The 6 Practices of the Ultimate Morning Routine

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Sign up for your free trial at Shopify.com/manliness at Shopify.com/manliness, Shopify.com/manliness. So early this year, Kate and I started a sub-stack. It's called Dying Breed. It's a place where we can write about things that wouldn't be a good fit for art of manliness, but we wanted to write about and share anyway. Each week, we publish two articles there. First, there's Kate's Wonderful Short Sunday Firesights. It's a great way to start your week off with some reflection. And then we have a longer form article that explores topics like luck, success, media theory, the intersection between technology and life, how to use technology in a meaningful way. When you subscribe, you get access to over 300 articles in the archive, including all of Kate's Sunday Firesights, plus articles like "20 Lessons from 20 Years of Marriage" co-written by Kate and I. What Kicker Guard can tell us why professional sports and life can seem so boring. We have articles on luck, what philosophers think about luck, a tour of our home office, and a lot, lot more. Plus, when you subscribe, you can comment and connect directly with Kate and I and other Dying Breed readers. It's just $5 a month or $50 a year, and your subscription is a great way to support the work we do at Art of Manliness. We'd love to see you there on Dying Breed. Head to Dyingbreed.net and become a member today. That's DyingBreed.net. Thanks so much for your continued support. We really appreciate you. (upbeat music) Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. There's been a lot of talk about morning routines in the last few years, but the idea is hardly new. Famous men from Thomas Aquinas to Benjamin Franklin structured their mornings to accomplish great deeds and live flourishing lives. A modern advocate of his age-old practice is Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, first published nearly 20 years ago. Long before morning routines became a trend, Hal was experimenting with his own, researching and refining what actually works. Through his experiences, and those that the millions have tried his approach, he's cut through the aspirational noise to offer a doable, effective framework for starting your day right. Today on the show, Hal shares the six practices of the Miracle Morning routine, why he chose them, and how they set up your day for success. We also discuss how long the routine takes and how a shortened version could be done in just six minutes as well as how to make it work if you're not a morning person. Along the way, I share what my own morning routine looks like. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is/morningroutine. All right, Hal Elrod, welcome to the show. - Brad, it is good to be here, man. Like you and I were just speaking that we've both been around a long time, man. So it took a while to connect, but better late than never. - Yeah, so you wrote this book called The Miracle Morning back in 2012. It's all about setting up a morning routine for yourself to set yourself up for Dave's success. And you've been blogging about it. You've built up this community around the Miracle Morning. And then recently, a couple of years ago, you released an updated version of the Miracle Morning where you've expanded and added some things you've learned over the past decade on how to amplify someone's morning routine. But let's talk about the origin of the Miracle Morning 'cause it was two personal setbacks that led to its development. The first was a near fatal car accident you had in your 20s. Tell us about that. - Yeah, so when I was 20 years old, I was one of Cutlery's top sales rep. I just finished my first year of college and I started a career kind of because a friend pressured me into going into an interview and I just wanted him off my back. So I got hired to sell Cutco and I started doing pretty well with them. And so they had me giving speeches at their events. And one night after a speech, I was driving home when my car, Ford Mustang, was hit, had it on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles an hour. And I was found dead at the scene. And my heart stopped for six minutes. They revived me on a helicopter, airlifted me to the hospital. I spent six days in a coma when I came out of the coma. I was told by doctors that I had permanent brain damage and that I would never walk again. And I just had, I had this like dual mindset where I went, okay, if I never walk again and I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life and that is my reality, I'm not going to allow that to dictate my mental and emotional wellbeing. And I told my parents, I said, mom and dad, I know you're worried about me, don't worry. If the worst case scenario is the doctors are right and I never walk again, I've decided I'll be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. And then on the flip side, I was like, but I'm not accepting that as my only option. I'm maintaining unwavering faith that I'm going to walk again while I simultaneously accept that I might not. Now you get to like a lesson for a lot of us, right? It's like, how do you expect the best? Like go out there with faith, approach your life with this confidence and optimism. And then also be at peace with like, hey, sometimes things go my way. Sometimes they don't, sometimes I'm down. Sometimes the down and out period lasts way longer than I want it to. So how can I be at peace and grateful and happy and keep moving toward the future that I want? And so I took my first step a few weeks later and then kind of the rest is history and how that tied in indirectly to the miracle morning is in that experience in the hospital, I decided that I was going to use that experience to help other people. I thought I'm going to write a book. I'm going to start speaking about this. Maybe that's why God put me through this. There's a bigger purpose. And so when the miracle morning became my morning routine and it changed my life so profoundly that my wife called it a miracle, then I just felt like I have a responsibility to share this with other people. - That idea of where you're holding those two different ideas in your head of, okay, I'm going to have faith that things will get better while at the same time, accepting maybe they won't and maybe this is my reality, reminds me of the Stockdale paradox from Jim Stockdale. He was an admiral in the military in the Navy who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam at the Hanoi Hilton, one of the most brutal prisoner of war camps. And before he was a prisoner of war, he studied stoicism and while he was there, he developed this paradox. He calls it the Stockdale paradox or it's become known as the Stockdale paradox of holding these two different ideas in your head. He's like, well, maybe I'm going to hope I'm going to get out but I'm also at the same time going to accept maybe I'm not going to get out. And that reminds me exactly what you did. - Thank you for that. I just, I just Googled it and I'm going to watch videos and read articles and I'm going to start incorporating that because I had never heard of that before, but yeah, that's exactly it. - So the miracle morning, it's got six practices. It's silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. And that's just another way of saying writing and use the acronyms savers for this routine. Your recovery from the car accident laid the foundation for the miracle morning routine because it got you thinking about resilience and goal setting, but it was another personal setback that led you to actually creating this concrete morning routine for yourself. What was the story there? And why did you end up choosing the six savers practices for your morning routine? - Yeah, so the miracle morning specifically was born out of the 2008 financial crash. I like millions of entrepreneurs, my business started to fail and I couldn't pay the bills and my house was foreclosed on and it was kind of a six month downward spiral. And then my wife gave me some advice. Actually, she, her advice was call your friend John and get some advice like your, 'cause I was struggling, man. I couldn't figure out how to turn it around and I'm drowning in debt and then the house gets foreclosed on and I call my friend John and he essentially tells me to listen to a Jim Rohn audio. He goes, "This audio will change the way you think, Cal, and it will teach you to solve your own problems and turn your life around." I was like, all right. So I listened to Jim Rohn audio and this one quote changes everything for me. It stands out and it's your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And I went, well, okay. And if anybody's listening, you can kind of take this and apply it to your life right now which is like on a scale of one to 10, if you're measuring the level of success, fulfillment, happiness, success in every area, your finances, your relationships, your mental health, everyone wants level 10. I've never met anyone that's like, why don't wanna be too happy or too financially secure or it's like, no, no, no, there's this human drive and desire to self actualize and be like, I wanna be the happiest and healthiest and most financially secure and most harmonious in my relationships that I possibly can be. So I determined I want a level 10 in terms of my success. And then my question was, as Jim Rohn is saying, your level of success won't exceed your level of personal development. It's like, well, what's my level of personal development? Am I developing myself to the degree that I need to to become the level 10 version of me day in and day out so I can show up at a level 10 and create that success I want in my life. And when I was honest with myself, and again, if you're listening to this, like do this assessment right now, right? What's level of success do you want, a scale of one to 10, probably a 10, right? Or at least like an eight or nine, you wanna be up there. What level is your personal development at right now? And you can assess that based on your daily habits, your daily rituals, your daily routines. Are you doing things each day to develop your mindset your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being and capacities to be at as close to a level 10 as possible? And for me, it was a no. It was like, I'm like at a two or a three. Like my personal development is all over the place. I start a book, I don't finish it. I'll try a journal, like I don't do anything consistently. And so I just Googled, what are the world's most successful people do for personal development? And that's where these six practices, I had a list of six and I was looking for one. I'm like, oh yeah, okay, the world's most successful people, they swear by meditation. I found this article, Fortune 500 CEOs who swear by meditation. And they said, this is what gave us our biggest breakthroughs that took our companies and our revenue and our income to new heights. And I was like, all right, I gotta meditate for that clarity and that mental well-being. And then I read articles on affirmations in the world's best athletes visualize and a lot of people attribute the books they read. And so I go, well, which of these is the best? And to keep a long story, not too long. It was, wait a minute. What if I did all of these? What if instead of picking one of the world's most timeless proven personal development practices, what if I created a simple ritual that combined all six of them? And that would be the ultimate personal development routine. And so that was it. Day one, it was like, I did 10 minutes of each of these practices. And most people do anywhere from five to 10 each. So it's like a 30 to a 60 minute miracle morning. This isn't like the 5 a.m. club. We have to wake up super, super early. It's just starting your day with these practices whenever you do wake up. And so yeah, that's how the savers were born. And it was these six practices. I did all of them the next day. And I've done all of them more days than not for the last 17 years. - Well, let's talk about these different components in detail, 'cause in the book, you go into detail on what these different parts of the savers routine could look like and the benefits of it. The first one is silence. Why start with silence as the first thing in the routine? - So you think about it. When do your greatest insights come to you? Is it when you're busy, when your mind is racing with a million things on your to-do list, when you're checking emails or staring at a screen or scrolling your phone? And the answer is no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your greatest insights and ideas and breakthroughs and perspectives and realizations always come in moments of peaceful, purposeful silence. And that's often unintentional where it's like you're in the shower or you're falling asleep at night or you just like the calmer and quieter your mind is, the more there is space for you to access your highest truth, your highest wisdom, depending on your belief system, like the wisdom of God, right? And so because of that, and because our smartphones have robbed us of those periods of silence that used to be part of our, like inherently, if you're waiting in line, if you're riding on a bus, if you're, like, we were with our thoughts a lot in the past, but now because that smartphone's with us, you know, pretty close to 24/7, it's like, we're not left alone with that, the benefits from silence. So this is about starting your day with anywhere from one minute of peaceful, purposeful silence. It could be prayer, it could be meditation. For me, it's both, it's a little bit, I always start with a prayer to like ask for guidance and really calm my mind and express gratitude. And then I'll set my timer on my phone, usually for five to 10 minutes, depending on, you know, what my schedule's like and what the day, what my availability is. And I just sit there and I have my journal next to me, by the way, a lot of the savers you combine them. So you can, for example, silence and scribe and all my journal right there. And as a thought emerges, I'm like, oh, that's it. That's what I need to do today. Or that's the most important thing. I'll open my journal, jot it down, close the journal, go back into silence. But again, that's where my greatest breakthroughs come from, insights, realizations, clarity, peace of mind, and so to start your day with that every single day, the benefits are immeasurable. - Yeah, before reading your book, I've been doing this for years. First thing I do when I wake up, I'll get out of my bedroom and go to my couch and I just sit there and I pray and I just kind of sit there for a couple minutes in silence, that's all it is. And it's nice. And it is interesting, you do get these insights, I think particularly after you wake up, but not if the first thing you do is dive into your texts and emails on your phone. - Yeah, so my rule is that my smartphone, you know, I don't check it until after silence is done. Yeah, so that's crucial because if you, as soon as you start checking notifications, your brain goes into reactive mode. - Yeah, I remember a long time ago, I'd get in the habit, first thing I do is check my phone and it just ruins everything. Your big proponent of meditation, particularly this thing called emotional optimization meditation, what's that? - So it's as simple as choosing your optimal mental and emotional state. And in the book, of course, like, you know, it's like four pages that walk you through, like how to do this, how to identify it. But it's to identify your optimal mental and emotional state. And then you essentially get yourself in that state and I give different ways to do it. One is to remember, like, when was the last time I felt that way or what makes me feel this way? For example, let's say you wanna be in a state of gratitude. Well, it's like, okay, so for me, I imagine my kids and I just smile. I mean, literally I smiled. As soon as I said my kids and I pictured them, like right now I just smile. And so you get yourself in the state and then you set your timer and you cultivate that state. You meditate in that state and what you're doing is, you're creating neural pathways in your brain so you can access your optimal mental and emotional states at will. It's kind of like exercise for your muscles, but it's for your mind. And so that way, as you do it day after day after day after day and you continue to cultivate your optimal states, you hardwire them in your brain and your nervous system and it literally changes your quality of life and gives you access to those states in the middle of the day or whenever you need them. So whether it's the state being, you know, joy, happiness, peace of mind, confidence, love, empathy, whatever that state is, by hardwiring it in the morning through emotional optimization meditation, you gain access to it all day long. - Yeah, we've had a podcast guest, Dr. Rick Hansen on the show. He's a psychologist and he does something similar. He calls it hardwiring happiness. Same sort of thing. You should just think about these optimal states that you want to be in. This is particularly useful if you have a tendency to be an Eor and you kind of had that negativity bias. - Yes, to really sit with those positive emotions, like really absorb them, like what it feels like, enrich them. And the idea is, like you said, you'll hardwire yourself for those more optimal or positive emotions instead of just being a negative Nelly all the time. - Yeah, absolutely. - So the next part of the savers routine is affirmations. Now affirmations, I think they got a bad rap. I think most people think they're cheesy. They think of Stuart Smalley from SNL saying, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough. I'm smart enough and dog on it. People like me. - Right. Well, you argue the reason why they might have a bad rap is because most self-help authors talk about affirmations in the wrong way. What do they get wrong? - So I think there's one of two problems. Number one is they tell you to affirm something that you don't actually believe. So if you're struggling, it's something that's not true. If you're struggling financially, they'll say just affirm, I am wealthy. I am, right? And if you're affirming something that is not factually true or doesn't resonate as true for you, then you create an internal conflict as if we don't have enough of them, right? And you go, I am wealthy. And then you're like, no, I'm not. I'm struggling financially right now. This is BS, right? So that's the first problem. The second problem is we're taught to often create affirmations in this flowery passive language that makes us feel better in the moment, but is actually diluting us into thinking something is gonna happen without our effort. I'll give you an example. So we've all heard the affirmation, I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance, right? And if you're affirming that and you're struggling financially, that feels good in the moment. You're like, oh, wow, I'm a money magnet and money is gonna magically flow to me effortlessly and in abundance, that's awesome. God, that feels so much better than my reality that I'm struggling financially. But that's diluting yourself. And so I think those are the two biggest problems is we're taught to affirm something that we don't believe in and it's cheesy and it's not true or we're affirming some magical result that's gonna happen independent of our efforts to give us relief from our stress. - Yeah, it's that kind of manifesting secret stuff. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, so what's a better way to craft affirmations so they're actually effective instead of cringy? - So for me, I use three steps and to me they've gotta be rooted in truth. They've gotta be practical and they've gotta be actionable. So the three steps, number one, step one is affirm what you're committed to. Step two is affirm why it is a must for you. And step three is affirm which actions you're going to take and when. So this is a very, again, practical, actionable, results-oriented. So it's like you're affirming what you're committed to. So not I am wealthy, but I am committed to increasing my income by 30% this year, right? Or what it's like you're committing to some sort of meaningful, measurable outcome. And then step two, why is it a must for me? Why is it important? Who's this gonna benefit? Like you're getting clear on the why that is so compelling for you. And usually I have like, you know, two, three, four, five reasons why I'm willing to commit to this thing for me, for my kids, my wife, like, you know, whatever, whatever the benefits are. And then number three, okay, well, what am I gonna do? When am I gonna do it? Okay, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and it's gonna go to my schedule. I'm gonna commit to focusing on business growth, period. I'm gonna read books on it. I'm gonna take action on it. I'm gonna work with chat GPT to figure, like, make a plan. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And so when you create affirmations that are following those three steps, really the only way you can fail is to live out of integrity with what you're affirming every day. Because, hey, this is what I'm committed to. This is why this is what I'm gonna do. That to me is like my, it's my North Star. It's the anchor for the rest of my miracle morning. The other savers really support what I'm affirming every day. - And so I imagine you wanna take some time before you start your miracle morning routine to write this affirmation out. - Yeah, I always make 'em on like a Microsoft Word or a Google Sheet because to me, affirmations are always a rough draft because as we continue to learn and grow and gain new insights and perspectives and strategies, I'm always editing and updating my affirmations. I'll make my rough draft, I'll print a copy, and then I'll go in usually multiple times a week, often during silence or during reading. I'll like, I'll read something or I'll think. I'm like, ooh, I need to remember that. And so I'll put in my affirmations. I always usually scribble on the sheet. And then after the sheet's gotten messy enough, I go back into the Word doc or the Google doc, update the affirmations, print a new copy, and just kinda rinse and repeat. And I've been doing that for 17 years. - And then when you got your affirmation written out, do you read it to yourself? Is that what you do? Or do you read it out loud? - Yeah, I just read it to myself quietly. I've had people in the miracle morning community that go, it's more powerful when I read it out loud. So I'm like, whatever works for you. And then I have another honorary quarter who is my co-creator of the miracle morning book series. She reads her affirmations, so she types them out. Then she reads them into her voice and into her app. And then while she's on the treadmill, she listens to them. So she's handling that, we're gonna get to the Ian Savers exercise, right? She's doing exercise while she's doing her affirmation. And she's listening to the affirmations. So it's like, she's killing two birds with one stone. She doesn't have to separate them. And there's a lot of the savers that you can combine in that way where you're doing them at the same time. - Something I did when I was a young man. This is back when I was in law school and my goal was I wanted to do really well in law school, get on law review. And so I had these goals for myself. And every morning, what I would do, I would read these goals out loud to myself but I'd also write them out like five times. So I had these old journals full of just like pages of me writing out my affirmations/goals over and over again. I guess it helped 'cause law school went pretty well for me. I guess it was a way for me to reinforce like what I was doing and why I was doing it. - Nice, nice. Yeah, I always say in the simplest form an affirmation is nothing more than a reminder of something that you have deemed so important that you want to remember it, that you want to integrate it into your thinking, into your belief system, et cetera. - We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors. - I've had my fair share of financial frustrations, surprise fees, mispayments, overdraft charges. It always feels like you're trying to make progress but end up taking two steps back. That's why a service like Chime would have been a game changer for my younger self. That's when all those mistakes happened. Chime understands that every dollar counts. When you set up direct deposits through Chime, you get access to features that actually help you stay ahead like overdraft protection up to $200 and getting paid up to two days early. It's banking done right. 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Shop Mint Unlimited Plans at mintmobile.com/manliness that's mintmobile.com/manliness. Limited time offer, upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required. That's equivalent to $15 a month. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only. Anything above 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device is required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. And now back to the show. All right, so that's affirmations. The next part of the routine is V for visualization. This is I think another thing that I think a lot of people think is hokey or cheesy. What does visualization look like? - So visualization is there's two parts to it. I think for it to be effective. And most people leave out the second part, which in my mind is the most important. And the first part is see the ideal outcome. And that's what they teach. Like, yeah, yeah, make a vision board. Like put pictures of your ideal outcome and see it and feel it. That's great because A, it's a reminder. Like, oh yeah, that's important to me. I need to stay focused on that and not get distracted and not lose sight of that. So I'm gonna visualize it. But more importantly, I'm gonna see it in a way where it's so compelling, where I'm creating, I'm literally generating a compelling emotional experience, similar to that emotional optimization meditation. I'm now creating a compelling vision that makes me feel so inspired that I'm motivated. Like that fuels my motivation to do the things today that'll get me there. But the most important part of visualization, that second part is mentally rehearsing the things that are going to get you there that you must do today. And in the same way, compelling, seeing yourself following through with things that might be out of your comfort zone, they might be scary, they might be difficult, but they're necessary. And so you use that visualization and it only takes a minute or two to see yourself tying your shoes, heading out the front door, going on that run for that marathon, right? Or opening of the Word document, the Google doc and starting on your book, like whatever it is. Or having that difficult conversation with your coworker or picking up the phone and calling prospects, like whatever it is, you mentally rehearse doing the thing. And this is what world-class athletes do on a regular basis. The best athletes in the world. One of their strategies is I'm going to visualize, I'm going to mentally rehearse performing at my best. Whether it's Tiger Woods when he was at the top of the game on 18 holes or Michael Jordan on the basketball court, it was seeing themselves and mentally rehearsing doing the thing so that when it was time to actually swing that club or step onto that court, they had already been there in their mind. It wasn't like the first time they had experienced it. They had felt it, they had seen it and now it was just time to go do it in real time. - Yeah, the way you describe visualizations, it reminds me of the WOOP method of goal planning. Have you heard about this? - Sounds funny, but I don't know. - Yeah, so it was developed by the psychologist name, Gabriela, your name's like Ottingen. I can't pronounce her last name. - I thought it was going to be WOOP. - No, but WOOP is an acronym that stands for W's wish. So you identify a desirable but achievable goal. O, the first O is outcome. So it's visualized the best possible outcome. I'm gonna create a positive mental image of that, see what it looks like. Now this is the most important part. The second O in WOOP is obstacle. So you got to identify a significant internal obstacle or external obstacle that might prevent you from reaching that goal. And then P in WOOP is plan. And then you create an if then plan to address the obstacle. So it's positive thinking, but also adding in some negative thinking, but then coming up with a positive plan to overcome that obstacle. - I love that, I love that, man. - Yeah, and then with those visualizations, I imagine they can change every day. So if you got a big thing going on that day, your visualization will be for that big, I don't know, sales call or something. - Yeah, for me, I'll actually all take up, before I do my visualization, I will look over, well, here's the thing. I'm looking over my affirmations typically, and then that leads to the visualization. 'Cause I have an affirmation for each one of my goals and each one of my roles. So like my most important goals, I've got an affirmation for, here's the financial goal I'm committed to as a father, here's what I'm committed to as a dad, here's what I'm committed to as a husband. So again, a goal or a role, an affirmation's appropriate. And then once you've read the affirmation, now you're just visualizing yourself doing the thing that step three of your affirmations was, which actions are you going to take and when? And that is the last thing you affirm before you go into visualization, giving it a real life example. When I was a year into my miracle morning, I decided that my level 10 fitness goal was going to be to run a 52 mile ultramarathon. Because I hated running ironically, and I thought, man, the person I'd have to become to run 52 consecutive miles when right now I couldn't even run one mile at that point, I was like, I wanna become that person. So I'm gonna make this commitment publicly 'cause it scares me, right? Like I was really, the miracle morning just got me thinking so big. And so I did, I committed to it. And what I would do is I would read my affirmations, I'm committed to running 52 miles on October 29th, 2009, no matter what, there's no other option. This is a must for me because it's such a fear and limitation that in order to overcome it, I will be able to overcome anything else in my life. And then the third step, which actions will I take and win, I will read the book, the non-runners marathon trainer and follow the training plan to a T, whether I feel like it or not. So I just affirmed that. Now I go into visualization. Part one, I visualize myself with the outcome. I see myself crossing the finish line of the ultramarathon. And I see it, I imagine what it'll feel like. I smile, I take a deep breath. I'm like, that's gonna be fricking awesome when I do that. Even though I'm scared, even though like, part of me doesn't even believe that I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna visualize it as if it were true. And then the second part, and the most important part is, I would mentally rehearse my cell phone going off at 7 a.m. when it was time to run. I'd visualize myself reaching out, turning the phone off, walking into my bedroom, getting dressed in my running clothes, walking to the front door of my house. I can still see it today like it was yesterday. Open the front door. I would see that my driveway slanted down to the sidewalk. And then I would read my affirmations one more time in my head. I'd recite them one more time while I visualize the sidewalk. I am committed to running 52 miles, right, yada, yada, yada. And then I would visualize myself running out the door with enthusiasm and energy and excitement. Now, think about how that impacted real life. When the alarm on my phone went off at 7 a.m., human nature, if I had not affirmed and visualized, would be like, I don't wanna run. I'll just do it tomorrow, or I'm not even gonna do the marathon, man. Who was I kidding? But that's not what happened, Brett, because that's not what I mentally rehearsed. It's not what I visualized. So what would happen is like I was a robot that I programmed that morning. The alarm would go off on my phone at 7 a.m. I would turn it off. I would get off the couch, walk into my closet, get dressed, go to the front door, open it. It was literally, it would play out exactly as I had visualized it that morning. So you can apply that practice, that two-step practice of outcome, and then the mental rehearsal to any goal, any role, any aspect of your life. And again, the affirmations essentially lead right into the visualization. - All right, so the next part of the routine is E for exercise. Are we talking like a full-blown workout in the morning for this? - No, and this is, I mean, this is one of the simplest, like this requires the least explanation. It's move your body first thing in the morning or relatively quickly after you wake up because it wakes up your lymphatic system. It gets your blood and oxygen flowing, including flowing to your brain. So you think clear, you feel better. And if you ever wake, there are days where I wake up and I'm like, I'll even start meditating. And I'm like, oh my God, my brain is not on right now. I am falling asleep. I'm like not, it's not working. I will stand up and do 60 seconds of jumping jacks. Or I'll just count to my age, I'm 46. So I'll just do 46 jumping jacks usually. But here's the thing. You go from I'm so tired and lethargic to now you're like breathing heavy after 60 seconds of jumping jacks. You're breathing heavy, you're alert, you're awake. The blood is flowing, the oxygen's flowing. You sit down and now your mental acuity is significantly improved than before you did that exercise. But then on an average day, it'll be like five minutes of stretching. Sometimes it's two or three minutes. I'll do like 60 seconds of plank, 60 seconds of downward dog, and 60 seconds of back bend, and 60 seconds of jumping jacks. That's actually my standard four minute workout that I do every morning. It's 60 seconds of each of those four activities. But you can do whatever you want. - Yes, no full blown workout, just the goal is to move your body. - And then I go after my miracle morning and after I've got the kids ready for school. When I go into my, I have a home office with a little workout, like a little tiny mini gym in the back. That's the first thing I do is I do like a 20, 30 minute full blown workout. So yeah, the miracle morning part of my exercise in my savers is just to get the blood and oxygen flowing and wake myself up. - Yeah, for me, my routine is, okay, I wake up, I do the moment of silence, pray, and then I take a morning walk. It's a mile, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to be on how fast I go. And like during that time, I'm thinking about what I got to do for the day. So I'm doing, maybe I'm just, I'm unintentionally doing some affirmations and some visualization during that morning walk. - I love that. And you're combining silence, you're combining nature, you're combining affirmations. Like, yeah, you can go for a walk and while you're on your walk, you can listen to your affirmations if you put them, if you record them, right? You can meditate and pray. For me, when I go on a walk or a jog around our property, like that is almost always, almost 10 out of 10 times, probably nine out of 10, I gain some sort of profound insight solution to my problem and I go back and I implement it. - Yeah, you're right. Taking that walk does wake me up. I'm good to go after that. All right, so let's move on to R. R is for reading. So in this reading part, what kind of reading are you doing? What kind of books are you reading? - So I have a unique kind of self-imposed rule where family is my top priority. Well, health is my top priority, but I've got that pretty dialed in. I've read many, many books on optimizing health. And so I've got my health routines in place with diet and exercise and all of those things. So family is my number one priority or right behind health. And it's the one that does require attention because with human beings, they're never stagnant. They're always growing, they're changing, they're evolving. You don't just get in the same routine where it's gonna work. If I do the same thing every day for my wife and kids, like, nope, they need me to mix it up and adapt to them. So I have a self-imposed rule that I have to read what I call a family book, which essentially just means either a book on marriage or a book on parenting before I read any other book, which is usually a business book that I'm excited about. So right now, I just, I'm rereading the book, Raising a Modern Day Night. You heard of that book before? - I've heard of it, yeah. - Yeah, and so that's a great book. My son just turned 13, so I'm reading it for him. And then after that book, the business book I read right now is called Wealthy and Well Known by my good buddies, Rory and A.J. Vaden. So that's it. First, I read at least a few pages out of a family book so I can learn one thing so I can apply to my family, and then I go into the business book. - So you're doing a lot of nonfiction reading during this time. - It's all nonfiction. - All nonfiction. - In the evening, sometimes I'll do fiction, but yeah, during the morning, it's all nonfiction. I'm trying to optimize my mindset and learn something that I can actually apply to improve my marriage, my family, my business, et cetera. - Yeah, lately I've been reading fiction in the morning. I love reading nonfiction books, but I've been doing a lot more fiction reading. - Interesting, how come? - Well, first off, 'cause I just want to, I read plenty of nonfictions. Like I need to use more fiction, it's enjoyable. But something that I've found as a unintended side effect of this, that you actually pick up a lot of cool personal development insights while reading fiction. Like I'm right now, my son and I are reading the Count of Monte Cristo together, the Unabridged versions, like 1200 pages. Crazy story, but there's a lot of cool insights about patients and these characters will drop these little insights about life, about business that I've been highlighting. And I'm like, this is really good. I can use this in my day-to-day life. So I know you're big on nonfiction, but fiction, I think you can find some really cool insights. - How old is your son, by the way? - He'll be 15 here next, or this month. - Okay, sorry. So I'm wondering if counting, I'm already on Amazon adding Count of Monte Cristo to my cart. So... - It's a great, it's... - Being at 13, is that appropriate? - Well, I think he, there's some 13-year-olds who could do it, but it's a beast of a book, but he'll feel awesome once he finishes it. He'll feel cool. All right, so you're gonna spend some time reading. The final part of The Savers is the final S, and that is scribing or writing. What's the purpose of writing in the morning? And what are you writing? - Yeah, well, and it's interesting. I think this is the one that I hear from people that they find the most challenging. And for me, and I find visualizations my most challenging, this one's pretty easy. The reason why to do it is that when you, there's multiple reasons. One of them is that when you put pen to paper, or typing, either way, you are forcing yourself to qualify your thinking. Like when you're just sitting there thinking, if you're just letting your mind race, you could think about 10 things in the span of a minute. You could be thinking about this challenge in your business, and then all of a sudden you're thinking of, oh wait, I gotta remember to do this at the grocery store today. And then you're thinking about, and my wife was mad because I didn't, and your mind just goes all over the place. You can't write like that. Nobody, when you put pen to paper, you're forced to be coherent, to qualify your thoughts and determine, discern, those that are most important to articulate. So that's one of the benefits, is you are focusing your thoughts and qualifying them in a way that is worthy of putting them in writing. So you're basically improving your quality of thinking. Also, you're keeping a record of your thinking and of your life, right now, I'm going through my journals from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, which were my first four years of Miracle Morning. It is so profoundly beneficial for me to, one, it's enjoyable. Like, wow, this is so cool to revisit. I mean, I'm writing like, man, Ursula's the one for me. I'm gonna marry her someday. I have no doubt in my mind. And I'm literally texting her pictures of my journal entries, you know? Like, hey, sweetie, check out this journal entry. And same thing with ones with my friends and stuff. So it's this beautiful record of my life and of where I was at at the time. And there's so many parts of my mindset that when I was, you know, in a beginner's mindset, that I've actually lost sight of. Like, I've lost sight of a lot of the basics and the things that got me to where I am. And now I'm like, man, I'm not thinking the way I used to, that I actually need to get back to where I was thinking in certain ways. In 2008, like, my mindset back then, when I was young and hungry and still learning and growing in that way, you know, not that I'm not still learning and growing, but it's invaluable. So those are just a couple of benefits. And the last one I'll share is going back to that emotional optimization meditation. I believe that gratitude is one of the most important keys to optimizing your mental and emotional wellbeing. You know, there's a million things that are going wrong in our lives. And there's a million things that we could be grateful for. And so I write those things down every day, one, two, or three of them. And then it's important, my hand goes on my heart and I look at each of them and then I close my eyes and I'll spend 30 to 60 seconds in silence, smiling and feeling deeply grateful for whatever I wrote down. It might be my wife or my son or my daughter or that conversation I had yesterday or I helped my friend move yesterday, for example, I wrote that down, right? Like that was on my gratitude list today is that I got the opportunity to help my friend move into his new house last night and we connected and he felt so grateful and like it was, right? And so when you do that, you're again, going back to hardwiring these emotions of gratitude and joy and feeling like, oh wait, my life's not totally, it's not all lack, like I have so much in my life, it's so rich. But if I don't actually pause and take time to think about it and even better write it down and solidify it, then look at it, then contemplate it, I'm not, it's one thing to have gratitude on a checklist, like, yeah, yeah, I'm grateful for my house and my kids and my wife and my money and whatever, like that's intellectual gratitude but having heartfelt, soulful gratitude that you ponder for a moment, that's where gratitude has a meaningful impact in your life. - All right, so journaling can help you with your thinking, it can help you see a record of your thinking so you can get some new insights and then you can also do the gratitude work in that journal. Do you write by hand, is that your preference? - Yes, and I've done both and I actually still do both. The Miracle Morning has a journaling app, so I'll write there when I'm on the road, I don't always have my journal with me, so I'll write there. But then I do prefer to journal by hand because there's something about putting pen to paper, and that isn't there, like the visceral experience when you're just typing away on a keyboard. - Yeah, so then I've thought about experimenting with, I haven't been a regular journal keeper in a long time, I was, then I kind of gave it up 'cause I just, I wasn't getting much out of it, I didn't think of the time, but if I decided to start up again, I've thought about doing it like on a Google doc, and then using chat GPT to like look for insights, like tell me, you know, find insights about myself based on my journal entry. Have you found anyone in your community doing that? - I'm sure there are many, we have, you know, millions of people that are doing their Miracle Morning, and using, in fact, I just did an AI survey for our community, I was like, 'cause I was curious, I was like, you know, I don't know where they stand, are they into AI, are they anti-AI? And it was something like 93%, I think, if our take said like, oh yeah, we're using AI, you know, not necessarily during their Miracle Morning, but just in general, so yeah, I'd imagine. I like that, I like that as a very strategic way to optimize your journaling. - Okay, so we've talked about the six practices of the Miracle Morning, we got silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. If someone were to implement these practices, how long would the routine take? - One thing with the Miracle Morning, it's completely customizable, and I talk about starting with whatever time you have allotted, and then dividing that equally by the savers for the start, to keep it simple, you have a lot of thought into it, so it's like, all right, I got 60 minutes, I'll do 10 minutes each. That's how I started my Miracle Morning in 2008. 30 minutes, five minutes each. Six minutes, one minute each, right? Just keep it simple, and try all the savers. And so for me, I always do a one hour Miracle Morning, I'll usually do five to 10 minutes of silence depending, affirmations takes me usually five minutes, visualization usually takes me between zero and five minutes, meaning that's the one saver that I personally do not do every single day. It just, it resonates with me the least. Exercise takes me under five minutes. I'll usually read for 15 to 20. So my reading is the longest of my savers because I just, I wanna go as deep as I can, I have so many books that I wanna read, and then journaling takes me about five minutes. So it's totally customizable to fit your needs, and it can change on any given day. But by starting with like a really simple, let's just keep it simple, divide it by six, okay, great. And then as you do the savers, you find which of them you want to allocate more time to, and which it's okay to allocate less time to. - Okay, so depending on how much time you lot to each practice, the routine could take 30 minutes to an hour. And you even mentioned you can give each practice a minute and make it a six minute routine. - That's not hyperbole, it's not like six minute abs or whatever. On days where we're pressed for time, we often have this all or nothing mentality, which is let's say you like to go to the gym for an hour and you only have 20 minutes. You're like, well, I'm not even gonna make the drive, I'm not gonna go, there's no point. And I love the quote, the philosophy, don't let what you can do get in the way of what you can't do. I can't do an hour, but I can do six minutes. I can sit for one minute in silence, and I can say a prayer of gratitude for guidance, and I can just calm my mind and feel at peace. Then I can pull up my affirmations. I might not get through the full page in a minute, but I might get through half bit, and that'll remind me, oh yeah, these are some of the most important things in my life that I'm committed to. Now I'm reminded why I'm committed, and I'm reminded which actions I've clarified that will ensure that I follow through. Then you go into visualization, you visualize yourself, you mentally rehearse yourself, doing the things for a minute, right? 60 seconds of jumping jack, 60 seconds of reading one page out of a book. Like in six minutes, the amount of growth you can experience when you do this, it's pretty profound. - Okay, so this is something that's adjustable. It can be shortened. But let's say there's someone listening out there who thinks, okay, this sounds awesome, and they wanna do the long version, the full version of the miracle morning, but they're like, you know, I've got kids, so if I'm gonna do this, I need to wake up before them, or I got a job that I gotta get to in the morning, so I'd have to wake up earlier. They're not sure about doing it because they feel like they're just not a morning person. - Any advice on waking up earlier to do this if you're not a morning person? - Yeah, and I'll say that when I was writing the miracle morning, I mean, the original edition back in, I was writing in 2009, 10, 11, that was my number one fear, or you could say insecurity is, how am I going to convince, you know, there's a large part of the world. I don't know the exact stat if it's half, you know, but let's just say it's half. If half the people that pick up this book have a lifelong belief that says, I am not a morning person. Actually, I do have a stat, what am I talking about? It's 72% of miracle morning practitioners that we have surveyed over and over and over again over the last 17 years, that's the average. 72% say they had never in their life been or believed they could become a morning person when they read the miracle morning. Usually it was a friend that convinced them to read it, and now they do the miracle morning every day. So 72%, it's like join the club if you're not a morning person, and because that was my biggest fear and insecurity is that how am I going to convince people? Yes, I know they'll be convinced that like, the way I can explain them, starting your day in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state with the six most timeless practices that the world's most successful people have sworn by for centuries, like it's a compelling case that like, yeah, that would definitely benefit my life. Like how could I argue that starting my day in a peak way and then going off into the day at my best self, like that got it, but I'm not a morning person. You don't understand, I've tried. You don't understand, I can't wake up. And so because that was my fear, the entire book is holding someone's hand, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, overcoming the limiting belief of not being a morning person, like from start to, hey, okay, I could do this. Okay, what's the first baby step? So it's not overwhelming, okay? So I always tell people, don't start with all six savers. Your first miracle morning should be waking up just like 10 minutes earlier, not an hour, 10 minutes earlier, and doing one of the savers. And if you've never read the miracle morning, people will just do the R. They're like, all right, I got the book on Kindle, I ordered it, or it's on audiobook. And they go, I'm gonna wake up 10 minutes earlier, I'm just gonna listen to the audiobook for 10 minutes. That takes next to zero effort, right? And they do that every day. And they're like, all right, it's easy, it's 10 minutes, I'm listening to the book, it's changing my mindset. And then they get to the chapter on silence, and then they integrate silence into their next miracle morning, which again, super easy. They wake up, you know, maybe it's 15 minutes earlier, and for five minutes they do silence, they do nothing. And then they listen to the audiobook. And then they get to their chapter on affirmations. And then they integrate that. So it's like, you're just baby stepping your way, and all of a sudden, a few weeks into it, and you're like, dude, I'm getting up 30 minutes before I used to, it's not even, it's effortless now, and I'm doing all six of my savers. So that's the way that I would kind of lay this out for somebody. - I like that. Something that had been useful for me for my own morning routine. I have these things I want to do in the morning, but sometimes I can't do them for whatever reason. You know, going back to that idea of like, don't let what you can't do get in the way of what you can do. - I love that. - If I can get something done later on in the day, like I'll break it up. Like, okay, if I can do my silence, you know, not first thing in the morning, but you know, while I'm in the car, I'll do that. If I can't get my walk-in first thing in the morning, well, I'll do it at lunch. But as long as I get it done, it feels good. - Okay, again, I think the same sort of thing you've been talking about, this is adaptable. You don't have to say like, you have to do this thing. And if you don't do it, then you're hosed. - Yeah, no, that's exactly it. It's not all or nothing. And that mentality is what stops us from doing or even starting anything, right? It's like, we have this perfectionist mind. And I do too. And we all suffer from this perfectionist mindset of like, if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not even gonna try, you know? - For someone who doesn't currently have this kind of morning routine, how would you summarize the benefit of implementing one? Like how does it set up your day in life for success? - The way that I look at it, it's kind of like hitting the reset button every day. Like we all have bad days. Life throws stuff at us that we're not prepared for. We don't even know if we can handle it and it affects our mental health. Like that's, we're all human beings. But for most people, you know, if you go to bed, going, oh my God, I've got this problem in my life and I can't sleep, I'm stressed out 'cause I gotta wake up tomorrow, I gotta deal with it. Like people go to bed with heightened levels of cortisol and stress and inner turmoil. And then they don't sleep well because their mind is replaying and racing like it was when they went to bed. Then they wake up in the morning and their first thought as their eyes open is, oh my God, I've gotta face the problems that I'm dealing with in my life. I don't wake up that way. If you're a miracle morning practitioner, you go to bed, you're like, all right, I got problems, but there's no benefit in worrying about them right now. I'm gonna think peaceful, grateful thoughts. I'm gonna think about the things in my life that I'm grateful for. So I fall asleep in a state of bliss. Mm, that feels good. And then you sleep better. Then when you wake up in the morning, you're not waking up going, oh my God, it's eight a.m., I've gotta get out the door and get to work and deal with my stressful life. Now you're like, oh, I've gotta wake up and I've gotta meditate and pray and then read my affirmations that make me feel empowered. Then visualize, then I'm gonna read, then I'm gonna journal what I'm grateful for. Oh, that's a really nice way to start my day. So it's like hitting the reset button every day and creating this self, it's a self care routine, right? Self optimization, self care. So that to me, yes, is why it's so important. - Well, Hal, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work? - You can get the book, Audible, if you're an audiobook person, Amazon, Kindle, et cetera. The best spot for everything, the book, there's a movie, there's a 90 minute documentary that features Mel Robbins and Brendan Burchard and Robin Sharma and Robert Kiyosaki and Louis Howes and me. But MiracleMorning.com is a great hub 'cause you can, that'll point you to the books, it'll point you to the app, it'll point you to the movie and you can watch the movie for free on YouTube or again, MiracleMorning.com is a great hub. - Fantastic, well Hal Elrod, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. - Brad, man, I'm so grateful. Do thanks for having me on. - My guest today is Hal Elrod. He's the author of the book, The Miracle Morning. It's available on Amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, halelrod.com. Also check out our show notes at awm.is/morningroutine. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. (upbeat music) Well, that wraps up another edition of the A-WIN Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanlings.com, we find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter. It's called Dying Breed. You sign up at dyingbreed.net. It's a great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support and 10 likes times of Brett McKay. Reminds you on listening to the A-WIN Podcast, but what you've heard into action. (upbeat music) Before we go, here's another episode to queue up next. I talked with etiquette expert Thomas Farley about all the tricky stuff that crops up during the holidays. Flying, hosting, re-gifting, tipping, and how to move through the season without accidentally annoying everyone around you. It's practical, timely, and surprisingly fun. Listen to it at aowim.is/holidayetiquette, that's aowim.is/holidayetiquette.