Greetings, Superfriends! Welcome to this week’s episode! This week’s guest is Hal Elrod, someone a lot of you have requested via email and in the comments section of the blog, so thanks for reaching out and sharing his name with us. He’s one of the highest rated keynote speakers in America, author of the #1 bestselling book “The Miracle Morning: The not-so-obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life before 8AM,” an ultra-marathoner… and much much more.

Beyond all these impressive credentials, he’s the only person I’ve ever met who has been dead. That’s right. Hal’s career and greatest triumph came about when he was hit (and killed) by a drunk driver. Miraculously, he was brought back to life, survived a coma, and defied the logic of doctors by re-learning how to walk. For the last decade, he has shared his incredible wisdom on overcoming adversity and creating extraordinary results in one’s personal and professional life.

In this episode, we get an in-depth look into the heart and mind of someone with a seemingly endless supply of tenacity, willpower, inspiration, and joy. My guests story is really the story of turning unimaginably dark times into silver-lined clouds, coming back time and time again from impossibly circumstances to make the best of it and achieve tremendous happiness and success. I feel truly fortunate that he opened up and didn’t hold anything back from us, sharing now only the darkest of the dark, but also his own strategies for overcoming them. I, for one, am going to be reading his most recent book very soon.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Hal Elrod went from being a self-described “mediocre” kid to local radio personality “Yo’ Pal Hal”
• Hal’s incredible success as a Cutco salesman, and more importantly, the valuable lessons it taught him
• The deeply moving story of the night Hal was literally killed by a drunk driver
• The even more incredible story of how he went from “you’ll never walk again” to running ultra-marathons
• How could a 20 year old kid have so much wisdom and tenacity to beat the odds with a smile?
• The “5 Minute Rule” that Hal learned in Cutco sales training, and how it changed his life
• How can you create miracles in your life?
• The story behind both of Hal’s books
• The idea of being able to truly love your life no matter what
• How Hal Elrod went from a massive success to losing everything, and suffering with suicidal depression
• The method’s he used to build himself and his life back up from there (and how it became his second book)
• What was the one quote that completely turned Hal’s life around again?
• How did Hal create the formula for his miracle morning, when there’s so much advice out there?
• The story of a major celebrity who’s life was changed by The Miracle Morning
• The 3 pieces of homework that Hal Elrod would like to assign to everyone in the audience
• What are Hal’s top recommended books?
• The 17 projects that Hal Elrod is working on

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Hal’s website, YoPalHal.com
• Another website from Hal, CantChangeIt.com
• A third website with tons of free resources: MiracleMorning.com
• Hal Elrod’s first book: Taking Life Head-On
• Hal Elrod’s second book: The Miracle Morning
• Hal’s latest book: The Miracle Morning for Salespeople
• Hal’s live event: BestYearEverBluePrint.com
• Paolo Cuelho’s book, The Alchemist
• The Miracle Morning Community Facebook Group
• Robert Kiyosaki and his bestselling book, Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Our previous episode with Gretchen Rubin
• Vision to Realityby Honorée Corder
• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
• The One Thing by Gary Keller

Favorite Quotes from Hal Elrod:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast, where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I just want to let you guys know that. This episode is brought to you by my best-selling online course Become a Speed Demon: Productivity Tricks to Have More Time. The course is the culmination of over a decade of my own experience and research into productivity theory, strategies, tips, and tricks from how to prioritize and structure your life to computer hacks and tips to automate your daily work and even ways to shave time off the basic tasks we all do every day.

The course is guaranteed to save you at least three hours a week or your money back. So for a 90% off coupon, check it out at jle.vi/productivity. That's http://jle.vi/productivity. Greetings super friends. Welcome to this week's episode. This week's guest is someone, a lot of you have requested via email and in the comments section of the blog.

So thank you guys for reaching out and sharing his name with us. He's one of the highest-rated keynote speakers in America. He's the author of the number one bestselling book, The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life Before 8:00 AM, ooh that's a big one and an ultra-marathoner, and he's so, so much more guys.

Beyond all these impressive credentials though. He's the only person I've ever met, who has actually been dead. That's right. His career and his greatest triumph came about when he was hit and killed by a drunk driver, miraculously, he was brought back to life, survived a coma, and defy the logic of doctors by relearning, how to walk and then running an ultra marathon for good measure, right?

For the last decade, he shared his incredible wisdom on overcoming adversity and creating extraordinary results in one's personal and professional life. In this episode, we get an in-depth look into the heart and mind of someone with a seemingly endless supply of tenacity, willpower, and inspiration. And of course, joy.

My guests' story is really the story of turning unimaginably, dark times into silver line clouds. And then coming back time and time again from these impossible circumstances to make the best of it and to retrieve tremendous happiness and success. You guys, I feel truly fortunate that we were able to open up and that my guests didn't hold anything back from us.

He shared not only the darkest of the dark but also his own strategies for overcoming them. I, for one am going to be racing out to buy his book very, very soon. And so let me introduce you guys, to Mr. Hal Elrod.

Hal, welcome to the show my friend, how are you doing today? 

Hal Elrod: Jonathan, I am fantastic, man. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this. 

Jonathan Levi: It is a  pleasure. You know, you're actually one of our most requested guests. Actually, we've got a bunch of requests from people posting on the blog that they want you to be a guest.

So I'm really, really happy we got you.

Hal Elrod: I didn't know that, but that's a great way to start off the interview. I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy. So this is great. 

Jonathan Levi: They do actually refer to you though as “Yo Pal” Hal. So I had to research who that is. And once I figured out who that is, then I got in touch with you.

Hal Elrod: That's funny. Yeah. There's a whole story behind that. If we have time, we can get into it, but yeah. Cool. Okay. 

Jonathan Levi: So how I actually read in your bio that even before your accident, and I'm sure we're going to get into that a little bit, but even before that you were a pretty exceptional guy. Tell me a bit about this radio show that you were doing at age 15.

Hal Elrod: Oh, that's like, actually I didn't realize that I was segueing into that, but yeah, that's the “Yo Pal” Hal story. Oh, perfect. Serendipity. Yeah. Look at that. So I will say that the word you use, I think I was an exceptional guy or whatever it was, for the most part, it was very mediocre. My entire life, I didn't get good grades,

I wasn't an athlete. You know, like I wasn't an achiever, you can say. The one thing that I did in my younger teenage years or whatever, that was kind of cool when I was 15 years old a buddy of mine, his older brother got sick when he was supposed to DJ a school dance. And I got the call from my friend and said, Hey, my brother calling in sick.

You want to DJ the school dance with me at our old junior high. You know, we were sophomores in high school at the time. And he said it's a seventh-grade dance. And I said that sounds like a blast. So we did it. We had a blast. We made $7, which is not a lot of money from a tip cup, I think. And if seventh-graders don't have a lot of money.

But the dream was kind of born. I was like, this is fun. You can make money playing music. So long story short, we started a little DJ business as quickly as we started it. We got in a big fight and we decided to not be partners anymore. So he kind of quit doing it all together. And I really branched out and started this DJ business.

Well, my dream became to be a nationally syndicated radio disc jockey. And I figured it college, I could probably get like an internship at a radio station and kind of work my way up. And my early to mid-twenties, I could start getting serious about radio. Well, at 15, I got a phone call from the local radio station manager. Larry Gamble, and he has one of those radio voices.

He called me and said, Hey, Hey, it's Larry Gamble down here at 103.7 FM, how are you? I heard you're a DJ. Is that right? I said, yeah, yeah, I do school dances and all sorts of fun stuff. He said, well, we want a high school student to host a radio show. Every Thursday, three hours. Would you be up for the gig?

And I said, yeah, that's my dream. Oh my gosh. Yeah, of course. I got the job and I went, tell him, mom, the exciting news. But right before I got off the phone with Larry, he said, hell, by the way, DJ always has an on-air moniker. That's a fancy word for a nickname. So whatever your nickname is, bring that on the air and make it fun.

And we'll use that. And I had no nickname. And so I went downstairs to my mom and I said, mommy, I got a radio show, dah, dah, dah, dah. She goes, Oh, that's so great. I said, but there's one problem. He said, I have to have an on-air moniker, which is like a nickname. And not only do I not have a nickname, but you guys named me how, but like the dorkiest name ever, what am I supposed to do with how?

And my mom goes, why don't you be, Hal, your pal or my pal, Hal. She goes, who, I know you slang beat, make it cool. Be Yo Pal Hal. And I said, mom, you're such a dork. I will never be Yo Pal Hal. And my website, yopalhal.com. 

Jonathan Levi: And mother is always right. 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. All of my closest friends, they call me yo pal or “Yo Pal” Hal.

All my best friends. Yeah. That's what they call me. So it just kind of stuck. And the lesson there is, mom is always 

Jonathan Levi: right. Always, always drives you crazy, but she's always right. Yeah. That's right. So I think that's really funny because I also had a DJ business in seventh grade and that it was just going through that memory as you were speaking.

So that's a really kind of funny commonality we have also because, you know, I started getting into business and entrepreneurship and doing my own thing at around that same age of 15 or 16. One question I want to ask you, Hal, what did your life look like at age 20 when the accident happened? So kind of fast-forward five years.

And are you still running this radio show? What are the things look like? 

Hal Elrod: So at age 19, I got another radio gig after my first year of college. And three weeks later, a buddy of mine introduced me to his sales manager at Cutco Cutlery. Selling Cutco kitchen knives. And I had resisted it. My buddy always told me, oh, you'd be great at it. Dude, I'm a DJ.

I don't sell things. Very long, very short, I took the job. I decided to be a good way to make some extra money because I was only DJing on the weekends. At that point, I was like the new guy at the radio station and kind of crazy. I mean, in my first 10 days, I broke the all-time company record for the Western half the United States, which meant in 50 years of the company being around.

And I think like a million sales reps. I sold more than almost all of them. I think one guy that had beat me back East, but. So I broke this record and I earned almost $4,000 in my first 10 days in commissions. Wow. And I was like, screw the radio. I'm getting like $10 an hour at the radio. So I quit the radio station and took off on this sales career.

And I just continued three weeks after the first 10 days whereby broke another record and it just kept, kept breaking sales records. And because of that, I always got asked to speak at all the conferences. And so a year and a half later, it was the cold December evening, December 3rd, I was 20 years old and I gave a speech.

I got a standing ovation, which was my first one. So it was kind of a special like, Oh my gosh, maybe I could do this for a living when I'm done with sales. And I was driving home that night when a drunk driver get on the wrong side of the freeway. And he was doing around 70 to 80 miles per hour in a full-size Chevy truck.

I was doing 70 miles an hour in a brand new Ford Mustang, much smaller than his vehicle. And I don't remember the headlights coming at me, but our cars collided head-on at a hundred, you know, between the two of us, 150 miles an hour head-on impact and airbag exploded, front of my car was crushed and the worst was yet to come as my car kind of

hit the drunk driver and spun sideways, facing where my driver's side door was, the car behind me was headed straight for me and hit me in the door of my car at 70 miles an hour, crushed the left side of my door, into the left side of my body. So bad that my leg broke in half, my pelvis broke between the center console in three places.

My arm broke in half. Shattered my elbow. Severed the nerve in my arm. My eye socket was destroyed. It's all made of metal now. My ear was almost completely taken off. I mean, just on and on I punctured my lung, I ruptured my spleen, and immediately, thankfully I was in a coma. I'm sitting on the side of the freeway.

I'm unconscious, I'm bleeding from head to toe and it took the paramedics and the fire department almost an hour to cut the roof off my car with the jaws of life and pull me out. And when they did, I had lost so much blood that I actually bled to death. And I was dead on the side of the freeway. It was clinically dead for approximately six minutes.

Uh, rushed to the hospital, spent six days in a coma underwent like eight surgeries or 11 surgeries. I don't remember the number. But a metal rod in my leg, two screws in my elbow, a metal rod in my arm, three metal plates in my eye, and came out of the coma six days later to the news that I would never walk again.

The doctor said I may never walk again. And I had permanent brain damage. And truly to keep it a long story short, three weeks later, I took my first step. And I think that what I can attribute that to is I just decided that's what I wanted when the doctors told me and my parents that I may never walk again.

And that if I did, it would be like a year before we could even revisit that they left. And I told my mom and dad, I said, well, the doctors aren't experts in me. They might be experts in medicine or whatever the hell they do and they're all day. But I said they're not experts in me. And I said, look, there's only one of two possibilities.

Number one. I'll never walk again. The doctors might be right. I'll never walk again. If that's the case, I've already accepted it. I've decided I'm not going to be sad or feel like the victim or be depressed or woe is me. If I'm stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, I will be the happiest person you've ever seen in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, because either way, I'm in a wheelchair.

And by the way, from the listening, whenever I speak to audiences, I always ask like, what's your wheelchair? Like, what's the circumstance that you let get you down, but it's out of your control. Maybe it's your past. Maybe it's your family or whatever. Maybe it's a physical thing that you've got going on.

But the second possibility I said is I'm going to walk again. And I said, mom and dad, I don't do what most of them might do. I'm not here sitting here going, oh gosh, I feel sorry for myself. And I'm afraid and I'm not focusing any of my energy on that worst-case scenario of not walking. All of my energy and all of my attention goes into walking again.

I think about it. I pray about it. I visualize it every single day. And the last thing I'll say on this, Jonathan is I don't think it was a coincidence that a week later the doctors came in with routine x-rays. And they said, Hal, we've got some exciting news. We don't know how to explain this, but your body is healing so rapidly that we're going to let you take your first step tomorrow in therapy.

So it went from never walking again to maybe like in a year, two, three weeks after the crash, I took my first step, and the rest is history, as they say. 

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. It's an incredible story, Hal. I think the first question that jumped out at me as you were telling that story, and as I was doing the research is how. Right?

How did you beat the odds? How does a 20-year-old kid? I mean, excuse me, but a kid should have the wisdom and the presence and the acceptance. I mean, to just say, I'm not going to be sad. I'm going to take this positively. I'm going to make the most of it. Where does that come from? 

Hal Elrod: Honestly, I think it came from, well, actually, I mean, I know it came from this because it came from something called the five-minute rule that I learned in my Cutco sales training.

Amazing. Yeah. The five-minute rule. And so a year and a half earlier, I went through my training, and our manager, my manager, who became a mentor and a friend. And he taught us the five-minute rule, which says it's okay to be negative when things go wrong. But not for more than five minutes, there's no value in wishing you could change something that is now in the past, or it's out of your control.

There's no value in resisting reality. Right. And so the doctor thought that I was in denial because of exactly what you said is 20-year-old kids, like all happy and positive, this isn't normal. It can't be real. That's what they thought. They thought I was in denial that I was delusional because I couldn't accept my reality.

And my dad, actually, the doctors sent my dad in to find out how I was really feeling. They said you got to find out it's normal for him to be angry or scared or sad or depressed, or get him to talk about how he's really feeling so we can help him through the emotional healing process. And my dad came in and expressed the doctor's concern.

I said, dad, I'm not pretending to be happy, but remember I live by the five-minute rule. It's been more than five minutes. It's been like two weeks. I can't change that I was in a car accident, but I can either choose to be miserable, I can choose to be happy. Either way, the circumstances are the same. Right.

And that was one of the greatest lessons. If not the greatest lesson that I learned is that when we understand this concept, that every negative emotion that we've ever experienced in our life was self-created. It was self-created by our level of resistance, to our reality. To the degree that we wish or want something to be different,

we resist reality. Is the degree that we create emotional pain for ourselves. And the moment that we go, you know what, I'm going to start practicing acceptance every day. I'm going to start accepting the things that I can't change. And by the way, if anybody wants like an in-depth video on this, you can go to there's a page on my website, cantchangeit.com cantchangeit.com. And there's like a clip of a 10-minute speech of me giving this whole message. I mean, that was the starting place. And then beyond that, you know, there are forces beyond my control or understanding or whatever you believe in God or the law of attraction, or it depends,

whatever that higher power is. There's things I don't have evidence of, but I have faith in, I guess, if you will, that I forgot who the quote was by, but he said, when you commit to something, providence moves or the universe helps you, I'm totally butchering the quote. 

Jonathan Levi: When you decide to head down your life's path, all the universe lines up to help you.

Hal Elrod: I think there was someone else that said it before that, that he kind of put it in his own words, but regardless that's the point is, you know, I just decided I'm like, dude, this is what I want. And I look at everything in my life, either that I've overcome since then or before then, or that I've accomplished.

I look at when I broke the all-time company record. Dude, I just committed. I said I will give it everything I have from the moment I woke up until I go to bed. For that period of time that I'm trying to break this record. From when I wake up till I go to bed and then I'll dream about it in between.

Right? I said, but my everything I'm committed. And when you do that, the way that every record I broke in sales always happened in crazy miraculous fashion where I was never on track for it. And I always want it. You know, I was tempted to give up so many times, I was discouraged so many days. And by sticking with it and staying committed till the end, miracles happen.

And it's like customers come out of nowhere or, I mean, just crazy things happen, you know, I've seen it enough and I've read about it enough to know that it's not luck or chance, unless that's the word for it. But I mean, it's really, it's something that you can depend on. I call it the miracle equation.

This is a little bonus lesson. I've probably never taught this on a podcast interview I've done. Love it. It just came up. So yeah, there you go. The Miracle Equation. So the way you create miracles in your life, and when I say miracles, I simply define that as a result beyond what you might believe is possible or what others consider possible.

Right? So it's something that's like when you break a record, you do something that's never been done before. Never no one's ever done it. Right? So the miracle equation, the way that you create extraordinary results, AKA miracles in your life. It's two really simple elements that most people don't maintain, unwavering faith and extraordinary effort.

That's it, most people, they set a goal or they have a dream as soon as they work towards the goal and they're not on track and it doesn't look likely, they give up the faith that it's possible. So there's no unwavering faith, it's wavering faith. Right. But the people that achieve amazing results in life, even athletics, right?

Like the guys that score 12 points in the last nine seconds of an NBA basketball game. It's because they maintained unwavering faith, even though their team was down and every other player was like, dude, there's no way we can win. There's only 12 seconds left. But one guy, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Reggie Miller, LeBron James.

They maintained unwavering faith until the last possible moment. And the universe contributed to what they wanted to accomplish. And the second component is an extraordinary effort. Right? Most people see when you give up the faith that your goal is possible, the effort goes right out the window with it.

It's like, well, dude, like why would I really try, really put forth the effort necessary when I don't think it can happen? I don't think it's going to happen. If you set a goal, you maintain unwavering faith that it's possible until the last possible moment through the ups, the downs, the doubts, the failures, the rejections, and you put forth an extraordinary effort, every waking moment, every possible moment until you achieve the goal.

That's when you find out what you're really capable of. And so few people ever, ever approach life or goals or anything with those components of unwavering, faith and extraordinary effort. 

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic, Hal, cause I don't know if you know, but our subtitle of the show is skills and strategies to overcome the impossible.

And that is a completely unique and completely valid skill and strategy to overcome the impossible in your own life. I'm really glad you mentioned that. I'm also really glad you mentioned the law of attraction because it's something I really fundamentally believe in. And when I read your story, I was like, I really hope this guy, has had the same life experience that I have, and the same forces are acting in your life that has acted in mind and maybe in our audience lives to where, when you put up that energy and that positivity, incredible things miraculously happen, whether you want to call it God, or you want to call it karma or kismet.

So I'm really glad you mentioned that. Yeah. How I have to admit, I didn't get a chance despite all the speed reading and all that stuff. I didn't get a chance to read miracle morning or taking life head-on before our interview today. So I was hoping you could maybe take us through those books one by one, and maybe share with us what they're about and how those messages and your teachings from that came from the point we left off on where you're sitting in this hospital been.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. So I'll give you both of my books were written out of a sense of responsibility. Where I had overcome something. And then I felt a sense of responsibility to pay it forward and share it with others.

I felt that it would be selfish to not do it. I wasn't a writer. It's funny. I still don't like, writing isn't easy for me. It's such a pain in the butt. I keep writing books, but it's my least favorite thing to do often than not. I'm a keynote speaker. I love speaking. I'll talk all day and take no effort.

Put me on stage for an hour without any preparation. And I can deliver a message, but you know, I can sit there for the same hour and I can work on one paragraph. And rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it, then delete it. Cause I hate it and then rewrite it and then know. So the point is, is both of my books were written because I felt this sense of responsibility.

Well, both of them have done exceptionally well in terms of the impact that they have on people's lives. And when I've looked at that, I, you know, when I came out, I go, man, is anybody going to like these people going to like, give me all these negative reviews, they're going to say, this guy's not a good writer.

I think that if I'm good at anything when it comes to writing, it's taking a powerful concept and then simplifying it, so it's so easy to understand and then making it actionable so that people can get results from it quickly. It's taken me years to figure that out, but I'm like, Oh, that's what I'm good at.

That's what I'm able to do. And my writing, if someone who's like a PhD in English Lit, they'd be like, Yeah, this guy is right, it's like a first-grader. It's horrible. But in fact, it's funny, one of my favorite reviews. So my first book Taking LIFE Head On! If you go on Amazon, it has no reviews under four stars.

And only six reviews that are four stars. The other, I dunno, 70 reviews are five stars. So people love that book. But two things. Number one, it hasn't sold nearly as well, which I can explain. We talked about the miracle morning I'll explain why, but my favorite review for the Taking LIFE Head On! was from someone who owned a bookstore and she goes, hi, I own blankety blank books here in wherever.

And she said, I want to start by saying that the writing was mediocre, if not terrible. Something like that, like I might be exaggerating. Here's the thing. It was a five-star review. So when I read it, I'm like, whoa, where is she going with this? Right. And she goes, but you'll notice I gave it five stars because the way he explained things and the story and the concepts have already changed my life.

So that was my favorite review. Cause I'm like awesome. I never tried to impress people with being a good writer. I just wanted to change people's lives. And I was like, that's the greatest review I have ever from a bookstore who reads tons of books, bookstore owner, and going, not a great writer, but I can't fault the book.

I mean, it's changing my life. So the miracle morning Taking LIFE Head On! if you didn't figure it out from the title, right. It's about me taking life head-on rooted in my story, right. Really the depth of my story and what it was like being in the hospital and just there's the whole story is obviously much longer.

Then we cover it today. And then it talks about the eight most profound lessons that I learned through that experience and how you can apply them to your life, to your business, et cetera, to overcome any adversity and turn it into an advantage. Or more specifically the subtitle of the book, which is How To Love The Life You Have While You Create The Life Of Your Dreams.

It's the idea that doesn't wait until you have this dream life. Most people are waiting for their life to get better before they actually truly love their life and love themselves. It's like, well, I'm not happy right now. I'm on a path. I'm on a journey. And once I get there I'll feel good. They didn't. No, no, no, no.

When I was in the hospital, I was able to tap into this inner, I don't know what you want to call it spirit or something where I actually loved my life. In the hospital with a cast and with brain damage and all beat up and scarred. And I found out I love my life. And I realized that if I could do it in the hospital, then anyone just about any situation or circumstance can apply what I learned from that to be able to love their life.

And then I went and beyond it too, they said I would never walk again. And then I went and ran a 52-mile ultra-marathon just to show that doesn't matter where you are now, anything is possible. So that was book one, Taking Life Head On. The Miracle Morning, again, was also written out of a sense of responsibility.

When in 2008, when the US economy crashed, I kind of crashed with it. I went from being successful where I had a six-figure business that I was running as an entrepreneur. I was a successful coach. I was a speaker and an author I'd written my first book. I had just bought my first brand new house. Bought my dream car, little infinity sports car and life was great.

And then the economy crashed and it felt like it happened so kind of quickly and kind of overnight. But I lost over half of my clients, lost my income. Went from being debt-free and very big on paying off credit cards every month to accumulating a $53,000 credit card balance in six months because I just couldn't pay the bills.

Wow. Couldn't pay the mortgage. I lost my house. And as a result of so much fear and uncertainty and I mean, just my identity was in crisis being a success coach who was failing miserably, I got deeply depressed, like suicidal depressed. And one thing led to another. I finally kind of confessed because I wasn't telling anyone.

I was kind of like embarrassed like I'm a success coach. And I don't think you should be embarrassed now, but being in it, I was like, dude, I'm a success coach and I can't succeed. What's wrong with me. And so I finally confessed to a good friend of mine and his advice was, he said, Hal, two things you need to do every day.

You need to exercise, which I hadn't done in six months. He said you go for a run or a jog or a walk or something in the morning. And he said, number two, you've got to read or listen to audiobooks or something. So basically he was saying, you've got every day, nurture your physical wellbeing. And then you've got to read books or audios to

nurture your intellectual and emotional wellbeing. So the next day I went on a run and on my very first run, about two minutes in, I heard a quote from Jim Rowan that became the catalyst for turning my life around faster than I ever thought possible. And a catalyst for The Miracle Morning. And the quote was this, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person that you become.

And at that moment, I realized I'm not dedicating time every day to my personal development. And therefore I'm not becoming the person that I need to be to create or attract whichever word you want to use. The success that I want my life. And so I had this epiphany, I was like, Okay, wait a minute, based on what John said, nurturing my physical and my mental and intellectual wellbeing.

Okay. I'm like, I'm doing that right now. And maybe that's kind of what Jim's talking about. Right? My level of personal development, if I want level 10 success, I got to become a level 10 person through daily personal development. And so I ran home with this idea. I'm going to figure out what the world's most successful people do every day.

And I'm going to pick the top one or two practices and start doing those. And I came up with a list of six practices. And when I tried to figure out which one or two will make the biggest impact in my life, and I'm at such a low point right now, how can I turn it around fast, we all want fast results. Right?

I want fast results. And as I'm trying to research between these six, which one's better, there was no conclusion because it depended on who you ask. Right? Ray Daleo, a billionaire said meditation was the number one key to his financial success. And I'm thinking, well, I've got to meditate and this guy's a billionaire and he's saying I'm financially ruined.

So that would make sense. But then I saw an interview with Will Smith on The Ellen Show and he told Ellen DeGeneres how affirmations were his key to being one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. I'm going, I got to do affirmations, but I'm going through all six of these. And finally, I went, wait a minute.

I was frustrated because none were proving to be more beneficial or better than the other. And I thought, what if I did all of them? What if I woke up tomorrow and I meditated, then I read affirmations, then I did visualization. And then I, you know, did some yoga, some exercise then I read. And then I journal, like, what if I did all six of the world's most proven.

I mean, nothing was rocket science. They weren't new, but all the research I did, I had never seen anyone that talked about doing more than one or two at a time, let alone six. So the next morning I woke up at 5:00 AM, which was crazy for me, but I knew if I wanted my life to be different, I had to be doing something different.

I got up an hour earlier. We'll go five, went through these six practices, and Jonathan, I mean, my life changed that morning. It wasn't called The Miracle Morning. It was never going to be a book, but I felt I could, for the first time, in six months of depression, I didn't feel depressed. I felt confident, I felt optimistic,

I felt hopeful, I felt energized. I'm like, dude, I was motivated. I thought if I do this every day, if I start every day at a level 10, it's only a matter of time between my outer world reflects my inner world. And I start to create this level 10 success that we all want. And I'll wrap up the story with,

the results and it was less than two months of doing what is now known as The Miracle Morning. I more than doubled my income and I didn't change jobs or get a promotion. I simply of the books I was reading in the morning and the clarity that I was gaining through the journaling and the confidence I was gaining through the affirmations.

I simply figured out how to scale my current business. And I doubled my clients, doubled the income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life to, I mentioned this earlier. That's when I decided, I want to use my miracle morning to do something physically that is so outside of my comfort zone, I can't even imagine doing it.

And I hated running. I'd never run more than a mile at a time. I thought I'm going to run a marathon. And after a few weeks of training for a marathon, I was like, screw it. Some people do double marathons. I'm going to do a double marathon, which was crazy. Yeah. If I would've known what I was actually committing to, I would have never.

So, you know, being naive sometimes is a gift. And then maybe last but not least, but my depression went away that morning. I mean, literally, like I didn't feel depressed again. I just felt better every day. Better, better, better, better, and better. And I'll close with, now tens of thousands of actually I think it's probably over a hundred thousand people now do the miracle morning every day from around the world, the way it changes their life,

I'm in awe. I am in awe of a guy just recently posted in The Miracle Morning community Facebook group, which I invite everybody to come to join. It's like the most positive online community that I've ever seen. Nice. 15,000 members, 16,000 as of yesterday. But he said he lost 60 pounds on The Miracle Morning.

Right. I mean, just crazy. You know, Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Love his stuff, so, okay, dude, this is going to blow your mind. Did you hear about what he said about Miracle Morning? I have not actually. Okay. I'm still, you can tell by my raise of excitement. Okay. He and I keynoted, we both spoke at an event a few months ago and I gave him a copy of The Miracle Morning.

You got to shake his hand and meet him and would be on someone like that. He's read every book that there is in personal development, the odds of him actually reading my book, I didn't think were very good, but I'm like, yeah, you got to take a shot. Right? I get an email a few weeks later from his publicist or his manager.

And he says Robert and his wife, Kim are big fans of your book. And they'd like to have you on Rich Dad radio. Amazing. Okay. So that's where it starts. So what happens is I, so I make that, I'm like, Oh my gosh, he must have read the book or looked at it or something. You know, I get on the show, and here's where it gets totally mind-blowing for me.

He starts telling his audience getting passionate. He says, this book will change your life. He says I've read The Miracle Morning, three times. I'm on day 60 without missing a single day. And he said this book has completely changed my life. And I went, dude if the miracle morning can change Robert Kiyosaki's life, who is a multimillionaire 65 years old done everything you could do in personal development, I was just blown away. So anyway. 

Jonathan Levi: It's incredible on so many levels because we've talked about habits a lot on this show. We've had a lot of habit experts. I recently interviewed Gretchen Rubin and talking about routines for happiness, and routines for success. Creating these kinds of structures and there, all the same, ones that come up, the meditation comes up, the positive affirmations come up.

Of course, we talk about exercise a ton. I've never heard of the idea of stacking them. How long does that take every morning, roughly?

Hal Elrod: It's scalable. I mean, most people do their miracle morning in 60 minutes. That's pretty average. 

Jonathan Levi: Well,  is breakfast fitting in there?

Hal Elrod: No. So I'll tell you this. When I first started The Miracle Morning, I was like, all right, I got six practices,

I'll do 10 minutes each. That's how I started it. Right. And then over time I was like, all right, I want to do a little more reading a little bit, you know, I can take less time for journaling. It doesn't take, you know, you go out and five. And so I kinda moved around there kind of modular. Right. I also try to adjusting what if I do exercise first?

What do I do meditation first? Right. So I really played with it. In the book, there's a whole chapter on how to customize The Miracle Morning to fit your style and your lifestyle. But there's also a chapter in the book called The Six-Minute Miracle Morning. And it's literally, it's not like some gimmicky, like, oh, here's six-minute abs or something.

I created it out of necessity, kinda like the miracle morning itself, which is, there were a lot of days. Most of us are all-or-nothing creatures. Right. It's like, Oh dude, I need it. I was going to go to the gym for an hour today. But I've only got 30 minutes. I'll just skip it and go tomorrow. I had that mindset for the miracle morning and I would end up missing it a lot of days when I couldn't do a full hour.

And then one day I had like 15 minutes to get ready and I go, what if I do one minute, really focused, intentional present minute for each of the sabers, six minutes total. And I meditated for a minute. And, you know, yeah. I didn't go to the depths of my inner being, but I lowered my cortisol levels. I lowered my stress.

I was calm. I was centered. I was like, Oh, that's kinda nice. I pulled out my affirmations. I read those for a minute. And really only a half a page long. It only took a minute to read, but I was focused on my goals, my highest priorities, and what I was going to do that day. Write my affirmations, directed my focus.

I go, and I did 60 seconds of exercise. I did 60 seconds of all of them. And after six minutes, even though it was one 10th of the time that I was used to, it felt like it was maybe 70 to 80% of the benefit. 

Jonathan Levi: There's that Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule.

Hal Elrod:  There aren't too many things that you could do one 10th of the time and get 80% of the benefit.

And there's people in The Miracle Morning community that they're like, yeah, I do a six-minute. Most people do like a 30-minute or 60 minutes, but some do the six-minute miracle morning on a daily basis. And you know, whatever works for you. Yeah. I love that. 

Jonathan Levi: I really, really love that. Morning routines are something I'm super fascinated in, ever since kind of Tim Ferris, drew so much emphasis in his show to talking about the power of starting your day off right, priming yourself for really a powerful day. So I'm really glad we got you on the show. Cause it sounds like you're the expert on the morning routine.

Hal Elrod: People are calling me that it feels weird, but I'm starting to accept it, and embrace it.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. So, Hal, it may be my background in kind of accelerated learning, but I have a guilty admission, which is, I love to assign homework to my listeners, to my students, to my blog readers. So if you could give one piece of homework with a hundred percent assurance that everyone in the audience would go home and do it this week, what do you think that homework would be?

Hal Elrod: I mean, there's one of two ways that I could kind of take this on. And so I'll throw both out there. Love it. The homework I would give you is I would pause, you know, as soon as I'm done talking, right, turn off the interview and move your alarm clock back 30 to 60 minutes earlier, that's step one. And the part of the premise of The Miracle Morning beyond what you do when you wake up is why you wake up in the morning.

Most people, the reason they wake up in the morning is because they have to. They have to be somewhere. They have to do something or they have to answer to somebody else. And they set their alarm accordingly. And I call that a mediocre morning. Right. You're literally, you're wasting with a valuable time in the morning that some of the world's most successful people understand that value and they maximize it every day.

But if you wait till the last minute to wake up and then even worse, if you hit the snooze button, you're starting your day with a lack of self-discipline and procrastination. So first and foremost decide, you know what? I'm not okay with mediocre morning anymore. I'm going to wake up 30 minutes earlier from now on not cause I have to be up cause I want to be up.

And why do you want to be up? Because you want to dedicate that time to becoming the person that you need to be, to create everything you want for your life. If that's your personal development time. And don't wait for you to master all the lifesaver. Just wake up 30 minutes earlier or 60 minutes earlier and read a book during that time or exercise for 10 minutes and read for 20 whatever.

I mean the miracle morning, you can start simple. You don't have to do it all at once, right. Start with something. So that's my assignment is for the next 30 days, wake up 30 to 60 minutes earlier. And do reading and exercise. Let's just keep it simple. Now, if The Miracle Morning is the book you're reading, obviously you can incorporate the lifesavers as you go on.

So the other homework I would give you is if you want the miracle morning, fast start kit, as I call it, you can go to miraclemorning.com and this is totally free. It will give you the first few chapters of the book for free. It will give you a 17-minute video training for free and a 60 minutes of audio training for free.

And that way you don't have to wait for the book to arrive from amazon.com in the mail, and then three days have gone by or a week. And you're like, eh, you kind of like lost your motivation or whatever. Tell me how you can start right now. Start today, take any energy you're feeling from this interview and apply it by, I would get the fast start kit and I would move your alarm clock back. And I would commit to your first miracle morning tomorrow. 

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic. I love that. And I really appreciate the kind of handouts in the homework and the really actualizing people's learning because really people can listen to podcasts until they're blue in the face.

If they're not taking it into their daily lives, I really don't see the value in besides entertainment, but I don't find myself all that entertaining. So we really gotta be assigning homework. That's actually gonna help people make change in their life. Two more questions I'd like to ask. What are the few books besides your own that you found most impactful?

And then what are you working on now? What's next?

Hal Elrod:  Yeah. Some of my favorite books, one is a self-published book that it's kind of like a cult classic. If you will, it's called Vision to Reality. It's by Honoree Corder, Vision to Reality. That's a great one. And then, you know, actually one of my favorites, and I think it's also self-published, but I'm not trying to be biased to self-published authors. 

Jonathan Levi: Nothing wrong with self-publishing. I self-published my book. 

Hal Elrod: So. Yeah, I'll throw in an author published by a major publisher, just for good measure. But the second book is called The Millionaire Fastlane. The Millionaire Fastlane is one of the best books I've ever read. Any money-related book, but it's basically if you want to be a millionaire legitimately, and you don't want to be a millionaire by the time you're 65 and you're not quite in your prime to enjoy your money, but you won't actually to be a millionaire in like, you know, five years or 10 years at the most depths.

A great book on legitimately what it takes. It's not for everybody. If you're not willing to be an entrepreneur and get out there and get out of your comfort zone and create value for people, and then scale that value don't waste your time reading the book, or maybe the book will inspire you to do that.

But The Millionaire Fastlane by M. J. DeMarco, a fantastic book. And then last but not least is The One Thing, The One Thing, uh, which is by Gary Keller. Founder of Keller Williams and Jay Papasan. And that is a fundamental, the top 10, got to read that book to really gain kind of the overall principle of just focusing on one thing at a time, crushing that one thing, rather than trying to get five, six different projects or goals done at once.

Jonathan Levi: Love it. I'm a huge believer in that as well. Hal, what are you working on now? What's next for you?

Hal Elrod: See that,  it's funny that you say that. That's the toughest question, right? Yeah. Right after I say, you're just focusing on one thing rather than five, but what's next for me? The 17 projects I'm working on right now. Amazing.

No. So The Miracle Morning for salespeople comes out, well, depending on when this airs, it might already be out. But if you go to Amazon, in fact, the Kendall's up for pre-order now, and then I think July 22nd is going to be the publish date, July 22nd, 2015. So The Miracle Morning for salespeople is it's 30% miracle morning and 70%

advanced tenant strategies and principles around selling. And then maybe most importantly, my live event, if you go to bestyeareverblueprint.com bestyeareverblueprint.com a dream of mine, Jonathan, for years that I let fear hold me back from, was to put on my first live event. And my dream was to have a hundred people there.

And my fear was what if only five people show up. I rented this big hotel conference room and there's five people sitting in a hundred chairs. So I finally got over the fear actually, no, I take that back. I didn't get over the fear. I just put a post in The Miracle Morning Community Facebook group that said, mark your calendars.

Our first live event is going to happen the first week of December 2014. It's going to be amazing in San Diego, California, more details to come. And then I hit the post. And then I went, Holy shit. I have to figure out how to put on a live event in five months. You know, we ended up having 220 people there. So I mean more than double my dream.

And so this year we're doing the second one, same thing first weekend in December. And if you go to bestyeareverblueprint.com, I encourage you to watch the three-minute video. And that will, for the most part, tell you everything that you need to know. You'll either know those are my people. I want to be a part of that event.

That content will help me make sure I have my best year ever, or you're gonna, you know, it's not for you. So either one, I'm fine with it. Yeah. Doing that and then we've got, you know, lots of books in the works and I speak speaking engagements and all sorts of, but as far as projects go, The Miracle Morning book series and the live event are the two big focuses.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. And we're going to make sure to add guys those links the bestyeareverblueprint and the cantchangeit link and all that good stuff on the blog post at becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. So we'll make sure all that stuff is in there. Hal, it's been such an inspiration to talk to you. I really appreciate you making the time. And I do hope we keep in touch. 

Hal Elrod: Yeah, my friend. Hey, thanks for having me on, and thank you for leading by example and hosting this podcast. It's fantastic. 

Jonathan Levi: Indeed. I'm going to be checking out your book very soon as well. I want to get myself a Miracle Morning routine going.

Hal Elrod: Dude make it happen. Right, Jonathan, I'll talk to you soon, buddy. Take care of hell.

Jonathan Levi: Bye-bye take care.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.