- So December 3rd, 1999
we went home that night and about 11:30 at night
we got a call from Hal's good friend, Jeremy
and he had indicated that Hal had been in a car accident.
- So the night of Hal's accident,
we were at a conference and we were coming back from it.
He gets in the car, I get in my car
and we head out.
He got ahead of me and I caught a red light.
- Hal was driving about 65 miles per hour.
- The drunk driver was going 80 miles an hour.
- Someone crossed the median and hit them head on.
His Ford Mustang spun around
and the oncoming driver T-boned him.
- There was like all this debris
in the middle of the freeway.
- And my buddy looks out the window and says
"I think there was a Mustang on the side of the road. "
I was like, "Dude, I couldn't even tell. "
And as I kind of started driving he's like,
"No man, I think that was Hal's Mustang. "
- When I talked to Jeremy,
I told him to tell Hal that we loved him
and that he had to hang in there
and that we were all coming.
- The fire department when they showed up,
they had to cut through the car to have to pull him out.
(machines beeping)
His heart had stopped for about six or seven minutes.
- I remember walking through the door
and it was like they'd been waiting for us.
There was whispers and it was like the Elrods are here
and then we were rushed into a room.
- The damage that was done to his body was horrific.
I did not expect him to live through the weekend.
- He's probably not gonna be able to hear
because of the damage to his ear.
He might not be able to see
'cause he had shattered bones around his eye.
He'll never walk again.
- There was so much brain trauma
and they told us that he would be a vegetable.
- I think he was in a coma for about a week.
- At first, it was like, say goodbye.
Then they were like,
oh, looks like he might make it sort of.
- We knew he was alive inside,
his brain was still working,
he wasn't a vegetable.
And he woke up the next day talking.
- When Hal woke up
his short term memory was completely impacted.
So it was like Groundhog's Day every day.
I remember one time he's like, "Did I get in a plane crash?"
I think we went with that story for the while.
I was like, tomorrow, we'll retell the real story again.
He took his first step
and it was another one of those things
where people were just shocked
at how fast he was coming back.
- He just defied everything the doctors said.
We laughed through all of it which is,
you always kind of found humor,
and I think that helped him survive.
- When Hal got out of the hospital four months later
his high school principal called and he said,
"I know this is crazy", but he goes,
"do you think Hal would speak to the student body?"
And so that was the start really of Hal's speaking career.
- I just feel like Hal had another purpose,
he wasn't done yet.
I still believe that now.
It was a miracle.
- My mom and dad were called in by the doctors
after I had been awake for a week
and I had been evaluated by all the psychologists
and the doctors sat them down and they said,
"We want to give you an update on Hal. "
They said,
"We're concerned with Hal's mental and emotional state.
We believe that Hal is in denial or delusional
because every time we interact with him,
the psychologist, his doctors, his physical therapist,
Hal's always smiling and laughing and joking
and telling us jokes, making us laugh. "
And they said, "Frankly, that's not normal. "
They said, "That's not normal for a 20 year old young man
that's being told you're never going to walk again. "
I can't change that I was in a car accident,
but I can change everything else
and I can damn well choose my attitude.
I will be the happiest, most grateful person
that you or anyone has ever seen in a wheelchair.
Consider that.
What's your wheelchair?
What's a circumstance in your life
that you can reference,
past, present, or maybe even
you're worried about for the future
that's out of your control?
Especially if it's in the past, right?
Or if it's happening now based on past events.
But what's your wheelchair?
What's that experience, that circumstance,
that challenge, that adversity
that has caused you emotional pain
when really you need to take a deep breath and acknowledge
I can't change it, it's in the past?
I might as well be the happiest,
most grateful person I could ever be
even though that thing happened
or even though I'm going through that thing right now.
Because see the two aren't mutually exclusive,
but most of us think that they are.
Most of us think that bad, painful thing happened,
happening, I feel bad.
Well, the reality is
you can endure
the most difficult painful circumstance in your life
and choose to be the happiest
and most grateful you've ever been.
(gentle music)
Why is it that when a baby is born,
we often refer to them as the miracle of life,
but then we go on to accept mediocrity for our own lives?
Where along the way
did we lose sight of the miracle that we are living?
Perhaps we became jaded by the challenges,
the setbacks and the disappointments.
When we were born,
everyone assured us that we could do, have
and be anything we wanted when we grew up.
So now that you've grown up,
are you doing, having and being
anything and everything you've ever wanted?
(crying)
I can only learn, grow
and become better than I've ever been before.
I think we struggle most in life
when we fail to take responsibility for our lives.
It's easy to blame other people, outside forces,
for how we feel or how we're limited in our life.
But when we allow our outer world
to dictate our inner world,
we give away our power,
we lose control.
And in doing so, we feel stressed and we get depressed
and we experience fear and anxiety
and life becomes a struggle.
Mentally and emotionally more prescription medication
is doled out now by doctors
than has ever been recorded in history.
Relationally, the divorce rate is still over 50%.
Physically, the obesity rate
is higher than it's ever been before.
Financially, there's more personal debt in the United States
than at any other time in our history.
People are settling for less than they're capable of
and as a result of settling, life becomes a struggle.
According to the social security administration,
if you take any 100 people
at the start of their working careers
and follow them for the next 40 years
until they reach retirement age, here's what you'll find.
Only one will be wealthy.
Four will be financially secure.
Five will continue working,
not because they want to, but because they have to.
36 will be dead.
And 54 will be broke and dependent
on friends family, relatives,
and the government to take care of them.
Monetarily speaking,
that's only 5% of us who will succeed
in creating a life of freedom
and 95% who will continue to struggle their entire lives.
It's no wonder that nationwide polls have shown
that only one in three Americans are actually happy.
- Let's talk more about what's going on here
in this trading session so far today
after this big plunge.
- I've had in my life, what I would call two rock bottoms.
In 2008, the US economy crashed
and like so many other people in the world,
I suffered the financial consequences.
Overnight, I lost over half my income,
I couldn't pay my mortgage,
I lost my house,
I was deep in debt,
I got in the worst shape physically,
and for the first time in my life, I got deeply depressed.
I was a motivational speaker.
To tell everyone that I was failing miserably
was a real identity crisis for me.
- I was never worried
that Hal was gonna fall into depression
but then he started to,
and I couldn't shake him out of it.
I finally realized that there's nothing I can do or say.
It needs to be somebody else,
maybe somebody else's perspective, a third party.
So I recommended that he go
and talk to his friend, Jon Berghoff.
- Hal called me and said,
"JB, I'm really struggling in my life. "
And I just said to him, I said,
"Hey buddy, I don't have all the answers
but I feel like you really need
to become the type of person
that deserves to attract that success. "
And he really took that to heart.
- And I was expecting business advice
you know, step one, step two, step three,
and he said, "Hal, two things,
you need to exercise every morning,
go for a run every morning.
And while you're on that run,
listen to some self-help,
listen to a business audio book. "
And he said, "Put yourself
in a peak, physical, mental, and emotional state
every morning to start your day
and then learn something you can apply to your life,
to your business, to your goals
while you're in that peak state. "
And my response was, "John, I hate running.
What else could I do?"
And without hesitation he said,
"What do you hate worse, running
or your circumstance that you just described to me?"
I said, "Okay, touche buddy, I'll go for a run. "
I grabbed my iPod,
which I was this close to selling for food,
and on that run I heard a quote from Jim Rohn
that changed my entire life.
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. "
I realized I'm not dedicating time everyday
to my personal development,
therefore I'm not becoming the person that I need to be
that can attract or create or sustain
the success that I want in my life.
And I had an epiphany.
I thought I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go online
and I'm gonna Google,
What are the world's most successful people do every day
for their personal development?
I'm gonna figure out
what the best personal development practice is
known to man and I'm gonna do that.
And after an hour of research,
I couldn't narrow it down to one,
I had a list of six.
And those six practices
when I tried to figure out which was the best of the six,
there was no clear answer,
it depended on which successful person that you asked.
So I had an epiphany.
I thought, what if I did all six of them?
What if I woke up tomorrow
and I did all six practices in one hour, one ritual?
My research had shown no one does all six,
maybe one or two, three at the most.
And I thought this would be
the ultimate personal development ritual.
I woke up the next morning,
even though I wasn't a morning person,
I jumped out of bed,
I went into the living room
and I went through all six practices for 10 minutes each.
(inspirational music)
And at the end of that hour,
by 6:00 a. m. , my entire life changed
because even though my outer world was still a mess,
even though my finances,
and my physical health my fitness,
everything was a mess on the outside,
internally, I felt like I could overcome
and accomplish anything.
And in that moment I realized
if I start every day like this
with this much clarity and motivation and energy,
it's only a matter of time
before I become the person that I need to be,
that can create anything that I want for my life.
- I remember first hearing about the Miracle Morning
'cause Hal was doing it
and this was just in casual conversation,
Hal sharing with me
another routine, another idea, another strategy
that he was using to amplify his life.
When I knew this was something special
is when Hal called me
when I think his name was Joe,
somebody had posted that they were doing the Miracle Morning
and they had posted a picture of their alarm clock
and I remember the first time that he saw the impact
and the feeling that I remember is the joy of Hal
knowing that he was helping another person.
- Good morning.
This is your friend, Joe, Joe De Sena,
hope you're doing well.
Guess what?
Let's look at the time.
It is 5:41 in the morning on Sunday.
You must be wondering what in the world dude
are you doing this early in the morning?
Well, check out Miracle Morning.
It feels like Christmas to me, honestly
and I've got a lot of energy.
It's like Christmas every day.
So anyways, check it out
and hope your life will be blessed,
I'll talk to you soon.
- I didn't see how viral it would become
where when somebody would implement this into their life
that they would then tell other people as well.
- So I actually got up at 5:00 a. m..
- Good morning.
It's just after six o'clock.
- How to have a Miracle Morning
coming to you from Jaco, Costa Rica.
- I came out to work out only in the morning,
little bit earlier than my usual time.
- (speaking in foreign language) Miracle Morning.
- I am not a morning person
but anyone can do the Miracle Morning
because it's customized to you.
- You getting your Miracle Morning on?
(baby cooing)
- Yeah?
Do you know what silence is?
(baby cooing)
I don't think you do.
- I think there's a number of reasons
why the Miracle Morning caught on.
Hal packaged it in a way
where there's these very clear steps that people can take.
- They need a set of instructions.
They need guidelines.
And I, in the beginning,
underestimated the power of giving somebody the path.
- Hal's taking something fairly complex and made it simple.
Even if you're laying in bed,
you can do half of them in bed.
You can do your silence
and your affirmations and your visualizations
before you even get out of bed.
It's like a miracle pill, if you will,
for starting your day right.
- When I was first introduced to the Miracle Morning
I thought it was the most ridiculous thing in the world.
I was like, nope, not for me.
I know people who do things in the morning,
but I'm a night person,
like I'm always gonna be a night person.
Course, it was very difficult at first
to just wake up even an hour earlier than normal.
Before I would often wake up at between seven and eight
because it was time to get the kids ready.
But you can wake up for yourself first
and dedicate that energy to personal development
to improving yourself and your life
so that you can better serve other people during the day.
- My morning routine is everything.
It's 4:30 in the afternoon right now
and I still feel annoyingly good.
It's like I have this pure and this clean
and this positive framed mind and energy right now
because I'm so crazy diligent about the morning routine.
- When you get intentional about how you start your day
you create a routine
that sets you up for extraordinary success,
that puts you in control of what you're thinking about,
of what your priorities are,
that aligns you with your values,
that primes your mind to work for you
instead of working against you.
- For me, the most important reason for my morning routine
is to help me serve my purpose
the best I possibly can.
So my purpose of helping the world
awaken through conscious comedy
and my purpose of being the absolute best husband to Amber
that I can be
and the best father to my future child
that I can possibly be.
I JP, see, hear, feel and know the purpose of my life
to be outrageously thankful
to touch and inspire the world around me.
When we have a solid morning routine that works for us,
we start the day on our terms.
We're in a very proactive posture with life
with more access to the miracle
of our own mind body connection.
And I think that's a good thing.
- My morning routine is crucial to my personality
and my career and my spiritual and emotional life
because there's something so crisp and clear
and regenerative about the early morning hours.
Me placing my routine into that
is a way that helps me prime
and get myself in a certain state.
It is a reminder of my own divinity.
I use my morning routine to remind me
of who and what I really am
and get myself into a particular state,
a particular feeling tone,
which for me is declaring
what the day is gonna be about.
- Next up, step ups.
- Oh, step ups.
This is not easy.
- Three, two, one.
Next up, triceps dips.
10 seconds to go.
- Workout complete.
I don't care what my wife says
about the seven minute workout
and that being her warmup and she teases me,
it's a real workout folks.
Probably not footage for the film.
You never know.
Alright, we got everything, we ready to go?
Let's go, woo!
We're ready, dude, we've got our bags.
We're ready to go.
Going to Toronto to speak at Socialite.
♪ Fly away with me ♪
♪ It's gonna be, gonna be all right ♪
- He's the keynote speaker.
He's been in the hall of fame business achiever.
He's known as yo pal Hal.
And are you guys excited?
Are we gonna give Hal Elrod a warm Toronto welcome?
Everybody bring it up for Hal.
(audience applause)
- I want to hug you,
I just want to hug you.
- Thank you for coming.
- How 'bout Teresa?
(audience applause)
- You guys want to have some fun?
- Yeah.
- All right, I have nothing fun planned.
I apologize on that front.
You're waking up 'cause you what?
- Want to.
- 'Cause you want to become the person
that you create everything you want for your life.
Now matters more than any other time in your life, right?
You can't wait for some day.
You can't wait to wake up one day
and realize you could have been, done and had so much more.
Tonight, set your alarm clock back 30 minutes,
even do it right now.
I will give you one bonus tip,
move your alarm clock as far across the room as possible
'cause I don't care who you are, myself included,
if I can reach the alarm,
if I can reach the alarm, right,
if I can reach the alarm while I'm still 90% asleep,
what do you do most of the time?
You snooze, right, fall back asleep?
Most people for their first 30 day challenge,
they just read the "Miracle Morning"
during their 30 minutes, right?
Until they get to the (mumbles)
and they go, oh I can implement silence into this,
then I can add affirmations, right,
and go through all the practices.
Who's ready to start Miracle Morning challenge tomorrow?
Raise your hand and say ay.
I just want to close by saying
thank you for being in this event,
thank you for allowing me to share my message with you.
I hope it's inspired you,
it's empowered you.
I hope to see you in the Miracle Morning community.
I love you guys.
Thank you so much.
(audience applause)
Catherine with a C, right?
- Yeah, it's Catherine with a C.
I've only read the first chapter
and you've already conquered my fears.
I know, I really respect that about you.
- It was really after the book published
and we started seeing,
you know, dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands
of people sharing, emailing me,
posting on Facebook, putting on Amazon
in the form of a book review
that the Miracle Morning
had radically transformed their life.
And we saw things like it saved my marriage,
it got me off my depression medication.
- The Miracle Morning helped me gain confidence and clarity.
- The Miracle Morning helping me in so many ways.
(speaking in foreign language)
- This life changing book
called "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod.
- "Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod.
- Before eight o'clock in the morning,
I am so energized that yeah, I've done so much,
I've accomplished so much.
- I have the ability and the power
and the control over my life
to take it in the direction that I want.
- I was like, I gotta do this.
- This is a way out for me.
- I'm happier, I'm smiling more, it's working.
- That date that I started the Miracle Morning,
that was the date that changed everything.
- I saw these amazing results.
And that's when I started to think bigger
that wow, this is actually changing a lot of lives.
And we came up with this mission,
the Miracle Morning Mission,
change millions of lives one morning at a time.
- The Miracle Morning has helped me
recover from a deep depression and anxiety.
(speaking in foreign language)
- The Miracle Morning.
- The Miracle Morning make me feel better with myself.
- When I made the decision to write "The Miracle Morning",
I thought who who's gonna read this?
People have such a deeply ingrained belief
of not being a morning person
that is created, I believe, when we're kids
because we want to sleep in as kids
and we only get out of bed because our parents make us.
So we develop this resistance to waking up early.
It's like, no, no, no,
if I don't have to get out of bed,
I'm not getting out of bed.
I'm gonna sleep as long as mom and dad will let me.
- A lot of people say to me,
well, Brendon, I'm just not a morning person,
so I don't have a morning routine.
It's not that you're not a morning person,
you're not a prepared person.
And there's two different ways, right?
'Cause those who say, well I'm not a morning person,
or I don't have a morning routine,
'cause it's too much discipline,
I'm just like listen,
your next level of success in life is preparation.
- You don't think that it's a routine,
but hitting the snooze alarm four or five times a morning
is a routine,
lying in bed and allowing anxiety to take over,
that is a routine.
Being late every day, that's a routine.
Getting your kids to school late, that becomes a routine.
You don't think about a routine in the negative,
but most of us when we're stuck,
when our lives aren't working,
when we're not happy,
if you were to take a look at
"the routine" that you're actually in,
those small five second choices
create a routine of negativity
that (bleep) your entire day.
- Most people really do wake up
and they feel exhausted
and then they turn on the news.
What does the news do?
It actually pours cortisol,
the fear chemical, through your brain.
They lose their energy,
they lose their creativity,
they start to perceive reality as a dangerous place
versus a generous, optimistic place to be.
And just because of the way they front end load their day,
they set themselves up for a day of average.
If you look at many
of the most productive people in the world,
they'll have one thing in common.
They were early risers.
And so when I started wiring this morning ritual,
everything started to change
By six o'clock, I felt fundamentally different,
I felt more confident,
I felt more energy,
and I believe your days are your life in miniature.
And if you start your day well,
and you take care of the day that follows,
the days slip into weeks,
the weeks slip into months,
the months slip into years.
You're pretty much guaranteed a world class life
if you get your days right.
- The biggest impact that morning routines had on my life
is probably a sleep regulation.
Getting much more regular sleep
is really one of the effects of having a morning routine.
And as a neuroscientist,
regular sleep is critical for brain health.
Sleep is not just a rest mode
and repair and recovery mode.
Sleep is also used for learning
and consolidation of memories.
- Everything you do,
you do better with a good night's sleep, okay?
Sleep affects every organ system and every disease state.
There is no single human function
that isn't affected by the way you sleep,
in amount or in quality.
So let me give you an example.
We now know that the more sleep deprived you are,
the faster cancer cells multiply.
We know that your reaction time
when you have been up for more than 36 hours
slows to the point of being a drunk driver
when we put you in a driving simulator.
So a lot of people ask me questions
about what is optimal sleep,
how can I get optimal sleep?
And we have to think about it in two different ways.
Are we talking about the quantity of sleep
or are we talking about the quality of your sleep?
'Cause those can actually be two very different things.
So from a quantity perspective, eight hours is a myth.
The national recommendation
is somewhere between seven and nine hours.
I've been a six and a half hour sleeper
almost my entire life.
My wife needs eight and a half or nine.
So everybody's sleep need is different
and that need can change over the course of your lifetime.
Consistency is going to give you the best sleep.
It's going to bed at the same time,
but more importantly, waking up at the same time
every single day.
So the vast majority of sleep regulation
is driven by not when you go to bed,
but when you wake up.
There's a certain frequency, if you will, bandwidth of light
that is prevalent in the air
in the first hour or so after the sun comes up.
You have about 30,000 cells in your eye
called melanopsin cells.
These are very sensitive
to a particular level of light called blue light,
which is approximately 460 nanometers.
Why is that important?
Because when the blue light hits the eye,
it triggers a reaction in the melanopsin cells,
which sends a signal to the brain
to stop producing melatonin.
Melatonin, if you remember,
is the key that starts the engine for sleep.
It's what gives you that morning fogginess.
They've got this fuzzy head.
They can't get it going.
They're like, oh my God, I got to drink the water,
I got to do this,
I got to do that.
Just stand in front of a window
to allow yourself to get a little bit of sunlight
because that stops that melatonin almost immediately.
And so if you get sunlight in the first hour
in your face, even a few minutes,
it will strongly reset your own circadian rhythm
and sort of line it up on the Earth's photoperiod,
so you're in sync with the Earth's daylight cycle.
- I wake up in alignment with my circadian biology.
I know the time that I perform best when I wake up
and it varies from person to person.
You can shift it a little bit
but it's kind of wired in.
When you wake up, have a glass of water.
Bonus points if you put
about a half a teaspoon of Himalayan salt in the water
and possibly lemon or lime juice.
If you do that first thing
that actually supports your adrenal glands
and you can have your coffee.
There are a couple of things that you could eat
in your morning routine.
One practice that I really appreciate
is called intermittent fasting,
which means you don't eat anything for breakfast
and you have a late lunch,
which gives you an 18 hour window
where your body has nothing going on.
So all of the enzymes
that would have been used for food
can be used for healing and repair and recovery.
But this is a stressor on the system.
So if you're tired or you've had a heavy workout,
it's probably not the right day to do that.
The two things that matter most in the morning are fat,
the right kinds of fat and protein.
Having a morning protein shake
can be really beneficial for you.
And when you're doing your morning protein shake,
you want to minimize the number
of carbohydrates that are in it
and you want to maximize
the number of nutrients that are in there.
So when you add things like leafy greens to it,
you're giving yourself some extra nutrients,
which are really good.
And the important thing is to make sure you get enough
of the right kinds of fat in your morning shakes.
It could even be like a little bit of almond butter.
You can add real butter if you want to.
Surprisingly, that's good in a shake.
What you want to do
is you want to eat for energy first and taste second.
When you get food that's higher quality, you feel better.
And when you feel better, you like your life
and you also spend less at the doctor's office.
- I think we all suffer
from what I call rear view mirror syndrome
where we constantly check the rear view mirror
to see who we've been in the past
and we think that that,
that that becomes our identity of who we are.
But the reality is that's who we were
and who we are is who we choose to be
and it really is limitless.
- So Hal, how do we get out of this EO fire 1266?
- So I get about 50 inbound email requests
every single week
of people wanting to be
on Entrepreneur on Fire
or recommending other people to be on the show,
and this one name kept popping up over and over again.
Hal Elrod, Hal Elrod, Miracle Morning.
Of my over 1,000 episodes,
his ranks as one of the top 10.
(gentle music)
I spent eight years as an officer in the US Army.
We had a motto in the army.
We get more stuff done before nine a. m.
than the rest of the world does all day.
I've always been a morning person,
I've always subscribed to that theory,
but the problem was, especially as an entrepreneur,
like what was I doing with that time
that I was waking up early?
And it wasn't really that focused of a time.
And that's really what I love about the Miracle Morning
is that it gave me that direction,
it gave me that focus,
and allowed me to say,
hey, I'm gonna take the hours
that I'm waking up earlier than everybody else
and actually putting them into something that's productive.
- The Miracle Morning practices
are like the iron that smooths out the wrinkles
in an otherwise wrinkly shirt,
which is this life that we live.
It's not brand new
to suddenly be silent in the morning
and to have affirmations and to exercise,
but these are the rituals
of every successful person you could think of.
It's amazing how fast the changes happen
and you feel it in your head,
the magic that starts to happen.
- So something that people don't really touch on too much
when it comes to morning routines
is how beneficial it can be to building habits,
and effective habits, at that.
Again, one of the reasons why I cherish my mornings so much
is the importance of small wins.
There was an article published
about the importance of small wins
when it came to Michael Phelps' success
where his coach would set up his days
so that when he wakes up in the morning,
he wakes up at the exact same time,
he has the exact same breakfast,
he does his workout down to the second the exact same way
and these are all small wins.
And by the time he goes to get in that pool,
he's already won.
- You know, we did the world's largest study
of high performers,
over 190 countries all around the world
and we studied what is it that makes people succeed
over the long term?
And it was so clear
that the number one thing that they were doing
was establishing habits
that help trigger them to be their best.
Whether that for you is movement, meditation,
writing, scribing, silence.
- These aren't new and fascinating concepts,
but executing them,
creating a daily habit,
putting them into your life
and having them take effect,
that is where the magic happens.
- What he did was he put into one form
the best ancient wisdom practices in the world
so I can do 'em every morning,
s-a-v-e-r-s, which fits my goofy lifestyle.
(mystical music)
- As we've grown and evolved as human beings,
we've developed morning routines
that take care of our physical space.
I'll give you an example,
you wake up, you brush your teeth,
you shower, you put on cologne and we head to work.
But if you go back 100 years, all of us would stink.
People would maybe shower once a week.
Now the last 100 years,
we've evolved in terms of how we treat our physical spaces.
It's rare to meet someone
who doesn't shower every single day.
But here's the problem.
We haven't evolved how we take care of our minds.
So while we clean our bodies, we wake up,
billions of people wake up every single day
with their minds filled with anxiety, fear, stress, worry
and they assume it's normal.
It isn't, these things are not normal
and we need to learn how to clean our minds,
a mind wash is what meditation does.
The amount of research
showing the benefits of meditation is just growing.
Last I read, there are 1,400 different studies
on how meditation improves every aspect of your life,
from your health to longevity,
to the way your heart functions,
to creativity, to happiness levels.
But it's so little understood.
- We have so many thoughts going on in our head
and we have the idea, oh well, if I meditate,
I'm not supposed to have any thoughts.
That's not true.
You just learn how to work with the thoughts.
You learn how to accept that your mind is active.
- So science is also now proving that meditation
actually increases different neurotransmitters in our brain
and that practice of gratitude or prayer
or whatever form of silence that somebody practices
actually has a physiological effect in the body.
- Silence is actually a form of meditation.
And sometimes I will just,
I do many kinds of meditations
and one of them is just simply to notice the silence.
And in the silence, I live in a beautiful place,
I can even hear the birds, right,
when the sun is rising?
They will wake up and they sing.
It's extremely soothing to the physiology
to just listen in silence to the birds singing.
- I believe when you quiet your mind,
it lets the wisdom of God,
the wisdom of infinite intelligence
or higher being, higher power, wherever you want to call it,
I believe it lets that spirit into your brain
and you'll kind of have a thought
that if you weren't quiet,
you wouldn't have heard.
- Someone came up to me and they said,
"Hey, do you do live events?"
And I said, "What do you mean?
I mean, I'm speaking at,
I just spoke at this live event,
what do you mean?"
They go, "No, no, no, no, no,
do you actually put on your own live event?"
So I thought that's a great idea, doing live events,
and I put on my goals do a live event.
Writing a book is scary.
Pales in comparison to putting on a live event
because guess what?
You rent a big giant hotel room
and you have to fill it with people.
- He told me that he had a live event
that he had sold 200 tickets to,
he had sold this thing out,
and I said, "What's your plan for the event?"
And he was still working on that.
- So he said,
And I can kind of work with you on this?"
And he was just gonna advise me at first.
And as we got into advising, I said,
"Will you do this with me?
Will you help me facilitate the event?"
- We had no idea if it was gonna work
even up until the moment that we were doing it.
And then we were blown away.
(upbeat music)
When a group of people get together
around a higher purpose,
they can't help but see their own higher purpose
within the vision of that group.
- Almost every person in the audience
was a practitioner of the Miracle Morning.
So I had a 180 Miracle Morning community members
in that audience.
And I realized wow, this is my community
right here sitting in front of me,
right here sitting with each other,
talking to one another,
supporting each other
with their goals, with their dreams
in having their best year ever.
And the proximity of being close to people
that are likeminded,
that you have a shared common purpose or objective
or in this case, really practice being the Miracle Morning,
the closer you get to people
that you're in a community with,
the more you're able to transform one another's lives.
And that's what our live events have done
for the members of the Miracle Morning community.
(upbeat music) (clapping)
- I thought I had headphones.
I'm like, no, I left already.
(bell ringing)
I first heard about the Miracle Morning
from my mom who had read the book,
started practicing it,
and then had my sister and I go on a plane
to the cocreation event.
And that was really cool to see.
We got to meet a whole bunch of different people
who had their lives impacted by the Miracle Morning
and by Hal, and we got to see everything in person.
So that really inspired us to start doing it
and to start the club.
- They have so much on their plate these days
and the pressures are so much greater
to get into college and just finish with high school
with straight A's and SAT scores and blah, blah, blah.
- I know mornings are one of the most difficult times
for kids to get out of bed
and be functioning in the mornings.
- She was always the last one out the door
basically running by the counter, grabbing something to eat
and she's out.
She's now up before Michelle,
she's out and with a half an hour leeway,
calmly packing up her stuff,
calmly having a sit down breakfast, ready to go.
- They started us off by going through the SAVERS
and teaching us different techniques to do that.
- As their mom, I see the changes in both my girls
to be more intentional, more mature, more calm,
less distracted,
definitely more aware of who they are
and how they go about their day,
more self aware in their own actions.
- Goodbye Hal, I love you.
- Goodbye Hal.
- Bye Hal.
(gentle piano music)
- My morning routine has changed over the years.
When I was a professional athlete
and I was actively boxing,
I always had a routine because I had to get up and run,
I had to go to the boxing gym and I had to work out.
So that's what my day was centered around.
Now things are different
because I'm a business woman, I'm a mom.
I have a million things going on all the time,
but in the morning,
it's a great time for me to just really get centered
and think, okay, what are my short term goals
and my long term goals,
making sure that I'm kind of keeping myself in check.
Because what happens when I didn't have routine
is that you kind of just lose track of everything.
You have the best intentions,
but you don't have any way to kind of check yourself
and make sure that you're doing the things
that you say you want to do.
Let's see, what was one of my latest affirmations?
I will learn how to say no
to the things I didn't want to do.
It can be anything.
It's just kind of a reminder for yourself
and the more you say it, the more you believe it
and it's embedded in you.
- We have 60,000 thoughts a day.
Our minds are always thinking.
And for the average person, 80% of those are negative.
We have a negativity bias
that we inherited from our caveman ancestors.
The mind can't distinguish between real and imagined.
So if you say I am dumb, your mind accepts that as truth.
If you say I am smart, your mind accepts that as truth.
I spend a lot of time during my day
saying things like I am filled with love,
I am filled with grace.
Another beautiful form of affirmation is gratitude.
I'm grateful for this day.
I'm grateful for my life.
I am alive.
I am healthy in my body, heart and spirit.
Anything that helps you feel more aligned
with the you that you want to be,
the you that you want to live out during your day,
that is a beautiful form of affirmation.
- (speaking in foreign language) live modestly.
On December 31st of 2020, we'll be completely debt free.
This is a big number but I am not afraid of it.
I think the Miracle Morning works
because it's just a proven framework
for a complete mindset change.
Miracle Morning helped me get through depression,
helped me to become a better father and a better husband,
and it also helped me find a purpose in life
through my business and serving others.
I'm a good man who loves to serve.
I will prioritize serving others first.
- I think the best thing about the Miracle Morning for him
is that it gave him a platform to find that purpose.
And now Keith is generous and kind and thankful and giving
and he's helpful around the house,
which has been an amazing change.
- Who is Everett?
- He's my son.
- Tell me who is Everett.
- Everett is our third son.
He made it all the way through birth
and he lived for three hours and it was amazing,
it was horrible,
it was the best worst thing that ever happened to us.
- He allowed us to understand what grace meant.
He allowed us to improve our marriage
for Kim and I, for sure.
- Keith certainly went
through a period of depression and frustration and anger,
I think probably like most dads would.
He really began questioning life and purpose.
- I was mad.
I was mad at God.
I was mad at people that said,
God had a plan, something like that,
and that's the last thing that I wanted to hear.
I wish that I had the SAVERS
and the Miracle Morning back then,
because I would've probably been able to process that
a lot differently than I did.
(gentle music)
Everett died in 2012
and I started the Miracle Morning last year in 2015.
So there was about a three year period
where I felt complete discontent.
Almost on the first day, it was this big,
it's almost like somebody
took this big weight off of my chest
because I had gone through the process of mindfulness,
of affirmation, of visualization.
I actually can now see myself doing something in the future
and that lit a fire in me.
And after that fire was lit,
it just continued to grow.
- I think the biggest changes with the Miracle Morning
was the peace that came.
He's softer to other people.
He is compassionate a bit more maybe than he was previously,
even though he was kind.
- I'm trying to.
Alright, we got you some more meat.
- Thank you, my friend.
- I almost had a Kevlar, a Bulletproof vest on
of positive affirmational just mental awareness
of who I was.
And that allowed me to pull myself up out of depression.
And I I haven't been there since.
Even through starting a business.
I've had my ups and downs, trust me,
and the affirmation component
and the visualization and the meditation, all the SAVERS,
has helped those downs become not very long.
- And so what if you could do that for every single day?
What if before you went to bed at night
you established the thought as
how am I gonna make tomorrow awesome?
Like, what's the one thing that's gonna happen tomorrow
that I'm really excited about?
That I want to wake up for.
Imagine if that was the last thought
that you went to bed with,
not oh my God,
think about all of this stuff
that I need to get done tomorrow.
So one unexpected way that we really got the word out
about the Miracle Morning came from one of my friends.
And he said,
"I've shared the book with everyone on my sales team.
Almost every single one of our sales people
that's read the book, their sales have increased. "
He goes, "What about doing
like a Miracle Morning for salespeople?"
And he said,
"And customizing the Miracle Morning
with affirmations and everything
that were designed for increasing your sales
and being successful as a salesperson. "
And I said, "That sounds like a great idea, sure.
You want to coauthor it with me, why not?"
Then I met Honoree Corder
and it really feels now like serendipity.
- I am the cocreator of the "Miracle Morning" book series.
We have almost a dozen titles in the series.
We started with the "Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents"
and then salespeople and then network marketers
and then we went to writing
and then we did a the "Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs",
parents and families,
"The Art of Affirmations Coloring Book"
and coming up next is one that is really,
I'm really fond of this coauthor and of this book,
it's "The Miracle Morning for College Students. "
We've heard for thousands of years
to practice any one of the life SAVERS
and I think the reason that the Miracle Morning
and the life SAVERS message resonates
is not really about the message
because it's not a new message.
It's because the messenger
is such a powerful messenger.
- Our morning routine starts with a variation of things.
The main thought that starts it off though,
is we have a rule that nothing enters our world
until we're full.
And the analogy I've always used
is if you took a soda can
and you opened it up and you emptied it out
and you hand that small can to a child,
the child can easily dent it, if not crush the whole can.
Versus if you take the same can,
fill it all the way up, pressurize it and seal it,
now that child has a very little chance of denting it
and almost impossible for that child to crush it.
And so my thought is
what's everything that can fit into that morning routine
that fills you up, fuels you up, pressurizes you
with awesome, great, powerful pressure pushing out
so that all the natural pressures
that life puts on you
is easily and effortlessly forged through
by that almost force field
you've created around you of energy.
Now treadmill desk is set up
and if you see, I have my vision boards wrapped around it.
This is me looking way out into the future.
What's the ultimate vision of what life looks like?
And I'll start doing affirmations
and incantations about this,
where I'm activating my body,
I'm looking at a visual image
of what that future point looks like
and then I'm physically feeling it in my body
while saying it
and getting that vibrational energy to move inside of me
so I can feel it at the same time.
So I'm trying to see it, feel it, activate it.
And if you go to the science aspect of this,
all I'm doing is trying to activate
as many lobes in my brain as possible.
- Having visualizations tends to set
literally visual scenery
on the back of the visual cortex.
And from the point of view of a neuroscientist
either doing fMRI or EEG,
the brain patterns produced
when you're imagining a scene
are actually the same as when you're seeing that thing.
So you're teaching your brain
how to get used to the ideas
that you'd like to eventually accomplish.
- Who has a vision board
that not all the visions have quite come true yet?
Right, and who has a vision board
that it just like, it's actually an invisible board?
'Cause it's been there so long,
you walk by it,
you don't even see it anymore, right?
That's what happened to me.
So visualize not just the end result,
close your eyes and visualize the daily activity.
One of the things that we found unquestionably
is a high performers have a high level of intention
for their day.
But what I do is I look at my calendar
or I look at my task or my to do's
or my priorities that day
and I simply walk through it in my mind.
Like, what's the mindset I'll need to be in?
What's the value I'll want to add?
How do I want to demonstrate myself?
How do I want to feel during that?
You know, by walking through the day like that,
it's more powerful for me
because I find that I'm more intentional
(water bubbling)
- My name is Risa.
I am a mother of two boys.
I am a motivational speaker.
Most of you know my story
that I was sick and I was supposed to be blind
but God rescued me from blindness
and I received donated eyes
from the United States of America.
So my sight and my life is a miracle.
I had undergone a separation in my marriage
and also I had lost my job.
So I was in a very serious depression.
There was no one else to turn to,
so I went to Google and I typed
how to get out of depression.
That's when I had suggestions
and part of it was "The Miracle Morning".
In the morning when I wake up,
the first thing I do is take a glass of water
and then brush my teeth.
And after that, I pray, I read the Bible
and then I do meditation and then affirmations.
The positive energy around me is continuously expanding.
And then I do visualization.
I've always wanted to travel the world
so I always visualize myself with airplanes and all that.
"The Miracle Morning" has helped me realize
how important I am as an individual
and also to appreciate myself as a mother.
My children are more happier
and they have a very strong foundation.
They know that I love them and they love me back.
- Wow, this is crazy.
"The Miracle Morning" in Korean, the Korean edition.
This is surreal.
We just signed with 19 foreign publishers
and "The Miracle Morning" is gonna publish
in 19 countries, 17 translations.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Perfect.
- Okay bye guy, you guys be good.
- We are going to Paris to film "The Miracle Morning" movie
and spread the movement.
I got the filmmaker in the back.
Will, where are you?
There he is, filming right now.
It's gonna be an adventure.
- Hey, we're on the camera.
We're going to Paris.
- We are underneath the Eiffel tower.
There's my beautiful bride.
- It's actually a marathon three days for me with the media.
So I'm meeting with television stations and radio stations
and I've got to sign 200 books this afternoon for Amazon
and then I do a more TV and radio.
So yeah, it's a pretty nonstop the next three days
and I'll sleep on the way home.
(whimsical music)
- And I read your book last September
and it changed my life.
- Wow. - It did.
- Hug for that, that's amazing.
Anyone can do it,
especially if you don't consider yourself a morning person.
(speaking in foreign language)
- We are now official and bestseller list
to Amazon in France.
It's very nice and very great.
- The last few days
have been beyond anything I ever imagined.
And I don't know what I would have imagined.
I mean, it was a media tour
to spread "The Miracle Morning" throughout Paris, France.
I've never done anything like that before.
I really did try to treat every interview,
every opportunity, every experience
as the most important of my life, of being here,
because I wanted to make sure that I reached and impacted
as many people in France,
as I possibly could with "The Miracle Morning".
You work so hard,
you follow your passion and your dreams for so long,
and almost as soon as you get
to the place you've been working for, it switches,
your emotions switch from this desire
to the fear of losing it all.
And "The Miracle Morning",
especially the use of affirmations,
enables me to address my fears in writing every day
and remind myself that the fears are in my head,
they're in my mind,
and that life has proven
that if you continue to do good things
and put good out into the universe
and work hard and move toward the,
move confidently in the direction of your dreams
as Henry Thoreau once said, that life rewards you
and that everything works out for the best,
even though it's never perfect,
there's always challenge and obstacles along the way,
you eventually get where you're moving towards.
- I was born into a body
that most people would say is a perfect body
to have an excuse not to workout.
You know, they'd be like, aw Shawn,
look at that, you're three feet tall,
you're in a wheelchair,
if you didn't work out, nobody would get on you about it.
And that's sad
because who better to be working out
than somebody who spends most of their day in a chair.
And so my mentality is if I can move this,
if I am blessed enough to be able to lift something,
stretch, pull, do whatever I gotta do,
then I'm gonna use it.
This body is a taxi cab that I am riding in
during this time around.
And so I want to keep the cab running smooth,
I want to keep it clean.
I want to have a good time in this vehicle.
I use air pumps as like chest press.
I use pulleys and sandbags for weights.
Self care, which you would say are your morning rituals,
is the cure to insecurity.
When you're taking great care of yourself,
the less your insecurities start to surface
and tell you you're not enough.
And I think at the end of the day,
people who don't want to exercise
they're basically writing out a prescription
for their own depression.
- If you exercise first thing in the morning,
the positive benefits from that commitment
sometimes last up to 15 hours after the initial exercise.
So just by that morning ritual
of getting involved in that intense exercise,
creating that pharmacy of mastery,
which releases dopamine, the inspirational neurotransmitter,
serotonin which calms you down and helps you fight stress,
BDNF, which amplifies your brain,
so you're thinking like a superhero.
I mean, what would that do for you alone?
It not only does that,
it actually increases your metabolic rate
first thing in the morning.
So you burn fat much more quickly,
which is key for a lot of people.
We all have greatness within us.
I believe a lot of people are going through their lives
and they sort of resign themselves to being average.
And they just think people,
like the great entrepreneurs
and the great heroes and the great humanitarians
and the great scientists are cut from a different cloth.
And what a lot of good research is starting to show us
is you don't get lucky, you create lucky.
And if you look at the superstars,
the great performers,
they're not cut from any kind of a different cloth or DNA,
they're just running different habits.
- (announcer mumbling)
and Lewis Howes takes it to the house.
- Well I just think when we have a big dream,
we need to have the energy in order to make it come to life.
And so exercise for me is,
it's just a nonnegotiable.
We only have one life
and if we're not taking care of our own body,
then it's not gonna take care of us.
And it's gonna hold us back
from achieving the dreams that we want.
(inspiring music)
(alarm beeping)
- Through "The Miracle Morning" and my routine,
I lost 90 pounds in eight months.
Not only did I lose the weight and keep it off,
but I changed my lifestyle
and haven't wanted to,
or even considered turning back.
I posted a picture in "The Miracle Morning" Facebook group
and I got like 700 and something likes like instantly,
hey that's amazing what you've done.
And in that moment, it clicked for me.
I had spent my whole life being inspired by other people
but I never realized that by talking
about struggling with my weight my entire life,
and then finally finding a solution
in the Miracle Morning could give other people hope.
So I always did stuff so that people would like me.
Like, I thought that that's how you got value
was you had to perform.
So like, I was always the class clown.
- You got to do a front flip, belly flop.
- Don't do a belly flop.
Oh.
- Oh my God.
(yelling)
- And while it's all like funny to look back and laugh at
like I was so desperate for attention
that all that was okay.
Like it didn't matter that like I was a human being
or I put myself in danger or that like could have drowned,
I could have died from impact.
Like people can fall from 10 feet and die
and I just jumped off a 40 foot cliff
because I wanted people to like me.
I was also like a really angry person,
like I was so just furious.
And I think a lot of that came
from feeling like the world owed me something,
but I never did anything about getting it.
And so I saw other people that had gotten it
and I was angry at them.
Like I didn't want other people to be happy
because I didn't feel like I knew how to be happy,
so why should they?
So I found Miracle Morning and then I knew how to be happy.
I used to live with this concept
that everybody was either better than or worse than me.
And so I was always just on this ladder
trying to move up
and trying to be better than other people.
And there's not that same element
of competition in my life anymore.
Like I'm not on a ladder, I'm on a landscape
and we're all going forward.
And like I get to be a part of that
instead of being against it.
I'm not angry at other people for being happy.
I'm sad when I see them not realizing their dreams
and I want to bring them with me.
(whimsical music)
- Great lives are created one great day after another
and those great days start with great mornings.
Miracle mornings are created
by systematically installing new habits.
I think the Miracle Morning has impacted so many lives
because it's awesome, it works.
If you put together this SAVERS model
and you start your day with these rhythms,
you will have better days period.
So I think reading is essential.
I think it's an essential part of the SAVERS model.
Hal suggests 10 to 15 minutes a day.
You compound 10 to 15 minutes a day,
over the course of a year,
that's a ton of reading.
And we need to realize that any one big idea
that we read from someone
who spent a lot of time figuring it out
can literally change our lives.
And you find that one little idea
that either affirms something you already knew
or maybe introduce you to new idea, and you implement that,
you compound that over months and years and decades,
and it's truly astonishing what you can create.
- I come across people,
what's your favorite book?
You know, what's the best book you've read in the last year?
And they'll be like,
"Well, I haven't read a book in the last year. "
And it's mind boggling to me that that that even exists
in places where people actually know how to read
and they have access to books.
The second way to learn
is through the experiences of other people.
You read their books, you go to their seminars,
you listen to them.
And then the third and most effective
and efficient way to learn something
is once you learn something,
you teach it to someone else.
Okay, because that reinforces your knowledge.
Most people that are readers,
they can point to a book
that has actually changed their thinking,
the direction, their knowledge.
And so when I read a book
it's really about trying to improve myself.
I'm trying to actually learn something.
And it could either be a negative aspect of me
that I'm trying to improve,
or it could just be simply learning about business
or getting better,
but not everyone that is a reader is a leader,
but I know very few leaders that are not readers.
(water bubbling)
(machine beeping)
- I wish I had more energy to be more chipper,
but it's going on 1:13 in the morning
and I'm in Saint David's Hospital
and I haven't slept in,
I haven't slept pretty much in the last two weeks.
Yeah man, they can't figure out what's wrong.
My white blood cells and red blood cells
are all out of whack, which is kind of crazy.
- Initially, I got texts from Hal and it was,
there were things just like, hey, I don't feel good,
I'm not sleeping,
I don't know what's wrong.
And then it was, I went to the hospital yesterday
and that was the first flag of, oh, what happened?
He's like, oh, well, we drained a bunch of fluid
from my lungs.
Then it happened again.
And by the third time he went into the hospital
to drain fluid,
he was draining quarts of fluid at a time.
I was kind of concerned about it.
But we didn't know what it was.
- After about five or six times
of getting him stuck in the back with a long needle
and pulling out two liters of fluid,
we finally went to a different hospital and they said,
"We don't know why the other hospital let you go home
but we're not releasing you until we know what's wrong. "
- Learning the secrets of using the mind
to achieve goals in health, wealth, and happiness.
Modern medicine can do a lot to heal
but the mind is also a powerful part of that prescription.
Take a look at these pictures.
The 20 year old man in this car
was hit head on at 70 miles an hour by a drunk driver.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
So what happened?
Well, please welcome Hal Elrod.
Did you ever go back to those times where you thought,
okay, is it worth it?
Is it worth fighting?
- Yes and no.
I mean, the thoughts of course went through my mind
of how am I gonna do this?
My body's a wreck.
How am I gonna get better?
But I don't think I ever gave up.
I always thought the only place to go is forward,
the only place to go is up.
I can't focus on the past.
I've got to move past that
and focus all of my energy and attention,
not on complaining about what went wrong
and wishing it didn't happen,
but all of my energy went into
my thoughts, words, and actions that would move me forward
and align with what I wanted.
- I found out about you from Brianna Greenspan,
who is in the audience, who you have also encouraged her
and she said, "The book is amazing. "
And Brianna, you went through something in your life too
where you were told probably won't walk.
- When I was 12, I cracked my spine.
And when I was 19, I had fusion surgery
but my body rejected it
and I couldn't walk for a year and a half.
As a kid, I was always getting sick
and I had a variety of different challenges.
It was going to the foot doctor, the eye doctor,
the stomach doctor, the ear doctor and every other doctor.
When I first got my Ehlers-Danlos diagnosis,
I felt relieved and I felt understood.
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a connective tissue disorder
that affects the collagen in your body.
Sometimes there's dislocations,
sometimes there's extreme stomach challenges,
sometimes there's inflammation.
And I used to have extreme, widespread pain everywhere.
It would hurt to just take a step.
"The Miracle Morning" has helped me tremendously
with my EDS diagnosis.
I could immediately see
that by incorporating some version of the SAVERS
into my daily routine,
I'd be able to do more with my time.
And that was something that was really intriguing to me.
I am fit, healthy, strong, and attractive.
I am confident that I can and will handle
any situation that life throws at me.
I was consumed a lot of the time
by the pain that I was experiencing
the first 19, 20 years of my life.
And the last nine years have been completely different
because I'm able to release some of that pain
and shift the focus from how I'm feeling
to how I want to feel
and what I'm gonna do to feel differently.
I am grateful for my health.
I feel relaxed, open and balanced.
All of this art was actually created by Paul Joy,
who had been doing "The Miracle Morning" for about a year
and he posted something in the group
and I saw them and immediately reached out and said,
"Hey, I want to create something
that can help people elevate their environment
and shift their subconscious thinking. "
And he immediately was on board, was super excited.
I told Hal what I was doing and he immediately loved it
and the rest is history.
I feel normal for the first time.
That's exactly what I was hoping to do,
to make a whole bunch of people
that have felt misdiagnosed, misunderstood
and like they were a total weirdo
feel normal for the first time.
(whimsical music)
- There's quite a bit of science
behind the application of journaling and the benefits of it.
The most compelling evidence
is actually in the field of gratitude journaling.
When you write down what you're grateful for
and you emailed that experience,
we found within six to eight weeks
they score higher on happiness baselines.
They also score higher
in terms of being able to help other people,
something called prosocial behavior.
- So I'm really big on describing.
That's something that I'm a big believer in.
If I can see it on paper, then to me, it becomes real.
And what becomes reality becomes part of my life.
So when I sit down every single day
with "The Five Minute Journal"
or another journal of any kind,
and I actually write things down, it just becomes real,
those words on a page become my actual life.
- You create the day before the day starts.
People talk about law of attraction,
but what I'm talking about
is a very real consistent daily creation
where you're doing it every day.
At night, you open up your journal,
you look at what are the things you did and didn't do it.
It helps keep you accountable to the actual actions
that you're taking to move forward in life.
- It forces you to sit down and identify
what's the most important task
or result you want to achieve today.
It makes you consciously plan your day
as opposed to again, like most people,
you wake up and you start reacting to the demand of others.
- When I came in here, I was having kidney failure,
my lungs were full of fluid
and my heart was surrounded by fluid
in a dangerous way
to where it could cause heart failure, kidney failure.
I've got a catheter in my heart
that is draining the fluid out from my heart.
It's mostly drained.
It's going well.
I've got a catheter in my lung
that is draining the fluid from my lung.
Hooked up to electrodes
to make sure I don't have a heart attack.
I've been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
(gentle music)
- I remember having
these kind of jarring emotional responses
to, oh my God, he's not doing well.
And there's a chance that he's actually gonna die.
That for me, it's a very trying emotional experience
in ways that you don't expect.
- You idolize someone and you see them
as the strongest, healthiest like person you've ever known
and then something gets thrown at them
that makes you remember they're human
and that's, it's a wake up call.
- So I remember I was driving from Philadelphia to Austin
to move within miles of Hal,
super excited to be near my buddy.
I remember I was in my hotel room and he told me the news
and I didn't know how to respond.
(crying)
- And I was gonna go see Hal in the hospital that day.
And I remember totally breaking down
in front of these parents,
100% complete breakdown.
And that was actually the first time
that I was articulating how important this person was
and how serious the situation was.
- Hey, this is a message for the Miracle Morning community.
If you're willing to send some positive thoughts Hal's way,
maybe leave a positive message
for Hal under this video,
you can acknowledge or thank him
for any difference he's made in your life,
just give him something fun and uplifting to read
while he's resting and recovering.
- Hal, Robert Kiyosaki,
I heard through the grapevine
that you may have recurrent cancer or something.
I just want to call to wish you the best
and thank you for your contribution to the world
with your book "Miracle Morning"
and to my life personally.
- Hal, my good friend,
I'm sending you some love,
sending you some healing vibes, my man.
When the world is chasing money and chasing success,
you're chasing love.
And for me, that is priceless.
- Your impact and your spirit
and your energy in the world
has made such a difference in so many people's lives.
We're all proud of you.
We're all cheering for you.
We're all praying for you.
And we all love you.
- I just wanted to remind you
how much you've helped me
and so many other people all around the world
because of your amazing strength and resilience,
and you can get through anything.
So thank you for being the champion you are.
- You know, I just sent a couple of prayers over to you
but never just told you straight up that I just
am wishing for a speedy recovery.
- I love you.
You're amazing.
You're a great father.
You're a great human and you're a great husband.
- They did tell me it looks like I'll be losing my hair
in a few weeks.
So I spiked it.
I thought all right,
this might be my last chance to spike my hair.
So I did it up today.
I'm feeling good.
Tammy, thank you so much.
Have a great day.
I will see you soon.
So for me, while I'm focused on being optimistic
and all of that most of the time,
there are times where the realism sets in
and I realize that I could die,
I very much, very well, despite all the positivity,
I could die.
With a wife and two babies,
leaving them is terrifying.
My son needs me.
My daughter needs me and my wife needs me
and the world needs me and I need me, right?
So, those moments, those dark moments,
those fearful moments,
I really try to minimize and not to deny them,
I feel them, as you can see, I really, I feel them,
but I don't dwell there.
Right, and I really believe,
that you want to look at the worst case scenario
and you want to acknowledge it and then accept it
and then be at peace with it
so that it doesn't cause, it doesn't hold you back.
And it's the same thing when I was in the car accident.
Dead for six minutes, broke 11 bones,
told I'd never walk again,
it's the best thing that ever happened to me.
And so now I feel,
even though I'm in the midst of the cancer,
they say hindsight's 20/20.
Why wait till the future
to see the positivity, the power,
in every experience we face, good or bad.
Every experience we face is an asset
if we choose to see it that way.
Just as the accident
was the best thing that ever happened to me,
I really believe,
because it allowed me to find,
to share it with other people and help them,
the cancer is gonna be
the new best thing that ever happened to me.
And then I'm gonna find a way
to keep helping others through the experience
and the things that I'm learning and overcoming.
(whimsical music)
♪ It's time to slow down ♪
♪ And give myself a little love right now ♪
- We have a video message that we're gonna play.
And this was prerecorded just in the last day or two
by our good friend, Hal Elrod.
And I'll share with all of you right now,
we've been throughout the day,
seeing if there was a time
where he wanted to address us live
and he's having a rough day right now, right?
I'm just gonna call it as it is, he's having a rough day.
So if you guys want to cue it up, that'd be awesome.
- I'm coming to you today from the hospital.
Just in case you thought this was what my office looks like,
nope, I am in the hospital undergoing treatment right now.
Doctor's orders,
which is why, sadly, I am not there with you.
However, the lesson,
and really it's to me, the question
that I believe we need to be asking ourselves
is how are we impacting the world,
and not just our bank account?
The biggest impact we can make is how we treat other people,
how we show up, how we show up to our work.
You've heard me say this before,
I think the greatest gift we can give to people around us
is to live to our full potential
so that we give them permission and confidence and courage
to live to their full potential.
So how are you showing up?
Right, that's the question?
How are we showing up?
- I think one of the ways
we can measure the quality of our lives
is by how we show up for people.
Hal has done this for years.
He's shown up in huge ways for so many people.
We need to not only work to take care of ourselves,
to become the best version of ourselves, for others.
But we do that knowing that one day when we face a challenge
it's important to have relationship equity,
that we have poured so much into others,
that when we're in a time of need,
that people will show up for us.
And Hal has so many people that have shown up
because of how he has shown up for them for so many years.
- Love you, take care, guys, I'll talk to you soon.
- Hey, if you want to turn and acknowledge Hal,
he can see you in that camera right back there.
Give Hal a big round of applause.
We love you, buddy.
Why Hal?
That just doesn't seem right.
He's offering so much to the world.
Why would he be faced with this challenge?
But you know in life, you don't get to say
what's fair and not fair.
That's not what life gives you.
Life gives you things
and you choose to turn those things that happen
into gold or silver or opportunity or lessons,
or you choose something different.
And Hal is choosing to turn this challenge
into an opportunity for all of us to grow.
And I think the way we honor Hal
is by choosing to grow with him through this experience
and celebrate his health when he gets to the other side.
(inspiring music)
- Some fresh juice for the day.
- One person can only drink so much liquid.
- I just decided that I was gonna be there for him.
And I made a flight like at 10 a. m.
and left the house at four
and I haven't been back since.
And at a certain point, he said I should go home.
It kind of got quiet and I thought about it.
And the next day I told him, I said,
"You know Hal, I can't leave you. "
And he said, which I thought was interesting,
he said, "I'm so glad you said that
because I don't want you to go".
- This is living in three places,
living between an apartment here in Houston with my dad,
and living in the hospital
and then living at home with my family and my home.
So between treatments,
I'm focusing on building up my immunity.
So there's wellness formula, there's garlic immune.
This is my parlor trick
that I've been doing since I was a teen
is to drink all of these.
(inspiring music)
And I just got a Miracle Morning cup
that way everyone knows this is my cup.
There's no question whose cup this is.
It's the only Miracle Morning cup in the house.
(laughs)
♪ This is my life ♪
♪ I know I can be ♪
♪ Anything I want to be ♪
♪ Anything I need to be ♪
♪ This is my life ♪
♪ I know I can be ♪
♪ Everything I need ♪
♪ I want to give it everything ♪
- 10 seconds to go.
- 10 seconds, how's my plank, how's my posture?
- Four, three, two, one.
(breathing deeply)
- My 2017 healing cancer affirmations.
I will do whatever it takes
putting forth extraordinary effort to beat cancer
and live a long, healthy life for my family.
I will beat cancer for Ursula
because I committed to her forever in a day
and I want to grow old and spend the rest of our long,
(sniffling)
spend the rest of our lives together.
I'll beat cancer for Sophie because she needs her daddy.
I'll beat cancer for Helston
because he needs my love, leadership and guidance.
(crying)
I don't normally read these out loud.
I read 'em to myself.
I'll beat cancer for dad because he gave up everything
to heal me and save my life.
I'll beat cancer for mom
because she doesn't deserve to lose another child.
I'll beat cancer for me
because I want and deserve to live a long life.
And I'll beat cancer for the millions of people
who are themselves battling cancer
or some other disease
and don't have the knowledge or resources that I do
and desperately need my leadership and support.
All right, those are my affirmations.
Time to visualize.
- It's hard and it's scary
and I try to be strong for him, for the kids,
I don't want the kids to be scared.
I only tell them the positive things
and if they bring up the scary things,
I answer it in a way seven year old will understand
or a four year old will understand.
- So how often do you guys see your dad right now?
- Barely. - Barely.
- Mia, you don't see him much?
- Uh uh.
- Well, why not?
- He's in Houston.
- What is he doing in Houston?
- Chemo.
- Can you explain to me what that is?
- It's like a type of medicine
because he has leukemia cancer.
- He has so much medicines.
- How does that make you feel?
- Sad.
- Yeah?
- Yeah sad, too.
- Well, what are you guys excited about
when he's all healed up
and he doesn't need any more medicine,
what are you excited about doing with him?
- We can go hug him.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
- Bye, love you, goodnight.
(gentle music)
- And so the last 10 days have been the hardest
10 days of my life.
Pain management for the last 11 days,
which I didn't really even know what that concept meant,
but it's essentially,
you know, just you are living each day to minimize your pain
or I think that's what it is, what it was for me,
just minimize your pain.
And none of this changes,
how hard this has been doesn't change my overall outlook,
which is I'm grateful for all of this,
because I truly believe that what doesn't heal you
makes you stronger.
And those are the greatest opportunities we have,
that adversity,
and the more difficult it is,
the better the opportunity for us to learn, for us to grow,
become better than we've ever been before,
and then go out and make a difference
with what we've learned and who we've become.
- Yeah that's, I think one of the things
that draws people into Hal
and why so many people from around the world
love and respect him
is he's walking the talk even when the chips are down.
- You know, it's easy to be happy and positive
when everything's going great.
And it would be easy
for somebody on the outside to look into Hal's life and say
you know, bestselling book and all these things are amazing,
of course, it's easy to be that positive,
but I've watched Hal
go through some of the most challenging moments of life.
- I believe that there are people on this Earth
that are the Hal Elrod's of the world.
They get put on this earth to endure things
that the average person couldn't
to remind us that the average person can.
- This is the Elrod family
for "The Miracle Morning Movie" take one.
Soft sticks marker.
Nice.
The Miracle Morning began as a daily ritual
to get everything that you want out of life,
success, health, happiness, money, love, et cetera.
And I guess it's the cancer that really taught me
that what it's really about is what matters most
and what we've already had,
all of us already have,
which is relationships and the people that you love.
And I found out personally
that I was addicted to success and achievement
and "The Miracle Morning"
helped me get everything that I wanted.
And then when I got everything that I wanted
I realized that although I said family was number one
and most important,
my schedule didn't reflect that,
my calendar didn't reflect that.
I was a workaholic.
And I find that too many of us are doing that.
We're squeezing in time,
an hour here, a minute there, 10 minutes there.
I would set the timer to play with my children
and not give them the time that they deserved.
And I was lying to myself
thinking that I was doing it all for them.
I was thinking that my role was a provider.
And I realized that I wasn't,
a provider wasn't my most important role.
It was a father and a husband
and providing was something that I did,
but my kids weren't gonna remember
how many mortgage payments I made,
my kids weren't gonna remember
how many hours I worked and churned and burned
and hustled and grinded and whatever term you use
as a badge of entrepreneurial honor.
Really what mattered is the people that I love
and spending time with them.
And the Miracle Morning now for me,
I still do it every day,
I've done it almost every single day for gosh,
eight or nine years.
You want to sun gaze?
Want to do a little sun gazing?
I always wonder if my neighbors
are looking out their windows watching me in the morning.
What it's about though
is giving to myself first every single day
so that I can become the person that I need to be
to be the best dad
and be the best husband and be the best CEO
and be the best friend and leader and son.
And that's what the Miracle Morning is about.
It's about becoming your best every single day
so that you can show up and give your best
to the people that matter most to you
in your world and in your life.
(inspiring music)
- We're going to ring the bell.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
- Ding, ding, ding, ding.
- Okay.
(bell dinging)
- Congratulations.
- All right.
- Everyone that has been a part of this
and part of the journey,
if you're watching this, I love you.
Thank you so much.
(inspiring music)
This is about all of humanity
and elevating the consciousness of our humanity
so that changing the world
is something that we do collectively together,
that we don't depend on our government,
that we don't depend on some outside forces,
but that we actually all take responsibility
to wake up every day,
become the best version of ourselves
and then go out into the world
as the best version of ourselves
and positively impact every other human being
that we come into contact with.
And if every single one of us does that,
consciousness of humanity is elevated
and the world is a better place.
(inspiring music)
- We got amazing news that not only is Hal still remission,
but his tests from his most recent bone marrow aspiration
came back-
- Negative residual disease
which means there's zero percent.
- Big fat zero.
So Hal's success,
probability of success in staying in remission
is almost guaranteed. - 95%.
- So we are just on cloud and we love you all.
Thank you so much for supporting us.
- We can never thank you enough
for your extraordinary love and support.
- We're just so happy.
- Love you.
- Love you guys.
- Yeah, he's filming the movie right now.
The movie is all gonna be about us talking about
that he's filming the movie right now.
- Where's the makeup room, where?
- There.
(upbeat music)
♪ This is my miracle morning ♪
♪ I'm waking up to live my dreams ♪
♪ This is our miracle morning ♪
♪ Bring out the best in you and me ♪
♪ Wake up to your full potential ♪
♪ The miracle morning is so essential ♪
♪ Win the morning, win the day ♪
♪ Work done early, we can play ♪
♪ Change our life and our behavior ♪
♪ Start the day with six life SAVERS ♪
♪ Time to make a little space and slow down ♪
♪ Life is not a race ♪
♪ Silence is our meditation ♪
♪ Program our thoughts with affirmations ♪
♪ Adhere to a good vibration ♪
♪ The body gets right with affirmations ♪
♪ Trying to be healthy, wealthy and wise ♪
♪ This is our miracle morning ♪
♪ We're waking up to live our dreams ♪
♪ This is our miracle morning ♪
♪ Bring out the best in you and me ♪
♪ This is our miracle morning ♪
♪ We're waking up to live our dreams ♪