Hal Elrod
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Show NotesHal Elrod is the #1 best-selling author of what is now being widely regarded
as “one of the most life-changing books ever written” titled, The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed To Transform Your Life… Before 8AM. It is also one of the highest rated books on Amazon with over 1,300 five-star reviews!
What’s even more incredible is that Hal actually died at age 20. He was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 mph, broke 11 bones, died for 6 minutes, and spent 6 days in a coma only to wake up to face the news that he may never walk again…
Not only did Hal walk, he went on to run a 52-mile ultra marathon, become a hall of fame business achiever, an international keynote speaker, one of the world’s top success coaches, he’s a hip-hop recording artist, has been featured in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, writes for Entrepreneur.com, has appeared on radio and TV shows across the country, and the list just goes on and on.
Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad said the following about Hal: “Hal Elrod is a genius and his book The Miracle Morning has been magical in my life. As my rich dad often said, ‘I can always make another dollar, but I cannot make another day.’ If you want to maximize every day of your life, read The Miracle Morning.”
As the bestselling author of The Miracle Morning, I brought Hal on today to talk about how you can change any—or literally EVERY area of your life, by simply changing the way you wake up in the morning—even if you’ve never been a morning person.
During this episode, Hal talks about the ‘5 minute rule’ he learned as a salesman. It’s what helped him to stay positive after his experience with the car accident. This is a power rule to live by in and of itself.
A favorite quote of his is from Jim Rohn. 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.”
That quote is HUGE! You must become the person required to achieve the success you want. Focus on improving yourself.
During the interview we also talked about SAVERS. That’s an acronym for each of the 6 practices that make up a miracle morning.
S : stands for silence. This is where you spend 10 minutes practicing deep breathing and meditation.
A : stands for affirmations. This is where you affirm who you are and who you want to be.
V : stands for visualization. This is where you envision yourself doing the things necessary to become who you want to be in order to achieve what you want to achieve.
E : stands for exercise. Do it. Feel better. Live better.
R : stands for reading. Read and learn to grow.
S : stands for scribing. Journal. It’s a great way to reflect on your days and how you are progressing. Plus, it will become a treasure that you can share and pass on to generations after you.
I want to personally thank Hal for being on the show and taking the time to share his story.
Recommended Books
The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money
The Last Safe Investment: Spending Now to Increase Your True Wealth Forever
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Episode TranscriptionWelcome to The Flipping Junkie Podcast. My name is Danny Johnson former software developer turned house flipper, flipping hundreds of houses. Each week we bring you interview, strategies, stories and motivation to help you get started flipping houses and on your way to becoming your own boss and achieving financial freedom. Thanks for spending time with me today. Now let’s get to it.
Hey everybody. Thanks a lot for tuning in again to The Flipping Junkie Podcast. We’re nearing the end of the foundation part of the flipping houses training series on the podcast. If you haven’t listened in before we’ve been doing basically a weekly training on flipping houses starting with the beginning like the foundation, getting the mindset correct, getting you set up by learning some of the mistakes that other people have made that we have made in our business and getting started and having the right mindset to push through and make it past where 95% or more of people that want to get into a real estate investing give up and quit. So if you haven’t listened to the other episodes, the previous ones for the last probably six or seven weeks, you want to go back and listen to those on iTunes and check out all that. It’s very valuable information to get your foundation set up right to get your house flipping business going and making it past where most people give up and that’s how you do that. We’ve been really busy cranking up our house flipping business this year. We plan to do more than we’ve ever done this year. Growing a great team to help do that and we’re excited to share a lot of that information. You can find out some of the things that we’re doing and see some pictures and stuff on our Instagram account. If you go to Instagram.com/flippingjunkie you could see some of that stuff. It’s pretty cool. My wife, Melissa, has been adding some pictures and stuff up there. Sometimes I don’t even know that she’s putting the pictures there, so you might find some stuff that I didn’t approve to put out there, but she caught me off guard, but anyway it’s pretty cool. Check that stuff out. We’ve got some changes coming to some of the software. Leadpropeller.com is the real estate investor website that we provide. We’ve been working a lot on some big ideas and changes in the works and then the CRM system to keep track of leads and follow ups for leads for real estate investors at reimobile.com. There are super exciting stuffs that we’ve been planning on working on and will be rolling out over the coming months. If you haven’t seen those things check those reimobile.com and leadpropeller.com.
Now today’s guest is somebody that I’ve been working to get on the show and finally got them to agree to a 30-minute slot in their busy busy time in their schedule to be on the show and I’m very thankful for him being able to do that. I’m here today with Hal Elrod. He’s on the podcast, he was not actually in my office, although they would be pretty cool. He’s the number one best selling author of an awesome book called “The Miracle Morning.” The not-so-obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8 AM. It’s also one of the highest rated books on Amazon with over 900 five star reviews.
Now I’ve seen other people had mentioned this book and I got interested and ordered it off Amazon and quickly read through it. It’s a quick read, a very interesting read. Hal has had an interesting life. He actually died at the age of 20 believe it or not. He was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour, broke eleven bones, died for six minutes, and spent six days in a coma only to wake up and find out that he might not ever walk again. Miraculously, he did end up walking and he actually ended up going on a 52-mile ultra marathon and became a Hall of Fame Business Achiever, international keynote speaker. He’s been featured in “Chicken Soup For The Soul” book series, writes for entrepreneur.com. He’s really done a lot of amazing things and you could say this is from hitting pretty much a rock bottom, I mean, how many people have said that they’ve actually died and come back and done all these things. It’s pretty pretty amazing. He’s got a really interesting story and Robert Kiyosaki author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” said the following about Hal. He said Hal is a genius in his book. The Miracle Morning has magical in his life and he said, “As my rich dad often said, I can always make another dollar but I cannot make another day. If you want to maximize every day of your life read The Miracle Morning.” I say that and it sounds like an advertisement and I don’t mind that at all because I will promote the heck out of the book “The Miracle Morning” because it’s an incredible book. Actually, after I read that, I’ve been doing the miracle morning every single morning, I think, it’s been almost four months now and it really is true. It really changes how you see everything, how you approach everything and what you accomplish. We’ll get into the details of all of it, but I have actually been doing it for that long and I might have missed one or two days here and there on a weekend or something, but otherwise I’m up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning to do my miracle morning and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. It’s really made a big difference in our life because my wife Melissa also does miracle morning. Alright, so let’s get into the discussion with Hal. Hal are you there?
Hal Elrod: I am Danny. Thanks for having me. This is going to be a good time.
Danny Johnson: Yeah I’m super excited about it. Thanks for being on the show. I know you’re pretty busy.
Hal Elrod: My pleasure, man. I’m honored that you invited me on.
Danny Johnson: Great. So for everybody out there, I brought Hal on today to talk about how you out there, anybody, can change any literally every part of your life by simply changing the way you wake up in the morning even if you’ve never been a morning person. Hel, let’s talk about your book and specifically let’s talk about you being hit head-on by a drunk driver and what happened there and then how you were able to bounce back from that and do all the incredible things that you’ve done.
Hal Elrod: Yeah. I mean the head-on collision with a drunk driver, it’s one of those things that no one ever imagined is going to actually happen to them. It’s of those that happens to other people that you read about or you see on the news and you feel sorry for them and then you change the channel, but it’s one of those things you never really imagined encountering yourself. When I was 20 years old, I was one of the top sales people for Cutco Kitchen Cutlery, Cutco kitchen knives. I broke a bunch of sales records at age 20, and as one of the top sales reps, I was asked to speak at most of the events that we had and give whether it was a motivational speech or teacher to get referrals or whatever it was and this particular night December 3rd 1999 at 20 years old, I gave a speech at a conference and that night driving home in my my first new car, I just bought it three weeks prior a new Ford Mustang, very proud purchased with my own money and driving home that night a man that I never met before got on the freeway going the wrong way and he was doing 80 miles an hour and I was travelling roughly 70 miles an hour and I don’t recall the headlights come in head-on but they were and it was 11:30 at night. It was pretty late and pretty dark and this full size Chevy truck much larger than my little Ford Mustang comes barreling down the highway directly at me and we collide head-on for a combined 150 mile an hour head-on collision. The worst was yet to come Danny. My car spun off the drunk driver and the car behind me crashed – my car spun, so it was perpendicular to the highway and my driver’s side door was a target for the car that had been following just a couple car lengths behind me and crashed into my door at 70 miles an hour. To everybody listening, to give you an idea like look over your left shoulder right now, just take a second look over your left shoulder, and imagine a car coming 70 miles an hour at you at your car door, just crashes into you and what you might imagine happening the whole left side of the car was crushed into the left side of my body and immediately I broke 11 bones like instantaneously. My femur broke in half, two pieces, my pelvis broken in three places. I shattered my elbow, severed my radial nerve and my forearm, broke my arm, ruptured my spleen, punctured my lung, my ear was almost completely severed. The top of the ceiling buckled it sliced a V in my head. My eye socket shattered and essentially I started losing a lot of blood. An hour later, I had bled to death and an hour later was when they finally were able to use the jaws of life, they being the rescue crews, and cut me out of the car and when they did I had lost so much blood that my heart stopped beating and I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes, brought back to life, rushed to the hospital, in critical condition, in a coma for six days and underwent emergency surgery and six days later I came out of this coma to the news that I suffered this horrible car accident. I had no memory of it and that I had permanent brain damage and that I would probably never walk again. I don’t care who you are. It’s a pretty difficult reality to even – a tough pill to swallow, tough reality to even comprehend, and like anything in life I had to decide how I was going to respond to it.
Danny Johnson: Right. So how was that? I mean we’ve been talking in this podcast over the last several weeks about sort of a series of foundation covering mindset and motivation and all that kind of stuff for people getting into flipping houses. Life is not so much about what happens to you but how you react to what happens to you. So I’d really love to hear what you’re thinking was like whenever you heard those words and how long it took for you and how you made that mental shift to say, “Hey, I’m not just going to lie down and let this ruin my life.”
Hal Elrod: Yeah. To be very transparent, I don’t remember coming out of the coma. I don’t remember about a week of being awake and being out of the coma. I was talking, I was interacting, but because of my brain damage, I have trouble with short term memory and especially at that time. What I’m going to share with you, I just got to know these series of events after I woke up from the coma from my parents and friends that were there and my sister and doctors and they just have kind of recreated the whole story for me and apparently I was – within a matter of hours, at least 24 hours, I had accepted it, acknowledged I couldn’t change it and I was focusing on being grateful and being happy, to the point where the doctors called my parents in actually about a week after the accident they called my parents in for a little sit down and they said physically Hal has made it through the worst. He is stable which at that point I had died, technically died, flatlined twice more in my coma, so it was a very critical condition. But a week after the coma, the doctors said Hal physically he has made it through the worst and all signs are pointing to a recovery. They said he may or may not ever walk again, so that is a reality I have a deal with. But they basically said, so physically he’s is he’s made it to the worst but mentally and emotionally we believe Hal in denial. They said they told my mom and dad that every time we see your son, every time we talk to Hal, he’s always smiling and laughing and joking with us and making us laugh and they say said that’s not normal. Frankly it’s not normal for a 20 year old to respond that way, so they said we’ve seen this before we believe that his reality is so painful he can’t accept it, so he’s checked out of it. He’s kind of delusional and just like everything’s okay. At some point, he has to face the emotions that he’s bottling up. Probably deep down he’s scared, he’s angry, he’s depressed, he’s sad. They said we would really love it if you could talk with him and get him to admit how he is really feeling, so that we can help counsel him through the emotional pain and that the healing can begin emotionally. My parents were of course concerned and my dad came in probably minutes later. He came in my hospital room right after that and – the brain damage is still to this day. My wife will vouch for that. What happened was my dad comes in and I don’t know the conversation happened with the doctor but here he sits down and I look over and he says, “Hal, can I talk to you for a second?” And I was watching TV in my hospital bed and my head is shaved it’s all bandaged, my ear is sewn on. I’m in bad shape you. I’m just watching TV and I look over and my dad who is asking if he can talk with me, he’s eyes were red and watery and I shut off the TV and I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh. He’s got some really bad news for me.” I said, “Dad what’s up?” And he explained the situation with the doctors and they’re kind of concerned with my being in denial and he said, “Hal, how are you really feeling?” It’s okay to be depressed or sad or angry of course. That’s totally normal. It’s to be expected but it’s important that you acknowledge the way you’re really feeling and talk about it. So tell me how are you really feeling deep down.” And I stopped and I thought about it because my dad was so concerned and I thought am I sad? Am I sad? Am I angry? Am I depressed and I’m just not realizing it? I got really truthful with myself and I looked at my dad. I said, “Dad I thought you knew me better than that.” I said, “Remember I live my life by the five-minute rule and it’s been two weeks my five minutes are up.” And he goes, “Remind me, what is the five-minute rule again?” I said, “I learned this in my Cutco sales training. It’s simply, it’s okay to be negative when things go wrong but not for more than five minutes.” And I said, “Dad, it’s been two weeks.” I said, the five-minute rule essentially says you get five minutes to be upset, complain, bitch, moan, cry, cuss, punch something, whatever you got to do and some goes wrong. But the five minute rule is simply the acknowledgement that there is no value in dwelling on something that is now out of your control, right? Unless you’re Marty McFly with the DeLorean, you can’t back time and repeat it, right? So I said, “The way that I see it there there’s only one of two options here. Number one the doctors are right and I’ll never walk again and I said even if that’s my reality, Dad, I promise you I’ll be the happiest person you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair.” I’ve already played it out of my mind. If I’m in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I’ll be the happiest person you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair. The most grateful person you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair. Because what else would I be? Miserable? What value would that – why? What’s the point? Once the circumstance has happened, the only choice you have is like you said, it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to it. I said, so number one I’m in a wheelchair the rest of my life, but I’m happy. And so I said, “Dad, if that’s the worst case scenario, you and mom have nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to worry about. Second scenario dad, second option is I will walk again.” And you know honestly Danny, I didn’t know if I would. I wasn’t delusional like I’m definitely to walk again. I just told my dad I’m committed that all of my energy is going into option number two. I’m thinking about walking every day. I’m dreaming about it. I’m praying about it. I’m meditating on it. I’m visualizing it. But simultaneously I have fully accepted if I never walk again. So it’s this interesting dichotomy where most people if they really want something, they don’t know how to not be radically disappointed if they don’t get what they want, right?
Danny Johnson: Right.
Hal Elrod: Or if they deeply love someone, they don’t know anything but to be distraught if they lose the thing they love. I know that there is this way to approach life where you expect the best but you accept the rest. You accept all things you can’t change when they happen or even before they happen. You accept life before it happens with the acknowledgement that negative emotions are self-created by our level of resistance to the things that we think are creating the emotional pain. We think it’s the thing, like, “Oh of course, I’m upset. Look at what she did to me.” Well, she did what she did. You’re choosing to be upset. If you just accept it, it doesn’t mean you’re happy about it, but much more powerful and rooted than happiness is peace. You are at peace with the things you accept and then when you’re at peace it’s kind of like a clean emotional slate where you get to choose the emotions. If you’re in traffic for example I love this analogy because everybody understands traffic. Most people Danny – do you like traffic or not like traffic?
Danny Johnson: Heck no. Actually I’ve learned to not hate it so much by listening to podcasts and things like that.
Hal Elrod: Most people don’t like traffic when I whenever I speak to an audience. I go, “Raise your hand if you don’t only traffic.” All of their hands go up and I go, “Here’s the game changer.” So here’s the deal, if you hit traffic most people resist. They’re like, “Oh no, come on go. Faster.” We resist it and here’s the thing. Here’s the secret. This is a very profound realization that I had from a mentor years ago, but it goes along with nobody likes feeling negative emotions for the most part and again we think it’s the thing. We think that we’re frustrated because there’s traffic, but it’s that we’re not willing to accept and be at peace with the traffic. What I realize is if I’m to be stuck in traffic for 30 minutes and I’m going to be late anyway, why not enjoy every moment in that car and it’s a metaphor for life to me. When you accept the things that are out of your control that you can’t change whether they are past, whether it’s current circumstances that are out of your control or it’s a future circumstance that’s on its way, once you accept it, you are at peace and when you’re at peace, you’re in the driver’s seat of your emotional state and you get to choose. When I’m in traffic, I’m like, “Alright, I accept it. I can’t change it. I’m at peace with it.” It doesn’t mean I’m happy there’s traffic, but because I’m at peace, I have this clean emotional slate and I’m like, “How do I want to feel?” I want to try out some musical and just freaking have fun right now. I want to be grateful where. I want to be insightful or whatever, right? You get to choose but not when you are resisting your circumstances reading emotional pain.
Danny Johnson: You know it’s funny because people say, oh, I’m so busy there’s no time for me to do all this other stuff because I’m so busy doing this that and the other thing and I’m in my car for it for this hour in traffic and it’s like you wouldn’t feel so busy if you realized that maybe an hour of traffic is your relax time. Choose to be like you said, switch the way you look at it. It reminds me of the Jim Rohn quote. He’s always talking about, “Don’t wish for less problems. Wish you were better.”
Hal Elrod: That’s it.
Danny Johnson: Everybody’s going to problems, everybody’s going to have situations, just learn to be better. And that’s something that’s not something people can flip a switch and immediately start doing, but that’s something to work toward.
Hal Elrod: That’s exactly it. I used to speak at high schools and colleges and I have these little “Can’t change it” wristbands made where if someone bought my book, they would get a “Can’t change it” wristband and those are the three words that for me I say literally the five-minute rule. It’s a very real thing. It’s a great way to start this process because it gives you time to feel your emotions. You get to be pissed off or upset or whatever, right? Literally when something goes wrong, you set your timer for five minutes and you get five minutes to be upset. And then after five minutes, you take a deep breath and you say three really powerful words which are “Can’t change it” acknowledging that whatever happened, I can’t go back and change it happened. It doesn’t mean you can’t change your future or do something now to change things moving forward. But you can’t change what happened whether it was five seconds ago, five minutes, or five years ago or whatever. And so that is that process. Here’s the interesting thing and I’ll wrap it up with this, most people when I teach this, if I’m talking to an audience, I’ll say, “How many of you feel like five minutes is like you need five weeks like five minutes is not long enough to be upset?” And most people will raise their hand. And I go, “Yeah, I thought that too and it feels that way at first.” But here’s what happens, at first, the timer goes off and you’re like, Oh, I still feel upset, right? But now you’re conscious and now you go, “Okay, can’t change it.” And you’re on there, you’re like halfway, one foot into acceptance, one foot over on resistance and you’re kind of like “I don’t know you know.” I’m accepting it, so it doesn’t feel natural. What happens though is after a few weeks of doing this, five minutes believe it or not, will become too long. You’ll set your timer for five minutes after you’ve done this a dozen times and all of a sudden, the timer – you go, “Gosh, damn it. I can’t believe it’s happening. I’m so upset. I’m so frustrated!” And then you pick up your phone and look at the timer and you’re like, “God, I still got another four minutes and thirty four seconds, right? And y then you just look again you’re like three minutes. Why don’t I just accept it now? This is silly. Why would I want to put myself through this?
Danny Johnson: Right. And it’s amazing when you think about what level of things can happen to you and how that still works if you’ve built it into a habit that you have like, like what happened to you, I mean, how much worse can it really get. For something that bad to happen to you and you still were able to quickly, from what doctors were telling you and your dad coming and talking about that, so that’s really cool. It’s like it’s something that becomes very powerful that I can handle those sorts of things.
Hal Elrod: It’s funny. You said two things – my dad that’s what he said when I reminded him of the five-minute rule because I learned that in my sales training and I said Dad remember I live by the five-minute rule from Cutco and then I remind him what it was and he goes “How?” But he goes, “Yeah. But that was taught to you for much milder adversity. That was for rude customers or cancelled orders.” And I said, “No. Yeah, you’re right. But the principle is universal” right? Whether you lose someone that you love or you’re in a horrific car accident or your arm is cut off, once you can’t change it, you get to choose whether you indulge in your emotional pain and create it and perpetuate it or you accept what you can’t change and you’re at peace. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is.
Danny Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. It’s amazing. What was the inspiration behind writing The Miracle Morning?
Hal Elrod: Yes, that was my second book. My first book was called “Taking Life Head On” play on words the head-on collision with the drunk driver and that was 2006 was my first book. I was 25 I think or 26 when it came out. And then the miracle morning came out 12/12/12, so December 12, 2012. Six years later. The first book obviously, the inspiration was I was in an accident and a friend, my good buddy, Jon Berghoff, just kind of one day he was like, “Hal, dude, why aren’t you writing a book. You need to share the story on the way you approached it. People can really benefit from that.” And so, both books were written out of a sense of responsibility where I kind of went through some tough times and figured a couple things out and they were so valuable and then when I shared them with clients or friends, they had a profound impact for those people and then I went, “Hmmm, maybe I should write a book.” And The Miracle Morning was the same thing. I had no intention of ever writing another book after my first one really. And in 2000 – well, here’s the quick story. So 2005 was the greatest year of my life. I buy my first house. I double my income. I’m one of the top sales reps like, number three in my entire company out of 50,000 sales reps. I get in the best shape in my life 5.7% body fat. I buy my dream car. I meet my wife. I write my first book. Everything is great. And then a couple of years later, the US economy crashed in 2007, I think it is when it started. I lose over half of my clients. I lose my house. I cancel my gym membership. I go from 5.7% body fat to 17% body fat. I get deeply depressed because I can’t pay the bills. I’m scared. I’m a mess. I’m the worst I’ve ever been. After six months, they’re really really really getting worse and worse and worse kind of a downward spiral, if you will, where nothing I’m trying is working to get myself out of it. I’m reading books and trying different things and it just keeps getting worse. And finally a conversation with that same friend Jon Berghoff who –it’s amazing I look back like so many turning points of my life had happened talking to John –I finally call him and I confessed how bad it has gone. Because Danny, I didn’t tell anybody about my circumstances. I kind of suffered in silence because I was a success coach. It kind of was an identity crisis to reach out to people and go, “Hey, I’m failing miserably. So I need more coaching clients.” Do you know anyone that needs a success coach who is failing miserably?
Danny Johnson: Yeah, I can only imagine.
Hal Elrod: I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell anybody. My fiancée knew. John, long story short, he encourages me to go for a run. He says, “Every day Hal, run or jog or walk. So you put yourself in a peak physical mental and emotional state.” He goes, “Every morning start off with some exercise and while you’re on that run, kill two birds with one stone, while you’re in that peak physical mental and emotional state, listen to some sort of self-help audio. In whatever area of your life you need to improve.” And so, the next morning, I was desperate. I thought it was kind of an elementary advice, I’m like, this isn’t going to work but okay I’m desperate, whatever. The next morning, I hear a quote from Jim Rohn who you mentioned earlier and this is the quote that becomes the catalyst for turning my adversity around faster than I ever thought possible. It literally is, I mean, I wish Jim were still alive so I could be like, “Dude, The Miracle Morning, you gave birth to this in a way.” And so, he 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 stopped and for anybody listening, ask yourself what I asked myself. What I realized is I’m not dedicating time everyday to my personal development. Therefore, I’m not becoming the person that I need to be to create the success that I want.
My epiphany was I’m going to figure out what the world’s most successful people do every day for personal development and I’m going to start doing that. I was looking for one thing, but after an hour of searching online and googling things like personal development and what was the world’s most successful people do for personal development, just different phrases, I had a list of six practices and I could not narrow it down below that. Depending on which millionaire, billionaire, CEO or philanthropist you ask, one of these six came up. And I almost threw in the towel – what do they call that – paralysis by analysis. I’m going, “I don’t know which one of these I should do.” And then the real breakthrough I went, wait a minute what if I did all of these? What if I did the six most powerful proven personal development practices known to man and I just did it 10 minutes each every day? I got excited and they woke up the next morning. I did 10 minutes of meditation, add in 10 of affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and journaling – those six practices and that was the morning my entire life changed because even though my outer world was still a mess, my bank account was negative, I was $52,000 in credit card debt, I was in the worst shape of my life physically, even though my outer world was a mess, internally I saw that if I start every day like this with this much, doing all six of these, this much clarity and energy and motivation, like, the way I feel right now I feel unstoppable and yesterday I felt suicidal, big difference. And so, the end of the story of the resort, which is less than two months of doing what is now known as The Miracle Morning, it didn’t have a name back then, it wasn’t going to be book, I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to deciding I was going to run an ultra marathon, which I started training for within a matter of weeks. I completed 52 miles five months later in one day and I went from being deeply depressed and borderline suicidal to being totally fired up. That didn’t take too much. That was like day one and because my life changed so rapidly and so profoundly, I started calling it my miracle morning, but again it was just my thing, and then I taught it to my coaching clients and just almost all of them went, “Hal, I’m not a morning person.” But I encouraged them to give it a shot for a week and nearly every single one goes, “Hal, I did I did your little tips on waking up. Oh, my gosh. It is changing my life.” And that was when I went, “Okay, I guess I got to write another book.” It took three years, but now I’m very grateful to say it’s one of the highest rated books on Amazon with 1300 five star reviews and so on and on. It’s kind of become this worldwide movement that has grown far beyond me. If I died today, knock on wood, The Miracle Morning, I think it’s got kind of a life of its own.
Danny Johnson: Yeah I think so too. And I’m just yeah I’m super glad that you did write the book because it’s really helped me in that whole realization especially with that quote from Jim Rohn that you mentioned, “Your level of success seldom exceeds your level of personal development.” So it’s all about you and that’s sort of when you look at it in terms of – sort of like when people, I’ve heard it several times before where they say if you take all the wealth in the world distribute it evenly between everybody, it doesn’t take very long before it’s all going to end up in the same hands that it was in before to the same level yeah.
Hal Elrod: Yeah. That’s a great way of putting it and I agree. If you were to take a highly successful business person and take everything away and drop him in the middle of nowhere, it would only be a matter of time because of who he is that he would recreate his circumstances.
Danny Johnson: Absolutely. And what I love best about the miracle morning stuff is you start your day, first, there’s no excuse because you get up earlier and so it’s not that “I don’t have time.” You get a little bit earlier than you would normally, maybe an hour. I started getting up an hour earlier, so I used to get up at 6:00 and then became 5 o’clock to do miracle morning. And you really get in the mindset to where you tackle the day proactively. We’ll get into a little bit deeper into each of those steps that you talked about, the six things, but you focus on what you want out of life and what you’re working towards and your self-development and so you’re starting the day proactively instead of getting up immediately reacting to everything – checking your phone, your e-mail, and saying, “Oh, I got to respond to this,” “I got to do this today,” “I got to that” and just putting out fires all day long and never really achieving anything that you set out to achieve.
Hal Elrod: Yeah. One simple way to put it is if you win the morning, you win the day. However you start the day, it just sets the context, it sets your mindset and the tone for the rest of the day. So if you have an unfocused chaotic morning where you woke up late, you’re rushing around – I call it a mediocre morning, right? So most people are going to start their day, well that’s the tempo and the momentum that you’ve created for the day and it makes it that much harder to make it a great day. But if you start proactively, like you said, it’s easier to win the day.
Danny Johnson: Yeah and I like the routine of it because one of the things, it was like It’s so profound and simple – profound because it’s common knowledge maybe, but not common practice where people typically would set goals or think about personal development and it might be the span of them reading one book or something and then it’s over with. But when you set it up to be every single morning, just the power of that, instead of like, “Well, I’ll look at my goals again at the end of a month” and then you just forget. It’s like every single day you’re starting out with that focus. Until you practice it, you don’t see how powerful it is I don’t think.
Hal Elrod: I agree completely.
Danny Johnson: But let’s get into a little bit more of what the six things are and then why or the benefit of each of you would.
Hal Elrod: Yeah absolutely. So these six practices, none of them are new. I mean they’re timeless but. But Robert Kiyosaki the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, he put it really well. He reached out to me and he said – I get giddy when I say this. But he reached out and he had read the miracle morning three times. He has personally sold 26 million copies of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He’s been around for four decades, but he had read the book three times. He does it every day. It changed his life and improved his marriage he said. But the way that he said it is, he said before the miracle morning every successful person swore by at least one of the six practices, which are known as the SAVERS by the way. If you’re taking notes, SAVERS, S-A-V-E-R-S is the acronym for the six practices but he said every successful person did at least one of the SAVERS and they swore by them, but he said no one to his knowledge was doing all six, which was pretty profound to think about. But he said no one was doing all six and now he does all six as part of his miracle morning every day.
I’ll run through these relatively quick and we can wrap up our time today. The first “S” is for silence and that is meditation and/or prayer, so rather than starting your day by snoozing until the last possible minute and then you kind of rushing out the door, starting your day your miracle morning begins with peaceful purposeful silence. It allows you to get centered and if you do any research, the benefits of meditation, there are over 1400 studies that have proven the profound physical, mental and emotional benefits of meditating every day. So that’s the start – Silence.
The “A” is for affirmations. And affirmations, it’s not the way they’ve been taught for decades where either the whole Stuart Smalley, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it people like me.” The way affirmations have been taught and they’re still taught today by some people – I respect their teachings but this in general I’m not a big fan of and they teach you to either affirm something that is not true in the hopes that you will eventually kind of trick yourself into believing it is true. So for example, if you want to be a millionaire, you say – they call it “I am statements.” “I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire.” Well, if you’re not a millionaire your subconscious, even your conscious mind goes, “No you’re not.” So you’re fighting the truth and you know the truth will set you free. Lying is never an optimum strategy. The idea that saying, I’m a millionaire you’re not that’s just not going to be the optimum approach because you’re fighting with reality. And in the second way that affirmations are taught is to use this flowery kind of passive language that makes you feel good in the moment such as “money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance.” No it doesn’t. That’s not how money works. Typically you’ve got to add value to the world or your employer or the marketplace before money is going to flow to you. So the way that I teach affirmation to the miracle morning and I will go in-depth on all the SAVERS, but I think this is a great example of how all of the SAVERS. If there’s anything that I’m good at, it’s I’m not the smartest guy so I’m good at really simplifying things, so that they’re actionable and results-oriented for people. The way I teach affirmation in the book is not to lie to yourself with these “I am statements” and not to affirm some sort of fantasy but to affirm your goals. Here’s what I’m committed to achieving this year, so goal number one is this and then why is that important. I’m committed to this because it’s going to help my family. Why is that so important to you.
And then, the third component is, what specifically must you commit to doing or are you committed to doing and when and for what duration. So you’re affirming that here’s what I want, here’s why I want it, and so therefore I will do “blank” on these days of the week from this time to this time no matter what. So now you’re not affirming some lie or some fantasy. You’re affirming the reality of what you want why you want it and most importantly what specific activities or actions you will take and when you will take them. So your programming, your conscious and subconscious mind, and your behaviors to be in alignment with reality of what you’re going to do to achieve the things that you want. So that’s an example of all the SAVERS being kind of from meditation to visualization. They’re all very practical and results-oriented like that.
The “V” is for visualization. In the book just the short of it is, I teach you not just to visualize the dream at the end of the tunnel, but visualize the activity you have to take today lacing up your running shoes feel how to feel the feelings and attach feeling to your visualization, so that while you’re visualizing lacing up your running shoes because maybe you hate running, but you’re training for marathon or you want to lose weight feel the feelings that you would feel if it were optimum and you were enjoying that activity that day, so that when that activity rolls around in it’s time to do it, you’ve already used visualization to pre-create an emotional experience that is compelling and enticing so that you actually are more likely to follow through and it makes it a lot easier for you to do so.
Danny Johnson: Right. So see yourself how you want to be doing the action.
Hal Elrod: Yeah. Doing the action and on a today method, not “two years from now I visualize a great future.” That’s fine, but don’t end it there. You got to support that visualization with the daily activities.
The “E” is for exercise and I’m not saying you can’t –if you like to go to the gym in the afternoon, that’s great. But the benefits of morning exercise are proven to increase your energy and improve your mental thinking, all of that.
And then the “R” is for reading, so reading self-help books and I really believe that we’re all just really one book away from learning anything, gaining the knowledge that we need to improve any area of our life.
And last but not least is scribing and scribing is a fancy word, if you will, for writing. But that is the magic that happens when you put pen to paper, you gain a heightened level of clarity and they say clarity is power and it is because if you don’t have clarity you have no power. You don’t know what to do or why you’re doing it or when to do it. When you when you scribe, when you journal, you get clarity that improves your ability to take action and follow through.
So those are the SAVERS. Any one of those is a game changer when you combine all of them. It’s becomes The Miracle Morning and that’s where the results are so powerful.
Danny Johnson: Right. I think journaling, the scribing part of it, at first I was, “Well, I’ll do the other ones. But that one I probably won’t.” But as soon as I started doing it, I was like, “Wow, this is amazing because it’s that it makes you stop and reflect and see if you’re actually making those improvements in your life instead of saying, Oh yeah, I should do that.” And then you just don’t do anything. Reflecting on how you handle the day before and everything, that’s what I do it when I journal. I think it’s very powerful. Some people think, so every morning you’re going to do this, right? What about weekends? I mean, do you recommend every single day including weekends? What do you do?
Hal Elrod: Yes. Most people – and we have our Miracle Morning Facebook group. I would invite everybody to come join The Miracle Morning community. And again, the word “community” is important because there’s miracle morning fan pages and there’s all sorts of miracle morning groups other people have started in their local areas or whatever. But The Miracle Morning Community is the Miracle Morning space where 35,000 people there from 38 countries. It grows by 100 to 200 a day. But this question has been asked in their group and it’s almost always unanimous that most people started with the weekends off and what happen is they wake up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday do the Miracle Morning, they feel unstoppable, on fire, motivated, excited. They feel accomplished. Then they sleep on Saturday and they wake up and they’re like. Why would I do that? I just missed out on the best part of my day. So most people go from five days a week to six days a week to seven days a week, but I think everybody do their own. If somebody wants to take the weekends off, it’s great. If they just want to do miracle morning Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it’s still going to be a pretty powerful transformational you know part of their life either way.
Danny Johnson: Yeah and I feel like my days is better when I do it, so I even do it Saturday and Sunday. But maybe a little bit briefer on the weekends, but I still do it just because I do the whole day is better that way. But I know we need to wrap this up pretty quick. Do you mind if I ask you real quick what are the three books that you’re reading right now?
Hal Elrod: Yes absolutely and I happened to be reading three, maybe even four. So the three books I’m reading now, the first is, “Will It Fly? How To Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time And Money.” A really great book for anyone who is an entrepreneur or if you’ve ever thought of being an entrepreneur. It’s by Pat Flynn and it’s just phenomenal. I’ve never really seen a book that that was like this and covered this topic. Most people just comes up with an idea, think it’s a great idea to invest your time, money, and energy to put it out there in the world and then they find out if it was a good idea or not. And this book teaches you how to systematically validate your ideas before you put a lot of time and energy into making them a reality.
The other one I’m reading is called “Story Selling by Nick Nanton” which is just a great book on how to use the power of story to influence or sell your stuff. I just read that one this morning. Nick Nanton by the way just come out with a movie, Visioneer. Go to visioneermovie.com, V-I-S-I-O-N-E-E-R movie dot com. You can watch – actually, when this comes out you probably have to pay for it. Right now it’s free. But it’s worth it. It’s the documentary Peter Diamandis, founder of X PRIZE and really fascinating.
Danny Johnson: Oh wow. I’m going to check that out.
Hal Elrod: You as of live right now, you can still get it for free, visioneermovie.com. And then the last one I’m reading is called the “The Last Safe Investment” and it’s by Brian Franklin and Michael Ellsberg. But that one, Michael just sent me – I think he wants me to review it or something, but so far so good. I’m kind of in the first couple chapters of all of this.
Danny Johnson: Great. Well thanks for sharing. I usually ask, “What you’re doing right now that’s helping you the most in your business?” Do you have a quick answer for that?
Hal Elrod: You know it’s finding strategic partners. I think that’s one of the biggest thing is leveraging other people. That’s the hardest thing is as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur. It’s so hard to let go of the activities that you’ve spent time learning and doing and you feel like it took you so long to learn them or nobody’s been doing it the way you do them, all these reasons and you just have to jump and the net will appear kind of thing where – like, I just brought on my – she’s now my chief of staff, she started as an intern, became my assistant, and instead of me trying to figure out and teach her stuff, I often just go, “Hey, figure this out.” And it’s amazing how she comes back and she does it better than I can. I’m like, “Wow, that’s freaking awesome. Thank you. Would you teach me now?” Whereas in the past, I thought I had to go learn it so that I could teach someone. That’s been really valuable, is leveraging people in that regard and then also leveraging partnerships. I partnered with actually John Berghoff, the gentleman I mentioned earlier, my best buddy. We run live events together now. I partnered with a gal named Honoree Corder. She’s my book series partner for The Miracle Morning book series. We have The Miracle Morning for real estate agents, for sales people, for network marketers, and those are those are out now, the journal is out now. So there’s these different Miracle Morning books in the series. But yeah, that has been it – is leveraging other people go both through assistant-type roles or staff or team roles and then also partner roles.
Danny Johnson: Great. Thank you very much. One last thing real quick too, whenever coming up with the affirmations, some people struggle with that and whenever I was reading I sort of struggled with it as well, but you do provide sort of an example of what you had for affirmations and would that be something that you’d be willing to share with us that I could put on the show notes page or something for people to take a look at.
Hal Elrod: Yeah. You could just put the link. Normally, this is for people that are reading The Miracle Morning. This is one of the many bonuses in the book, but the website anybody can go to, it’s tmmbook.com, so TMM as in The Miracle Morning, book dot com tmmbook.com and you’ll get the bunch of sample affirmations including my own personal affirmations from 2012. It is just a bunch of stuff that you’ll get at the website.
Danny Johnson: Great. And is there a place where other people can find you besides, I guess, you mentioned the Facebook group. Is that just facebook.com/miraclemorning?
Hal Elrod: No. So the direct URL that you can put in the show notes is mytmmcommunity.com. That will help you get through all the different Facebook groups that are miracle morning related that people have started. It’s mytmmcommunity.com and my website is my name halelrod.com and that’s where you can find out about all things related to my speaking or coaching or live events that sort of thing.
Danny Johnson: Awesome. Well, thanks again Hal for being on the show and taking the time to share it with my audience and the flipping junkie listeners out there for the podcast.
Hal Elrod: Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and for everybody who tuned in. Thanks for listening and I hope to see you in The Miracle Morning Community.
Danny Johnson: Awesome. Well take care.
Alright. Great episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did in interviewing Hal. He’s a great guy with great information and a wonderful idea with Miracle Morning and an amazing story, but it really will change your life. I do highly recommend that you get the book and follow it. You can find information that we talked about from the show on the show notes page at flippingjunkie.com/24. I’ll have all the links and everything and the books that we talked about, as well as what we talked about with what the SAVERS were with silence affirmations, visions, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. Be sure to subscribe to The Flipping Junkie Podcast on iTunes and leave a reading in review if you’re enjoying the podcast because it really helps to promote it and to help us to get more guests on the show and do all those things that we’re doing. Thanks for following along and we’re continuing this series of flipping houses training from foundation to learning how to talk to sellers, do marketing to get leads, analyze the deals, buy them, fix them up, sell them, all that kind of stuff. So definitely you want to subscribe and return each week to listen in.
Thanks for listening and see you next week.
