had great mentors that have
taught like the five-minute rule and the
power of acceptance that was taught to
me when i was 20.
my parents they lost my sister died when
i was seven or i was eight she was a
year and a half and my just my mom and
my sister at home and me and my mom was
breastfeeding my baby sister ameri
and um
she
uh all of a sudden i was across the hall
sleeping and my dad was at work my
sister was out of town and i heard my
mom screaming my baby my baby and i'm
kind of like coming too and i thought
she was playing with her like oh my baby
my baby
and all of a sudden like i get clear
that like the the horror in my mom's
voice and i run across the hall under
her bedroom and amerie's dead in her
arms whoa she had heart failure and uh
she was born with a really rare
condition
um my parents
uh within a m within
a matter of it was less than a year
my mother
devastated
but she she founded a support group for
parents that had lost
children like under the age of five or
something right so she led that for
years they started a fundraiser to raise
money for the hospital that that cared
for anne-marie while she was alive and
um so i really i didn't even know it
then but i learned right i think it was
planted in me that you take adversity
right and you you find the advantage or
you turn it into an advantage right
tragedy into triumph i mean um
so i think it's just the conscious
choice
to
to to to an optimism is probably yeah i
mean that might be the simple way to put
it um
optimism and and then i will throw one
other quality in there which was a
chosen learned quality which is what
really led to the miracle morning
the day i came with a miracle morning
and it wasn't called that but i heard a
quote from jim rohn
and jim rohn said
your level of success will seldom exceed
your level of personal development
because success is something you attract
by the person you become and in that
moment i went
dude i'm not dedicating time every day
in my personal development i'm in
survival mode i just go into my office i
just like work all day
and really not productive i just spin
the wheels you know and i'm in fear mode
i'm in scarcity mode right and then i do
that until i'm exhausted and i go to bed
that's my daily routine and for a lot of
people i think that's it you wake up you
deal with life and then you go to bed
right
and
i went therefore because i'm not
dedicating time every day my personal
development i'm not becoming the person
that i need to be
that has the knowledge and the beliefs
and the energy and the qualities the
characteristics the skills the talent
right to create the results the success
i want in my life and that's when i went
i've got to create the most
extraordinary personal development
ritual in the history of humanity and i
got to start doing it
and um and that's how the miracle
morning was born so the point is this
i believe that that is one of if not the
most fundamental key to success is that
quote that philosophy from jim rohn and
here's the way that i equate it in my
head if we're measuring success on a
scale of one to ten in any area of life
i don't mean usually success we think
like professional success i'm talking
about your level of success in your
relationships as a parent your level of
physical energy your level of success
you know in terms of your emotional
invincibility rate on a scale of one to
ten what level do we want ten ten right
nobody's like i don't wanna be too happy
i don't wanna be annoying happy like
i'll just i'll do a six like i don't
want too much money i don't want family
coming out and asking no no we all want
like that's one thing we share in common
as humans is we aspire like we actually
all have an in us we all want to fulfill
our potential
and sadly most people don't and i
believe that it's because
it's for me i went okay i want level 10
success in every area of my life
but like jim rohn is saying my level of
personal development is like at a two
maybe a three on a good day right now
right and this is the disconnect
this is what we want in our lives this
is who we are and that's not a judgment
it's just right in terms of our level of
personal development and then i my
epiphany was if i dedicate time every
day to personal development
i will gradually become a level three
and then a level four and then a level
seven eventually if i become a level 10
person in terms of my beliefs and my
knowledge and my habits and my skills
i can only help but attract and create
and sustain level 10 success in my life
so it's a result of who we become right
and so i think that is you know optimism
combined with a relentless dedication
and i know you have it too and almost
any successful person on the planet does
right to personal development and it's
that idea that if i want to create an
extraordinary life i have to become a
level 10 life i got to become a level 10
person
i love that
awesome before i ask my last question
tell these guys where they can find you
online
uh hal elrod.com or miraclemorning.com
that is awesome
my final question is what is the impact
that you want to have on the world
yeah of course a beautiful question and
uh it feels good to have clarity on that
and it changes too by the way i always
tell people that
so my mission in life is to elevate the
consciousness of humanity
one morning at a time one person at a
time and
i had a uh it was probably probably a
year ago we were talking somebody asking
this question we were talking about it a
friend and i i i
had like a realization i go
this is kind of grandiose to say this
but the miracle morning literally could
lead to world peace
and the reason i say that like right now
we're working on doing a program in
schools where across all grades from
preschool to college where teachers
start every day with the miracle morning
with their students right so they lead
them through a it's a six minute version
of one minute of affirmations one minute
meditation one minute of exercise one
minute of reading right journaling all
the way through
and
um
my thought like imagine if every student
in the world started their day with
meditation out with with those practices
like
it could end bullying how are you going
to beat up the kid that just you just
you know you just meditated with and you
heard his dreams and his ambitions and
his affirmations and so on and so forth
so um yeah so i'm seeing it in the
community uh and around the world that
to that that really as it elevates the
consciousness of each person each
morning
there's a ripple effect that expands out
to their world their families their
communities ceos are better leaders for
their employees so on and so forth so um
yeah that's uh that's the mission that
i'm i'm working on damn good mission
appreciation awesome how thank you so
much for coming on the show
man all right guys there are a few
people in this world who get to show
what their leadership is really about
because they've been tested and i think
after hearing his story i think it's
very fair to say that he's been tested
not once twice but three times and built
that mindset by going through those
things and really seeing in the trenches
what works what helped and then bringing
that back i was telling him before we
started rolling the thing that i find so
extraordinary about him is in the
classic heroes journey the ending of the
story is always the person bringing the
lesson back to everybody else and
teaching and that's how i see him i see
him as somebody who is living the hero's
journey and
really engaging in that final most
amazing piece which is to share the
things that he's learned and i think as
you engage with him engage with this
content read the book you're going to
see that you're going to see the
profound way in which he's able to
really explain things and make it
accessible to everybody else so that we
can use this stuff in our own lives
i think that what he says is just
extraordinarily powerful and it works
and it's the kind of thing that i've
seen countless people in my circle that
have achieved
just amazing things in their lives
they're all using the elements that he's
talking about so like he says this
really is tried and true stuff that a
lot of people are putting to use
his own community 500 000 people every
day wake up and do the miracle morning
routine so
check it out it is something that could
be really profound in your life the
affirmations a lot of this stuff i just
think is unbelievably powerful so give
it a shot i'd love to hear how it's
working for you i think it's going to
serve you well if you haven't already be
sure to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care hal
my man dude that was awesome hey
everybody thank you so much for watching
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