The Power of Creating a Miracle Morning Routine – With Hal Elrod

Dr. Mindy  

So I’m just gonna jump right in. And while I have to start off by just welcoming you to the recenter podcast, I am so thirsty to have this conversation. So thank you for being here.

Hal Elrod  

It is such an honor Mindy, thank you for having me. And yeah, this is great is our second time talking in the last month, I think

Dr. Mindy  

I know, I really appreciated our conversation on your podcast. And for those of you listening, if you haven’t, we’ll link the podcast here. So you can go listen to our conversation over on House podcast. But here’s what I want to tell you. So I have this really interesting insight with my morning routine that I did a few years back that changed my life. And I think this was before your book came out. Because I had been having my own experience with changing up my day to day routine. Getting up earlier, dedicating my life to to the first two hours of my day was all about filling my bucket back up. And it changed everything in my world. And then your book came out and I was like, oh my god, somebody else under knows this. And I was so excited. So. So talk to me a little bit about the morning. And what why is it that it’s such an important time for us to dedicate to ourselves? Because that was what I found was I had to get up before kids, I had to get up before my husband, I had to get up before I went off to work and give to me first and then everything in my day worked perfectly. Why does that work?

Hal Elrod  

Totally. Well, first thing I want to say is if you are listening to this, and you’re not a morning person, do not turn this off, don’t tune out. I wasn’t a morning person when I had the same realization that you just described, right? It was actually 2008 the economy crashed, I was in a depression, I was losing my house being foreclosed on. I was out of shape, like I was in a bad spot. And I heard a quote from Jim Rohn. He said your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And I don’t know what it was, but he clicked for me like, if we’re measuring success on a scale of one to 10 however you define success, fulfillment, freedom, finances, whatever it is, everybody wants level 10 success. Like I think there’s an innate drive and desire within us to fulfill our potential to create the most extraordinary life that we can. But most of us wake up every day and life stays the same. And the reason is, we wait till the last minute to wake up. I mean, you think about that, like literally everybody listening can relate to where you look at your schedule, and you’re like, Okay, when’s the first moment that I have to be somewhere? Do something, take care of someone else? Or answer to somebody else? Right? And then you go, okay, and then what’s the last minute that I could set my alarm for? To not like, get fired? Have my kids taken away on and on and on? And there’s another group of people that like that you’re a part of many right that realize, oh, that’s there’s a better way. And here’s why. So to answer your question very directly, here’s why it’s so important. How you start your day, sets the tone, the direction and the context for the rest of the day. If you start your day, procrastinating until the last possible minute to get up, you are starting your day as a procrastinator. Right? You’re delay, you’re literally think about the alarm going off, and you’re going Oh no, it’s morning. Like that’s the worst energy. You’re, you know, you’re resisting life itself. It’s like, hey, a new day. And you’re like, No, I just would rather lay here unconscious for nine more minutes. News, right. And so what the Miracle Morning does is it allows you to start every day in a peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state, as a better version of who you were when you went to bed the night before. And I want to I want to frame it this way. And it’s funny, this recently came up for me, there are only two things that we have control over. Well, there’s really there’s one thing and then there’s there’s there’s variations of it, the one thing is ourselves, that’s all we can control. And since the pandemic hit in 2020, that which is out of our control via a virus or the government, an election, you name it, that which is out of our control has been amplified and magnified and thrown in our face. And then from every direction, right neighbors friends, I mean, it’s it’s so polarizing. And here’s what I want you to consider is that when you focus on things that are out of your control, you feel out of control. And you feel out of control, you experience stress and fear and depression and anxiety. And that’s how most people start their day. And it’s how most people end their day. Yeah. And so if the only thing we have control over is ourselves, you can break that down into there’s two parts. Number one is who you’re becoming, you have control over who you’re becoming, based on how much time you’re spending in silence, which is the first practice of the Miracle Morning, right? The books that you’re reading, what you’re learning, the journaling, you’re doing the self clarity that you’re gaining, right? How you’re who you’re becoming every day. That’s the first thing. And the second is how you’re showing up. And when you focus on becoming the best version of yourself every morning and start your day, you’re then able to show up as a better version of you, for the people that you love and the people that you lead. And that’s why the Miracle Morning, and you know, a morning routine in general to me is so, so life changing.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, you know, there’s so much of that, that I really resonate with, because when I decided to get up early, and what I did is I went from getting up at like, seven to getting up at five. So I didn’t just gently go into this, I went two hours early. And what I why I did it is I found that I was walking around my kids were very little at the time, I was, you know, I was working and balancing, you know, family with work. And I started getting stinking thinking. And so my brain was like, oh, there’s never enough time for me. No, but there’s nothing that I do in my day, that is okay for me. And I started to find myself falling into a really weird pattern of thought. And what ended up happening at that moment was that actually two of my closest friends had these dramatic life changes, they move to new areas. And I watched when they moved to a new area, their whole mindset shifted, because their routine changed. And there and all of a sudden, their lives could change, their marriages changed, everything about them changed. And I started to ask myself, you know what, like, I can’t, I’m not going to move anywhere. But I can move my routine. So how about I just changed my routine get up. So I give to myself first. So I stopped that, that pattern of thought. And then from there, let me see how my life changes. And I mean, how it was like within a couple of weeks ago that that I could no longer say that I wasn’t giving to myself, I no longer could say I didn’t have time because I had two hours every morning. I meditated. I listened read books, I infused inspiration. So you are 1,000% right on that.

Hal Elrod  

Yeah, well, a couple of things you said that I so resonate with number one is I did the miracle morning for a few days getting up an hour earlier. And I wasn’t a morning person. So like when I had when I heard this quote from Jim Rohn, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. My epiphany was this was 2008, by the way, at the height of like the Great Recession, which is why I like millions of Americans, my house is being foreclosed on, I can’t pay the mortgage. I mean, right now, my business is failing. And I heard this quote, and I go, Okay, if I want to achieve level 10 success in every area of my life, my health, my relationships, my finances, according to Jim Rohn, and it makes sense, I need to develop myself into a level 10 person, like a level 10 version of me, I need to develop my habits, my mindset, my beliefs, my skills. If I want level 10 success, I’ve got to ratchet my level of personal growth up. And, and I’m like, When am I going to do it? It’s like you I’m looking at a schedule like I’m, I’m packed, like I weighed in a bedtime, I woke up at 6am right to get ready for work. I started work at seven. And then I’d worked until you know, my eyes were bleeding, and I couldn’t look in the computer anymore. And you know, and I’d go to watch TV for an hour and go to bed, rinse and repeat. And so as I’m looking at the schedule, I go, when am I going to fit in this hour of personal development? And I’m like, like my eyes kept getting drawn to 5am. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, I’m not a morning person. And I remember this quote from one of my mentors, and if you’re listening, you might write this one down. It was so simple, but so profound. He used to always say his name’s Kevin Bracy. He would say, hell, if you want your life to be different. As obvious as this might sound, you have to be willing to do something different first. And I think for most of us like it’s like, yeah, that makes sense. But we don’t we just want things to change. But we don’t want to change because change is painful, right? But the crazy part is, even though I wasn’t a morning person, I’m like, Alright, I’m going to do it. I wrote my schedule. 5am personal development. This wasn’t it wasn’t called the Miracle Morning on day one. It wasn’t a book idea. Like none of that. But here’s the crazy part. At that time in my life, I had been depressed for six months. It was this downward spiral where I’m losing clients. I’m losing money. I’m going in debt at my house. I’m trying to save it. I finally can’t, you know, I’m 30 years old. My wife’s pregnant like, you know, I thought I was living the dream. I just bought a house a year and a half prior right now I’m like, about to move back in with my dad, which I did. Um, but that first night, I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, like think about like the night before a vacation when you’re a kid or or like your first day back at school when you can’t wait to see your friends. Like, let me ask you this, even if you’re not a morning person, was it hard to get out of bed on those days where you were so excited to wake up and man that night? I was like, I can’t wait to try this. And I woke up the next morning and the night before I had Googled 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 six. It was silence, which is, you know, meditation or prayer, Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading and scribing, which is a fancy word for journaling. But it’s an acronym SAV, ers, the savers. And I went, well, which of these should I do? Which is the best one? And there was no clear answer. And the epiphany was, wait, what if I just did all of them? What if I woke up an hour earlier, and I did the six most timeless proven personal development practices in the history of humanity that the world’s most successful people have swarmed by for centuries. I go, that would be the ultimate personal development routine. Woke up the next morning, I fumbled my way through it, like I didn’t know how to meditate at that time, affirmations felt super inauthentic the way I learned them online, right? Like I’m going through these practices, but even sucking at them. At the end of that hour. It’s very similar to what you said, Monday, I’m like, This is it. If I if I start every day with this much clarity, and energy and peace of mind, and motivation, and gaining new knowledge, it’s only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be to turn my finances around to turn my life around. And the last thing I’ll say on that is this. I was thinking one year, because I had read the compound effect before and I was like, I’ll get 1% better every day. And one year from now, I can have a totally different life. Yep. And Mindy, it happened in less than two months. In less than two months, I have more than doubled my income. I went from six clients barely, I couldn’t pay the bills with six clients. Two months later, I had 14 clients. So I doubled my income was above water. Physically, I hadn’t exercised in six months after a miracle morning and I thought how could I go to level 10 fitness, I thought, I’m going to run an ultra marathon, I’m going to run 52 miles. I’ve never run a mile, except for in PE class in high school. But I’m gonna run 52 miles and my depression didn’t even take two months to go away. It was gone within a day or two not gone. But it was it was fading because I think one of the main causes of depression, and I’m not like a professional here. But it’s hopelessness, right? If you lose hope that’s depressing. And because my income no matter what I tried, kept going down and down and down, not to mention the economy. We’re in the worst recession of that time in decades. I’m scared, everybody’s scared. But that very first day I went, this is going to work. And so I wasn’t depressed. Because now I had hope. I had clarity. This is the thing. And I went to my wife. After the two month mark, I signed on to coaching clients that day. And I can remember I can picture meeting or in the hallway of our house, I said, Sweetheart, I just signed on to more coaching clients, I’ve officially doubled our income. It’s all because this morning routine, it feels like a miracle. And she goes, it’s your miracle morning. And I go I like that miracle morning. And so I wrote on my scheduled miracle, you know, and then like one thing led to another I tied it to my coaching clients, it worked for them just like it worked for me. And I thought if this worked for them, and they weren’t morning people and I wasn’t a morning person that worked for me, the Miracle Morning, like I have a responsibility to share this with the world. And you know, then I started writing the book and all the thing but that’s like the the origin story of how it organically all just kind of came to be

Dr. Mindy  

amazing. You know, I think that there’s two reasons that it works the way it worked for you and the way it worked for me. And I’m sure for the way of when you say 3 million people have bought your

Hal Elrod  

book, though. You said they just reinforced somewhere in that range. Yeah, three or 4 million.

Dr. Mindy  

That’s amazing. I can tell you as an author to sell three to 4 million books is like, you know, hats off my friend. That’s pretty pretty freakin amazing. But what what I think happened for me is it was and what I hear in your story, it was a pattern interrupt. And so if you go and you look at Neuro Linguistic Programming, a lot of these old patterns we get stuck in that are no longer serving us become just like automatic reactions. And we don’t even realize that we’re in this stinking thinking or the way we’re showing up every single moment of the day is actually building us a life that’s adding to the depression and anxiety. So when I was when I flipped my routine, and I started getting up earlier, it like changed my nervous system, and it kind of woke it up. The second thing that I think why it works, and I’m curious if you’ve done any research on this, is that if you look at when you go into sleep and out of sleep, our brains are a little bit in this theta wave state when we’re coming out of sleep, and it’s in theta waves that we are able to reprogram our subconscious. So I actually learned this from Bruce Lipton because he believes that from zero to seven, we get Most of our conditioning is hardwired into our subconscious. And I when he said that I was like, well, that’s really depressing. How am I? How do you want to do that? And he said, Well, affirmations? And I said, Well, okay, but affirmations? I don’t know. Like, they haven’t always worked for me. And he said, Do you do them before you go to bed and when you get up in the morning, because the brain is in this state of wave state, so you actually have a door into the subconscious. So I’m curious if that part of why it’s so miraculous is you don’t even realize that you are changing hardwired conditioning that may have been in there since you were seven years old.

Hal Elrod  

Yeah, I think that’s, you know, I talk in the book, one of the main things I talk about is reprogramming your subconscious mind. So what you just said, and, and if you’re okay with it, I’d actually love to dive into affirmations. So please, yeah, so again, so the so if you’re listening the Miracle Morning, the Savers is this is the process, right? The six habits, silence, Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. I think affirmations are the most Miss taught, misused and misunderstood form of personal development. And they’re the most effective. And here’s what I mean, the, the way, we’ve been taught affirmations, there are two problems with the way that most people have been taught affirmations. Number one is, we’re taught to lie to ourselves, essentially, and tell ourselves that something is true, that is not yet true, that we want to be true. And in the idea that we’re going to trick ourselves into believing that it’s true.

Dr. Mindy  

When you put it in those words, I’m like, yeah, that you know, it’s really your your your only hardwiring, what you don’t believe if you do it, right. So yeah, go ahead.

Hal Elrod  

If you’re, if you if you’re struggling financially, you would be taught to say something to affirm something like, okay, just tell yourself, you’re wealthy, just say I am wealthy, and just say it over and over and over and until you believe it. Now, there may be some merit in that it’s probably better than saying, I suck, I’m broke, right? But here’s the problem. The truth will always prevail, you know the truth. So if you’re saying I am followed by anything that is not factually true, then you are creating an internal conflict as if we don’t have enough of them. Right. And you’re fighting yourself, and you’re like, I am wealthy, and then your subconscious like, dude, no, you’re not. You’re like, sure. I’m doing my affirmations. I am a millionaire. Like, you’re not even a thousandaire, bro. Like, what are you talking about? You’re like, no quiet, I’m doing so so the truth will always prevail. That’s the first problem. The second problem is we’re taught to use this flowery passive language that produces a magical result independent of any effort. I’ll give you another example. Let’s say you check your bank account balance in the morning on your phone and you’re going Oh god, I’m negative. I’m negative again, right? Or, or I’m or I’m, I’m broke, whatever. Okay, I gotta pull out my affirmations. And you do these very popular affirmations that say something along the lines of I am a money magnet. money flows to me effortlessly. And in abundance. Oh, that feels good. Now, why do people why is that affirmation stood the test of time. I don’t think it’s because it works. I think it’s because it makes people feel better. It gives them temporary relief from their money woes, because they but if you check the phone and you’re like, Oh, I’m negative, you go I’m a money magnet, money’s gonna flow to me effortlessly in an abundance. Oh, God, that feels so much better than this dress I was feeling a few minutes ago, when I was focusing on reality, which is that I don’t have money. But but it’s not going to magically flow into your life because you’re some sort of Money Magnet, right? And again, right not discounting what we can’t see, there may be some merit, but let me teach you what I believe and what you know, the Miracle Morning community has adopted as a very effective, practical results oriented process for creating affirmations. Step one, there’s three steps, step one, affirm what you’re committed to. In life, we don’t get what we want, because we want it we don’t get what we want because it magically attracts and flows into our life without us doing anything except for, you know, sitting on our couch and humming or visualizing or whatever. In life, you get what you’re committed to. So saying I am wealthy when you’re not wealthy is a lie, saying I am committed to becoming wealthy that’s rooted in truth. And it’s also reinforcing the only thing that will make you wealthy which is your level of commitment to getting there. So I’m committed to blank. Here’s the way it looks in template form. If you’re writing the affirmation, it’s I am committed to blank no matter what there is no other option In and you affirm it with so much conviction that it becomes your reality and you become committed. I’ll give you a quick example. Six years ago, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer and I was given a 20% chance of surviving 20 to 30%. It was a acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And in the beginning, I was afraid that what if I die, you know, I had a seven year old daughter and a four year old son, and the doctors are saying there was a 70 to 80% chance I was going to die in the next few weeks. And at the time I was in the hospital, my heart was failing, my lungs were failing and my kidneys were failing this cancer attacks your organs very quickly. So I double down on a miracle morning, I doubled down on the Savers I started reading only books on you know, natural ways of healing cancer. But the most important tool was my affirmations. And that first step said, I am committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old, alongside Ursula and the kids, no matter what, there is no other option. And Mindy, whenever I felt the fear of what if, what if I do everything right, and I still die? What if I left my mark with the miracle morning and I’m now’s my time, like, whoa, who knows. And I went, that fear is not serving me right now. That’s not healing my body fear is a stress response. And so I would replace the fearful thoughts by pulling out my affirmations which were on my bedside table, they were in my phone, they were in my car, they were ever they I had multiple copies. And whenever I felt fear, I’d replace it with this unwavering faith in my ability to heal and say, I am committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old, alongside Ursula and the kids, no matter what, there’s no other option. And I said it with such conviction, and such passion and such energy, that within a matter of weeks, there was no fear. It wasn’t even part of my confidence anymore, it was completely replaced. And you can apply that that step one, to turning your finances around saving your marriage being happy. If you’re not like anything, you fill in that blank with whatever activity habit result outcome that you’re committed to.

Dr. Mindy  

You know, I love that because, again, I feel like you and I must have known each other and another, another part of our lives because I have used that with patients that I’ve been coaching back to health. And when they’re really sick, I always say to them, here’s what you have to know is failure is not an option. I do not fail when it comes to putting somebody’s health back together again. So you can go ahead and have your doubts, but lean on my certainty when those doubts come in until you get your own certainty because what from the lens that I look at the body heals itself, and failure is not an option. We’re gonna stay committed to that. And it’s interesting how that works to turn somebody’s brain from that. But what if what if and it even takes me even to a little bit of a place of anger that doctors when they give prognoses. They think they’re doing it out of respect for the patient. But they don’t realize that that’s messing with the way that their brains are thinking about the outcome of the condition they’re in. So that’s brilliant, what you just said How

Hal Elrod  

I love what’s first of all, you and I could have an entire podcast on the health care system and healing ourselves and all the things and I get I can get, you know, I’m not an angry person, I can get very angry when I think about how many poor patients are being given what I would call bad advice, right? Like, when I asked my doctor, what part does diet play in my recovery, and I only asked him that to kind of test him and see where he was out. And he goes, it doesn’t matter as long as you do chemo. And boy did that make my blood boil when I was in the hospital cafeteria, watching these cancer patients dragging their IV tower around with a 32 ounce Big Gulp soda in one hand, and pizza and cake and another aren’t going. Your doctor told you it’s okay to eat that and they’re feeding it to you in this hospital cafeteria. So frustrating. So and by the way, I will say this. Um, two things. Number one, if anybody’s listening to this, I want to I want to give you a little affirmation to add on to this when I had cancer and I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving and like you said the doctors think they’re just managing expectations. But what they’re really doing is creating a self fulfilling prophecy that the person is going to kill themselves, mentally and emotionally and spiritually because that’s what they think is going to happen. The day that I was diagnosed with cancer and given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. My wife was a wreck, understandably, she was in tears. I said, Sweetheart, I know you’re scared. I said, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little scared. I said but but I have unwavering FAITH that I will beat this cancer. And I said, here’s the statistic that I’m telling you. The 20 to 30% is based on everybody that has A fear based mindset that eats a bad diet that takes no responsibility for their recovery and gives it all to the doctor. I said, I’m telling you, sweetheart, there’s a 100% chance that I will be in the 20 to 30% of the people that survived this cancer, because I will do everything in my power, mentally, physically, logistically, emotionally, spiritually relationally to beat this cancer. So I’m going to be amongst the people that do it, right. And if you’re listening, you create your own statistic, you create and Mindy I love that you as a doctor are giving people exactly what they need, which is that you can beat this if you choose to beat it, period. Right?

Dr. Mindy  

And it’s I think what’s really important for people listening is it is important it when in the beginning to retrain your mind, you might have to hang around some certain people, like you know, listen to your podcast, listen to my podcasts like you have to brainwash yourself to make sure that you stay in that vibration. Otherwise the doubt of the world the doubt of the doctor seeps in and the minute you have doubt to your point, now you the outcomes not looking good for you. So certainty is

Hal Elrod  

imposes my layman’s explanation for everyone with I have no qualifications. I am not a doctor, nor do I, you know, play one on TV, all that. But our body hat correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we have trillions of cells, right, like 40 trillion or something. And here’s my layman’s explanation. They are they have no opinion. They are impartial. They just do whatever we tell them to they respond to whatever we feed them. Through our mental and emotional state, we are either telling ourselves like if you’re living in fear of dying, you’re saying oh, I we’re going to I’m going to die. And your cells go Oh, okay. I guess that’s what we’re doing. If you say, oh, no, I’m going to live. Now you have 40 trillion cells that go Oh, okay. I guess that’s what we’re doing. And I, you know, I had Dr. Bernie Siegel on my podcast a year or two ago, I read his book while I had cancer, love medicine and miracles. You know, he was a cancer surgeon that did over 3000 procedures, I believe. He said the one thing that every patient that healed themselves had in common, including those that had very deadly cancers that they shouldn’t be, is they all their mindset was, I’m going to live there’s no other option. He said, That was the common trait, right? So listen to Mindy, listen to me, listen to Dr. Bernie Siegel. The second step in the affirmation. So number one is affirm what you’re committed to number two is affirm why it’s a must for you. Now, language is important if it resonates more for you to say affirm why it’s deeply meaningful to you. So why it’s a must, why it’s meaningful, why there’s no other option. So this is where the rubber meets the road. Simon Sinek made why very famous, the why is what fuels our ability, our drive to do whatever it takes to follow through with a commitment. So here’s what my affirmation looked like when I had cancer. So I’m committed to beating cancer, you know, like yatta yatta yatta. Step two, I’m committed to beating cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day, I’m committed to beating cancer for Sophia and Helston because they need their daddy’s love, guidance and leadership. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna play with their grandkids one day, I’m committed to beating cancer for my mom and dad, because they don’t deserve to lose another child. My sister died when I was eight. I’m committed to beating cancer for myself, because dammit, I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. And last but not least, I am committed to beating cancer for the millions of people who are themselves battling cancer or some other disease, and may not have been blessed with the knowledge and resources that I have. And I can help them on their journey to healing. So Mindy, when I read those four or five bullet points with just as much passion and conviction and meaning it fuel I’m like, you know, part dropping F bombs, like if F Yeah, I will do whatever it takes for those reasons.

Dr. Mindy  

Did you ever doubt so did you read these in the morning? And I assume you did. And every when you read them, did you ever go I don’t feel this today, like your reading agenda was the most. Okay.

Hal Elrod  

In the beginning, I was like because well, here’s the thing is I created these affirmations to replace fear with faith. And when I say faith, let me give context. It’s a very loaded word. You can place your faith in whatever you place your faith in. Meaning if your faith is in God or a higher power and you believe that God will heal you, then that’s where you place your faith. Um, I’m talking about faith in the outcome, right faith in your ability to heal your ability to follow through to do everything in your power. So when I say faith again, you can place it wherever you want, if your faith is in your pinkie, and you’re like, because of this magical Pinky, I will, you know, make a million dollars or I will achieve this goal, or I will beat cancer, right? Whatever. So, where you place your faith is only consequential in the negative if it’s in something that is variable, like it’s in your, your lucky shoes, and then you lose them. And now you’re like, Oh, God, right. But if it’s in a crescent, such as yourself, such as God, it’s in a constant that isn’t gonna get lost or stolen or fall away, you know what I mean? Um, put your faith wherever you want. But, but so I was in the beginning, there was fear, because I was thinking practically, like, for example, Wayne Dyer died of leukemia, and I went, Well, shit, if Wayne couldn’t beat it, he’s pretty evolved. You know, I’d say I aspire, you know, to evolve to the point of where we was, if he died. Then I thought, Well, maybe he died because he was ready to die, I don’t know. But I’m like, well, am I ready to die. So there was this mind, you know, storm in the beginning. And then I got clear on what’s going to serve what’s gonna give me the best odds of healing. And I decided its unwavering faith in the, the possibility of me healing, that’s, that’s what’s gonna, that’s what’s gonna give me the best chance. So I’m going to put all of my eggs in the basket, whatever is giving me the best chance, the what ifs don’t serve me. Right? filling my cells with fear and doubt, that doesn’t heal me. It’s that unwavering faith in the ability to heal. So in the beginning, it was, I was trying to replace the fear with faith. But after a few weeks, it the fear was gone, it would rarely come to visit, and I pulled the affirmations, but I read them every morning. And every night, I book ended my day, with my commitment to beat cancer, the reasons why. And then step three, affirm which actions you will take and when which actions you will take. And when that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where the results are generated, right? If you affirm what you’re committed to, and why it’s a must for you, and then you just in going, Oh, I did it. I did my affirmations. That doesn’t, you have to actually clarify, which actions are you going to take, if you want to write a book, you can’t say I’m committed to it, and here’s why. And then that’s it. That might not get read, you’ve got to go. So therefore, I’m going to wake up an hour earlier, I’m going to write every day from seven to 8am, six days a week or what Right? Um, you got to get clear on what you’re going to do. And when and when I had cancer, the third step of the affirmations it was I’m going to combine the best of Western medicine because I had a side note I had reached out to two of the best holistic oncologist in America and they said how neither us nor any holistic oncologist can help you because of your cancer. It is so fast acting that your your He said your oncologist wasn’t exaggerating. You have a week or two to live before your organs shut down. Because I didn’t want to do chemo. I am I’m very holistic, very natural. And I I told my oncologist, I don’t want to do chemotherapy, can you support me naturally healing this and he said, how your heart is failing right now. Your lungs are failing, your kidneys are failing. He said, If you don’t start chemo tomorrow, I’ll give you a week or two to live. But that’s it. And I thought he was I don’t trust, right. I figured he was scaring me into chemo. You know. And so I’m like, my poor wife is breaking my fingers under the table holding, you know, like holding back tears. And I said, Doc, can I have 24 hours to do my own research? And that’s where I reached out to these oncologists. They said, how, you know, we can’t this type of cancer, nobody is naturally going to put their their reputation on the line, like you know, and so I’m like, Well, if they’re not going to help me, I’m going to do so here. Here’s here’s where I landed, though. I committed to do chemotherapy. Which, by the way, because my cancer is so aggressive. It’s one of the most aggressive chemotherapy regimens. I did 650 hours of chemotherapy in seven months. It’s horrific. But I said on day one, I went, I’m going to relentlessly, relentlessly research every holistic healing modality and I’m going to implement all of them as if that’s all I was doing. I’m going to detoxify my liver from chemotherapy, I’m going to build my immune system. And I think that’s the greatest lesson for people that you know if you know someone that has cancer, if you’re listening to this or you have cancer, it ever shows up in your family. I get that doing it all natural, most people aren’t going to do it. And I realized, Oh, if I would have gone on natural, I would have actually had less influence to help people because they’re, you know, they’re not going to listen to me over their doctor. But here’s what I’m telling you, if you’re listening, I know this is a slight tangent, but I feel like it’s so important. Do the chemo, if you’re going to do it, that’s on you do it, do whatever you’re going to do, you and your spouse, whatever you decide, um, but for the please do every holistic practice available to you, your doctors, unless they’re a holistic doctor, they will, unless they’re Mindy, unless you’re blessed with a doctor Monday, they’re probably going to know nothing about any of those modalities. My oncologist is considered one of the best leukemia doctors in the world. He told me diet doesn’t matter. He knew nothing about juicing or supplements, or vitamins, or ozone, sauna, or coffee enemas, or lymphatic massage, or all the other practices that I did on my own. So please take responsibility for your healing. And don’t delegate it to a doctor. Unless it’s Dr. Mindy, because she’s got your back.

Dr. Mindy  

No, here’s something interesting on what you just said. And I think this is something that I know I have not discussed on this podcast. And is really a consideration when you are writing that line between more traditional conventional approaches to your health and a more natural alternative approach. Because to your point, I think they both have benefits. As much as I will always slant to the natural, I am always been open to what might be there in the conventional and the more traditional. And here’s what I know. And what I just heard. And what you said, is if you choose to do something like chemotherapy, then go all in, in your belief that that is going to help you. It’s when we do something like chemo or an antibiotic, and we’re like, Oh, I see it with antibiotics all the time. People are like, I don’t know, if I should do it, the doctors kind of scaring me, I guess I’m gonna do it. And then we do it. And we’re incongruent with the decision. And that is now creating dis ease in the body. So what I just want, I don’t want people to lose sight of of what you did, as you said, Okay, I’m going to do it, I’m not just going to do a little bit, I’m going to go in and do all of it. But I’m also doing natural, I’m going in with both and I am clear that that is my path, there was no uncertainty. The minute you put an uncertainty in it, you’ve lost part of the healing magic, don’t you think?

Hal Elrod  

Yes, and yes. And so I will say there, I wish there was no uncertainty, but I was so resistant to chemo. But again, that’s where affirmations come into play. The reason affirmations I feel like are the most effective form of personal development, right? A if you follow those three steps, what you’re committed to why it’s a must for you, and what actions you’ll take. And when those are affirmations that are rooted in reality, they are practical, they are actionable, they are results oriented. In the simplest form, an affirmation is nothing more than a reminder, that’s it. Even if you don’t follow that formula, like, by the way, my affirmations that formula is for every goal I have in my life, right? My financial goals are following that formula. My marriage goals follow that formula. But I have all sorts of ancillary information, it’ll be a quote from a book and I’ll read it, I’ll be reading a book and I’ll go, ooh, that quote that sentence, I need, that is a reminder, I need to live that. So it goes into my information. My information was like four pages long now. They, they’re always evolving, and I’m trying to delete an ad. But the point is, it was my affirmations. My natural thought was, I don’t want to do chemo. This is poison. But my affirmations that I read every day reminded me how Yes, and the chemo is poison, however, you need to affirm that your body is intelligent enough to direct the chemo to the cancer to kill it, while preserving your cellular health, so that your body can thrive. So I would sit there and meditate. And I would I’d say, God, thank you for the chemotherapy, killing the cancer. And thank you for my body being strong enough to survive, thrive and live to be 100 plus years old, throughout this entire process, right? So so it was a yes. And for sure, I’m not like bulletproof where I just am like, I had no inner conflict about it. I had a ton of inner conflict and all and I realized that I need to be at peace with it. I need to be grateful for it doing its job. While I’m also you know, aware of getting off it when I can on and on and on. But who knows if I wouldn’t have done it. I might not be here. So I did the best of both worlds. You know, and I live to tell about it.

Dr. Mindy  

Where does gratitude you talked about being grateful. Where does gratitude fit into creating a life that you want to live or a body you want to live? Then, when you’re maybe in a health state where you’re not feeling so grateful about it, where do we have to shift our perspective from resentment and, and frustration that we’re our body or our lives are in a certain place? And shift that into gratitude? And how do we go about that? Because sometimes it’s really hard to make that shift.

Hal Elrod  

Yes, so I am writing a my next book is called the Miracle life. And the, the Savers were the formula in the Miracle Morning, the ABCs are the formula, the miracle life, keeping it really simple. It’s except life exactly as it is, be grateful for everything. And we’re gonna, that’s I’m just giving this as the framework, and then choose your optimal state of consciousness. Right? So imagine you go through life, and you accept life as it is. So you don’t get angry that this happened, or that happened, you just are at peace with life, then you then you go beyond just being emotionally neutral and at peace. And you actually go further into gratitude. And so it’s be grateful for everything. And that’s, to me gratitude, if you only use it for the positive things, it’s got very limited power in your life. There’s a scene in The Miracle Morning movie, so that we started filming after the book came out, we started filming a documentary about this movement that was happening around the world, and all the people that were changing their lives in Miracle Morning. And then we also interviewed a bunch of like, famous authors about their morning routines, and this whole thing. Well, halfway through the filming, I got I was diagnosed with cancer, and I called our director, I said, Nick, you’ll never believe this, I’m in the hospital, they’re giving me a 20 to 30% chance of surviving this cancer. The movie is on hold. I you know, I just gotta focus on surviving for my family, you know, and he, you know, he, we talked for a while, and then he said, How, look, I hope, I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way. But there’s two things. Number one, I believe you’re going to beat this cancer. And number two, I don’t want to put the movie on hold. I actually want to come to the hospital, and I want to film you beating cancer, because I think it will inspire countless people with Keith, because he’s we’ve known each other for a decade. He goes, I know your mindset, I know how you’re gonna approach it. And I want to capture that in real time. So there’s a scene in the movie, where they had, they had to give me chemotherapy in my spine. Right? And that, you know, the thought of that I’m like, That sounds terrible on every level. Well, the woman missed the target, and she injected it into my nerve. And it created the most horrific, unbearable migraines for 11 consecutive days. I’ve never been in so much pain. And at one moment, I handed my dad my cell phone. And I said, my dad was my caretaker in the hospital for a year. I said, Dad, I want you to film this, this is the lowest, I’ve never felt worse in my life. And I keep recording these video blogs of like, Hey, guys, you know, have a positive attitude. Yes, I have cancer, but I’m still grateful. I go, I want you to capture this moment. And little did I know that it would be in the documentary. Like I don’t even think about that. But when you watch the documentary, you see me bawling my eyes I’m in, I can barely talk, my mouth is shaking, I’m in so much pain. And I’m saying, I want you guys to understand, I am grateful for this experience. I am grateful for every moment because if it doesn’t kill you, it does make you stronger. And to me, every adversity is an opportunity to learn to grow to become a better version of ourselves. And because of that, you can be grateful for it. And it’s so often said Hindsight is 2020. Like, you know, one day you’ll look back and you’ll be grateful that you had to go through that and who you became and I go, why wait until some future point to experience the benefit of the adversity you’re facing. Why not live life in a lens of unconditional gratitude, so that even when you’re crying in pain, you’re doing it through a context of I’m grateful because God this is the hardest, most painful thing I’ve ever been through. And I’m so grateful that it’s happening because I know that on the other side of it, there’s a better version of myself. So that’s my view of gratitude is it’s everything. There’s never a moment, literally Monday, there is never a moment in my life. That I’m not grateful. Never there’s nothing because I’m grateful for it all.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, well, if you can be grateful in that moment, you can be grateful in any moment and I think I can’t wait to see the movie. I haven’t seen the movie. And I just I am so in love with people who have trained their minds to overcome adversity to, to use adversity to their life advantage and that I can’t wait to watch that, because that’s incredible. I will tell you when the pandemic hit, well, I, one of my friends posted something within the first couple of weeks, we were all in quarantine. And he said, I can’t wait to see who I’m going to become on the other side of this, what is this pandemic going to do to me? And I gotta tell you, I was so inspired by that, that I actually kept that mantra throughout the whole pandemic. And my life is so much better because of the disruption that the pandemic created for me. And through that whole, like movement of us going into like fear and Oh, my God went away out of this. I just kept saying, Oh, my gosh, who am I going to be on the other side of this? And, wow, am I happy with what came out of that experience? So I think you’re really like if we can all dive into the heart of that moment of adversity and flip it. Now there’s no nothing life can give you that’s ever going to shut you down or put you in the wrong direction, don’t you think?

Hal Elrod  

Totally. And here’s what I want. I want to leave or give people this, this thought that life’s gonna do what life’s gonna do. You can either be at peace, while life doing what it’s doing. happy and grateful when life’s doing what it’s doing, or you can be miserable and stressed and fearful, right? Like, the only thing you can control is your inner world, right? It’s how who you’re becoming and how you’re showing up every day. And without going into too much detail. This whole mindset for me started when I was 20 years old, I was in a car accident, I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour. I was found dead at the scene, I broke 11 bones. And I came out of a coma six days later. And I was told I would never walk again. You’re like a cat you got i got like six or seven more lives, I’m not sure. A week after I came out of the coma. And I was told I would never walk again. My femur broken that half my pelvis broken three places. And the doctors called my parents and they said we’re concerned with how we believe that he is in denial. Because he’s always smiling and laughing and telling jokes and they go that’s not normal for a 20 year old. That’s being told he’s never gonna walk again. They said we think he his reality is so painful that he checked out. Can you talk to him? Get down to the bottom how he’s really feeling he should be sad and scared and angry and depressed. My dad comes in that night tells me the doctor’s concerns. He says How? How are you really feeling? I know when your friends are here. You guys are joking and laughing and he goes but like at night when you turn the lights off and you’re just in your head and you’re thinking it’s okay to be sad and scared and angry, depressed. These are normal feelings. The doctor say you need to admit how you’re feeling. And I sat down I thought you knew me better than that. He said, What do you mean? I said, Remember, I live my life by this thing called The Five Minute Rule, which says it’s okay to be negative, but not for more than five minutes. The idea is when you feel when you find yourself getting upset you I’d set a timer for five minutes. And I give myself five minutes to bitch moan, complain, cry, whatever. When the timer goes off, I would say can’t change it and acknowledge I can’t change what happened five minutes ago. So I have I have a choice between two options. I can be at peace or I can be miserable. I can be miserable that it happened upset, angry, frustrated, or I can accept it exactly as it is and be at peace. And I said, Dad, if I’m in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I’ve decided I’m going to be the happiest, most grateful person you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair. Because I’m in a wheelchair either way. The only thing I get to choose is how do I experience every moment in my wheelchair. And if you’re listening right now, I want to ask you, what’s your wheelchair? What’s the experience in your life past present or even that you’re worried about in the future that you’ve allowed to determine your mental and emotional state. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to let your circumstances determine your mental and emotional state, you can determine it and so you can even be in the most difficult circumstances of your life and go okay, this is what’s happening. I can’t change it in this moment. It is what it is I’ve got to get through it. So therefore I’m going to choose to be the happiest, most grateful version of myself I’ve ever been Huawei and during the most difficult time in my life, and the Miracle Morning to me enables you to read affirmations that remind you then sit in silence and meditate on that feeling. Visualize it exercise read something that affirms it journal what you’re grateful for right like that is the practice that you know from experience every day allows you even if you have a bad day the day before you get to wake up into that me time that sacred A time to become the best version of you and start every day at your best.

Dr. Mindy  

Amazing. Oh my god, I could talk to you forever how I just love the way you think. And I know you’ve got to go pick your kids up. So let me finish on this on this thought I have two two questions I ask everybody. This season, we’re really diving into self love. And the first one is what’s your self love practice? Somehow? I’m thinking it’s tied into the morning. And the second question is, what’s your what’s your superpower? And I think we all just witnessed your superpower. But I’m gonna let you answer those two questions.

Hal Elrod  

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So I mean, my Miracle Morning is my self love practice. You know, one of the books I read years ago was love yourself, like your life depends on it. And I really integrated that into my Miracle Morning. The I literally have a section of affirmations that are my self love affirmation right in bold, it says self love, and then colon. And then you know, there’s like a few sentences that affirm How I love myself that I love myself unconditionally, that I give myself grace, that I’m always doing the best I can, and that I deserve just as much love as I give to my children, if not more, right, like to put it in context and realize the way I love my kids can I love myself that way. And that helps me to create the context. And then the superpower is it’s what we just talked about toward the end there, it’s choosing my experience. I don’t mean my external experience, I can’t always choose that. I can only choose my internal experience so I can choose that no matter what’s going on around me. I get to control what’s going on inside me. I choose to be at peace. I choose to be happy. I choose to be grateful. I choose to serve others, I choose to be a source of love and light, and nothing anyone else does or says no matter how rude or mean or whatever. It doesn’t change who I’m committed to being in every moment of my life.

Dr. Mindy  

Oh my gosh, I got chills. That’s that’s a Mic drop. How do people find you how you’re just such a joy to talk to?

Hal Elrod  

Thank you, Mindy. Miracle. morning.com is the hub you can watch the movie there, you can buy the books, you can download the free Miracle Morning app, you can join the community which is a Facebook group with 340,000 members from like 100 countries that wake up they’ll support you on this miracle morning journey. Yeah, Miracle morning.com is the hub for all of it.

Dr. Mindy  

Amazing, amazing. Well thank you for your time and again thank you for being such an incredible example of what’s possible when you really commit to putting your mind on the right thing so just super grateful for you and we got to do this again prep live because this was really your your your enthusiasm is infectious. And you know I

Hal Elrod  

do in person do you do in person interviews? We’re starting to

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, we’re gonna that’s our next step. So I will I will

Hal Elrod  

quick I’ll give a quick insight or information for your audience and for you so I am currently writing the Miracle Morning updated and expanded edition it probably won’t be out for like eight months six months eight months something like that. So you know get the get the addition now but but it’s gonna have the miracle evening Chapter The Miracle life chapter I’m rewriting the entire book so I’d love to come back on and like revisit this when when we do that.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, please reach out you’re welcome back on anytime and let’s do it live and we’ll go in

Hal Elrod  

love in person interviews. I love that I’m gonna make a note of it. I love you. I love your energy. I love your the stand that you take for healing for people naturally, right? Yeah. So I’m just I’m so grateful that we got to connect again and I can’t wait for the next time.

Dr. Mindy  

Great. Great. Thank you. Wow, appreciate you know