F*CK Law Of Attraction! - How To ACTUALLY BRAINWASH Yourself For Success | Hal Elrod

Hal Elrod, welcome back to the show. It's great to be back, man. It's good to have you back. You There's something about you and what you've gone through that I find incredibly useful. This might be the wrong word, but uh you have faced death legitimately twice. You Your heart actually stopped, I think, for 6 minutes after a car accident. Yeah. And then not too long ago you were diagnosed with cancer. They gave you 10 to 20% chance of survival. 30, but still not good. Yeah. Yeah. Not on the right side of that 50% mark. No. But you have put together ways of dealing with it. Before we get to the the stuff that you cover in your Miracle Equation, I want to know what it's like when somebody tells you that you have potentially fatal cancer. Like, what's that moment? Especially when you've been through something like that before. Yeah. Uh there there's obviously multiple thoughts and feelings. Um but you know, for me, the car accident, when I was 20, it gave me a lot of faith in the power of self-healing, in the power of faith itself, right? And so, the day I was diagnosed with cancer So, faith. Yeah. Um We'll come back to that. But you use miracle faith. Like, these are very specific words. Anyway, we'll come back to that. So, sorry. Yeah. No no problem. Um so, we kind of talked about this on the you know, last time I was here in terms of uh one of the greatest lessons I learned was when I was 20 years old. Well, actually 19 years old. I learned the lesson to accept reality exactly as it is. And the other side of that coin is that every painful emotion that we experience is self-created by our resistance to our reality. Do people push back on you when you say that? Cuz you go hard in the new book. You go hard with the idea that uh whatever negative emotion you're experiencing, that's entirely on you. You create that. You can stop that. Uh I've gotten pushback on ideas like that. In fact, the strongest pushback I've ever gotten on any any idea I've ever presented to the world was that it's all your fault. Maybe that fault is the word that freaks people out. Here Here's the To me, this is the difference is that the difference between responsibility and blame. Right? People confuse those two. Like I say, you know, you're responsible for your life. And they go, "Well, how can I be responsible for I wasn't responsible for the trauma and the tragedy and the this and the that? Like I wasn't responsible for my car accident, right?" But the difference between responsibility and blame is blame determines who's at fault, right? The drunk driver was at fault. Maybe your parent was at fault for wronging you or abusing you when you were a child. Responsibility determines who's committed to the current reality and the future reality, right? So, it's like I'm not I'm not at fault for blank, but I'm responsible for how I experience every moment of my life. And that's actually the the future of my work, I feel, is really um focusing on teaching people how to choose their optimal experience in every moment of life, regardless of what's going on outside of you. Do people get confused? And And we will get back to that moment where you're told that you have terminal cancer, but I So, the idea of choosing your experience, define experience for me because the thing that's happening to you is not necessarily the thing that you can choose. I agree with you that we have agency, but I never would have used the word experience. Your inner experience. Okay. Right? So, what you think, how you feel, what you focus on, your mindset, etc., right? You get to choose your experience. And the great example or or great is the Viktor Frankl, right? He said, "The The last of man's freedom is to choose one's own attitude in any given set of circumstances." This is a guy in a concentration camp for people that don't know. Yeah, which you know, and I always think like Yeah, which you know, and I always think like I love his book and his story because it's like, you know, we've got issues, we've all faced adversity. It doesn't get much worse than waiting for your day to die, having your you know, he was 31 years old, wife's at home, kids at home. He's watching his friends and and you know, peers being taken to the to the gas chamber and and thinking he's going to die and you realize, oh, I get to choose my experience like that's how I would define it. To me, that's choosing my experience. I can't change what's happening outside of me. I can't change what happened 5 minutes ago, 5 months ago, 5 decades ago, but I can choose how I experience every moment of my life. And for me, it's I want to choose I want to experience love in every moment. I want to experience gratitude in every moment. And the day and let's just circle back to your question. The day that I was diagnosed with cancer, I I decided I told my wife I said, sweetheart, I will be the happiest, most grateful person, version of myself that I've ever been while I endure the most what I imagine will be the most difficult time in my life. How does your wife respond in that moment? So, let me set the stage here. So, I'm guessing that in the the exact moment that you get diagnosed that you don't have the sort of cuz right now you sound like a teacher, right? And I'm guessing in that moment it was more like I just got hit with a sledgehammer and there's like a disorienting effect to all of that. Do you have like did you have that reaction or have you done so much work that you don't even have that reaction? This is like a monk-like existence. That. And and and and I say that humbly. Here Here's what I mean. So, when I had my car accident, everything we're talking about in terms of this mindset of accepting reality as it is, accepting the things you can't change so you can be at peace with it, that was developed when I was 19 in my Cutco sales training. I learned something called the 5-minute rule. It says it's okay to be negative when something goes wrong, but not for more than 5 minutes. And the number's arbitrary to 5 hours, 50 minutes, whatever, right? The point is painful emotion, you're self-creating your emotional pain based on your resistance to reality, which another way of saying that is it's your wishing and wanting you could change something that's out of your control. And if it already happened, it's out of your control. And so, I learned that in a very you know, the context of facing rejection and failure in a sales career. But when I came out of my coma and I was told I would never walk again and I had to process that and that was more of what you're talking about, the like, you know, I'm 20 years old, I'm going, "Wait, what? I'm never going to walk again? I have 11 broken bones, permanent brain damage, my ear was almost completely severed, like, you know, I'm scarred beyond belief." So, that was a lot of processing, but I realized, "Oh, this is that 5-minute rule. It's just in a much more extreme circumstance. I can't change that I was hit by a drunk driver and if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I can never walk again, that's my reality. Who will I choose to be in that wheelchair?" Okay, so now we have to talk about reality. So, if the experts are telling you that you're going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, you had to decide that you weren't going to let them define your reality. And this is where this gets in I literally, as you were saying resistance to reality, I underlined the word reality. Because that word is tricky and I'm the same. So, I think about the mind being a prediction engine and that I I think of it as the closer you get to what is objectively true, the more you're able to predict the outcome of your actions. But in that, like, I'm making a lot of assumptions, I'm choosing to believe one thing over another when I don't have enough evidence in one direction or another, I choose the things I consider to be useful, won't spend our time defining that, but I have a way that I come up with what is useful. How do you decide what is real? So, so to me, here's the two sides of this coin, right? So, I the doctors thought I was in denial because I was, you know, all positive and happy and and they called my parents in one day and they said, "We're concerned with how we believe he's in denial. He's not facing this." This is 2 weeks after the crash, 1 week after I came out of the coma. They said, "We believe he's not facing reality, essentially, and that it's so painful for him." They said, "This is a normal response we see with accident victims that have or in some horrific accident told they're never going to walk again." Yeah. We believe that he can't handle his reality, so he's checked out, and that's why he's always laughing and joking and, you know, whatever. So, my dad came into the hospital room and expressed the doctor's concern, and he said, "The doctors said, 'Hal, what's normal is for you to feel sad or scared or depressed or angry with the drunk driver, angry that this happened. It's normal to feel those emotions. How are you really feeling?" And I went inside, and my dad was his face is red. He's trying not to cry. He's, you know, and I'm and I'm like I can tell it's, you know, he's Because he's worried about your future? He's just I think that he was they they I think it's just, you know, you mean he's watching his son, right? It's only 2 weeks removed from me being found dead, you know, and and I'm out of the coma for a week, and so it's this very uncertain As a dad now, I can only imagine like what I went through to me and compared to what my parents went through, I think my parents had the worst of it, right? And I think until you're a parent, you don't you don't make that connection, but I'm like to watch your child go through that and have not be able to do anything, you know? And I said, "Dad Dad, um I said, "I thought you knew me better than that." And I said, "Remember I live my life by the 5-minute rule that I learned in my Cutco training?" And he said, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "It's okay to be negative and and feel sorry for yourself, but but only to a point where you extract the lesson, the value from the circumstance or the experience." And I said, "I can't change that I was in a car accident. I can't change that I broke 11 bones, and if the doctors are right and I never walk again, then I'll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. So, I get to choose though how I experience every moment on that journey." And I said, "And Dad, I've decided" and this came before the cancer, it was the first time I decided, "I'll be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair if that's the case, but I'm not accepting that as my fate." This is the other side of the coin, Tom, is I'm accepting reality exactly as it is, no matter what that is. So, if I'm in a It's essentially I'm accepting life before it even happens. So, if I'm in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I've already accepted that and decided, if that's my {quote} {unquote} worst-case scenario, I'll be at peace in that wheelchair. Because here's the thing, I'm in a wheelchair either way at that point. I'm either miserable in a wheelchair or I'm the happiest person you've ever met in a wheelchair. Either way, I'm in a wheelchair. And if anybody's watching, I often ask, like, "What's your wheelchair?" Like, what's the circumstance in your past or present that's out of your control? And you're but you're allowing it You're you're you're It's giving you You're you're allowing it and giving yourself permission, "Well, I feel bad because this happened in my past. I'm a victim because this is happening in my in my current reality." Versus I can't change what I can't change, but I get to choose how I experience what I can't change. How do you walk down the path of, "Okay, I might end up in a wheelchair, and if I am, I'm going to be the happiest ever, but in the interim, I'm going to fight really hard" Yes. and by the way, go through a tremendous amount of suffering, I have to imagine, in rehabilitating yourself and all of that. So, it would have been easier to uh truly not resist what the doctors are telling you is real because there's going to be less physical pain, certainly, in just acquiescing to, "Well, I'm going to be in a wheelchair." Yeah. It's going to be much harder to stay optimistic, to push against that, to do the physical therapy and all of that stuff. So, what I'm trying to wrap my head around is how you both accept I I accept the future outcome in what whatever may be, but there's some And this is where reconciling how sort of hardcore scientific push I can change and faith miracle, which to me, in the way that I define those words, is like utterly detached from all that stuff. Woo woo. Yeah. Kind of, yes. Yes, totally. Yeah. Um, the So, and yeah, that's this is the other side of the coin that I keep missing to get to So, here's where it's at. It's I accept my life exactly as it is, and I accept no matter what happens in my future, I accept life before it happens. Yep. Um, while I'm going to maintain unwavering faith that I can create the outcome I want until proven otherwise. So, the beauty of it is What what do you call proof? Um, that I get to a point where, well, it's been X amount of time, and I can't walk again. Would you How do you decide that amount of time? So, for instance, I know somebody that had a stroke, and they're just not rec- years and years and years now, and they're not recovering at the rate to the extent that they hoped they would, and they are beginning to wonder, is this a futile approach, or do I keep going? So, yeah, it's this it to me, you can get to this place, it's almost like, I guess, in some ways, an enlightened state, where you're ex- you accept life exactly as it is, as I've as I said, um, while you move toward what you want. And And I'll give you an like, here's how this worked out with the car accident. And I told my dad in this conversation, I said, "Dad, I accept that I may never walk again. I'm at peace with that, but I'm not deciding that's my only option." I said, "The doctors might be experts in medicine, but they're not experts in me." And I really believe that, right? Like, just cuz you're given a statistic, that's the statistic based on the masses, based on people that live in fear, based on people that eat unhealthy, based on people that right that aren't doing any of the things to heal themselves. And so, I told my dad, I said, "I'm going to I'm going to pray every day, I'm going to meditate every day, I'm going to on healing, I'm going to visualize myself walking again. I'm going to do everything in my within my power to create the outcome that I want. And if I get to a point where it's like, "No, you I can't walk again." And I don't know that time frame, right? For me it it essentially didn't fully come because a week after that conversation with my dad and the doctors had said, "Your son's not going to walk again. He needs to come to grips with that. I think he's delusional. He's he's checked out." A week later the doctors came in with routine x-rays and they said, "We don't know how to explain I don't know exactly I don't know I don't know exactly what they said, but they said, 'Hal, we're going to let you take your first step tomorrow.'" And I was like even I was thinking I was a I was thinking a year that in a year I could heal and and walk again. But it was 3 weeks after the crash, after my femur broke in half and my pelvis broke in three places, that the doctor said, "We're going to you can walk again." I took my first step the next day. And you know, that there was I had no science. I didn't right I wasn't reading, "Well, what's the mind-body connection and how do epigenetics play into this?" And like I I didn't know, right? It was very layman's approach to healing myself, but now there is a lot of science out there that shows the mind-body connection. Let me ask you a really pointed question. Yeah. Do you think you would have healed faster, the same, or slower if you knew exactly the epigenetic scientific route to walk? Or is is prayer Mhm. faith visualization, all of that more effective? So, let me even refine this a little bit further. Assuming that prayer, visualization, all that has a uh a grounded real-world scientific mechanism by which it works, right? So, if those things trigger something over here, do you think that if you could just pull the epigenetic levers, that you would get the same outcome, or is there I mean, I guess what I'm really asking, is there a deity that's playing some role in faith, miracles, prayer? That's interesting, right? And we could we could we could spend a lot of time talking about, like I have a very unique relationship with prayer or with God. It's very It's very much I don't know, it works. Right? I I I don't for me it's not like, well, what's written in this or that is exactly how it is. I actually don't know that. I don't have My faith isn't It's really not an unwavering faith in what someone else told me is true. It's an unwavering faith in possibility. That's it. And from that place that there is no fate? When you say possibility, what do you mean? I think we create Yeah, I know I think we create our fate. I think that we Great example, if I would have lived in fear, you know, and I would have thought and I would have given up and gone, "Oh, I'm never going to walk again." I I I I would imagine there's a strong possibility that that would have been the fate I would have created, and I never would have walked again. Right? It was the no, I'm going to walk again. And and you know, I'm I think anecdotal evidence is one of the most underrated, right? Like when it's dismissed, like, "Oh, no, no, that's just those 150 people that did that, but we don't have science yet that proves what they did, so it's dismiss that." Dr. Bernie Siegel, who I had on my podcast a couple years ago. Um, he wrote the book Love, Medicine, and Miracles. There's that word again. Um, and uh and Dr. Bernie Siegel, I read his book when I had cancer. And he said that And this is all anecdotal, but he has three I think 3,000 patients, and he said that for the most part in his, you know, 30-year career, all of the patients that beat cancer, and many of which he said beat cancers they shouldn't have statistically beaten, that were very deadly. They were stage four. He said those that beat their cancer, they have the mindset, call it unwavering faith, call it unshakeable belief, like it's just words, whatever you want to call it. But they went, "No, I'm going to live. I'm going to live for my family, for my kids, for my whatever. I'm going to beat this cancer. There's no other option for me." And he said, "And they And he would even be astounded that somehow they did." And he said he watched many cancer patients die that had cancers that they shouldn't have beaten. They were very healable. But their mindset was, "This is it. I'm going to die. I have cancer." And they lived in fear. And And it was this He said it was self-fulfilling prophecies on both sides. Okay, let's tie this back to Victor Frankl for a second. So, Victor Frankl says in Man's Search for Meaning that you could Again, this is in a concentration camp. You could predict uh within 72 hours who would die because he said once they gave up, he was like they only had 72 hours to live. I remember thinking, "Whoa, that is really interesting." Now, if he's right, and that just feels intuitively correct to me, that there is going to be a biological connection between the parts of your subconscious that reach your conscious mind and vice versa. So, your conscious mind, you can't go uh I mean, maybe some monks can, but for most people you can't go um slow my heart rate down to exactly 42 beats per minute. You can't go uh killer T cells up ramp, you know, production to whatever. But truly, when somebody's spirit breaks, there's going to be a biological knock-on effect. Sure. Now, for me to go back and answer the question that I was asking you, I agree with you. I don't understand how the universe works. So, let me just plant that flag aggressively, aggressively. Yeah. There's something I don't understand very clearly. Yeah. So, everything that I say becomes a guess. But, I have a guess that if I could directly control the the epigenome, if I could directly control my biology, that I would get a superior outcome than if I put things in the faith modality, prayer, all of that. Now, that's all I have right now. Yeah. So, if I were diagnosed with cancer, I would first of all call you and be like, walk me through the exact protocol cuz you have like all these uh anti-cancer visualizations and all that. Dude, I wouldn't be above a single bit of it. I would do it all. I would pray. I would do whatever the hell I needed to do. Uh but, that to me is a proxy only for that which we don't understand yet. And so, what I want to know, and maybe you've already answered it, but what I want to know is, do do you have a hunch, I know you don't know, but do you have a hunch that there is a um a more powerful spiritual being thing that like is waiting for us to to show our faith, or is this just the lever that we have now because we don't know the scientific levers to pull? To me, I would say my, and this might be controversial for some people, but I I my belief in a higher power, a deity, a spiritual God, it is more scient- it's almost more scientific. Um and me Does that mean that ultimately you will be able to understand in the sort of Einsteinian way of He didn't think of God, if I understand it correctly, he didn't think of God as a person in the sky, but he very much thought that there is this higher power, whatever, that we don't understand that put all these rules into play. But, once you understand the rules, you really do, in his vernacular, understand God's thoughts. Yeah. Well, one one way, and again, I I can't go deep into this but with statement, but right that everything is energy. And so to me God is that that ultimate energy that all things are born from and die into. And we be explained. Say again? It it will ultimately be explained. Yeah, I think so. I think it is actually explained. People just maybe aren't making the connection, right? But people that are studying um metaphysics and and and you know and and I forgot what was that author that did the uh that studied water. Right? And he and he would have two glasses of water and if you put negative thoughts toward one glass, it would change the molecular structure in this What? You haven't seen that? I'm so skeptical you can't imagine right now. So walk me through this. like Masaru Emoto. It's a Japanese author. Um and so yeah, he took so he I mean he has an entire book on this. negative thoughts towards one glass of water. thoughts towards the other glass of water. to put a certain amount of distance between the two glasses of water? I don't re- I don't remember. I'm going to have to learn about this. look about this. Oh god. So but you don't remember the name? I got to take it Japanese, I think I believe, Japanese author. power of water and he did this. somebody here that could look this up. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty well known. glass of water Um good vibes, bad vibes. Okay, what I'm trying to get to is and and so you answered the core of my question, which is that you think in in what I'm calling the Einsteinian way of like God is the the rules of the universe. You said energy, I'll just say rules of the universe. Yes. And that we will ultimately be able to know these things. They they follow a set of rules. So they aren't like they aren't unknowable, undefinable where God becomes a a mystical thing. Don't try to understand it because I go crazy and I've done actually a fair amount of thinking as to why this bugs me, but I think it's outside of the importance of what we're talking about now. But when people say quantum and they mean magical, it drives me nuts. Well, if if you remember, so the miracle equation, right? Which we I think we talked about last time I was here. Um I like I really defined miracle I demystify There's a whole chapter I think on demystifying miracles. And it's the idea that I don't view a miracle as some magical unexplainable result. May be maybe unexplainable in in some ways, but to me a miracle is any result or outcome that's beyond the realm of what you believe is possible for you. Therefore, when you achieve that outcome it feels like a miracle. It feels like I can't believe I did this. And the way that I broke that formula down well, how do you create miracles at will? It's two decisions. And if you study the world's most successful people in all walks of life, they live by these two decisions including you, whether you're aware of it or not. It's unwavering faith. Unwavering faith in themselves or or in God. They can put it wherever they want, right? Like it's just I have unwavering faith that if I do these things, if I work really really hard, that I'm going to create this outcome. That I'm going to attract the right people into my life. That I'm right that luck's going to come my way. Whatever whatever it is. But you see these people that have that maintained unwavering faith they could do something that they had never done before. And those are the only people that do things they've never done before. And maybe that no one's ever done before, right? But the average person goes, I'm only going to do things that I know for sure I can do cuz I've evidence that they've been that they're possible either cuz I've done it before or I've seen someone do it and I know so that my faith's very narrow. Versus this unwavering faith that I'm going to walk again. I'm going to I'm going to you know, reach millions of people through Impact Theory, right? Like you had never done that before. I'm going to build a company of nutrition bars and sell it for a zillion dollars, right? Like what? Right? So even unconsciously you're operating with unwavering faith. Here's one of my favorite examples that's very tangible. Take the best sport stars and we're I'm going to choose the basketball. That growing up, Michael Jordan, that was my guy, right? Um, you pick you pick any sport star, but we'll take basketball. The truth is hitting your career goals is not easy. You have to be willing to go the extra mile to stand out and do hard things better than anybody else. But there are 10 steps that I want to take you through that will 100x your efficiency so you can crush your goals and get back more time into your day. You'll not only get control of your time, you'll learn how to use that momentum to take on your next big goal. To help you do this, I've created a list of the 10 most impactful things that any high achiever needs to dominate. And you can download it for free by clicking the link in today's description. All right, my friend, back to today's episode. Michael Jordan maintained in my in my from my assessment, maintained and so Kobe Bryant, you take anybody, right? LeBron James, unwavering faith that they could make every shot that they took despite the evidence shown. Right? So, you take you take these players that are having a terrible game. Right? You know, you know, first quarter, right? 0 for 7. Right? But but here's the thing, the average person allows that's where they lose faith. And faith is replaced by fear and doubt. It's oh, dude, I'm off tonight. I'm 0 for 7. Like, pass the ball to somebody else. But not Michael Jordan. Give me the ball. Oh, I missed the eighth one. I'll make the ninth one though, guaranteed. Oh, I missed the ninth one. I'll make the 10th one, guaranteed. Unwavering faith he'll make every shot he takes. And then because he has unwavering faith, what happens in the fourth quarter when he's had three terrible quarters and it looks like he's off and he should be benched. People are calling for me to bench Jordan. Stop, put him on the bench, why stop shooting? Your team's down, it's your fault. He goes, no, no, give me the ball. Dude, you asked for the ball six and you're not making it. Give me the ball. I have unwavering faith I'll make every shot that I take. And in that fourth quarter that unwavering faith, that luck, whatever it is, God, that four, it comes, it the spirit is in him and he comes back in the fourth quarter and he comes back and he brings his team back and he wins the game. Because he maintained unwavering faith that he could until the last possible moment. And that first decision in isolation, right? Unwavering faith. But it requires the second decision, which is extraordinary effort. Michael Jordan and every highly successful person, you included, maintains unwavering faith they can do whatever they set out to do regardless of the what what what the you know, the short-term results are showing them. The feedback immediate feedback is like, "No, no, no, dude, you're you're not on track." And it doesn't matter if I'm not on track. I'm going to get there. Watch. And they put forth that second decision, extraordinary effort. Jordan, he keeps trying. Right? He's fighting for rebound. He's fighting for everything until that last possible moment. And then at the buzzer, he wins the game. And to me, you can apply that analogy to life. Those two decisions, if you shift how you live, where you go, "You know what? From now on, I'm going to maintain unwavering faith in everything I try." And here's the thing. You might approach a goal with unwavering faith, put forth extraordinary effort, and you don't reach that goal. Maybe in the bigger picture, you weren't supposed to reach that goal cuz that goal wasn't the end of your the road, right? That was you were supposed to learn from why you failed that one time so that you could do something bigger and better in the future. Okay. That's the supposed to. Talk to me about that. Mhm. That that feels Who's defining supposed to? What context did I I don't even know what I said. So, basically that Okay, you you have the unwavering faith, so you've made decision number one. Decision number two, you put in the just massive amount of effort, but you still don't get the outcome. And you said, "That's because you may not Maybe you weren't supposed to." And so, that's where the You said something in in that cuz dude, so much of this resonates with me. But you said, "Where you put your belief doesn't matter." You said you could put it in anything. God, whatever. And that I disagree with. I think where you put it is going to matter a lot and then this idea of supposed to um talk to me about that. Those two things Yeah, let's circle back to the supposed to, but in first the where you put the belief, right? So, here's my thought and I don't even know know if I've ever said it that way before. That just came through me, but um you see many people that are very successful, right? I believed in myself. I believed in myself. My my daddy told you and taught me to believe in whatever, right? Like I believed in myself. I maintained unwavering faith that I could do anything I put my mind to and I gave it everything I had until the last moment and I did it, right? But you find out that they go I give it to God. I had all my faith that God would give me the power right? So, again, one person putting the belief strictly on themself might be an atheist. The other one, they put all the belief in God, right? And so, that that's where that came from. It's again it's an I don't know, but to me that makes sense to go well you you just see anecdotally that there are people that their faith is in themself and they achieve extraordinary, remarkable things and other people their faith is that it's actually God that's enabling them to do that. Both might be right. It might just be two different ways of looking at, you know, I don't know. So, that's my thought on the and I'd love I'd love to hear your thoughts on that like on those that example of putting your faith in two different spots but achieving the same outcome or something remarkable. My thought on that is ultimately what matters is the behaviors. So, the reason I think it matters where you put your belief is I think some beliefs will cause people to do the wrong thing. But if you do the right thing, even if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, you'll still be you'll get the outward signs of the um the success. So, take Michael Jordan. If he uh trains poorly, believes poorly, but still makes every basket, then he's going to win, right? Now, the odds of him making every basket if he's training poorly are virtually zero, but it becomes about you were able to make the baskets because you had the skill set. But, making the basket is ultimately what matters. And so, when you think about an infinite number of universes, there's a universe in which Michael Jordan never trains, but somehow divine luck, whatever, he just makes basket after basket, and he still becomes, you know, a version of the Michael Jordan that we know. But, just from a probability standpoint, and who knows if there are actually multiple universes, so we only have this one, and you get the guy that had to work. So, my thing is, I think when some people, I'll use The Secret as an example. Mhm. I have met way more people, dude, and I mean way more people, that lean on the part of The Secret that I think is total [ __ ] which is that if you wish for a parking spot, a parking spot will become available. It's like, no, if you sit there long enough, just the the nature of a parking spot is such that one will come available. Um So Wait, you don't believe in parking karma? You have to talk to my wife. I don't know. or not, but believe it or not, but I'm So, yeah, we could derail on karma, but so, I think that where you put that belief is ultimately going to matter because some beliefs are going to be more optimal at getting you to take the action that will yield the outcome that you want. But, the reason that I believe totally with you in the two things, just that we would I think use slightly different words. So, what I tell people, the first part, the unwavering faith, I call the only belief that matters. And to me, the only belief that matters is that you If you believe that humans are designed in the following way, that if you put energy and effort into getting better at something, you will actually get better. Yeah. So, it's like, oh, I failed, that just means that I need to get better at this thing, and if I put energy and effort into it, I will actually get better. Now, if you believe that, you'll actually take the actions. Yeah. And so, that's the second part of that equation. You have to actually take those actions. So, and that's the second part of your equation. So, we both agree on that. I just think that you can put your belief in something. There is a higher For example, there is a higher power watching out for me, and the secret is that as long as I visualize it, it's going to come true. That person will fail. Yeah. And they will fail reliably because it it's like flipping a coin. Sure, 50% of the time it will come up heads, but if your life strategy is that it needs to come up heads 80% of the time, you're [ __ ] dude. You are You are going to get ruined. Yeah. And so, I think that one needs to be very thoughtful about that. But, to your point about you have people that have these extraordinary lives, and one puts the faith in God, the other puts the faith in themselves. And so, it begs the question, is the second part the only part that really matters? And that is my hypothesis, which is that if somehow, someway, you just always did the right thing, you're going to win. It's just that you know, and I know, that if you don't have that belief that you can get better, you won't put the energy in to do the other thing. Yeah. To do the right things. So, I think I think I think we're say I think we're saying the same thing essentially, and I think there's a little bit of confusion with me, too, um in terms of when I say putting your faith that you could put it in God, you could put it in yourself. Um and then your rebuttal in terms of like, you know, but you can put your faith in the wrong or belief in the wrong thing, right? Here's what I mean. I think that the faith is in the possi- I said I mentioned earlier in the possibility of the outcome that you want. And I guess credit might be a better word of what I meant when I said you could put your faith wherever. The credit could be wherever. The faith is that it the thing you're working towards is is possible, and that therefore you're going to give it everything you have. Mhm. Right? And so, again, the credit though is like, I'm crediting my father for my ability to do this. I'm crediting myself for my ability to do this. I'm crediting God for giving me the strength to do this. Right? So, so I think that's the my, you know, slight distinction is I think I meant more it's credit. You know, the credit could go wherever, but the faith you have to maintain the faith that you can achieve the goal. Cuz again, if Michael Jordan in the game was like, I have faith that you know, that that I can that I can make every shot I take because God gives me that power. Okay. I have faith that I can make every shot that I take because I'm capable of anything that I put my mind to. Okay. I Can I give you another example of why what you credit really matters? So, even adopting your new word, I'm not sure if I can get on board entirely. Um so, a lot of athletes are superstitious. And so, imagine if Michael Jordan was saying, all of my success is because I wear one red sock and one blue sock. And then he shows up to the game one day and oh [ __ ] there's no red sock blue sock. And if he believes that's really the reason to your earlier point that he's missed nine shots, but he still wants the 10th because he has unwavering faith that he's going to make that 10th. And because he believes he can, he actually gets the ball, takes the shot, makes the 10th when it really matters. If he doesn't call for the ball because he doesn't have his red and blue socks, he will literally fail. When I When I'm saying is, going back to the earlier point that we made that God is knowable, I'm putting new words on that. So, if that doesn't sit well with you, I'll give you a chance to push back. But I believe because I believe it's just the rules of the universe, that God is knowable, then one should be very thoughtful about either putting their belief in in a proxy that will never fail you or in the real thing. Now, the only reason I say a proxy that will never fail you is because I don't think we yet know the real thing. And so, to to boil it down all the way to the hyper specific real thing would be very difficult. So, one in my worldview, and I'm going to use the word ought on purpose. So, one ought, because I believe that's how the world should be, one ought to place the credit, their faith, all of that in in even though I know it's a proxy, in a proxy that's never going to fail me. Now, ironically, if nothing ever shakes your belief in God, that may be a proxy that never fails you. Yeah. The proxy I have adopted in my life that I advise people use is that the human animal is designed to get better. And you can get so good at something that people can't stop you from doing it, and just focus on your ability to get better. Put time and energy into practice, all of the things that we know made Jordan Jordan. Yeah. Um and you increase your likelihood of the correct outcome, the desired outcome, Yeah. by thousands of percent. So, I think I don't know if there's a semantic slight difference, but like using the example of the shoes, let's say he's got, you know, the socks or whatever you you use, right? Jordan's faith is in the socks. Again, no, the faith is in he can make every shot that he takes. I'm saying I don't care where that faith comes from. think though if he credits, if his faith is based on the socks and the socks are gone, will it Then he doesn't have faith that he can See, that's the thing. That's why I'm saying credit matters. Because I agree with you. So, the only point I'm disagreeing, cuz I think your your whole thesis makes a lot of sense. The only thing, and you like you said, you've never said it that way before, Yeah, yeah, yeah. is is when you said it doesn't matter where you put the credit, every alarm bell I have went off. And so, all I'm pushing back on is that where you place the credit does matter. So, now as I say that, if you still think, "No, no, no, Tom, you're missing something," then we can go deeper. But to me, it just using the the superstition about the socks as an example, Yeah. my hypothesis about life is that if one puts their faith in a proxy that can break socks and no the socks don't show up. And then because he lacks belief, he won't play well. Cuz I think we both agree, if his belief breaks, Yeah. he won't play well. Yeah. So now all I'm saying is whatever you credit, whatever you choose to believe in, whatever your faith is based on all of that, and maybe we need to to talk about why I keep saying proxy, but whatever your proxy is going to be, you better pick a proxy that isn't going to break. So here's what's miss Here's what's missing. I get it again I we're we're like we're kind of like we're we're like missing something. And here's what I mean. His faith is wavering using your example. I I never talked about wavering faith. Unwavering faith you can achieve the outcome. But if if it's based on socks that can be changed, Mhm. well then that's wavering faith. That is waverable Waverable faith. Waverable. People are either in the feed right now, they want to drag me out into a field and shoot me, or like the funny thing is this really matters to me. I was just talking to Evan Carmichael, whom I love dearly, but he's like uh you know, Tom, sometimes you'll go so into the weeds on something. And I'm like, Evan, I can't move forward unless I actually understand it. Yeah. And so what I'm trying to understand in your belief system, because you've pulled off something so extraordinary not once but twice, I'm trying to figure out if you agree that well, I'm trying to figure out if you agree that a breakable proxy creates waverable faith. Yeah. And that's So then we both agree. Or are you like, no, if Michael Jordan wants to believe in the socks, we're good. I think he sets himself up in in an incredibly weak and dangerous situation. Yeah. In that I truly believe In fact, this will be how we will put this to bed. I believe in the following statement, and then just tell me if if you believe it, too, or you disagree. I believe Michael Jordan's career would have been substantially less if he had put his faith in a pair of socks than that he put it in hard-ass work. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the idea of unwavering faith is that it couldn't be put into socks because it would be waverable, as you said. Unwavering faith is that no matter what socks I'm wearing, no matter what the other So, I think it's almost like I'm thinking Yeah, big like you kind of drilled in, but Let's go into the word proxy cuz I think this whole this will bring everything home. Okay. Okay, so the I am interpreting what you say in terms of a miracle, prayer, faith, or my what I call the only belief that matters, they're all just proxies. What I mean by that is in the Donald Hoffman way. So, Donald Hoffman, utterly fascinating guy, and he has a rubric or rule of thumb. It's not quite the right word. He has a framework with which he looks at the world that says we definitively are not experiencing the world at the connection point to objective truth. So, what he's saying to then get into metaphor is that reality is so complex that any creature that is born of evolution would never optimize for interaction with objective truth. And so, the example that he gives is a computer, and I think this is brilliant. A computer functions on opening or closing an electrical gate. And so, it's zeros and ones. It's either on or off. Everything that you do, from playing a video game to writing an email, to sending a text message, all has to do with opening and closing electrical gates in a certain sequence. But, it happens blindingly fast. And any human, if you had to open and close the electrical gates to send an email or to play a video game, you you just would not be able to do it. Our brain doesn't work fast enough to pull that off. So, we create graphical user interfaces. So, when you're playing Grand Theft Auto, you have the experience that when I, you know, nudge the controller, the steering wheel on the screen turns. But the reality is all that's actually happening is you're opening and closing electrical gates. So, what he's saying is all of life is a proxy. And it's a to use the video game analogy, it's a visual proxy that allows you to open and close those gates in a way that is stimulative of your dopamine centers, right? So, that you have the sense of wow, this is fun and you know, I got to play a game. But in reality, you're just opening and closing electrical gates. Yeah. So, what I'm saying is the the reality of what you've done from learning to walk again to beating cancer, all of that, there is an electrical gate opening and closing type thing where it's whether it's killer T cells going in, whether it was sending the nutrients you're absorbing to the right part of your bones to heal. That's the opening and closing of the electrical gate. The how we get there, prayer, meditation, visualization, all of that stuff is a proxy. Mhm. So, if you have a proxy that works in the right way. So, video games. A lot of people It It costs about $350 million and 5 to 7 years to build a AAA game. Okay. So, that's that's all the underpinnings to get those electrical gates to open and close at the right time. It is obscenely complicated. Yeah. So, we're going to work really hard to get a proxy that doesn't break in the case of a video game. And so, what I'm saying is I think Donald Hoffman is directionally correct in that we we need proxies. We're going to deal with life at the level of proxy, but what I'm saying is be very careful what proxy you use. Because if you use a proxy that can break, which they probably all can at some level, but if you use a proxy that breaks easily, superstition, you're really going to be in trouble. Yeah. And period. That that is the sum total of what I'm trying to communicate. Everything you're saying makes sense, and I think that it goes I think over unwavering faith overrides all of that. Right? That's kind of the thing. It's like no matter what socks I'm wearing, no matter what challenges I face, no matter what the statistics are, I will maintain unwavering faith that I can achieve the outcome that I want, and if I don't, I'll be at peace with it. That was my approach to the car accident. I'll maintain unwavering faith I can walk again, and if I never walk again, I'll be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. So, I win like not I you know, right? Life's great no matter what. How do you start translating this into things you do? Obviously, Miracle Morning, it's a routine, it's a system. How do you take those things, and you you intimated some of the stuff that you've done around cancer? Like how do we translate this into an action list? So, I'll give you a real specific example, right? So, the Miracle Morning, um I had written or published 4 years before I was diagnosed with cancer. And I've done the Miracle Morning every day for 14 years long much longer than the book's been out, right? Since 2008 is when I started, and I literally do it 6 days a week on average by like 6.2. who are watching this for the first time. Yeah, so the Miracle Morning is essentially in 2008 when the US economy crashed, I crashed with it. You know, my my business failed, my house was foreclosed on, my body fat percentage tripled, I canceled my gym membership, I lived on credit cards. I just and I got depressed. I was just circumstantially depressed. Like my life is falling apart, and the economy is crashing, the recession's getting worse, you know? And a series of events led me to a Jim Rohn quote. Jim Rohn said, "Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development." And that in that moment it landed for me. I'd probably heard it before, right? But you either What's Tony say, you know, Tony Robbins? A moment of inspiration or desperation for you to make that change, for it to hit. And I go, this is how I quantified it in my head. I go, "Okay, wait, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development." On a scale of 1 to 10, what level of success do I want? That's what I asked myself. I went, "Well, 10." I don't know anyone that doesn't want level 10 success, right? Meaning it's this human innate drive and desire to make life as great as it can be. I want level 10 health. I want to be as happy as I can be. I want to be as financially secure as I can be. I want to be as energized as I can be, right? On a scale of 1 to 10, if I'm measuring any positive aspirational outcome or way of being, I want level 10. And then I asked myself, "Okay, if my level of success will seldom exceed my level of personal development, what level of personal development am I operating at right now?" And again, this was 2008. It was about six months into this downward spiral where I'm just hopeless, nothing's working. I'm trying to sign clients. Not only am I not signing new clients cuz nobody has any money cuz the economy, my current clients are just continuously quitting, you know, um and uh again, the house being foreclosed on, which like it was my first house that I'd bought a year and a half before, like living the dream, and now it's falling apart. And so at that time my level of personal development was like a two or three, you know, like I wasn't reading. I was literally in desperation mode where I would wake up at the last possible minute, go into my office, stare at my computer, call people, try to get business, right? And then I would do that until my eyes bled at the end of the night, and then I'd go watch TV for an hour and go to bed. And that was that was rinse and repeat. And so at that time my personal development was at a two or three. Now, that I believe this is the visual disconnect. Every person that I'm aware of wants to experience the greatest level of success and fulfillment and joy and health, and happiness that they can, level 10. But if your level of personal development, which I would define as your internal way of showing up to the world, your the knowledge that you possess, the skills that you've acquired and developed, the habits that you've established in your life, the mindset, the confident, right? That's your personal development, right? Who you are. So if you want level 10 success, but your level of personal development is at a two or three, I believe this is the disconnect for our society. And so in that moment when I heard this quote from Jim Rohn, I went, "So wait, I've got to create a personal development ritual that is so effective that enables me to learn, grow, evolve, and become a better version of myself, ultimately that level 10 version, the best version of me, so that I can create and sustain that level 10 success that I want." So I went home, I spent an I was on a run, I spent an hour Googling, "What do the world's most successful people do for personal development? What are the best rituals, best routines?" And I was looking for like the one, like what's the one that I could do? And I ended up with a list of six practices. And I got a little overwhelmed. I wrote down meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. And first thing, the first problem was we've been conditioned in our society to look for something new. I want the new iPhone, I want the new computer, I want the new this, right? If I've heard of it, I dismiss it. Uh and I know about that. Well, but do you do that? Well, no, but I learned about that like seven years ago. But do you implement it? Do you live it? No, right? But we were we like we literally do these mental trickery where we're like, if I know about it and I'm not different, it must not be effective, right? So I'm looking at this list, I'm like, I know about meditation, like yeah, that's not new. Affirmations, those are like goofy, you know, visualization, sure the world's greatest athletes do that, but I'm not an athlete, you know, exercise, I kind of I know that, you know. So, I'm like I almost got dismissed it cuz it wasn't new. And then I got dismissed it because I was overwhelmed cuz I'm like cuz I had the epiphany of okay, it's not new, but the world's most successful people have swore by these six practices since way before I was born. Hundreds of years, right? And if you study, depending on what successful person you study, in fact, what caught my attention with these, I read an article, you know, it was something along the lines of Fortune 500 CEOs that swear by meditation. And that caught me off guard cuz at that time in my life I was what, 28? Um I I hadn't meditated before. And I viewed it as like a spiritual woo like I it it conjured images of monks in a monastery. I'm like, how's that going to make me more successful? I'm in debt, need to make money, don't think meditation's going to get me there, but this article talked about how these CEOs said their their best money-making ideas, their their greatest clarity, it all came in their meditation. I was like, maybe I got to try that. And then affirmations, I always thought those were super goofy, right? I watched you know, I watched Saturday Night Live, Stuart Smalley, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. That was my image of affirmations. And so, but then I saw this video of Ellen DeGeneres interviewing Will Smith. This was pre-Chris Rock slap, right? When you say the name Will Smith now, it's a different connotation than it used to have, yeah. But so, pre-Chris Rock slap, yeah. And she asked him, how are you so successful? Like you're a multi, you know, platinum-selling recording artist, you're a blockbuster movie star, you have one of the hottest TV show like everything you do, you succeed at the highest level. How? And he said, affirmations. When he was, I think he said 15 years old, he learned about affirmations. And he said he wrote them a little different than I had heard them taught, where he, in writing, articulated what he wanted in his life, and then who he needed to be in terms of the mindset and the behaviors to get that and then he affirmed that every day and aligned his thoughts, words, and actions with what he affirmed. It was his blueprint for the life he wanted. And he said, "I just lived in alignment with who I needed to be and what I needed to do and all the things that you just mentioned came true." And I was like, "That's a different way of looking at affirmations that I can get into." Why? What what part of that felt different? The The difference between the the delusion of like, "I'm I am blank." Like we've all heard the affirmation. I think the two biggest problem with affirmations are one of two. Number one, we're taught to affirm something as if it were true, but it's not. So, for example, if you want to if you if you if you're broke and you want to be wealthy, just tell yourself, "I am wealthy." "I am wealthy. I am a millionaire." Just just tell yourself until you believe it. And then you'll eventually like I I I don't believe that that's Now that There might be some merit to that, but to me that's not optimal. Lying to yourself, the truth will always prevail. When you say, "I am wealthy" and you're broke, you're creating an internal conflict as if you don't have enough, you're creating a new one that's like your subconscious goes, "Dude, you're not a millionaire. You're not even a thousandnaire. Like who are you kidding, right?" The other problem with affirmations is we're taught to use this flowery passive language that makes us feel better in the moment, but is destructive in the in in the future. Here's what I mean. Another financial version. "I am a money magnet. Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance." It's a very popular affirmation. Oh, yes. Why? Here's why I think it's popular. It gives people temporary relief from their money woes. You check your bank balance on your phone in the morning, you're like, "Oh God, I'm overdrawn. I need to do my affirmations. I am a money magnet. Oh, that feels good. That feels real good. Money's flowing to me effortlessly and in abundance. Everything's going to be taken care of in my financial life. I feel better. And it's this daily delusional belief session that prevents you from doing what you need to do cuz you're tricking yourself and your subconscious into thinking it's just going to all work itself out. So, that Will Smith formula and and I'll actually I'll share So, my formula for affirmations, I've kind of evolved what I learned from Will, right? Is three steps. Number one, affirm what you're committed to cuz in life you don't get what you want because you want it, you get what you're fully committed to that you're going to do whatever it takes to achieve that result. So, number one, affirm what you're committed to. And I'll give you a really Yeah, I'll give you an example of how I applied this during my cancer journey in a minute. Yes, please. Yeah. So, number two, affirm why it is a must for you. Or, depending on the language that resonates with you, you might say why it's a must or why it's deeply meaningful to you, right? Why why is it like you're you're willing to do whatever it takes to follow through with that commitment cuz it's so important. What are the whys, right? The Simon Sinek like the whys that will drive you to do whatever it takes. And the third step to creating affirmations that produce results is affirm what specifically you will do and when you will do it. Give an example. When I had cancer, and by the way, this is also ties in the unwavering faith piece. Unwavering faith, it's a very flowy, loose, intangible. It's hard to grab onto. This is how I apply it in real time. Um when I had cancer, I followed these three steps for my affirmations. Whenever I felt fear, I'd pull up these affirmations and step one, affirm what you're committed to. I am committed to beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids, no matter what. There is no other option. So, if you're if you're using that as a template, it's I am committed to blank, no matter what, there is no other option. I For me, when I was I didn't have the formula, but when I was walking again, I was committed. I'm committed to figuring out to walk again, no matter what, there's no other option. Yet, in the back of my mind, I also accept if that doesn't happen. Right? So, it's this interesting dichotomy where you're you're you're you're maintaining both. I'm at peace with whatever. But, the thing is, once you accept what you can't change and you're at peace with it, you don't have to think about it. Like, you literally get to file it away. Until that outcome If If the worst-case scenario happens, I've accepted life before it ever happens. So, I can file that away now. And now, 100% of my energy, my intention, my emotion, and my actions is focused on walking again. And I don't have to pull that out unless it never happens. And then I go, "Oh, I guess it you know, it's been a year. I'm definitely the bones aren't healing. I'm never going to walk again. I'm going to be I'm in a wheelchair. That's the rest of my life. Cool. I accepted that a year ago." And so, step one, I am committed to beating cancer alongside Ursula and the kids, living 100 years old, no matter what, there's no other option. Step two, affirm what why it's meaningful to you. And I recommend using bullet points. Like, if there's only one reason it's meaningful, that's great. But, here's what my affirmation said. I'm committed to beating Ursula. Beating Ursula. Beating cancer. Oh god, Freudian slip. Uh uh oh man, I'm already on social media. Does health hit you? Um no, I'm committed to beating cancer for Ursula because I promised her forever and a day. What is up, my friend? Tom Bilyeu here, and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline, by its very nature, means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing, achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you, it pays off. In fact, I will tell you, you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called How to Build Iron Clad Discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. I'm committed to beating cancer for Sophie and Halston because they need their daddy's love, leadership, and guidance. I'm committed to beating cancer for my dad because he gave up everything to save me. I'm committed to beating cancer for my mom because she doesn't deserve to lose another child. My baby sister died when I was eight. I'm committed to beating cancer for the millions of people who are themselves battling cancer or some other disease and may not have been blessed with the knowledge and resources that I have and I can help them on their journey. And last but not least, I'm committed to beating cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. And Tom, whenever I felt fear that I was going to die, which in the beginning I felt almost every day, right? The logical mind. I'm like, what if I do everything right and I still die? And I've got to think about what's that mean for my kids? And I got to prepare like I got to be responsible just in case I can't ignore that possibility. I have to actually make sure my life insurance is set up and and the will I get right there were logistical things. And whenever I'd focus on the possibility of me dying and doing some prep work for the kids and the family and my wife, the fear would come up. But every time I felt that fear, the way that I replaced it with unwavering faith is pulling out those affirmations and going, "Fear doesn't serve me in this moment on this journey to heal." So, I'm And I would The affirmations were printed on my bedside table. They were the screensaver on my phone. They were all over the place. They were in the car. They were my reality that I created. I said, "I am committed to beating cancer. There is no other option." I said it with such conviction. I remember it. I'd hit my fist. That's why that happened. I would "I'm committed to beating cancer, no matter what. There is no other option. I'm going to do it for Ursula because she deserve Right, like on and on." I'd read those and that became my reality. And here's the amazing thing. After I did that for a few weeks, the fear disappeared. It was replaced with unwavering faith in every fiber of my being. And then that last, that third step, the specific at which specific actions will you do and when will you do them? The high level of that was I will combine the best of Western medicine with the best holistic practices known to man. And I will dedicate time every day to studying and researching the best holistic practices that my oncologist is dismissing because they've got no That wasn't part of his education, right? My oncologist is a whole 'nother story, but when I said, "Hey, what part does diet play in my healing?" It was more of a rhetorical question. He said, "It doesn't matter as long as you do chemotherapy." And that is a little bit angering when I'm in the hospital in the cafeteria and I'm looking at these poor people that have cancer walking around with chemo, you know, in their IV and they're dragging their IV tower and they're drinking Big Gulp sodas, eating the worst quality meat and bread and pizza and cake and pie because their doctor told them it didn't matter. Again, it's a whole 'nother topic that I'm very passionate about, but but so the what I will do and when it was I'll do my Miracle Morning every day. I will double down on my Savers. And the Miracle Morning just put a super fine point is to do those six things in a very useful way. Yes, and and well let let me dive into that real quick. So, those six practices meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. I decided I I my first Miracle Morning was I'm going to do all six. That was the epiphany. Instead of picking one, what if I did the six most timeless proven personal development practices in the history of humanity every day? Like that would be the ultimate morning ritual. That was my theory. I thought well, how could it not be? And I thought that level 10 success that I want and me needing to be the level 10 person to achieve that success, to deserve it. I thought if I do those six practices, that should accelerate how quickly I evolve into the best version of myself. And I was thinking it would take a year. I was thinking about the compound effect, right? 1% better every day. Tom, in less than 2 months, and I hope this gives hope to anybody right now that it you know, the cancer piece is hope for a certain type of person that's facing that or has family facing that, but if you're having financial struggles or if you're just afraid of the recession that's looming, right? In the economy in 2008, at the height of the recession, when it was the economy was getting worse and worse and worse and worse, that's when I did my first Miracle Morning. And I woke up, I did all six practices, I fumbled my way through them. Like I A, I wasn't a morning person, and I almost That was another thing that almost derailed me. And then I went, "Wait a minute. Do I want to change my life or not? Am I willing to get out of my comfort zone and do something I've never done before to create a result I've never created? Hell yes, I am. I'm going to wake up an hour earlier." Why did it need to be the morning? Great question. Um because so as I looked at my schedule and I'm like, "Okay, when am I going to do these six practices?" And I thought, "You know, I'm going to do an hour. Like I don't want to fly through this. I want to go deep. I want to really give it time." I thought and I thought there's six practices, so my mind just went to 10 minutes each, cool. That's a good starting place. Then I can adjust if I want to do more or less for anyone. But I thought um when am I going to do it? I thought, "Okay, maybe in the evening after work at like 9:00 p.m." Because I was working till 9:00 p.m. every day. Like I was in desperation mode, right? At 9:00 p.m. and I go, "Who am I kidding? I'm exhausted. I'm mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the day. There's no way that I'm at my best to do these." Then I go, "Okay, throughout the day." I go, "I'm working all day." I go, "What am I going to you know, maybe my lunch break?" But I want to eat. And so I thought and then I'd go, I'm looking at the schedule, looking at my planner, I look at the morning and I go, "Not the morning. Like but but like something intuitively inside me was like, 'Hal, if you start your day with these practices, you're going to start your day in a peak physical, mental, and spiritual state. You're going to start as a better version of the guy that went to bed the night before.'" And if you start every day in a peak state, I also read an article by um what is his name? Steve something. He wrote Personal Development for Smart People. Um he had an article called The Rudder of the Day. And just like the rudder steers the ship, he said, "Your morning is the rudder of the day. If you have an unfocused, unproductive, lethargic, lazy morning, that's probably the type of day you're going to have because that's how you're showing up to your day. If you have a focused, disciplined, structured morning, you're going to be in a focused, disciplined, structured state to create that kind of day." So kind of the combination, that's just I'm like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And so I scheduled my alarm for an hour earlier. I was getting up at 6:00 every day. So I went to 5:00, which was like I'd never gotten up at 5:00 in my life unless it was like an early flight. And I woke up the next morning, I did all six practices, I fumbled I you know I didn't I met like the night before I had six browser tabs open. How to meditate, how to do affirmations, how to fit like I didn't really know how to do most of these. But even fumbling my way through the six practices at the end of that hour, my whole life changed because I went from being hopeless. The economy's crashing, I'm already in debt, my house is foreclosed on, I'm in the worst shape physically of my life cuz I canceled the gym membership, I don't have time to exercise cuz I got to work to try to save my you know our our financial life. And even after after that first day I went, if I start every day like this, I feel good. I feel I don't feel depressed like I felt the last six months, I feel like hopeful. I feel like this is it. If I start every day like this, it's only a matter of time before I become that level 10 person and create that success I want. And I was thinking it would take a year, it happened in less than two months. And it didn't What's it? Well, here's the it. The results. So in less than two months, I more than doubled my income. And again, the hope is for anyone listening, the economy got worse but I got better. And that's the idea is you can't control the economy, good luck with that, but you can control if you get better. And specifically I wanted to get more coaching clients, that was my income at that point. I had written my first book Taking Life Head On. Um and that's a whole other story. I had written that book but it wasn't making any money. I was starting a speaking career at colleges, that wasn't making much money yet, maybe 500 bucks a month. My main income was my coaching income. And that's where I had lost half of my clients. And so I the it was in less than two months, I more than doubled the amount of clients. Now how did I do that? Well, the first thing I did is I'm looking at these SAVERS, the R is for reading. Oh and I got to real quickly, SAVERS. The the M, meditation, became silence as I was writing the book. I had these six practices and they were not my own, right? I didn't invent any of them. And I was frustrated. How am I going to organize this in a way that people can remember it, that it flows together, and I can picture the moment. I walked out of my office. I was living with my dad, my wife and I had lost our house at that point, moved in with my dad, and I'm in the office. I walk out, my wife greets me in the hallway, and she goes, "Hey, sweetie. You look You look flustered." I said, "I'm frustrated. I I I'm trying to write the book, but I have these six practices, they're not connected in any way. I don't know how to communicate them in a way that they're memorable and they flow." And she goes, "Why don't you get a thesaurus?" My wife is my muse, by the way. "Why don't you get a thesaurus and see if you can swap out any of the words with synonyms and then structure an acronym that people can remember?" I gave her a kiss on the face. I was like, "It's brilliant." I went back in the office. Meditation became silence. Affirmation stayed the same, right? S A, V for visualization, E for exercise, R for reading, and the final S was journaling. So, it'd be the saverja. But it But But that became scribing, right? Which is writing. And so, and I was like And when I when I got that, I was like, "SAVERS." I go, "These six practices saved my life. They saved me from missing out on what was possible. And they can do that for anybody." And so So, those are the six practices. And in 2 months of doing this miracle morning It wasn't called the miracle morning, sorry. I'm doing my morning It was literally morning routine, morning routine. And actually then it became mayverger or whatever, but I went into my wife and I said, "Sweetheart" This was in our first house that I Sorry, I'm going back in time. And I said, "Sweetheart, I just signed on two coaching clients. I It's all because of this morning routine. We've doubled our income in the last 2 months." I said, "It's a freaking It It's a miracle." And she goes, "It's your miracle morning." And I go, "I love that." You know, I mean, so this is it's like not this couldn't have evolved more organically. It was not a book idea. It wasn't like, "Ooh, what's a good book title?" It was like my wife said, "It's your miracle morning." I'm like, "I love that. It is It is. It's a miracle morning." And so my schedule became miracle morning every day, you know? Um and then I started teaching it to my coaching clients. There were I had 14 clients at the time. Almost all of them said, "I'm not a morning person." And they were they're like, "Hal, I'm not a morning person." Like and I go, "I know. Neither was I." And I gave them a few tips. Keep the alarm clock as far across the room as possible so it forces you to get out of bed. That will wake you up five times more than if you reach over and you're fumbling with the phone on your bedside table. So I gave them a few different tips that I teach in the book. There's five steps on beating the snooze button, right? And 13 out of 14 of the clients came to the next call and go, "Hal, I'm having the best week in my sales career. I'm running again. I'm exercising. I'm a morning person. In the last 2 weeks, this miracle morning thing works." And that's when the light bulb went off and I went, "If this changed my life, if the miracle morning changed my life and I wasn't a morning person and I was like at rock bottom. I was in debt. I was depressed. And it 2 months later, life's changed. If this changed my coaching clients' lives and they weren't morning people, this could change the world. This could change anyone's life." And that's when I really owned I have a responsibility to figure out how to share this with as many people as I possibly can. And I thought, "I should probably write a book about it." Like that seems like the next logical step. Speaking of writing, what do you have people do in the journaling section? So my journaling method, it was really inspired by Five-Minute Journal. Um but it uh but I kind of I kind of evolved a little bit. So the first thing I write down is and and and there's, you know, you whether you write by hand or like we have a The Miracle Morning app. People, you know, can journal in there. And these are actually prompts in the app. But so my step one, I write down what's Is there anything I need to let go of? And I find that's a such and now I didn't used to do that. I used to do with gratitude, but I realized that if we have something that we're not letting go of whether it was a fight yesterday with our spouse or it was it's something from our childhood or it's whatever. And when I say let go of that's another way of saying accept, right? It goes back to the acceptance piece. Just what do you accept? What do you either let go of, accept, be at peace with, right? Whatever language works for somebody. I always say don't don't use my language, use the language that resonates with you. And so number one, what do I need to let go of? And it's like oh yeah, I'm I'm I'm feeling stress or anger or frustration over that thing. I'm going to release it. I'm going to let it go and I'll write it down and then I'll sit there for 30 seconds or act of writing it down that helps people is it bringing it into their conscious mind? Writing it down takes it out of your head and puts it on paper. It gives you a focal point, right? Or in your phone, whatever. It gives you focal point and then to me it's about the act. It's about the the actual emotional I'm letting it go. And whether you need to say it out loud, say it to yourself, do you know, whatever whatever works for you. Play with it, right? Play with it. Like let it go. They're not writing about the subject itself. They're just saying that fight with my wife I need to let it go. They jot that down and then they do the act of That for me some but again it it varies. Sometimes I go I need to let go this and then depending on what comes through me, sometimes it might be like I need to let it go because it's not serving me. Like I'll just again it's really organic. Whatever free writing. A lot of times though it's just I need to let that go and then I actually do it viscerally throughout my body, right? Really let it go. mechanism for that that's tied to silence? Like starting in your forehead and make sure the muscles are relaxed and then you get to your eyebrows like that kind of thing? Not really but you see it just through my physiology, right? Like so for me it's really imagining it kind of like I guess cuz it's I'm hanging on to it up here very often, right? It's in my like I'm I'm I'm I'm it's sticking up here and so it's like I just imagine it just releasing and just letting it go. Um I will say that like when it comes to that acceptance piece in the 5-minute rule, that for me it was three words. To let something go, I'd set the timer on my phone for 5 minutes and for 5 minutes I'd [ __ ] moan, complain. I'm like, "This is so frustrating, right?" And I remember when I first learned the 5-minute rule, I taught I was learned in my cutco training. The way my manager taught me is he said, "Look, you guys sales is a microcosm of adversity that is much more intense than the average person experiences. For example, he said the average person experiences rejection occasionally and it's really difficult for them. You're going to experience it every day multiple times a day. You're going to make 20 calls and you're going to talk to 10 people and eight of them are going to say, 'Don't ever call here again.' He's like, 'That's hard on the nervous system, right? Most people aren't used to that.' He said, "So you need a a strategy, a tool to be able to move through it quickly so that you don't hang on to it. You don't get frustrated and you don't extend that painful emotional turmoil." And he said the 5-minute rule is you set your timer for 5 minutes and you give yourself 5 minutes to feel all the emotions. If you're frustrated, feel it. If you want to cuss, if you want to punch a wall, whatever, like feel it. After 5 minutes, you say three very powerful words. Can't change it. It's an acknowledgement that I can't change what happened 5 minutes ago. So now I have two choices. I can continue to resist reality, wish it didn't happen, and be frustrated, angry, upset, sad, whatever it is because I'm not willing to accept that. I'm I'm resisting it. That's choice one or you can choose to accept it fully. To say this happened, I can't change it, so I can choose to accept it, be at peace with it, and focus 100% of my energy on what I can control. And when I learned that, go ahead. I was just going to say, how do you move through that part? So, let's take the example, my wife and I got into an argument. I need to let go of the emotion that I'm having over the argument, but my wife is really wrong. And I was not able to convince her in that, and I'm going to run into this again and again and again and again. So, let let me share an example and then bring that back, please. Um, I think it'll help us to get there. Um, when I first learned this, I thought five minutes? I'm not going to be I'm not going to stop being upset because a timer goes off. Like, and and five minutes is not enough time. Can I get like a five-hour rule, you know, for some things, like a five-day rule? And here's what happened. This is the And this will help lead into answering that question. Is when I I remember, I can literally picture it. I was in my apartment and I had a lady cancel her appointment. And I was like, no, I needed that appointment. Like, cuz I had every day our manager with with in Cutco, they're so good at accountability. It's like, how many calls are you going to make today? How many appointments are you going to schedule? And then you call them multiple times a day, right? So, it's very you're very supported. Um, cuz they know And you're also I was I was 19, right? So, they know that if I experience a little rejection without someone to help navigate me navigate that, I'm probably going to quit, and right? So, I got a lot of support. And I remember this lady canceled and I had schedule I had hit my goal for appointments for the next day. So, I was like And it was like at 9:00 at night. So, it's too late. I couldn't fit that appointment. And I was No, I can't believe she canceled. I needed that. I've got this goal for the week. Ugh. Set my timer for five minutes and I'm pacing around my apartment. I'm frustrated and I'm in my head, why would you do that? Like, I mean, you know, like I had this I was just going on and on. And the timer went off and I go, I'm still pissed off. Like, just like I thought, five minutes isn't enough. And I I snew I hit the timer again, went for another five minutes, did that a couple times, right? Here's what happens. Once you start practicing this mindset and you become aware, cuz eventually you get to a place where it might have taken me 10 minutes, maybe 15, but eventually I go, "All right, I guess my manager, my mentor is right. Like, I can't change that she like right the emotions eventually die down. Time heals all." And eventually you go, "Okay, I'm going to accept it. I can't change it. I only have four appointments tomorrow instead of five. Um I'm I'm going to I'm going to just get on the phone in the morning. It is what it is, right?" And now I'm at peace because I accepted it. Took me 15 minutes, but I accepted it. And now I'm teaching myself, I'm elevating my consciousness, my awareness that oh, I actually am in control of the emotional pain I experience. When I get to acceptance, I'm at peace. You think about like having a heartbreak when you were younger, right? And you thought your world was or you were in sixth grade, you got your heartbroken and you thought life's over. We were supposed to go to prom, you know, dance and get married, whatever. But eventually when you get to acceptance, you're like, "Well, okay, I guess we're not you know, I I I thought I could get her back. I can't. We're done. Okay, I'm at peace now, right?" And so, after a few weeks, maybe less than a few weeks, I remember and I can picture same apartment, near the same phone. The difference was this was a worse adversity in the sales world, which is it was the Sunday night, orders were due Monday morning, and my biggest order of the week that I had just seen like 3 hours before, it was the biggest order I'd ever had. I'm like I'm brand new, 3 weeks into the career. She calls at 9:00 at night and says, "Hey, um my husband came home. He was super upset that I spent that much money on knives. I have to cancel the order." And I'm like, like I had already in your mind, if you're in commission, you spend the money, right? You're like, "Oh, I just made a thousand bucks. I'm going to buy this and that, right?" I hit my goal, great. I've already celebrated the win. And now she just took it away from me. And I'm like, "No, no, no, no." And I'm trying to talk, you know, I'm like, "Oh, are you sure? I mean, you you get a 15-day trial." And I get off the phone and I set the timer for 5 minutes. Now, this is much worse than a couple weeks earlier when of an appointment canceled. This is the biggest order I've ever had the night before orders are due. And I set the timer for 5 minutes and I go, "I can't believe she canceled. Like, oh my god, and I don't have my goal. What am I going to do? I mean, I guess I can't change it. I just got to get on the phone and make more calls." And I pick up my phone and there was 4 minutes and I can see the phone. There's 4 minutes and 32 seconds left. And I go, "Why don't I just accept it now? What's the value in me be feeling so bad about it for another 4 and 1/2 minutes?" And I turned it off and I go, "Can't change it." And I felt at peace. And then where that evolved to, so step one is the 5-minute rule. Give yourself the buffer to feel it. Step two is get to can't change it as fast as is healthy for you, right? Don't rush it, but get there as fast as you can. Whenever you get there, you're free. You're liberated from the emotional pain that resistance creates. And then the third step, the third evolution of this mindset, is accept life before it happens, which is once you've practiced it for a few weeks and you go, "Oh, I don't ever have to feel any unhealthy emotional pain." Now, to be really clear, Tom, I believe every emotion serves a purpose. I believe we should grieve. I feel sadness is a There's a purpose in anger. Every emotion serves a purpose. But only to the point where it's beneficial for us. And most people, their emotions control control them to the point of detriment. And so that third point of accepting life before it happens, and this circles back to your question you asked a long time ago, and then and we just went off on a tangent, when I got cancer, how did I respond when I was told I had a 20 to 30% chance of surviving? So when I went into So the way this happened, I woke up in the middle of the night struggling to breathe. And I was like, And my you know, I I have to sit up and I can't lay down or I can't breathe. I have to sit up in bed. And my wife says, "Go to urgent care tomorrow." And it's like 2:00 in the morning. And I go to urgent care the next day and they misdiagnosed me with pneumonia. Well, I go to the ER and they drain 2 L of fluid from my lung. A day and a half later, I can't breathe again. I go back to the ER, my lungs full again, they drain another liter of fluid. They don't know what's causing it. This goes on for 11 days. In 11 days, I had my lung drained seven times. They're sticking these giant needles in my back and draining fluid. And I'm going to this hospital and and they they they don't know what's wrong. Finally, my doctor, he runs a bunch of tests. He's a new doctor, he just moved to Texas for I literally seen him once. And he calls me and the the assistant calls and says, "Hey, Dr. What was his last name? wants you to come in." And I for the results and I'm like, "Can you give me an idea what it is?" And she goes, "He he'd like you to come in and tell you." Like scariest words a a nurse can say. Yeah. And at that point, my wife took our kids to go visit my grandma, a trip we've been planning forever. She hadn't seen the grandkids yet, but I couldn't breathe every other day, so I had to cancel and I said, "You go without me. I don't want to rob her from seeing the grandkids." And her great grandkids. And I go in to the office and um he says, "Well, Hal, you know, the tests came back and uh there's there's definitely something." And he's he's like he can't say it. Like he's nervous to tell me. And I reach over and I put my hand on his forearm and I said, "Doctor," I said, "I I I know you don't know me well." I literally said this to him. I said, "But I live by this philosophy where I accept life before it happens. Meaning, you can literally tell me I'm dying today and I'm totally at peace with it. It is what it is. I can't change it. So, whatever you have to say, you can tell me." And right, probably a flip. I'm normally the doctor should be comforting you, but he goes he like he had a sense of relief and he said, "You have Looks like you have cancer." And to be honest with you, even though I said I could be Because literally I I like I I my identity is I'm a very healthy person. Now, looking back, I see all the things I did in my 20s. I I experimented with some drugs. I took a lot of workout supplements that had horrible cancer-causing stuff dyes in them. So, there's a lot of things I did. But in general, I was like, "Dude, I'm a really healthy person." I'm like, "I don't I don't I don't know think that's it. But if that is, okay." Right. And he says, "You need to get a second opinion." I got into the car, right? And I'm like, "Okay, I But literally, when you live this way long enough, right? I've accepted Well, so I go, 'Okay, I have cancer. I can't change that. So, there's no point in feeling sorry for myself. I'm not going to be depressed. I'm not like I have cancer. That's a fact. I'm going to choose to optimally experience every moment while I deal with this. I'm going to be I'm going to have faith. I'm going to whatever, right? I'm going to be positive. I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be joyful. And I'm going to deal with this in as optimal ways I can cuz my only objective is to heal for my family.'" I called my wife on the phone and I said, I told her what happened. I said, "I have cancer, right?" And she starts bawling. And my poor my mom's there with her at the zoo. And uh my wife starts crying, you know? And And it was hard for Like I was at peace with it. But I But I, you know, the empathy of like, "Oh god, my This is devastating for her, you know?" And uh I said, "Sweetheart, I said, I I I I I can only imagine what you're going through." I said, "But let me say two things to you. Number one, when I was hit by a drunk driver and told I would never walk again, I made the decision that I will be the happiest, most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair like while I endure this." I said, "Same decision today." I said, "So, I want you to know you don't have to worry about me at all in terms of like I'm at peace with this. I'm going to figure it out." I said, "The second thing that I'll tell you is this cancer has a 20 to 30% survival rate. I already told her that, which that's when she broke down in his tears, you know? Right? Cuz if you're looking the other side, you're going, "So, wait, there's a 70 I I knew how she was interpreting it. There's a 70 to 80% chance that my son husband's going to die." Right? And by the way, this cancer kills people in weeks. They told me I had a few weeks to live if I didn't start chemo the next day. Jesus. And um my heart was failing, my lungs were failing, and my kidneys were failing all at once, right? They discovered more with these tests. And I said, "I know the doctor said there's a 20 to 30% survival rate, meaning among the masses of people." And it was a small amount, it's a rare cancer, but among the it's like 6,000 people in the US have had this cancer. And I said, "Among those 6,000 people, 20 to 30% survive I'm telling you, sweetheart, in my mind there's a 100% chance that I'll be among the 20 to 30% of those that survived this cancer cuz I will do everything. I will maintain unwavering faith, and I'll perform the extraordinary effort that I'm going to be the I'll do everything that those people did and more. I will do everything." And so so that was that's my honest answer is I was I was at peace. I can't change that I have cancer. The odds are they're odds, not my odds, right? Nobody tells me what my stats are. Those are Those are stats amongst a group of people, right? And so I'm going to beat it. I get all that, super powerful. And going back to the letting things go, I think it's a critically important step, acceptance. But then next step is tactics. And so how do you leverage tactics? Now, originally we were talking about journaling, and so I was trying to figure out, okay, we do the letting go, but maybe this is even more important. So when you have something big like this, how do you get into mode? So how do you Is it research? Is it something else? I was every So so so here's Actually, this is here's a beautiful answer that I love I call my answer beautiful. Um self-proclaimed beautiful answer. No, but an answer that explains I call this like Miracle Morning 2.0. Which is when I started the Miracle Morning, it was a general practice to evolve myself, right? Now granted, had a slant toward making money. In fact, the first book I read was called book yourself solid on how to gain coaching clients, right? Cuz that was how I made money. And I applied it, and what do you know, it worked, right? But, Miracle Morning 2.0 is where you take a very specific result that you want to achieve, and you filter it through all six of the SAVERS. So, it could be saving a marriage that is on the rocks, right? Um in this case, it was beating cancer. At that point, nothing mattered other than if I if I don't beat cancer, none of my other goals matter. So, 100% of my energy during my Miracle Morning is going to go into beating cancer. So, what does that look like? So, silence. I meditated on I and I I So, I meditated in a state of healing. And when I often combine meditation with affirmations. So, I'll say things like my body is completely healed, and then I'll sit there. I'll also integrate help me understand that cuz with money, you said don't tell yourself the lie, I already am rich. Sorry. Thank you for that. Language is important in this case. My bud My body is healing. You know, it's always I never affirm a result has happened that hasn't happened. It's always I'm committed to my body. It's like it's that it's this is happening. And now, I also incorporated visualization into my silence. You can kind of combine SAVERS. you visualizing? I was visualizing every cell in my body healed. And here's how that happened. That wasn't on day one. Day one, I was visualizing me with my family healthy, right? So, I was like just visualizing down the road. But, I believe that's the least effective form of visualization. I believe the most important form of visualization is visualizing what are you going to do today that will create that that vision board that you that you got on the wall. So, an example in that case with cancer is I would visualize myself every day doing the things that I needed to do that day in order to heal. Why is visualizing something so near term important if you're about to do it. Is it visualizing it going well? Is it just reinforcing so you make sure you actually do it? It's visualizing yourself in a peak state while you do the thing. And I'll give you one of my favorite tangible examples. Um when I was doing the Miracle Morning those first 2 months, I challenged myself in every area. What's a level 10 in my health? What's a level 10 in my fitness? What's a level 10 in my relationships? And I'm going to set level 10 goals, right? And in fitness, I hated running. I had never run more than the required high school mile in PE class. And I thought, "I'm going to run a marathon." I don't even know what that takes. That hurts my soul to think about running. I hate running, right? But I thought, "Who would I have to become, right? I love running a marathon to the level 10 for me. Who would I have to become?" I'd have to become a level 10 version of me in terms of my fitness to be able to run a marathon. That was my aspiration was becoming a level 10 version of me. And I used these level 10 goals as targets. And so, when I was training for the marathon, visualization was arguably, I mean, it all worked together. I affirmed, "I'm committed to running this marathon. Here's why it's important because it'll help me become the person that I need to be to create everything else I want for my life." Right? And but then visualization, here's how this piece played out. I printed off uh I was running the Atlantic City Marathon. And I printed off a picture of the finish line. I found it on, you know, online. And I would look at that. And I would close my eyes and I would only spend like 60 seconds visualizing myself crossing that finish line. And I would create the flood of emotions of what that's going to feel like, how hard I will have had to work, 6 months of training to get to that moment. And I felt that. That's part one, step one of visualization, of Miracle Morning visualization as I teach in the book. Is that visualizing the completion and feeling the thing you want to feel when you complete it? Yes. Two two two two reasons for that. One, it fuels the desire to make it happen cuz if right if that outcome's exciting for you, you're you don't want to I want to get there, right? The other thing it does is it helps you believe it's possible, right? Because if you're imagining a goal that's so far beyond what you've ever done before, you're like, "Who am I kidding, dude? I've never run a mile. How am I going to run 52?" I ended up doing an ultramarathon, but how am I going to run 52? And like so so that is it's it's hard to even get motivated to to go train when you're like, "Dude, I can't that's so far from what removed from who I am or what I've done." But when you see it over and over and over, that's the healthy part of like tricking yourself into actually believing and feeling what it's going to be like. Maybe it is possible. I've seen it so many times. The problem is that detrimental if you leave it at that, and that's where most self-help gurus, if you will, that's how they taught it. That's all they've taught. Visualize yourself crossing the finish line. Visualize yourself getting that million-dollar check, right? And they left it at that. Why is that detrimental? Because you trick your subconscious into thinking it's a foregone conclusion independent of any effort that you put forth. You're like, right? Somebody's like, "Hey, are you going to finish that marathon?" Like, "Dude, I have I I know I already have Yeah, I already have, bro. I've seen it." "How's the training going?" "Eh, I haven't really started the train" It's like, wait, so you've you've you have a false sense of confidence. You've deluded yourself into thinking that's going to happen. I don't know about that. The most important part of visualization is the second step, which is after you spend 30 seconds, a minute, it doesn't take a long time. You just see it, feel it, go, "That's going to feel good if if and when I get there, right?" Then, this was the most important part is I would visualize, so I had committed to go train every morning at 7:00 a.m. I committed to go run. I bought a book for all you non-runners that want to run a marathon, there's a book called The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer. It's for people that hate running and how to psychologically and logistically get yourself there. And so that's what I was reading. And so I had a training plan, right? It was like on my day one, jog, you know, walk, jog a mile, right? And then day two, it's like another mile. Then day three, you get to 1.5, right? So you really work your way up. And the visualization piece was I would close my eyes, and I would visualize my phone, literally. So I'm sitting at my couch where I do my Miracle Morning, my coffee table in front of me, my phone's on the coffee table. I'd visualize, and I would even hear beep beep beep beep beep beep. And I would visualize myself like a movie, picking up my phone, but seeing it through my eyes. And seeing 7:00 a.m. on my phone, cuz that's when I committed to run. Then I would visualize setting it down, I'd visualize myself walking in I'm going to Dude, I can see it like it was yesterday. Walking into my bedroom, into the closet, I'd visualize myself putting on my running clothes, my shoes, lacing them up. I'd visualize and I'd spend about 5 minutes doing this. Visualize myself walking through my living room, going to the front door, and then I would visualize myself grabbing the handle, opening it, and and as soon as I saw the sidewalk, I would use affirmations, and I would say something like, "I'm going to go for a run today. It's going to be incredible. I'm doing this because it's helping me become a better version of myself. I'm becoming stronger. I'm capable of Right, like whatever it was. It was just a freestyle often of This is it. This is going to be great. Let's do this." And I would literally smile, and I would get myself in this hyped-up state to go for a run. That's the power of visualization. I've rehearsed the thing I need to do while in a peak mental and emotional and physical state that is compelling, so that now, when the alarm went off in real time at 7:00 a.m., it was unconscious. I picked it up. I picked it up. I went into my bedroom, I got dressed, I walked out, I grabbed the handle, and it was like it was like a it was like a you know, like a first-person shooter game, right? Like you literally like you see the hand reach out, I'd see the sidewalk, and I'd be flooded with confidence and excitement to hit that sidewalk and go for that run. And if I hadn't have visualized, and everyone can relate to this, here's what I would have done. I can almost guarantee it. Alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m. Now, say I hadn't visualized, I would have gone, I [ __ ] hate running. I don't want to run. Dude, I I just I I'll do it tomorrow. And there goes all our goals and dreams. That's why visualization in that two-step process in that way to me is one of the most And that's what the world's greatest athletes did, right? Is they visualize themselves performing at their best in the game or the perfect swing. And so when they stepped on the court, they're like, "Dude, I've already been here in my mind, in my emotions, and in my body. I'm just And so then they perform the way Like I love visualization as mental rehearsal, right? That to me is like a much better description of what you're actually doing. You're mentally and emotionally rehearsing performing at your best before it's real time. And then when it is real time, you go right into it. And making sure in the visual- visualization that you mimic or create the emotional state that you want to feel, I assume, is a key part of that. It's arguably the most important part, right? Yeah, it's creating a a compelling peak emotional state with of doing what you need to do. And you can apply this like in sales, right? Sales people fail because they hate making phone calls, and they're afraid of the rejection, right? So I used to visualize before I even knew this, I'd visualize myself making phone calls, and I'd visualize myself smiling. See myself picking up the phone, smiling, and it was always I'd picture it at the time that I committed to make the call. So that when that timer went off, I had It was like it was all just right. Neurons are firing off like, "Oh, time to walk over, open your notebook, pick up the phone, call a number, right?" And I'd could imagine it going wrong. Right? Customer hangs up on me. Normally that would make me go, "How could you do that? I'm a good person." Right? We go I go to the victim mentality. But now I'm like I picture myself going, "No big deal. Next call." And then when it happened, I had already rehearsed it. So, no big deal. Next call. Right? Did you run a normal marathon and then decide to do an ultra or in the prep for the marathon you upgraded to an ultra? So, in the prep for the marathon I upgraded to an ultra. And here's what happened. I have two friends that have run ultras. And this is they always I always say there's a fine line between optimism and delusion. And I cross it often, right? You often are just like, "I can do anything." You know? Um and so I was like, "Dude, wait. They ran ultras." So, it was like once I had just started training I'm like, "Dude, I I ran a mile today. I ran two I'm ran two miles. I've never run two miles in my life. IF I CAN RUN TWO MILES I can do 52. Yeah, 52. Um and I literally that was literally my thought. If I can run two, I can run any And also I thought if I can run 26, which is so far off, what's 52? Like who cares? You know? So, I was like, "And if they've done it, I can do it." That's one of my most I think one of the most important beliefs is if another human being can do it, not they're different than you, they're better than you, they're simply giving you evidence of what's possible for most of us all of us, right? And so yeah, so I committed to run 52 miles. And what I did is the the marathon I ran, the Atlantic City Marathon, they don't have an ultra marathon. It's a 26-mile marathon. So, I convinced three of my coaching clients to run it with me. And we showed up at the Atlantic City Boardwalk at 3:00 in the morning, which was 5 hours before the marathon started. We ran the marathon course in the in pitch black in the middle of the night, and then we met up with everybody else when the marathon started, and we ran the marathon. Jesus, did you pause in between the two uh goes, the two cycles? I No, but I was the I mean, dude, I it was I it took me 15 hours, which is like the worst marathon time. And I also, you know, keep in mind I I had you know, I have a broken femur, right? That has I have a 14-in metal rod in my leg leg. I broke my pelvis in three places, not to mention the breaks in the arm and stuff. So, um there was a part of it, call it ego, call it it was ego, healthy ego, I guess it was like "Doctor said I'd never walk again? I'm going to run 52 miles." So, I have to imagine that some of this stuff starts kicking up in terms of pain. Your leg starts hurting, your pelvis is hurting. One, how do you What did you use? Ibuprofen. Ibuprofen. So much Ibuprofen. Okay. I couldn't have I mean, I had so much pain in my pelvis and my leg, I could not have you know, I don't I say could not have. But but I I mean, I was I literally got to the point where I'm like, I can't walk and then I I take Ibuprofen and then within about 20 30 minutes, yeah, I I literally have to walk for a little while until it kicked in. And then I got into the rhythm where I would know when it was wearing off. Right. was like every 3 hours or something, I would have to take and I would then I get ahead of it so I didn't have to walk. I could keep my pace and keep jogging. Did you keep coming back to a why? So, you talked earlier about you have to have a why. So, you're doing all of this, you only to be the level 10, you could have done a marathon, everybody would have been very impressed, yourself included, your wife, all of us, ah. So, what was the why when it starts sucking and you've already completed a marathon? Yep. And nobody would have been like, "Oh, you're such a wuss if you tapped out at 36 miles." What was the why that got you to 52? So, there's two answers to that. The first is that I I I would have given up many times had it not been ironically for my three coaching clients. Do you conned into doing this with you? yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and and but I'm like I'm like, "You guys I'm like, how you doing?" "Oh, I'm not doing it." I'm like, "Dude, we're at 30 miles. Like, that's more I literally WAS THE VOICE." I'M THEIR coach and I'm like, I literally was I had talked myself out of it. I was like, I'm in pain. This is tough. Cuz dude, I'll tell you, that's the thing. When you run 26 miles and it's the hardest thing you've ever done and then you're like, "We're at the halfway point and I started fresh. I have to do it again and I can barely walk." Right? So, I mean, it's mental I mean, a marathon's mentally, you know, very difficult. And so, I mean, at the 13-mile mark, I'd imagine it has the same thing. Like, "Dude, I'm I'm I'm I'm barely hanging in there and I'm halfway there." And so, yes, I actually was not I was not the great leader in that moment. I relied on other people to And they were like, "Hal, no. Let's keep going." And I'm like, "You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right." Like, my bad. Um so, that was the first answer just to give some context. This to me, I like I love, you know, you're all about universal proxies, right? And I And I am as well. That to me, that's why unwavering faith is universal proxy. It's like, doesn't matter the color of the socks. Or that's where I think there was a little bit of a disconnect in how we were communicating about it. It's like, "No, unwavering faith is It's unwavering." There That's why it doesn't matter if you you could you could believe it is, you know, my pinky, right? You know, but again, it's if you lose your pinky. Whatever. It's unwavering faith that no matter what, I can get there. So, but my why to me is the it's the ultimate why, if you will. And I don't mean that in a it's better than other whys, but it's universal. My why is always to become the best version of myself. In fact, that's I didn't invent that. That's from Matthew Kelly in his book The Rhythm of Life. He says, "The purpose of life is to become the best version of yourself." And you can back test every decision that you make. Will this this this cheeseburger this this candy bar or this apple, which will help me become the best version of myself? Right? Will watching this documentary, right? Will improving, as you mentioned, the human animal is designed to get better and better and better at something, right? To become the best version of yourself. And so, to me, the my why to do everything is to And you can use different language to become the best version of myself, to fulfill my potential in service of others. When I read uh you ever read the book Love is the Killer App? No. So, Tim Sanders, I read it in like 2004, and this is what is doubt he that book established my purpose in life. Tim Sanders focused on talked about and by the way the context of the title Love is the Killer App, meaning in business of every application available, love still prevails. When you're a person that expresses love through generosity and service, you're going to get promoted faster, people are going to want to work with you, you're right? Like your customers are going to love if you're grateful, all of these things. All these intangibles that are often not thought of in business. And so, what he taught me in that book is adding value for other people. So, my purpose in life became to selflessly add value for others. And then that evolved in what's the best way I can do that? It's actually to become the best version of myself, to fulfill my potential so that I can help other people fulfill theirs cuz if I'm not striving to be the best version of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually, relationally, in every way, who in the hell am I to write a book or give a speech or be a coach or help anybody do anything? So, so that's that was my why. It's I'm willing to do everything in my power to fulfill my potential and become the best version of myself. And that was also born after the car accident. I told my dad, I said, you know, when he said came in and said the doctors are concerned that you're in denial and I said, "Dad, I live by the 5-minute rule, you know?" And I said, "Besides, Dad, I said, remember I always, you know, ever since I started selling Cutco and giving speeches at all of their events, you know, I've always kind of wanted to be like a motivational keynote speaker like Tony Robbins or one of these guys." I said, "But I don't really I've never had to overcome anything major. Like you and Mom were great parents. Like I got bullied as a kid, but like just normal stuff." And I go and I'm literally in my hospital bed. This is before I was ever knew I would walk again, right? And I go, maybe that's why this happened. And I said, I believe everything happens for a reason, but Dad, I think we get to choose the reason. I This could happen cuz life's unfair, or it could happen because I'm I'm meant to take this challenge head-on, become the best version of myself so that I can help other people. Maybe this is the message that all be which I didn't know I'd be on Impact Theory talking about my car accident and the lessons that I learned by giving it everything I have. But I think for anybody watching this or listening to this, I think it's to to think about like I think I feel, it's my own opinion, that we have a responsibility to those we love and those we lead to become the best version of ourselves so that we can help them do the same, right? I just I agree. Yeah. Very much. Brother, I don't know why the universe keeps [ __ ] with you, but may you keep uh impressing us all with the reaction. Where can people follow you? miraclemorning.com is the best hub. We actually just redid the homepage. I've never loved a homepage. I love our homepage. But you can get the books there, you can get the app there, you can watch the Miracle Morning movie, right? There's a documentary that we filmed during my cancer journey called The Miracle Morning. Um the community, everything is at miraclemorning.com. I love it. All right, guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you want to learn some really useful habits on how to maximize your productivity, be sure to check out this episode here. One thing I'm always telling people is the reason that I'm able to work as much as I work, to endure as much stress as I endure, is I'm very good at compartmentalizing. When I have something stressful, I take it and sort of