299 A New Dawn, A New Day, A New Year: Transforming Your Mornings & Your Life with The Miracle Morning author Hal Elrod | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***


[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Hal ElRod, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:04] Hal Elrod: Mahan, it's an honor and I'm excited that we're talking about leadership today because that's not always the focus of the interviews or conversations that I have.

And so I love it. That's where we're going. 

[00:00:14] Mahan Tavakoli: Can't wait to get some of your thoughts and insights on the miracle morning and how it applies to leadership.

But before we get to that, how would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become. 

[00:00:27] Hal Elrod: Yeah, thank you for that. So I had a kind of a unique upbringing. I grew up in a small town, Oakhurst, California, Northern California by Yosemite National Park. One of my early defining moments was I was eight years old and I woke up to the sound of my mother screaming across the hall and I ran across the hall and my sister had died in her arms.

My baby sister, Amory was just 18 months old and she had heart failure that morning so I saw my sister pass away at eight. I didn't fully comprehend it. I didn't know how to process it, but I witnessed my parents within a matter of months and really within a year, my mom was leading a support group for other parents who had lost children.

My dad was leading fundraisers and the family participated in an annual fundraiser to raise money for the hospital that tried to save my sister's life. And so I really learned at a very young age that you can take your tragedies. And you can use the experience to serve others, turn your pain into purpose as it's often said. And that really shaped it as we'll get into, I'm sure today the rest of my later years when I went through my own tragedies and then ask myself, how can I use these experiences to help other people? 

Fast forward seven years later my parents had bought a grocery store and we lived in the grocery stores. One of those old fashioned grocery stores where the house was on top of the store. And so I would, go out in the morning, my pajamas, get cereal and milk. It was a fun upbringing. I started working at 12, but at 15, I started my own DJ business and it happened by accident, but I ended up starting a mobile DJ business.

Where I started doing mostly DJing school dances. And then I was doing weddings and car shows and DJing at bars, which probably wasn't legal, but in my small town, sure, whatever but I had a dream that I wanted to be a professional DJ and I wanted to be on the radio someday and.

I was at the grocery store one day. My dad was checking people out. I was bagging groceries. And this woman came in and said, oh, I'm getting married next month. I'm so excited. And my dad being my manager, if you will, he goes, Hey, do you have a DJ yet? And she goes, no, we're looking for DJs, but they're so expensive.

And he said, my son's a DJ right here. She goes, really? How much do you charge? And I had never, she was my first paid gig. And he goes he goes a hundred dollars. She goes 100 and he goes, yeah, he's relatively new, but he does a phenomenal job. So my dad pitched me but to make 25 an hour as a 15 year old was doing something that I loved was phenomenal and I did that gig.

And then I just kept raising my fee . Later that year, I'm, I'd be making 500 for a few hours of a wedding. And it shaped me in realizing that, okay, wait a minute. Hey, I love DJing weddings and dances. So I can find work that actually doesn't feel like work.

Number two, I'm getting paid. 10, 20, 30 times what any of my friends are making and they hate their jobs. And that really shaped my future of, okay, so I'm going to find work where I can scale my income beyond what's considered normal. And I'm going to find work that I actually love to do. And so those two things also shaped, my future.

And now I'm a keynote speaker. I speak for companies more than anything. I'm an author. I love writing. I really love speaking. And of course, the amount you can earn as a keynote speaker defies normal, hourly wages. And so those are some defining moments. We're learning how to overcome adversity and find purpose in it.

And then also, in terms of the work that I would eventually do yeah, those early experiences really shaped my life. 

[00:04:05] Mahan Tavakoli: I love both of those examples, Hal, and we could spend hours just talking about those two, where, first of all, the anti fragility that you learned from your mom. I love the way Nassim Taleb describes, anti fragility.

Some systems and some people can become better as a result of breakage. You saw that with your mom, no one wants the kind of loss that she experienced. However, sometimes people can find a way to build on it and contribute back as she did. And as I know, You did through some of your later experiences.

And also the fact that when we have that purpose and that joy in what we do, that's when we can contribute the most to the world around us, which is what you're doing. Now you had another experience a little later on, you were still pretty young that both served as a challenge and an opportunity for you to become better.

And Meet your purpose as well. 

[00:05:07] Hal Elrod: Yeah. When I was 19 years old, I was DJing on the radio station. I was living my dream. But a friend of mine introduced me to an opportunity in direct sales. And he said, you can set your own schedule. I'm paying for my own college with this. There's really no ceiling on your income.

And so I decided to give it a shot, even though I'd never really sold anything, formally in my life. And the company was Cutco cutlery. making the world's finest cutlery. That's their tagline. It's high quality kitchen cutlery made here in the United States. And it was sold not door to door, but via in-home presentations that were set up over the phone from referrals.

So when you would do an appointment for somebody, you'd ask them for referrals and then you would call the referrals and it would repeat. And so I decided to give that a shot. And in my first 10 days I broke the all time 50 year old company record. I sold more Cutco in my first 10 days than anyone, at least in the Western half, the United States had ever done.

 And that really broke the mold. Even though I DJed when I was young, I was very mediocre for most of my life. Like I didn't get good grades. I wasn't an achiever. I wasn't an athlete. I never really felt like I was special or capable of doing much. And in Cutco. I had a mentor who believed in me and through his belief, I borrowed that.

And within those 10 days, I broke the all time record. Fast forward a year and a half later, and I'm one of the top reps in the company. And I gave a speech at a conference one night. Now I'm 20 years old at this time and driving home that night after my speech I was driving a Ford Mustang. My first new car I'd bought with my own money and I was hit head on by a drunk driver, my car was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour.

I spun off the drunk driver windshield shattered, airbags exploded, I was probably knocked unconscious at that point. And then another car crashed into my door at 70 miles an hour, my driver's side door, and it crushed the left side of my body, breaking 11 bones instantaneously. I broke my femur in half.

I broke my pelvis in three places. I broke my arm in two pieces. I shattered my elbow. I broke my eye socket into multiple pieces. And I ended up being found dead at the scene that night. The paramedics that took the fire department An hour to cut me out of the car. And when they did and they pulled me from the wreckage, I had lost so much blood that my heart stopped beating.

And I was clinically dead for six minutes in a coma for six days. And when I came out of the coma, I was told I had permanent brain damage and that I would never walk again. And I embodied the mindset that I'd learned in my sales training, which is to accept the things that you can't change. That there's no point in wishing you could change something that's in the past.

And so rather than feel like a victim and feel sorry for myself, I went, I can't change that I was in a car accident. And if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I can't change it, how am I going to respond? And I decided, Mahan, that I will be the happiest, most grateful person that anyone's ever seen in a wheelchair.

Because I just had this awareness that I'm in a wheelchair either way. We can either let the unchangeable circumstances in our life determine our mental and emotional well being, which far too many of us do. We've been conditioned to believe that when good things happen, we're allowed to feel good.

But when bad things happen, we're supposed to feel bad. And what I realize is a different paradigm, which is How about no matter what happens, we can choose how we feel. We can choose to be at peace in the midst of chaos. We can choose to be happy and grateful in the midst of challenging circumstances.

So much so that the doctors thought I was in denial because I was so happy. But two weeks after. I came out of the coma three weeks after my bones were broken. The doctors came in with routine x rays and they said, we don't know how to explain this how, but your body is healing so rapidly that we're going to let you take your first step today in therapy.

So it went from you're never going to walk again to three weeks after the night of the crash. I took my first step and I don't have a graph to show you the correlation between my mindset and the healing of my broken bones. But there is a picture that I have of me taking that first step. And of course, the car accident if you online and.

Google Hal Elrod car accident, you'll see a bunch of wild pictures. But I do believe in the power of the mind over the body and how we can heal our body through our thoughts and emotions. And I do believe that played a role. And it just taught me that a, accept what you can't change because there's no value in wishing you could change something that's out of your control.

Whether it happened five minutes ago, five months ago, five decades ago, we either choose to be at peace with that, that we can't change or to be angry and upset and scared and frustrated and resentful. Those things don't serve us. And the other lesson I learned was from mom and dad, which is I asked myself in that hospital bed, how can I use this experience to help other people?

And that's when I got out of the hospital. I started writing my first book. I started speaking at high schools and colleges around the country. And sharing my story and empowering other people to be able to apply the same philosophies and strategies to their adversity.

[00:10:10] Mahan Tavakoli: You experienced this adversity, and you. it as a stepping stone in a way to meet your purpose in helping others. I also had a conversation with Admiral Kyle Kozad who became paralyzed after a fall served as the highest wheelchair bound. Navy officer as a three star admiral, very similar perspective with respect to controlling what you can and accepting what you can.

Both stoic philosophy and Reinhold Niebuhr talked about it in the serenity prayer. One of the things I find how is that for many of us, it's easier to acknowledge that intellectually it's much harder to do it. So Where is the gap between people right now listening to you and nodding and saying, yes, there are things we can't control.

We should let go of them and move on, but it is still really hard to do. How can you bridge the gap between the knowledge of the importance of it and then being able to do it? 

[00:11:17] Hal Elrod: I am so glad that you asked me that because it's a very practical strategy that I learned in my Cutco sales training, believe it or not.

And this is what I applied when I was in the hospital and it's something called the five minute rule. So I was 19 years old, day two of training, my manager, my mentor he taught us the five minute rule. And he basically said this, he said, look, sales is a microcosm for life in terms of the adversity that you're going to face.

We were all college students. , we didn't know what was ahead of us. And he said, the average person faces rejection. Occasionally you're going to face it multiple times a day. 

You're going to make 20 phone calls. You're going to get rejected on 12 of them or 15 of them,

you're going to go see 10 people this week on appointments. Three of them are going to tell you no, maybe four or five, right? Maybe all 10 some week. He goes, you have to have a strategy, a technique to quickly process adversity and move through it. Rejection, failure, et cetera. And he taught us the five minute rule.

And he basically said this, he said when you face adversity, First, you have to understand that every painful emotion, and I'm gonna ask everybody listening to really lean into this because it's profound, but it could go right by if you don't catch it. Every painful emotion that you or I have ever experienced in our lives and that we will ever experience in the future is self created, and it is self created by our resistance to our reality.

In other words, it's our wishing and wanting that something didn't happen that did happen or something were different. That's completely out of our control that determines the mental emotional turmoil that we experience the pain that we experience and most of us, we weren't taught that in school dang we should have been so we always point at someone or something as the source of our pain.

You go, of course, I'm angry. Didn't you hear what she said to me. So it's her fault that you're angry. But wait, what if she said the same thing to another person and they're not angry. Okay. That they're at peace with what she said, because they go that has nothing to do with me. That's her. How can it be her fault, if the same thing can happen to two different people?

One person's angry, the other's not. So that is literally proof, that it is something within us, that determines whether or not we experience that emotional pain over the things that are happening to us. In another circumstance, you might go, of course I'm sad, look at what I lost. Another person could lose the same thing and maybe they're sad as well but maybe we're distraught, we're depressed, we're bedridden with emotional anguish.

And the other person goes, I've never been so sad in my life, but I can't change it. So I'm not going to stop living my life. And so he taught us that every painful emotion is self created by our resistance to reality. So he said the opposite of resistance. Is acceptance. He taught us the five minute rule, which he said, when something happens that causes you to feel upset, as soon as it happens, set your timer on your phone for five minutes and give yourself five minutes to feel your emotions fully, he said, cry, bitch, moan, complain, punch a wall feel it fully, don't suppress it, don't act like it's okay.

Feel it fully. But he said, when the timer goes off after five minutes, you say three very powerful, life changing words. Can't change it. Can't change it is an acknowledgement. I can't change what happened five minutes ago, but I do have a choice right now. I can continue to dwell on the unchangeable. I could wish it were different.

I could wish I could go back in time and change it. None of that changes it. It's a form of delusion. So you can keep resisting reality and being upset or the other choice is the opposite of resistance, which is acceptance. We can accept reality exactly as it is. And that can't change it mantra is the key that unlocks the door to emotional freedom where you go, I can't change it.

And an important distinction is when you accept life exactly as it is, it doesn't mean you're happy with life exactly as it is. If something difficult, painful, tragic happens, you may not be happy about it, but it's much more powerful than that because happiness is an emotion. And it's fleeting. You can be happy one minute.

And then, you get a phone call with bad news or you turn on the news and now you're emotionally distraught. But then you win the lottery and now you're happy again, right? We spend our lives chasing these emotional states and I do the same thing, don't get me wrong. I like avoiding painful emotions and I like pursuing and experiencing positive ones.

But here's the difference, when you accept reality exactly as it is, when you say can't change it and you mean it, doesn't mean you're happy about it but in between... happiness and sadness or whatever positive emotional state you want to choose. And if you want, if you were looking at this right now, you'd see me take my right hand from the positive emotional states and bring it heart center in prayer position.

One half of the prayer, the other hand comes and meets it and they meet in prayer position in between happiness and sadness, positive, painful emotions. Is a state of consciousness that I would call peace, or you might call it inner peace. When you accept life exactly as it is, you are at peace. And it's far more powerful than any emotional state because it's emotionally neutral and it is rooted.

It is ever present. It is ongoing. So if you live in a state of acceptance, then when painful things happen, You feel the pain, but you're able to hold it in a state of peace. It doesn't control you. You're able to, if you want to get out of the controls, the right word, but essentially you're choosing the emotions that would best serve you because you're always at peace.

And so that's the greatest lesson I've learned is apply that five minute rule and get to the, can't change it, that mantra at the end of it. And I want to be clear. Some of you listening are saying, Hal, you have to be joking me. Five minutes is not enough time for me to get over something. And I thought the same thing when I first learned this and the first few times I set my timer for five minutes, the timer would go off and I would go.

I'm still upset. I don't, I'm not upset because the timer went off and I would snooze the timer two or three more times, but something miraculous happened after. probably a week or two of doing this. I remember the day I set the timer for five minutes. This woman had canceled the biggest order of my early career at that point.

And it made it so I did not reach my, I had reached my goal. Now I didn't reach my goal. And I went, I can't believe it. How could she do that? The timer's running. I said, God, what am I? She would have loved those knives. Gosh, dang it. What am I going to do now? I guess all I can do is, get on the phone tomorrow morning and just go for my goal again this week.

And then I picked up the phone and there were four minutes and 32 seconds left on the phone. And I had a consciousness elevating epiphany. I went, what's the point in me being upset for the next four and a half minutes over something I can't change. I'm going to turn the timer off now. I'm going to go watch TV.

 I'm going to go enjoy myself. And in that moment, I went, you know what? I don't need a five minute rule. I need a five second rule. Just let me feel it. Let me curse. Let me scream. But then I'm just going to accept it, say can't change it and move on. And whether I'm in traffic or six years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and given a 20 to 30 percent chance of surviving.

Both instances, I've accepted life. Before it even happens. And you have that power to start with the five minute rule, give yourself that buffer, but eventually you'll realize, oh, I'm in control of whether or not I continue resisting reality or accept it exactly as it is unconditionally and choose to give myself the gift of inner peace.

[00:19:25] Mahan Tavakoli: What a powerful point how it, accept it, and then move on. That feeling part is one of those things that I know, whether for myself or a lot of executives, we don't give ourselves enough time to feel it first. And that's one of the reasons some of the feelings end up lingering and then coming out later so feel it first, then accept it before moving on. It's not just trying to move on immediately. 

[00:19:54] Hal Elrod: Absolutely. And I think I used to be guilty of that is, they call it spiritual bypass or emotional suppression where I didn't allow myself to feel feelings.

In fact, I got so good at this. And that's the thing. Maybe the five second rule isn't the answer. I think the five minute rule actually is where you want to stay because I got to where I'm like, Oh, I don't have to feel emotional pain anymore. And then I was eventually diagnosed with cancer. And now, while I don't know that's the cause, but to your point there's a great book called the body keeps the score where it basically says all these painful traumatic experiences, if you don't process them, then they will come out sideways. And it could be. Later that day where you blow up at your spouse because this thing that happened at work that you're still harboring or some sort of physical ailment.

But yeah, as I'm saying this, I actually think, the five minute rule is probably healthier than the five second rule. 

[00:20:42] Mahan Tavakoli: There are things that we can't control. And you mentioned that. How and it's important for us to recognize that one of the reasons I loved your book is that it lays out a framework on things we can control with the miracle morning.

So how did you come up with the thoughts around the miracle morning before finding out what are some of those things we can do to have that greater control on our days?

[00:21:09] Hal Elrod: so For me the miracle morning was not a book idea. It was a very organic solution to my own problems and then I started teaching it and it just turned into something. The feedback from people was that it was helpful. And so I wrote the book, but it was 2008 when the United States economy had crashed. And I'm sure everybody listening was around during that time. so positive and optimistic that during that time, I realized there's a fine line between optimism and delusion.

And I cross it every once in a while, a lot more back then, I never watched the news and whenever my friends would go, Hey, are you concerned with the economy? I'd go, I create my own economy. I'm not worried about, I was just overly unrealistic and optimist, and and all of a sudden the economy crashes and my coaching clients who were all business owners, salespeople, et cetera. All of a sudden their bottom line is decreasing, right? They're not earning as much. They can't afford to pay me as their coach. So I lost over half of my coaching clients over about a four, five month period.

And therefore I lost over half my income. And like most people, , I was probably spending 80 to 90 percent of what I made. So now all of a sudden I can't pay my bills. I can't pay the mortgage. I'm living on credit cards. I went from being debt free to. Having 52, 000 in credit card debt that six month period, my house is being foreclosed on by the bank.

I Stopped exercising because I canceled the gym membership. I was depressed. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. And a friend of mine recommended that I listen to this one Jim Rohn audio. And I was so frustrated because I called him for advice on how I could increase my income. And he goes, listen to this Jim Rohn audio.

I go, dude, that's the laziest advice you could ever give. Come on, I've listened to plenty of self help audios. I don't need that. So I take his advice. I got nothing to lose. I listened to this audio. And Jim Rohn says a quote that literally, it became the catalyst for me transforming my life faster than I ever imagined possible.

And it really, it gave birth to the miracle morning. Jim Rohn said your level of success in every area of your life will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And I had probably heard the quote before, and now if anybody's listening and they've heard that before no, listen to what I'm about to say, because this is how I processed it.

 I usually quantify things. It's how my brain works. And so I went, okay, if my level of success. In every area of my life will seldom exceed my level of personal development. There's two questions. What level of success do I want? And what is my level of personal development? The level of success that I want on a scale of one to 10 is the same as everybody listening wants and you want on.

We all want level 10 success. I've never met anyone that's I don't want to be too happy. I don't want too much money. There's an innate drive and desire within all of us to experience the best that we possibly can. We want level 10 health and a level 10 marriage and level 10 happiness and level 10 energy.

So then I asked myself, what's my level of personal development? And at that time in my life, again, I'm in scarcity mode. I'm drowning in debt. I'm, months away from being evicted from my house. I was waking up every day at the last minute working until I couldn't look at the computer screen anymore, watching TV and go into bed, rinse and repeat, and my level of personal development I assessed, was it like a two or a three?

Like maybe a four on a good day. And I believe this is the disconnect for 90, maybe 95 percent of our society, including leaders. In fact, sometimes more often leaders, because you achieve a level of success and you feel like I don't need to do the stuff that got me here anymore. And so what I believe is.

Everybody wants level 10 success, but the majority of society, we don't have a level 10 personal development ritual every day that ensures that we are optimizing our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing, and that we are performing at our best every single day. And so I went home I was on a run when I listened to the audio and I went, okay, I'm just going to go online I'm going to do a little research and I'm going to Google what are the world's most successful people.

From CEOs to millionaires billionaires and professional athletes, like the people that are the best in the world. What are their forms of personal development? I want to find the best one. And I spent about an hour online doing this research, and I was looking for one practice, but I ended up with a list of six.

And none of them were new, which was disheartening. We're conditioned in our society to find new, right? You know what I mean? Literally marketers, they sell you on the new iPhone and the new leadership training and the new, but this, if it's not new, it's eh, I don't know. I it's been around a long time.

I need the new cutting edge and we discount proven. We discount the things that countless people have done to get there. And I'm looking at this list of six practices. It was meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling, nothing new. And I almost just decided, eh, I can't do all of these.

I don't know which one's the best. None of them are new. I've tried most of these before. And then the epiphany happened. I went, wait a minute. What if I did all of them? What if I woke up tomorrow, 30 to 60 minutes earlier? And I did the six most timeless proven personal development practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries.

I thought that would be the ultimate personal development ritual. And I wasn't a morning person, but I realized if I want to take my life and my business to the next level, I've got to take myself to the next level. So I set the alarm for an hour earlier than normal 5 a. m. And here's the interesting thing, Mahan, for the last six months of my life, I had been depressed.

I had felt hopeless. I had felt scared. The economy was tanking, my finances were tanking. And that was the first night as I went to bed, I felt excited. I felt hopeful because I thought, if I start every day with this ritual, this could be the one thing that changes everything. So I woke up the next morning it wasn't hard to get out of bed.

I was like a kid on Christmas. I ran into the living room and I sat down the night before I had Googled how to meditate, how to journal, how to do affirmations. I got a how to. And that morning I went through all six practices. And in all honesty, I was pretty Mediocre at them.

 I didn't know how to meditate. Visualization was weird. Affirmations felt super inauthentic the way I'd learned them online. Like I'm amazing. I'm a champion. I just, he's super goofy, like positive self talk, but even not at the best. After one hour, I thought, oh my gosh, I don't feel depressed.

I feel hopeful and inspired and I have clarity and I feel energized. And I just learned something new from the reading. I did. If I start every day like this, it's only a matter of time before I become the level 10 version of myself. That's capable of creating that level 10 success that I so desperately want to get back to.

And I was thinking it would happen one year, one year from now, I can become a better, I can change it all. Mohan, it happened so fast in less than two months in a declining economy. In the great recession, I'm more than doubled my business. I'm more than doubled my take home income, my revenue and take home income.

I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to deciding to run a 52 mile ultra marathon because I hated running. And I thought I defined that 10 version of myself physically. And mentally. And so I committed to run a 52 mile ultramarathon, did it six months later. And I had never run before, by the way.

I hated running. And my mental and emotional state, my depression, that did not take two months to go away. That began fading on day one, and even more on day two. Because this morning ritual, which by the way, it didn't have a name, it wasn't a book idea yet, but it was changing my life. And I thought, This is the one thing that is going to change everything.

And I remember the moment and I'll put a bow on the story. And then if you want, we can get into these six practices and give some advanced training and all this stuff. But to put a bow on the story, two months later, I sign on two clients, coaching clients in one day. And officially that put me over double my income when I started the morning ritual. 

I went to go celebrate with my wife. She was in the bedroom and I remember the moment she was coming out of the bedroom with a basket of laundry. I caught her and I said, sweetheart, put that laundry down. I got to give you a hug. She said, why? I said, I just signed on two more coaching clients. We've officially doubled our income in the last two months.

The economy is tanking. I said, and it's all because of this morning ritual. It feels like a miracle. And she goes, it's your miracle morning. And I go, I like that miracle morning. And so I started writing in my schedule every morning. I had been writing personal development at 5 AM. I started writing miracle morning and then I taught it to my coaching clients because I was so excited to share it.

 Most of them resisted. 13 out of 14 clients came back the next week and said, how most of them were not morning people. They said, how I just had the best week in my sales career. How I just started running . It was the same amazing results. And that's when the lightbulb went off and I went, okay, if the miracle morning changed my life and I wasn't a morning person and it did it in two months, if the miracle morning is changing my coaching clients lives in their first two weeks, and most of them weren't morning people, this could change the world.

It took me three years to write the book. I'm a very slow writer. I self published it because I couldn't get a publisher and you fast forward now, it's, millions of copies sold and millions of lives transformed, and I'm still amazed by the whole thing, but I appreciate you letting me be here because this is my mission, is sharing this practice and this book with as many people as I possibly can.

Thank you, Mahan. It 

[00:31:18] Mahan Tavakoli: is an outstanding book, Hal, which has done... So incredibly well selling millions of copies when the average nonfiction book on Amazon sells 200 to 300 copies. Because there is so much value in it now, It takes a certain level of discipline.

Every new year, we start out the new year with new year's resolutions, gym memberships spike a couple of months later, people aren't going to the gym. Almost all of us have a desire to lose weight, become healthier. You name it. There's lots of. The right intentions, but the behaviors don't align with that.

What was it that got you to do this on a daily basis? And more importantly, what is it that you recommend to people to do? So this is not just something they read and reflect on, but they act on long enough for it to be transformative for them as well. 

[00:32:19] Hal Elrod: Yeah. The biggest objection that I hear one of two.

I don't have time, right? I'm already so busy. I don't have time on the second is I'm not a morning person. So I want to start by handling those two the I don't have time is you have the same amount of hours in the day as everybody else. Of course, we've heard that before, but you don't have to do an hour long miracle morning.

Now the average person does between 30 and 60 minutes, but there are many people that do a 10 minute miracle morning. And that's how I always recommend people start. I always say, just wake up 10 minutes earlier. And do one of the six practices that are known as the savers, by the way, we're going to get into that, but anybody listening, the acronym S A V E R S it stands for silence.

That's your meditation or prayer time. A is for affirmations. V is for visualization. E is for exercise. R is for reading. And the final S is for scribing which would be your journaling practice, it means writing. So those are the six practices. I always recommend when somebody starts, you don't have to do what I did, which is I did a one hour, all six practices.

I encourage people wake up 10 minutes earlier and do one of the savers. And in fact, a lot of people if you order the book on Amazon, they will Do the are. So think about how easy this is. You just set your alarm 10 minutes earlier. If that means that you go to bed 10 minutes earlier, it's not that hard, but you wake up 10 minutes earlier.

And all you do is you go into the living room, get out of your bedroom, or you're going to fall back asleep, and you just start reading and you read the book. And within a few days, you get to the chapter on silence. And then the next miracle morning, you integrate reading and silence. And it doesn't have to be longer.

It doesn't even have to be longer. You could do five minutes of reading, five minutes of meditation. Then you get to the chapter on visualization and then you fold that into your miracle morning then exercise and so on. So it's 10 minutes of your time for what can become a radically transformative practice.

And before I forget, I just want to say this for anybody listening. One of the biggest. Miracle Morning Advocates is Robert Kiyosaki, Mohan, I'm assuming you're familiar with Robert. So I spoke at an event, I was Robert's warm up act, and he was the headline keynote speaker. I got to have dinner with him after, and I gave him a copy of the Miracle Morning.

Now, I assumed he would never read it, I thought he might throw it in the trash on the way out or to the airport. I had Googled him before the event and at that time his net worth was 80 million. So I'm thinking to myself, he's probably doing okay. I don't think he needs my little self published book about doing a morning routine, but I figured whatever.

I got nothing to lose. It's a rare opportunity that I'm at a table with him. I gave him the book. I get an email from him three weeks later, I should say his assistant. And she said, Hal, Robert has read the miracle morning three times in the last three weeks. Now my jaw dropped right there. I go, what? It is changing his life.

And he wants to have you on rich dad radio. And my mind was blown. I go on rich dad radio and Robert kept pausing me, stopping me and going, everyone listening, go right now and order the miracle morning. It will change your life. It is changing my life. And so I often tell this as a joke, I say when I created the miracle morning, I was 50, 000 in credit card debt, right?

I was negative. When Robert Kiyosaki changed his life with the miracle morning, he was worth 80 million. So if you're wondering if this will apply to you, it will only apply. If your net worth is between negative 50, 000 and 80 million, anywhere in that range. And you're in good company, so I just wanted to mention that and Robert Kiyosaki, to this day, I get emails from people recently in South Africa, Hey, Robert was giving a speech here in South Africa, and he spent five minutes telling us that we need to read the miracle morning.

 You couldn't ask for a better advocate, so in terms of, am I too busy? 10 minutes of your life. Give it It can change your life. And then in terms of I'm not a morning person. I was asked in an interview Mahan once they said what percentage of miracle morning practitioners were already morning people.

So this was easy for them. Instead of checking, email, they did the savers and he said, what percentage of miracle morning practitioners were not morning people. So this was a radical shift in maybe their self concept, their identity, their limiting beliefs, and I did not know the answer.

That was probably five or six years ago. Ever since then, we surveyed the global miracle morning community, which it's millions of people, but. 300 and some thousand that I have contact with. And it is always roughly 72 percent say that before they read the miracle morning, they never thought they could become a morning person.

So if you're not a morning person, you're in good company. The book is designed to not just tell you what the miracle morning is. But to shift your psychology and your mindset to realize you can do this and then set you up logistically to make it really easy to follow through. 

[00:37:27] Mahan Tavakoli: It is.

And as you mentioned, it's not necessarily becoming a morning person. It's prioritizing to wake up slightly earlier to focus on these savers. So it's taking the time for yourself. And the first part that you, Mention how is silence, which I find is very hard for many executives 

most of them have their phones right next to them as they sleep and that serves as the alarm when they wake up immediately, there is the email, everything else. So there's very little silence in their lives. Why is purposeful silence in your view? So important, especially for 

[00:38:11] Hal Elrod: leaders. I'll tell you why I integrated into my life.

When I was doing that research, the night before the first miracle morning, I was doing the research, I came across an article and it was titled something along the lines of fortune 500 CEOs who swear by meditation. And that caught me off guard because I never thought of it in that context.

 If someone said meditation, I'd picture a yogi on a mountaintop or a monk in a monastery, right? Like I never thought about how it equated, but these CEOs were talking about how their biggest breakthroughs came during their meditation, not to mention was how they manage stress every day.

 There's over 1400 scientific studies that prove the physiological benefits of meditation and the mental and emotional benefits. It lowers your cortisol levels. It lowers your stress. So that's actually what got me to even try meditation a couple tips on meditation. Number one when you're new to it.

So you I mean, I'm saying meditation, but again, it can be prayer. It can be breath work. What I recommend when you're new is use guided meditation. So we have a miracle morning app. It's a free app on the phone. And then there's a premium version as well. That has over 150 guided savers tracks. So it doesn't just walk you through a meditation.

It guides you through meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. And then there's tracks for individual sabers. But the point is when I was new, I thought I was terrible at meditation because my mind was racing. So I found that hitting play on a track. And letting a professional, someone that was an expert at guiding me through following my breath, guiding me through clearing my mind, guiding me through letting go of stressful thoughts.

That was transformative. Basically, they were teaching me how to meditate. So after I did guided meditations for a few weeks, maybe a month, then I went and did it on my own. And to this day, I do both. Some days I just want total silence. And that used to be baked into our lives.

Before we had smartphones, you would get quiet time in the shower and quiet time on the train. Quiet time is standing in line at the bank, right? That's gone. Our smartphones have robbed us of that peaceful, purposeful silence, which is where most of our best ideas So that to me is why it's so crucial. 

[00:40:38] Mahan Tavakoli: It is.

And it's something that, takes a lot of effort and takes lots of work, which is why I appreciate your recommendation of guided meditation as part of the process, because sometimes when we haven't done it before, it's a struggle getting started with it. Now, another one of the elements that you mentioned that initially.

Because of the misunderstandings with the word people cringe when they hear, you clarify what you mean by it and those are affirmations. what role can affirmations when done well, play 

[00:41:16] Hal Elrod: in this? Yeah. Affirmations are my favorite of the savers, and I think they're the most misunderstood because the way that we've been taught affirmations by, self help gurus, if you will one of two fallacies in terms of the approach.

Number one, we're taught to lie to ourself about something that we wish were true. So for example, if you're struggling financially, you're taught to affirm, I am wealthy. I am wealthy, right? And the thing is. If it's not true, we know it's not true. And you can apply that to any area of your life.

If you say, I am happy when you've been depressed for six months, you're creating an internal conflict as if we don't have enough of them, right? And so lying to yourself is never the optimal strategy. The truth will always prevail. The second problem is we're taught to use flowery passive language that promises us a result independent of any effort.

I'll give you an example. I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. That's a very popular affirmation. It couldn't be further from the truth, if you're a leader, you know you have to create value in the marketplace, in order to generate income. You don't get it because you're a magnet.

I think people like that affirmation because it deludes them into feeling better for a minute, it's like taking a hit of a drug Oh, it feels better to... Tell myself I'm a money magnet and money is going to magically appear in my life, but that's not going to change your bank account balance.

So the way that I teach affirmations in the book, they are very practical. They are actionable. They are results oriented very quickly. Three steps, step one, affirm what you're committed to. And you can apply this formula by the way, to every area of your life in your marriage, as a parent, as a leader in your health, step one, what are you committed to step two, affirm why it is a must for you.

What are the three to five reasons that this is non negotiable. And step four, affirm which specific actions you will take and when that is an affirmation formula that's rooted in truth. Again, it is practical, actionable, and it's directing your subconscious mind and your behavior toward the end that you are aiming towards.

It's not delusional. You're not lying. So every one of the sabers, by the way. Is that style of practical, actionable results oriented. I want to give you, I want to take one step back and give a quick example. Meditation in the new edition, not in the original edition, but in the new edition, I created a style of meditation.

I think I made it up. I don't know. Maybe it is somewhere else. I don't know where it came from, but I call it emotional optimization meditation, and it's where instead of just quieting your mind for five or 10 minutes. Step one, you identify what's your optimal emotional state that will serve you today.

Then you regain that state. It could be from a memory. It could be the last time you experienced it. It could be by affirming it, but you get yourself into the state. Then you set your timer for one, five, 10 minutes and you meditate. Or almost like you marinate in that state. And what you're doing is you are programming your subconscious.

You are creating neural pathways in your brain that enable you to access that state at will. And if you do it every day, then literally you become that state and you can apply it to happiness. You can apply it to confidence. You can apply it to empathy. You can apply it to playfulness, you name it.

So that's just two examples between affirmations and silence about the miracle morning. Takes these practices and removes them from the land of woo Right. And really makes them practical. 

[00:45:03] Mahan Tavakoli: It's not just sticking to the affirmation part of it, that action is really important.

Yeah. Another thing that plays a role for leaders. visualization. Now, I find how it's a lot harder when there is greater uncertainty in the world and for a whole host of reasons, there is more uncertainty in our lives. How would you recommend for leaders to approach visualization in a way that can be impactful for themselves and for their 

[00:45:35] Hal Elrod: teams?

There are two steps to visualization that I think are really important and most people that teach it only teach the first step and without the second. I feel like the first can even be counterproductive. The first step is visualize your ideal outcome. Whether you make a vision board 

you just visualize your ideal outcome. What that is designed to do. The benefit is you're generating the emotions in real time that outcome will bring you in the future. And what that does is it fuels your drive, desire, and motivation to do the things today that will move you toward that end goal, but if that's all you do.

You can delude yourself into thinking it's a foregone conclusion. If all you do is see the end result, then your brain thinks, oh, yeah, it's going to happen. But it's not going to happen unless you do something today to move forward. So the second step in visualization, I think, is the most important.

Visualize yourself doing the thing that you need to do today while putting yourself in a peak mental and emotional state that will compel you to actually do the thing. An example of that is when I was training for the ultra marathon, I hated running. So my natural inclination, when my alarm went off at 7 00 AM, which is when I was supposed to run was And I could do it tomorrow, right?

And then tomorrow turns into the next day. So here's how I use visualization to overcome that. And you can use this to overcome anything that, you should do, but you don't feel like doing, or just to optimize how you feel when you do it and your ability to do it really well, I would visualize the alarm on my phone 00 AM, then I'd visualize going into my bedroom, getting dressed in my running clothes.

Heading out my living room to the front door, opening the front door. Then when I saw the sidewalk, I would bring out my affirmations that I read that morning for my marathon. I am committed to training for a 52 mile ultra marathon, which I will complete on October 29th, 2009. I'm doing this because it's enabling me to become the best version of myself.

And if I can do this, I can do literally. In order to do that, I will follow the training plan, right? So I followed those three steps of the affirmations. I got myself excited as I visualized the sidewalk and then guess what happened at 7 a. m. When the alarm went off, I didn't give into human nature and procrastinate because Mahan, that's not what I mentally rehearsed that morning.

It's almost like you become a robot. When you use visualization this way, where when it's time to do the thing that you're supposed to do, if you mentally rehearsed doing it while in a peak mental and emotional state, then I would just get up off the couch, walk into my bedroom without even thinking. But I didn't talk myself out of it because that's not what I rehearsed that morning.

So that's the power of visualization. And you can use that to make sure you show up at your best every single day. Not only for those that you lead, but also for those that you love. I visualize greeting my kids in a playful state. I visualize engaging with my wife in a loving way, especially if we had a disagreement the night before I mentally rehearse an optimal engagement with my wife.

First thing in the morning. So this applies to business. It applies to life. It applies to every aspect. 

[00:48:41] Mahan Tavakoli: It's interesting how that there is still so much misunderstanding about it. I've talked to different Navy SEAL commanders rich divinity included who started the mind gym for the Navy SEALs and they practice a lot of this visualization.

or you look at the top athletes, Michael Phelps, same thing. So it is part of peak performance and part of what we need to do every morning. And you give great structures and recommendations on that exercise is another one of them, which is really important. I want to quickly jump to reading and then Scribing or writing , 

[00:49:23] Hal Elrod: I think most leaders are readers. That's a very popular cliche phrase, but I think that I would imagine most people listening to this probably read, maybe not, but most probably do, I believe that we're all one book away from a solution to whatever we have going on in our life. So I'll give you a little bonus tip.

This is something that I do. Whenever I ask an audience, when I'm giving a keynote speech, I say, Hey, how many of you. Family is your number one priority and almost every hand goes up. And then I say, thank you. I say, be very honest right now and keep your hand up. If I were to look at your schedule, would it be obvious that family is your number one priority and at least half the hands go down and the other half, or probably a lot of them are lying because they don't want to be embarrassed or whatever,

but the point is before I had cancer, I was very much guilty of that exact thing, which is I say families number one, but I sure as heck push them aside to work weekends or work late, right? And so one very simple self imposed rule I have that I would share with you is I'm not allowed to read a business book in the morning until I've read a book on parenting or marriage.

 That reminds me every morning. Oh yeah, my family's my highest priority because it is easy to think it and forget it. And get so caught up in your work and your goals. But it's a literal reminder every morning that family's my number one priority. I'm reading a book on being a better dad or being a better husband.

[00:50:51] Hal Elrod: Now that's number one. And the other thing it does is it teaches me to be a better husband, my level of personal development related to being a family man increases every day when I read and I read affirmations. In fact, Mohan I'm going to share this with people. I don't want to overwhelm people, but I do three miracle mornings now.

So number one is my personal miracle morning from 4 a. m. to 5 a. m. I do savers for me. I focus on spirituality. I focus on my mental health. That's my first miracle morning. Personal is my first one. Parenting and partnership is my second one from 5 a. m. to 6 a. m. I focus on my affirmations, the reading for my wife and my kids.

Then my third one is productivity. And my third hour from six to 7 a. m. Is I focus on my business and I'm reading business books. And by the way, this is a relatively new thing. I did it a long time ago. I fell off of it. So I'm trying it again. And. So far it feels really good to have those three separate distinct spaces.

But for most people, I don't want to overwhelm most people you do one miracle morning, and you've got your affirmations for each area of your life and you spend five minutes reading your affirmations and, five minutes meditating, you do 30 minute, a 60 minute, et cetera.

But I just figured I'd share because I've recently decided to really up my game, Thank you to another level. You're 

[00:52:12] Mahan Tavakoli: setting the standards with your own example, how, and as you said, for us, the challenge is to get started. One of the authors I love is Yuval Noah Harari, and he does a month plus silent meditation retreat in India, which is something that is impressive.

But at this point I'm not there, but it sets the standards so I can tell myself. Maybe I can do it for half an hour and focus just on that. So what you're doing for the three hours is outstanding in setting those standards and breaking the barriers for most of the executives. As you say, even starting with 10 minutes a morning is a great start being disciplined with that.

And then moving it on to the one hour timeframe. I would love to get. your thoughts on a couple of other things quickly. how with blurred work life boundaries, hybrid work how does the miracle morning blend into the workday in your view for people and how should it as we move forward?

[00:53:19] Hal Elrod: I mentioned that I speak for a lot of companies. And and usually it's almost always an executive at the company read the miracle morning and they say, it's changing their life. And they say, I want my people to experience this. In fact, there's a national CPA firm called Ruben Brown and the miracle morning is part of their culture.

Even from the hiring process, they say it's their competitive advantage. So they do a miracle morning, 30 day challenge publicly over zoom for their entire company. With weekly calls every week and they're on their 11th month. So they're on their 48th call or something like that. And they said they don't see any end in sight.

The point is whether you're coming into the office or you're working remotely, if you can engage your people and make personal development, a part of your culture. And when you make personal development, part of your culture, you're enabling all of your people to become closer to that level 10 version of themselves.

And it improves work life balance. It improves productivity. It improves their mental health. And if you can brand it on something like the Miracle Morning, the way that the Ruben Brown firm has now, you've got everyone speaking the same language. Oh, did you do your savers today? I did my savers today.

Hey, I'm really struggling with my affirmations. How are you doing your affirmations? Hey, let's make affirmations for this company goal that we're doing. So it gives a common language for every person in the company. And it almost ensures that they show up to work every day as a better version of who they were when they went to bed the night before.

That's an 

[00:54:49] Mahan Tavakoli: outstanding example of how this can be incorporated in team and organizational conversations, because I do believe part of our leadership responsibility and role is to develop ourselves, the miracle morning and the savers that you lay out is a great way of doing that. But another part of the. 

Leadership responsibility. In addition to the example we set is to bring our team members along. So this is a great way of doing that as well. You have updated and expanded the book. You have a thriving community. How can the audience find out more both about your book, your community, the app, all the great things you offer.

So they can tap into the power of the miracle morning for themselves, their teams and organizations. 

[00:55:39] Hal Elrod: Yeah, thank you for asking that. And MiracleMorning. com is the hub for everything. You can access the app there. You can access the book there. You can actually, there's a movie, there's a 90 minute feature length documentary that actually incorporates Robin Sharma, leadership expert.

He's in the film, Brendan Burchard. Lewis Howes, Mel Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, some very well known leaders are in that film talking about their miracle morning, their morning routines, et cetera. So MiracleMorning. com is the hub for all the things. And of course if you want to just go straight and buy the book, you can buy it wherever books are sold.

Amazon. com of course is where most people buy their books. So that's a great spot to go. But MiracleMorning. com is the hub where you can get to All the other aspects of the the miracle morning ecosystem, if you will. 

[00:56:26] Mahan Tavakoli: Miracle morning, has helped millions around the globe really appreciate your passion, excitement, energy in having an impact on people's lives thank you so much, Hal Elrod. 

[00:56:37] Hal Elrod: Mahan, thank you, brother. I appreciate you so much.