Hal Elrod | SAVERS: The Ritual That Changed Millions - Radical Responsibility Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Miracle morning. I created that when I was not a
morning person, but I needed. You know, it was the
two thousand and eight recession and I had lost over
half of my clients, half of my income, and I
was my house is foreclosed on. I was at a
really low point in my life, and so I went, Okay,
I've got to change something. I've got to do something different.
And what I determined was, I've got to dedicate time
every day to personal development, but not haphazardly. I've got

(00:21):
to be extraordinarily intentional. And in fact, it was this
Jim Rone quote, your level of success will seldom exceed
your level of personal development.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Maul,
and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from
leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfuluence practices, positive psychology,
and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This

(00:51):
is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
helping you find alignment with the person you are always
meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
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(01:11):
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This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
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(01:34):
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(02:00):
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(02:20):
learn more and start your journey today?

Speaker 3 (02:24):
What if the way you start your morning could transform
your entire life. In this episode, I sit down with
best selling author and inspirational force hell Elrod, creator of
the Miracle Mourning. How's not just a thought leader, He's
a living example of resilience, having survived the near fatal
car crash, beat cancer, and come out the other side
with a mission to elevate humanity. We explore how his

(02:47):
savors practice silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing became
a global movement. But this conversation goes deeper. How opens
us up to what it means to serve others by
healing our own wounds, How to cultivate emotional resilience, and
why balancing family, business and a greater mission isn't just possible,

(03:08):
it's necessary. Whether you're an early riser or still hitting
the snooze button, this episode offers something vital, a clear
path to waking up with purpose.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Let's dive in. My name is doctor Fleet Maull, your
co host for the session, and I'm thrilled to be
here today with hel Elrod. Welcome hell Fleet.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
It is so good to see you.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
As always, Yeah, it's great to see you, and we've
gotten to do this before, and I always enjoy our conversations.
And I'm a big believer. I've been doing a morning
routine for a long time and your SAVERS program is
influenced and changed my morning routine a bit. I've added
some elements to it, but I'm a real faithful, dedicated
practitioner of the SAVERS. So thank you very much, and
we're going to explore that in our interviewed today. I

(03:50):
would like to start off a little bit because your
work really has come out of the adversities that you've overcome,
and so I'm just wondering if you could talk about
a little bit of how these experiences of overcoming a
car crash where the doctor said you're likely to never
walk again, and you ended up running some marathons I believe,

(04:11):
and then a very serious cancer, and also having your
business fall apart during an economic recession. How did overcoming
these adversities create who you are today and what you
bring to the world.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, you know, I learned this from my mom and
my dad. When I was eight years old, I woke
up to my mother screaming across the hallway and not
mourning my baby sister died in her arms, with just
me and my mom and my sister at home, and
it was devastating for our family, especially my mom and dad.
And within under a year, my mother was leading a

(04:43):
support group of other parents who had lost young children,
and my father was leading a fundraiser for the hospital
that attempted to save my sister's life and was caring
for other kids. And I learned from my mom and
dad that you take your adversity and you turn to
it into an opportunity to yourself personally and then to
help other people. And so for me, when I came

(05:04):
out of the coma six days in a coma, I
found out I had eleven broken bones, I had permanent
brain damage. They said I would ever walk again. I
told my dad, Dad, if I'm in a wheelchair the
rest of my life, I've decided I'll be the happiest,
most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair, because
I'm in a wheelchair either way. But more importantly, Dad,
I said, I've wanted to be a motivational speaker for
the last year and a half, since I was in

(05:24):
sales and speaking at conferences. I said, but my life's
been relatively easy. You know, I was bullied growing up.
Normal stuff, but pretty easy. I didn't have much to
talk about. I said, maybe that's why I was hit
head on by the drunk driver. And that's why I'm
in this situation I'm in now because it's my responsibility
to overcome my adversity so that I can help other

(05:46):
people overcome theirs. And when I was diagnosed with cancer
and given a twenty percent chance of surviving, it was
the same thing. It was like, oh wow, okay, another one.
I don't know what I was supposed to learn from this,
but something. And so I think that's the biggest thing
for entrepreneurs, most entrepreneurs, right, you're best suited to serve
who you once were. So whatever you've overcome in your life,
and the bigger the adversity, I think it's the bigger

(06:08):
the opportunity, the bigger opportunity to grow, to evolve and
for a better version of us on the other side.
And then we get to turn back and reach out
our hand and help the people that have come before us.
And whether that's you've achieved economic success, you've overcome mental
health challenges, or for me, it's overcoming these physical challenges
and then being to help other people help them overcome

(06:29):
their obstacles so they can achieve what it is that
they want in their lives.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, you share a real nugget with us, say, I
want to memorialize that you're best suited to serve those
who you once were, the previous you, Right, That's who
we're best to serve and support on their journey. That's
really great. As entrepreneurs, we're all going to face a
lot of challenges and you know, we may crash and
burn a few times before we succeed. So what feel
is the most critical mindset shift? I mean, you kind

(06:54):
of shared it in terms of how your parents influenced
you and then how you but it almost sounds when
I hear you say this, it almost sounds this is
too good to be true. I mean, because this guy
really have had that positive of an attitude as he's
laying there in that hospital bed and they're telling me
he's never going to walk again, and then facing cancer,
and then you know, facing your business falling apart. You
know what's the secret sauce underneath being able to Because

(07:18):
I'm sure you've had down moments. I'm sure, you've had
moments of despair, moments of wanting to give up. So
what's the secret, sauce to to develop that mindset so
that we don't give up and we keep finding our
way back into the saddle and moving forward.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
I think that yeah, And I want to comment on
what you said, which is how was I so positive
at nineteen years old being told I'm never going to
walk again? And it was a year and a half
prior I had started a career in sales. I was
hired by CUTC Cutlery, and on my second day of
my Cutco sales training, I learned something called the five
minute rule, which says it's okay to be negative when
something goes wrong, but don't dwell on it for more
than five minutes. In the times arbitrary you might need.

(07:51):
I think after my car accident, I needed five days.
To be honest, it wasn't five minutes. But the point
is this, I was taught to set a timer for
five minutes. When the timer goes off, you say, can't
change it, and acknowledge I can't change what happened in
the past, whether it was five minutes or five months,
or five years or five decades. The only logical choice
we have when we face adversity is to process it,
feel our emotions, but then say can't change it. Acknowledge

(08:15):
I can't change the past. So the only logical choice
I have is to be at peace with what I
can't change, be at peace with the past, and focus
my energy on what I can change. That was the
application that I you know, I applied that to the
car accident, to the cancer, and I learned it when
I was in sales. If I had to identify, though,
the number one mindset shift for an entrepreneur to be successful,

(08:35):
it's if another human being has ever overcome or accomplished
something that is evidence of what is possible for every
single one of us. And I trace that back to Cutco.
My second day of Cutco training, we learned about the
fast Start contest. It was the most anyone had ever
sold in the first ten days in a fifty year company.

(08:56):
Right so for in fifty years, the most anyone had
sold in their first ten days. And I was mediocre
my whole life up until that point. You know, I
was a C and D student. I was always getting
in trouble in school. I never accomplished. I wasn't a
star athlete, none of that, and something inside me, this
belief that I just shared, developed. I want wait a minute,
if another human being has ever sold x amount of

(09:18):
cutco in their first ten days, that means that it's
possible for me. That's evidence in what's possible for me.
And I think that one of the biggest problems with
human beings in general, but especially entrepreneurs, is we create
separation between who we are and where we are on
our journey and other people that we deem to be
more qualified, more successful further along. I know I'm guilty

(09:42):
of this. I look at people in my industry and
whether it's authors or speakers or entrepreneurs, and I go, man,
they're so much more you know, charismatic, or there's so
much more detail oriented, there so much further along, or
they're such a bigger network and they've sold so many
more books than me. Whatever it is, we create a separation,
and what we need to do is we need to
create a connection. We need to create we need to

(10:02):
look for the similarity of Oh, they're a human being
that started at square one, right, and everybody started as
a baby learning to walk and then evolved and so
I think that's the biggest thing in entrepreneurship. If you're
facing a challenge, somebody else has overcome that challenge, and
that means you can too, if you aspire to achieve

(10:24):
something that you at this point seems so far out there.
For me, it was to change one million lives one
morning at a time. It was to sell a million
copies of The Miracle Morning. As a self published author,
I had no idea where to begin. But I look,
I studied there are other people that have done what
I'm trying to do. That means it's possible for me.
So that's where you start with the belief that it's possible,

(10:45):
and then you go learn from them and figure out
what they did. Like this event that you're putting on
now is doing for people, right, learning from others, and
that was it. You model what they do, and then
you can get the same results that they got, if
not greater.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Well, that's an incredibly powerful distinction once again, because you know,
I study everything everyone I can, and I'm guilty of
that too. Sometimes they're like, oh, they're so far along,
they've done so much, they're so accomplished, you know, and
you can start to feel small or something right, or
get humidated. But that shift you're talking about, they're a
human being. It's funny, you know when you sometimes we
idolize all kinds of people and then sometimes we have

(11:19):
the opportunity to meet them in person, and they may
be incredible in prison, but there's still just a human being, right,
you know, they're ordinary human beings and if they can
do it, we can do it too. So that's really
a critical mindset shift. And you know what I hear
you saying around both those things in terms of overcoming
adversities as you've done, and then that mindset shift. You know,
it's a relationship between logic and emotion. So those distinctions

(11:41):
you made are very logical if you think about they
make a lot of sense. They're very logical. And yet
entrepreneurs often very emotional and driven by emotion, and there's
a we can use emotions positively. I mean, emotions can
really debilitate us, but they can be used as positive energy.
So I wonder how that's worked for you in terms
of that balance between logic and emotions or are you
just naturally kind of doctor Spock?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
You know, I mean, in two words, it's emotional intelligence right.
I mean that's emotional intelligence is the ability to identify
and self regulate your emotional state. I think it's the
ultimate superpower because think about that. If you can identify
what causes your emotions and then you can regulate your
emotional state to the point where you literally go, what
do I need to feel today to be at my best?

(12:24):
And I know we're gonna talk about the Miracle Morning today,
but I'll get ahead of us a little bit. One
of the practices that I do in my Miracle morning
and all we've been saying the Miracle Morning in general,
I view it as this is a daily practice that
enables me to choose, consciously, choose what is the optimal
state that I need to be in today to be
at my best to achieve everything I want in my life.
And then I use a practice I call emotional optimization meditation,

(12:47):
where not just following my breath and clearing my mind,
but I actually ask that question and then I identify,
you know what today I really I've got this big
presentation or I've got this media fleet. I need to
be really connected to my purpose. I need to be
really present and open and enthusiastic and confident so I identify
the emotional state or states that I want to be in,

(13:08):
and then I write them down and I close my
eyes and I get myself into that state. Now to
do that, I might ask myself, when was the last
time that I showed up for something like this in
the way that I need to today, And I'll remember,
I'll go, that's right, and I'll recall that state and
I'll go back to that state, and once i feel

(13:28):
like I've got a hold of it, I'll set my
timer and I'll meditate or I almost like the word
marinate in that state and what happens. And literally, when
you do this, you're hardwiring your nervous system. You're reprogramming
your subconscious mind. You are acclimating, activating, and then you're programming,

(13:49):
if you will, that state so that you can access
it at will. And so for me emotions, I believe
that we don't have to be at the murder see
of our circumstances or outside forces human beings. Most of
us assume that our emotions are dictated by external forces.

(14:09):
If you meet someone and they're upset, you go, why
are you upset? They rarely take responsibility for the emotional
state that they're in, and they always have someone or
something to blame. Of course I'm upset, didn't you hear
what he said to me? Or of course I'm sad.
Don't you know what I lost? And for me, there's
value in all emotions. That five minute rule that I
talked about earlier, that was the idea of that. Hey,

(14:29):
you set your timer for five minutes when something goes wrong,
and you allow yourselves to fully feel, authentically feel whatever
emotion comes up for you, cry, vent, scream, whatever it is.
But understand that once you express the emotion and you
feel it, you then get to choose whether you continue

(14:52):
to dwell in that state. And if it's not productive,
why would you do that. It's only a lack of awareness.
It's unconn concious emotional experience. Where you would dwell in
a state that doesn't serve you. That's detrimental to you.
And that's why the five minute rules, where you set
the timer, it goes off after five minutes, and it
reminds you, okay, wait, you've been dwelling on this for

(15:13):
five minutes. You've been allowing yourself to fully express and
experience those emotions, and then you consciously go now you're conscious,
and you go, okay, do these emotions serve me? Do
I maybe need another five minutes, or maybe I need
the day, Maybe I need to take a day to
just feel That's fine, But the point is that you
are living a conscious life and you're going okay. At

(15:36):
some point, whether it's five minutes or five whatever, you
set the time and you go, I'm done. I can't
change what happened. Now, what emotion would best serve me?
Where do I want to go from here? And what
mental and emotional state is most congruent and aligned with
where I want to go? Great? How do I get
in that state? And on day one that might feel foreign,

(15:57):
you're like, well this is weird. Normally I get upset,
I stay upset. But with practice of this five minute role,
you eventually take control of your emotional state. And when
I was diagnosed with cancer, the day that I was diagnosed,
I didn't even have the timer for five minutes that
I've done this for so long. I went, I can't
change it. I have cancer. I've been given a twenty
to thirty percent chance of surviving. What is the best

(16:20):
course of action? And what state should I be in?
And I told my wife the day I was diagnosed. Sweetheart,
I know this is hard for you, and I am
so sorry that our family has to go through this,
but I want you to know I've decided I will
be the happiest and the most grateful I have ever
been while I endure the most difficult time in my life.
And I want to invite everyone to consider again, these

(16:42):
aren't mutually exclusive, and it isn't just bad things happen
to me so I have to feel bad. It's no
matter what happens to me. I have the power to
consciously choose how I feel, what I think, and how
I show up to any experience that I'm facing in
my life.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
This is so so incredibly liberating and empowering, and it
just really touches me to hear you share this in
the power with what you share, because it is so
absolutely liberating. And you know, when you're preparing yourself in
your morning routine and you know you have this or
that activity and interview what to do later that day
of presentation, and you know you want access to that state,
so you're cultivating or as you said, marinating in it

(17:21):
so to give yourself ready access to it. That is
an emotional state, but it's a constantly chose an emotional
state that will support what it is you want to accomplish.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, and now I want to say this to give
a little bit of context or broader context. Let's say
my wife and I got in an argument the night before.
So this is not business at all. Right, we had
an argument night before. Now you're supposed to make up
before bed. Sometimes it doesn't go that way, right, And
then when I wake up for a miracle morning, and
I'm remember, oh, man, she frustrated me. And I know
she's frustrated. I know that that emotional state of being

(17:54):
in a state of anger or frustration or resentment that
does not serve our marriage, That does not serve what
I'm ultimately after, which is a harmonious marriage for myself,
for my wife, for our kids. And so I will
use that meditation as well as the other savers practices
that I know we'll go into later. But I'll get
in a state of forgiveness, love, empathy. I'll remember what

(18:16):
do I'll even journal what I love about my wife,
what I appreciate about her. I'll think about the last
time that I felt connected and in love with her
and I'll get into the state, and then I'll visualize
her coming out of the bedroom and me greeting her
with eyes of love and forgiveness and empathy. So this
is just an example how you can use this meditation,
this intentional choosing of your optimal emotional state in any

(18:40):
from personal to professional circumstances every day of your life.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
I've often and a lot of programs I've taught of yours,
I've talked about the idea of a life by design
and different similar ideas of this. And you know, sometimes
people are resisting, Oh that that feels too structured too.
I just gotta love my life be what it is. Okay, Well,
good luck with that, because we're talking ourselves at the
mercy of all the circumstances, right, and now everyone else
deals with those circumstances. So let's talk about it. So

(19:06):
we're going to talk about the Savers Miracle morning regimen
in a moment, but let's talk about this morning thing
to begin with. I mean, a lot of us have
heard as entrepreneurs that most billionaires get up at five am,
and you know, that whole idea, and you know, someone's
may go, I don't know hidy, I'm really more of
a six am, six thirty am kind of guy, because
to get up at five am, I'd have to go
to bed so early it would cut off time I
have with my wife in the evening. But I know

(19:28):
you make the point that it doesn't have to be
a particular time of the morning. The thing is that
you create a routine you do in the morning. So
I wonder if you could just talk about, let's disabuse
anybody's resistance around the morning thing to begin with.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, so Miracle Morning. I created that when I was
not a morning person, but I needed. You know, it
was the two thousand and eight recession, and I had
lost over half of my clients, half of my income,
and I was my house is foreclosed on. I was
at a really low point in my life, and so
I went, Okay, I've got to change something. I've got
to do something different. And what I determined was, I've
got to dedicate time every day to personal developpment, but

(20:00):
not haphazardly. I've got to be extraordinarily intentional. And in fact,
it was this Jim Rone quote, your level of success
will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And in
my head, I quantified that, well, I want level ten
success in every area of my life. I want to
be as happy as I possibly can, and as healthy,
and as financially abundant and secure and you name it.

(20:21):
I want level ten success and fulfillment. If Jim Ron
is saying my level of success will seldom exceed my
level of personal development, then in my mind I thought,
I've got to create a level ten personal development routine
that enables me to become the level ten version of
myself in terms of my knowledge and my beliefs and
my mindset and my habits and my capabilities, so that

(20:42):
I become the person that I need to be, who's
capable of creating the success I want in my life. Okay,
So then I studied what are the world's most successful
people do for personal development? And I was looking for
one practice and I ended up with a list of
the six most timeless, proven personal development practices, and I thought, well,
I can't do all of these. And then right when

(21:04):
I said that, I went what if I did all
of these? What if instead of choosing one, what if
I did all six of these timeless practices? And then
the question of well, I'm busy like, I don't. I
wake up and I work until I go to bed
right way, At that time, I didn't have kids or anything,
And I go, when am I going to fit this in?
And so I'm looking at my schedule. I'm looking through
my calendar. I'm going, Okay, well, in the evening, I'm exhausted.

(21:26):
I was thinking maybe after work. I go, my brain
is fried. There's no way I'm going to be in
a great state to do my personal development. So then
I'm looking maybe like middle of the day, and I'm going,
there's no time. And then I'm looking at the morning.
And again, if you're listening to this and you're not
a morning person, I'm like, I already I think I
woke up at the time. Yeah, I already woke up
at six am to get ready for work. So I go,
what am I gonna do? We give at five am?

(21:48):
And at that time, I hadn't discovered Robin Sharma and
the five Am Club and all that. I don't if
that existed yet. But I went, this was two thousand
and eight, by the way, I go, what if I
woke up at five am and I dedicated the first
hour of the day to six Most timeless, proven personal
built in practices in the history of humanity. I would
become a level ten version of myself very quickly and

(22:09):
now pretty much listening. By the way, I want to
be clear, you do not have to wake up at
five am to do the miracle morning. You don't have
to do it for an hour. You can do it
as little as six minutes. So it's very flexible, right.
But for me, I'm like, I'm all in. I'm gonna
wake up an hour earlier. I'm gonna do all six practices.
After my very first miracle morning, it was a complete
shift in my consciousness, in my paradigm. I went, if

(22:31):
I start every day like this, because for six months
I had been this downward spiral into financial ruin and depression,
and my very first miracle morning, I went, wait a minute,
If I start every day with this much clarity and
energy and motivation, and I'm gaining the knowledge and I'm
articulating my priorities, I mean, all of the things I'm
doing in this miracle morning, I thought, it's only a

(22:53):
matter of time before I become the person I needed
be to change my life. And it happened in less
than two months. In less than two months at the
heighth of the Great recept and I more than doubled
my income and everything turned around. And it turned around
so fast. I told my wife it felt like a miracle,
and she named the mirror. She goes, it's your miracle morning.
And I didn't know it would be a book idea
any of that. But well, I share this part because

(23:14):
I was not a morning person but my very first
But and here's why, most of us, if you think
about it, when we were growing up and our brains
were forming as children, very few of us got out
of bed on our own accord. We got out of
bed when our parents forced us to get out of
bed and go to school. And so it's only natural

(23:36):
that as our brain was developing and forming as children
through our teenage years, we developed a resistance and this
limiting belief that says, I'm not a morning person. Why
you a morning person? Why hey waking up in the morning.
My parents made me wake up, and I sleep in
every chance I get, if it's the weekend, I get
to sleep in. So as children, we developed this limiting

(23:56):
belief that says I'm not a morning person, and then
it carries in our childhood and for many people the
rest of their lives. But you have to step back
and go, wait a minute, why am I not a
morning person? When you understand, oh, it's because I was
forced to wake up against my will for the first
eighteen years of my life. No wonder, I'm not a
morning person? Can I become a morning person? And then

(24:17):
you go you asked the question I asked earlier, when
you asked me what's the number one mindset shift for
an entrepreneur to be successful? If another human being has
done something, there's evidence you can do it too. There
are now millions of people around the world that do
the Miracle Morning. We survey them regularly fleet seventy two
percent of them said they had never in their entire

(24:39):
life believed they could become a morning person. So if
those seventy two percent of the million plus people have
never thought they could become a morning person and they did,
you can too. And I'll just say this without I'm
not trying to sell the book, but that was a
big when I wrote The Miracle Morning. That was my fear.
How am I going to hold someone's hand from I'm

(25:01):
not a morning person and I've never been one and
I've tried and it doesn't work for me too. I'm
waking up doing the Miracle Morning every day and it's
a lifelong habit. So the entire book holds someone's hand
psychologically speaking through that journey from not a morning person,
don't even want to be one, to the miracle morning
is changing my life and this is going to be

(25:21):
a lifelong habit.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
I absolutely grew up that way. I didn't want to
go to bed at night, I didn't want to get.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Up in the morning. Now that's old. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
I ended up struggling with becoming a morning person, but
I am today. And that's pretty good evidence. You got
seven hundred and twenty thousand out of a million who
were not mourning people and now they're doing the Miracle morning.
So that's pretty good evidence. I mean, the idea if
only one person could do it means we could all
do it. But if you got seven hundred and twenty thousand,
that's pretty darn good evidence. Well, let's go to each
of the savers a little bit. We'll have to limit

(25:49):
the amount of detail because but listen, sure I thought
all six of them.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
So originally these six practices, it was meditation, affirmation. Well,
it doesn't matter what they work. But when I was
right the book, I was frustrated because I didn't have
a way to organize them into a cohesive way to
remember them. And my wife said, why don't you get
at the stories and see if you can swap any
of the words with synonyms and then form it into
an acronym. And I kind of scratched my head and

(26:14):
I go, that might be brilliant, right, And meditation became
silence the first s in savers, and journaling became scribing,
which is the final s in savers, and the rest
remained the same. So the first s is silence. That's
your meditation or your prayer. It's about quieting your mind,

(26:34):
palming your nervous system, creating mental space for mental clarity.
And they're over fourteen hundred scientific studies now that prove
the psychological so the mental, emotional benefits and even physical
benefits lowering your cortisol levels of meditation, it could also
be prayer. It could also be breath work. It's about
starting your day though, calming the nervous system, and creating

(26:57):
an optimal mental and emotional state of peace and space
to move through the rest of your day. The A
and Savors is for affirmations, and this one's really important.
I think it's the anchor of your miracle morning because
you get to articulate in writing. These aren't the goofy
old affirmations that where you just tell yourself something that's
not true, like I'm wealthy even if you're not, you know,

(27:20):
or I'm a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly like.
These are kind of goofy affirmations that I think if
affirmations a bad rap. The way that I teach, affirmations
are practical, actionable, rooted in truth, and results oriented. So
here's a quick three part formula. Step one, affirm what
you're committed to. So every area of your life. In

(27:41):
your health, I am committed to blank, no matter what,
there's no other option. In terms of your finances, I
am committed to blank, no matter what. There's no other option.
Now the blank could be an outcome, like I'm committed
to earning one hundred thousand dollars this year, no matter what.
There's another option. It could be a habit. I'm committed
to making twenty prospecting calls a day, no matter what.
The there's another option that is Step one, affirm what

(28:02):
you're committed to. Step two, affirm why it's a must
for you. Write down the reasons underneath the commitment as
to why are you willing to do whatever it takes.
And when you read these every single day, you are
programming your subconscious mind to be committed and reminding yourself
why you're willing to take the actions do the things

(28:22):
you need to do whether you feel like it or not.
And the number three third step is a firm which
actions you will take and win. This is where the
rubber meets the road. Once you're clarified your commitment and
why it's a must for you, get clear on, Okay,
what are you going to do and when are you
going to do it? If you're committed to losing twenty
pounds this year and this is a must because you

(28:43):
want to get healthy and have more energy, well what
are you going to do? So the third step is
a firm which actions will take and win. So I
will go for a run Monday through Friday at seven am,
right like you get clear? And now this affirmation's formula
is the anchor. It's the foundation of everything you want
for your life. Because if you follow those three steps

(29:06):
in each category of your life as a parent, as
an entrepreneur, in your health, et cetera, now it's just
a matter of reading those every day and living with integrity,
living in alignment with what you're affirming every single day.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
So I believe you have templates for these affirmations, for
this structure on your website or that to company your book. Right.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, So in the new edition, the Miracle Morning Update
and Expanded Edition has seventy new pages of content. That's
one of the things I did is we have resources
on the website, but I put a bunch of them
in the book so you could actually go through and
brainstorm and then write out your affirmations while you're reading
the book. So, yeah, I'm glad you asked.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
And we were talking before about emotional intelligence and the
positive power of emotions. So when you're doing these affirmations,
is it important to sort of feel them as you're
doing them.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
I believe that feeling that is crucial with everything that
you do. Right, we are emotional creatures, and in order
to be in you know, if you're read your affirmations
in a lazy, tired, lethargic state, right. Imagine if you go,
I am committed to achieving my financial goals. Right, It's

(30:12):
important because right, that's not gonna get you where you
want to go. So yeah, reading them with conviction within.
I'll give you a quick example. When I was given
a thirty twenty to thirty percent chance of surviving cancer,
I was scared. I was optimistic, but I couldn't help
but think of Okay, well I'm a father and I
could die. I can't pretend that that's not a possibility.
Like I'm gonna put my faith in it, but I

(30:34):
have to make sure that my affairs are in order
for my kids and my wife. So it this really
hard mindset, Clint, where I had to maintain unwavering faith
I was gonna survive while I planned for my death.
Very difficult to do, but I had to do it.
So I realized that dwelling in fear, as I said earlier,
that was not productive. So I followed this formula Number one.

(30:56):
I am committed to beating cancer and living to be
one hundred plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids.
No matter what, there is no other option. I read
that every day with such conviction fleet that it became
my mental and emotional reality. Number two. I had four
reasons why it was a musk for me. I was
committed to beat cancer, for my wife, for my kids,

(31:16):
for my parents, for myself, and for humanity. There were
five reasons, and I elaborated on each of those in
my affirmations. Why I was doing it for my wife,
why for my kids? Then the third step, what actions
will I take? And when I clarified every holistic protocol
that I would do in addition to chemotherapy to survive cancer.
So I read those affirmations with such emotion and conviction

(31:39):
every day that I truly believe they saved my life,
like they were my anchor to optimize my mindset and
design and influence my behaviors so that I knew what
I wanted, I knew why I wanted it, what I
was committed to, and I was clear on what I
was going to do in order to achieve it. The
VA is for visualization, and I won't go through the

(32:00):
rest of these quicker affirmation does my favorite spend time
on because I think it's so important visualization. All you
have to think about is that visualization. It's been taught
I think wrong in a lot of ways. But think
about how athletes visualize. And here's what I mean. We've
been taught to create a vision board, visualize the end result.

(32:21):
Now there's value in that when you visualize yourself crossing
the finish line, achieving the goal, and you do so
with emotion. You generate the compelling emotions of what it's
going to feel like to achieve your goals. That compels
you to move forward. But it's the least important part
of visualization in my opinion. The second part is the
most important part. This is what athletes do. Yes, they

(32:43):
visualize the championship. That gets amotivated. But the second part
is you mentally rehearse yourself taking the actions today that
will ensure you get to the goal down the road.
So you mentally rehearse yourself. For me, when I was
training for a marathon, I would mentally rehearse myself like
a movie, getting dressed in my running clothes, going to

(33:05):
the front door, opening my front door, seeing the sidewalk.
I'd recite my affirmations one more time of why I
was committed to go on that marathon, what I was
going to do. And so what happens is when you
mentally rehearse the actions in a peak state. Then when
it's time to actually take those actions, you are infinitely
more compelled and motivated and driven to do the things

(33:29):
that you mentally rehearsed while being in a peak state
during the morning. That's visualization the exercise not rocket science here.
It's not about going through the gym. It's moving your
body first thing in the morning. I go to the
gym in the afternoon, but I move my body for
five minutes in the morning. I do jumping jacks, I
do stretching, and as little as sixty seconds of jumping

(33:51):
jacks will take your mental alertness from a two in
the morning to like an eight. I mean you're because
the point of morning exercise, it's not about building muscle
in the morning, it's about getting the blood and oxygen
to flow through your body, including up to your brain.
Right when you do jumping jacks or whatever. Go for

(34:11):
a brisk walk and now you're going, okay, I'm awake. Right,
you're breathing heavy. Now you're awake. Now you're alert, and
now you have far more energy that you've generated through
exercise and mental clarity to be effective throughout the morning
and throughout the rest of the day. The R is
for reading. Again, there's no rocket science here. But whatever

(34:31):
you want to achieve in your life. You want to
improve your marriage, there's a book for that. You want
to make more money, there's a book for that. And
it's simply starting your morning by doing a little bit
of reading and if you do some math. Let's say
you read ten pages in the morning. Now, if you're
a decent reader, that's like, no, ten minutes. If you're
a slow reader, that's twenty minutes. But let's say ten
page today. That's three thousand, six hundred and fifty pages

(34:54):
a year. That's the equivalent of eighteen two hundred page
self help books or books on achieving the things you
want to achieve. Can you imagine fleet if anyone listening,
if you read eighteen books are cut in half five
pages a day, that's nine books just under a book
a month on an area of your life that you

(35:15):
want to improve. That means in one year you could
master you could learn how to master your health, your wealth,
your relationships, your fitness, you name it right or one
book away. And the final ESSM. Sabers is for scribing,
which is a fancy word for writing or journaling, and
that the power of taking the sixty thousand thoughts that
go through your head every day and clarifying the ones

(35:38):
that are of the most value in writing every morning.
And for me, there's two things I write in the morning.
Minimum Number one, what am I grateful for? And I
take it from my head and I put my hand
on my heart and I close my eyes and I
picture the thing I wrote down, and I take it
from intellectual gratitude that's up in my head like a

(35:58):
checklist to heartfelt, soulful gratitude that enhances my mental and
emotional well being. I picture my kids and I smile,
and I think about how much I love them and
how grateful I am for them, or my wife, or
the roof over my head, or my business, or my clients,
you name it. And the second thing I do is
I look at my to do list for the day.
It's usually got ten to fifteen twenty things on it,

(36:20):
and I ask myself, what's the one thing, what's the
number one thing on my to do list that will
move the needle the most? Because that's usually the thing
that we avoid. Human nature is to gravitate towards the
easiest thing with the least scary consequence, check it off
and trick ourselves into thinking we're being productive when we're
really just being busy. So I use scribing to transition

(36:42):
from the miracle morning into and it closes it out
with gratitude. Then I'm looking at the to do list
and I'm going, Okay, what's the number one thing that
I'm committed to do today to earn the right to
work on? And then I look at what's the number
two most important thing to get done, and then number
three and so on. And that's how I optimiz my
productivity every single day is using the final essence savers

(37:05):
describing practice to transition into the workday.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
And this is a proven formula. You've done it, and
you've created incredible success with it, and at least a
million people around the world are doing it, if not more.
And I can tell you I'm doing it every morning.
It's made a huge difference in my life. How do
we set ourselves up for success? Because if I end
up staying up late or eating a lot late at night,
or there are other things where I'm not sleeping, well,

(37:28):
it's gonna be tough or it's gonna get easy to
get wake up to my God, I don't feel good
enough today. I'm gonna skip that. I can't do it.
So how do we set ourselves up for I know
in your newest iteration of your book you talk about
the miracle evening. How you set yourself up for success?

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, I've always said, ever since the original Miracle Morning,
published over a decade ago, that a miracle morning starts
the night before with your preparation. But I always had
a very minimal preparation. It was basically I had written
a set of evening affirmations based on the premise that
what you think about before bed comes your first thought
in the morning. And all use a couple examples, like

(38:04):
when I was a kid Christmas Eve, falling asleep, all
I could think, Oh my gosh, Santa's coming in the morning.
I'm getting presents in them. Ah wah yeh kids, Christmas Tomorrow.
I went to bed and thinking about Christmas, excited. As
soon as my eyes opened in the morning, what was
my first thought? It was the last thought I had
before bed, and I had the same level of energy

(38:25):
and enthusiasm that I fell asleep with that. I was
excited when I woke up. Now on a side note,
that to me was the miracle morning when I started
practicing and I realized I can recreate that state of
excitement every night before bed. But here's the problem. For
most people. They don't go to bed peaceful, grateful, or

(38:47):
excited for the morning. They go to bed stressful, worried,
anticipating the morning, not with the excitement, with anxiety. And
so if we go to bed, so not only does
it affect our quality of sleep. We can't fall asleep,
we can't stay asleep, but we go to bed thinking,
oh my god, I gotta wake up in the morning,
I've got so much on my to dolist, I'm so stressed,
the world's a crazy place. And then as soon as

(39:09):
our eyes open, it's the opposite of that Christmas morning
description I gave. And now we hit our before our
feet hit the floor. We're anxious, we're stressed, and we're overwhelmed.
And so for me, the simplest form was I'm going
to create bedtime affirmations that so I'm intentional about what
I think, what I focus on, what I tell my

(39:30):
subconscious every night before I fall asleep, so that I
go to bed at peace. I go to bed feeling grateful,
and I go to bed excited to wake up tomorrow
do my miracle morning and have the best start to
the day. And I was able to recreate that Christmas Eve,
Christmas Morning, you know, feeling every single day. So that's

(39:50):
the short of it. In the new edition of the book,
it's a twenty plus page chapter on the miracle evening.
And you mentioned what if I eat a lot, I
cover seven different steps before bed to create a ritual
to land the plane if you will right so that
you go to bed, and I call it it said,
a miracle evening is your strategy for blissful bedtime and

(40:12):
better sleep. And what inspired me to actually write that
chapter in the new edition is in twenty twenty, I
went through a six month period where I was suffering
after going through chemotherapy for over eight hundred hours over
three years, and I was suffering from extraordinary insomnia and
sleep deprivation where I was sleeping two to four hours
a night. I was suicidal. It was the worst time

(40:36):
in my life, worse than anything else that I've gone
through before that. And I figured out how to get
through it, and then I started asking my audiences at
this I speak all the time, and I'd be speaking
every company I spoke for, I raised my hand or
I said, raise your hand if you struggle to fall
asleep or stay asleep, and it was always roughly half
of the audience that raised their hand. And I thought, Okay,

(40:58):
I've figured out how to get through this and go
from horrific sleep to sleeping like a baby. And so
I put all of this into that Miracle Evening chapter.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
And when I read that story, I mean all the
adversity you've done with and it's so compelling and so
powerfully stories, and that one really hit me. The level
of insomna you were dealing with was really extreme and
took you all the way into suicidality, and you found
your way to work through it by basically, you know,
a lot of what we're talking about. We're talking about mindset,
we're talking about intention, We're talking about these practices we

(41:31):
can do to manage our motions and manage our thought processes.
And so we're really talking about in some ways, becoming
the architecture of our own brain, our own neural architecture, designing, programming,
And you know, we're talking about this maybe more psychological terms,
but there's a whole neural landscape underlying this, and there's
what we now know about neuroplasticity. We can literally reprogram

(41:53):
our own brains. We can completely shift our neural architecture
to create the life we want. And deeper than that,
if you get in that stuff, there's a whole quantum
theory level and everything. I mean, this is an amazing
phenomenon of the human being and we can literally become
the captains of our own ship, and it's kind of limitless.
And that's what you're pointing us in a direction.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Of Well, and you said something really important that a
lot of this is about mindset, and then you also
mentioned it's also about practices, and I really want to
highlight practices because practices are what cultivate the mindset and
make it sustainable. If anybody's ever gone to an event
like a Tony Robbins event, which I've been to, love
Tony been to his events, But if you've ever gone

(42:32):
to an event where it shifted your mindset, you're there
and you're like, oh my gosh, all these possibilities. I
see my potential, I see what's possible. But if you
didn't integrate practices into your life. Then when you went home,
you went back into the same practices, none of which
core cultivating the mindset that you were introduced to at

(42:54):
the event, and then nothing in your life changes. And
I've been there, I've done that. We can all relate
to that. The practice is that's what makes the Miracle morning.
People have asked me as an author, they go, like, hell,
I wrote a book, why is the Miracle Morning? So
like sticky, how is it this word of mouth phenomenon?
Like how are you doing this? And I've had to

(43:16):
reverse engineer and I go, you know what it is.
Most books shift your mindset, but it short lived because
when people get to the end of the book, they
don't do anything differently. They put the book away, they go, wow,
that was amazing, But all they do is start reading
another book and now they have a different mindset shift.
The Miracle Morning, inherently is about integrating daily practices that

(43:37):
enable you to keep cultivating that mindset indefinitely. So yeah,
it's very important. The mindset is important. The practices are
what cultivate the mindset. And if you have a short
term mindset shift but you don't support it with practices,
it's likely going to fade away.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
And really populinsight is to realize that we're always practicing.
The question is what do we practice?

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, and our old practices, our old habits, will take
us right back into the old way of being unless
we put in these new practices. And for example, maybe
we have a gratitude practice. We're cultivating gratitude in our
affirmation or in our savior as routing team, Well, how
do we go from having a gratitude practice to becoming
a grateful person? Right? We do the practice a lot.

(44:21):
Right states become traits, and we repeat it again and
again and again, and pretty soon we've changed our brain
and we actually find that to be our baseline. Where
we've changed our baseline and it's completely possible, and it
read been such a powerful model of that. I'd like
to talk a little bit about here. I know life
balance is really important too. You have young kids now,
and you're really structuring your business life so you can

(44:43):
really spend time with kids, your kids so you don't
lose that and so you're really about succeeding in business
and succeeding in life, and so talk about that a
little bit. But then also about making it even bigger
than just my own success with my own kids there,
because you really you have a goal to really shift
humanities consciousness, a vision that's really keeping you moving forward
and inspiring you to make it more than just about

(45:04):
your own success. So I wonder if you could talk
about both balancing our life so our personal life and
our business life aren't at odds, and then making it
about something bigger as well.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, the early experiences that I had. But my choice is,
or my belief is that my purpose, and I think
this could be true for all of us. It could
be a universal purpose for anyone. But my purpose is
to It used to be to fulfill my potential so
that I can help other people fulfill theirs. Now that
was my first purpose that I ever wrote down, and

(45:34):
it is still one of my purposes. Yes, you can
have more than one. That's one thing I've realized is
it's not one life purpose. It's hey, what I have
more than one purpose? Just like right in your work,
you might have more than one purpose. So one of
my purposes to fulfill my potential to help other people
fulfill theirs. But now my purpose is to serve like
it is to serve, to be of service to others

(45:56):
and so. And it's aligned with that first purpose, because
the first purposes fulfill my potential in service of others.
But it starts with my family. And what I realized,
that's what my cancer journey taught me, is I was
a workaholic and I did not realize it. I was
so ambitious and I was so I had such big,
a big purpose. If I want to change the world

(46:18):
and help all these people, and my family would take
a back burner. Hey, sorry, I tell my wife's feed.
I gotta work again. I got this big thing, and
I'm changing lives and I'm making us money. And da
da da da da da da da dah. The cancer
journey taught me is I was valuing quantity over quality.
I was valuing changing the world over being fully present

(46:39):
and engaged with the three people who mattered most to me.
And I found this is true with far too many entrepreneurs. Again,
when I'm giving a speech, I'll say, how many of
you have families? Raise your hand and keep your hands up.
If family's your number one priority. All the hands that
go up, every single one of them stays up. I said, Okay,
put your hands back down. I want you to put

(47:00):
your hands back up. If I were to look at
your schedule right now, those of you that said families
your number one priority, if I were to look at
your schedule, would that be obvious? And very few hands
go back up? And so and that was me. And
so for me now, I have arranged my life, my schedule,
my work to only work when my kids are not

(47:23):
in school. So as soon as I wake my kids
up in the morning with my and then I get
them ready, and then I drive my daughter to school,
and my work day starts at nine because that's when
I get back from taking my daughter to school. Well,
I have to leave at three o'clock. In fact, as
soon as we're done in five minutes fleet, I'm getting
in the car and I'm going to pick up my
son from school and then I'm taking him to the YMCA.

(47:44):
So my whole world revolves around my family. And I'll
tell you that was not an overnight thing. That took
years for me to be able to shift my schedule.
And it was like I would try it and then
I would fall back. And so I want to get
like encourage anyone, give yourself grace, but make that a
north start. If you are an entrepreneur, whether it's your

(48:05):
family or it's your health, put what matters most first,
and it is not money at the very least, it's health,
and it's beyond that, it's relationships. I was just doing
a research for a podcast on how to be Happier
in twenty twenty five, and a Harvard study, very recent
study proved that the number one predictor of happiness is
the quality of our relationships and how often we sacrifice

(48:30):
our relationship because we got to work late and we
got to achieve this goal and that goal. So keep
in mind that I believe at the number one and
number two priorities in every human beings life. I'm projecting
here but health, relationships and consider I know for me,
I used to value productivity above health all the time
because I would take adderall that the doctor prescribed that

(48:52):
wasn't healthy for me, But boy could I focus for
hours and hours on end. As soon as I got cancer,
I stopped taking that. I stopped putting anything and synthetic
in my body, even if it helped me more productive.
So anyway, that's around the family piece and then around
the world piece. And why don't I give you a
site or I want to turn it back to you fleet?
How did you phrase that question around beyond family? How

(49:14):
did you phrase the question just.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
To you have a vision bigger than just the benefit
of your own success and your family's well being, That
there's something about really contributing to the largest sphere of
human consciousness in life.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah, the Miracle Morning mission is to elevate the consciousness
of humanity, one morning at a time. And I came
to that by realizing that, well, what does it mean
to elevate your consciousness? And that's what the Miracle Morning does.
Is when you do the Miracle Morning, you're doing these
daily practices, you're elevating your consciousness, which means to elevate
your awareness of your thoughts, words, and actions and how

(49:49):
they impact you and other people. So you're able to
be more intentional and to choose to shape your thoughts, words, actions,
and as we talked about earlier, your emotions. Right, So,
when you're doing the Miracle Morning and you're in silence
and you're doing contemplative meditation, and you're being aware of
the thoughts that you're thinking, you're aware of the emotions
that you're feeling, and then you're able to, from that

(50:10):
place of awareness, be more intentional about crafting, choosing, designing,
cultivating the optimal states, thoughts, behaviors. So when you do
your miracle morning, you elevate your consciousness. Consciousness is it's
the ultimate superpower. If you have a low level of
consciousness and you're not very aware and you're not very intentional,

(50:31):
then life's going to happen to you. When you elevate
your consciousness, you become the creator of your life and
you design the life. You create the life that you
want on your terms from a place of awareness and intention.
So my mission, and it goes back to the car accident,
all these experiences. I believe my responsibility and we could

(50:53):
all take this on, is that it's my responsibility to
help as many people as I possible we can. That's
what my life is about for the rest of my life.
And the neat thing about this client is I can't fail.
See a lot of us set these goals where they
are these black and white goals, and it's a paradigm

(51:14):
of if I achieve the goal, I succeed, Like I
want to earn a one hundred thousand dollars or a
million dollars or sell a million books or whatever. If
I achieve the goal, and I've set goals like this,
and I still do from time to time. But if
I achieve the goal, I succeed, and if I don't
achieve it, I failed. But if you wake up and
you just go, my mission is to make the biggest
impact I can make every single day and every person's

(51:37):
life that I come in contact with, from you know,
the waitress or the waiter at the restaurant, to the
you know, every human being, starting with the people that
are closest to you. So for me, it starts with
the my inner circle. And then once I've served my
family for the day and the kids are off at school,
well now I've got what six hours to serve humanity

(51:57):
to the best of my abilities.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Wow. I think that's a really powerful place to bring
our conversation in. I'd love to keep exploring some of
these things, but I want to make sure you're on
time to pick up your n And so this has
been really enjoyable and so powerful. There's so many powerful
distinctions here, and I really encourage all of our audience
to get more involved with your work. And there's links
right down below where you can find your way into
Hell's world and explore the miracle morning and how this

(52:21):
could make a dramatic trifference in your own life as
an entrepreneur. So, hello Rod, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Thank you, Flee, appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember,
real change happens when we commit to our growth, face
our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If
you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you. Take

(52:48):
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Hal Elrod | SAVERS: The Ritual That Changed Millions

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Hal Elrod | SAVERS: The Ritual That Changed Millions