The Miracle Morning Summary & More | Hal Elrod
The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 am)
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod introduces a transformative morning routine that can elevate your success in every area of life—ready to wake up to your full potential?
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Introduction
The Miracle Morning is about adopting simple approaches to produce life-changing results. The morning is arguably the most critical part of the day. It sets a precedent for the remainder of the day. Therefore, if you can significantly improve your morning routine, you can significantly improve the rest of your life.
In The Miracle Morning, Hal Elrod outlines how he turned his prognosis of disability and brain damage, caused by a car accident, into a life full of success and potential.
In the book, Elrod suggests that starting the day with a set of specific habits, known as “Life S.A.V.E.R.S.”, can improve one’s productivity, happiness, and overall well-being. The “Life S.A.V.E.R.S.” stand for Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (writing).
About Hal Elrod
Hal Elrod is an American Author and success coach. Hal suffered a severe car accident at the age of 20. He uses this moment and his subsequent recovery as an example of how anybody can better themselves and have the life they want. He is the founder of the Achieve Your Goal podcast and has written two books: The Miracle Morning and The Miracle Equation.
StoryShot #1: We All Have the Potential to be Successful
Most Americans are living a life that falls short of their potential. They are more overweight, more in debt, and more lonely than they should be. Hal explains that the Social Security Administration offers a point that exemplifies the degree to which people are falling short of their potential. If you follow 100 individuals for 40 years, you will only find one wealthy person and four financially stable people. Comparatively, five will need to work their whole life, 36 will have died, and 54 will still be reliant on friends and family. Basically, 95% of people are not living life to their potential.
Hal uses himself as an example of how anybody can start living up to their potential. Hal was dead for six minutes following a car accident. He then spent several days in a coma. Then, upon awaking, doctors told him that he would have permanent brain damage and would not be able to walk again. However, Hal did not give up and ultimately recovered. Instead of wasting time wishing he had a different life, he created the life of his dreams and fulfilled his potential.
StoryShot #2: Rearview Mirror Syndrome and Isolating Incidences are Our Downfall
RMS
Your thought processes are deeply linked with your performance. Therefore, the way you are thinking about your life could be preventing you from reaching your full potential. The majority of us tend to focus our thought patterns on things that have happened in the past. Hal describes this tendency as Rearview Mirror Syndrome (RMS)
One of the most significant issues that arise from RMS is that people look to their past to define their future. Suppose an individual with RMS has a new opportunity. In that case, they will turn them down as they have not yet experienced these opportunities before. Hal uses the example of people who meet a fantastic potential partner but turn them down because of the failed relationships they have had in the past.
Isolating Incidents
Our tendency to isolate incidents also prevents us from fulfilling our potential. Isolating incidents involves disconnecting events from other events and your future. Hal provides an example of people who put off doing a workout. Frequently, people tell themselves they will do today’s workout tomorrow. However, these people are forgetting that these decisions will impact on the person they are becoming. They are becoming somebody who is happy to put off important tasks in favor of comfort.
Individuals are happy to put off a workout because people are more lenient with themselves when they consider events in isolation. However, if you look at the events together, you will notice that exceptions are becoming a norm.
StoryShot #3: Change How You Think About Sleep
Many of us are guilty of hitting the snooze button as soon as we wake up. The issue with this is that we choose to start our day by letting ourselves off the hook. Instead, we can wake up with a sense of purpose. If you wake up with a purpose in mind, you will be on your way to crafting a happier life. The most successful people across all fields have one thing in common: they get up early.
Hal describes how tiredness in the morning is not to do with not having enough sleep but not having enough anticipation. We never struggle to have enough energy on Christmas morning or our birthdays. The anticipation for the day ahead stops us from being tired. We need to recruit this same purpose for every day of our lives.
Hal recommends forgetting about the number of hours of sleep you will get. Thinking about how exhausted you will be tomorrow will only spoil your productivity for tomorrow morning. Hal recommends telling yourself that you will feel good in the morning as you have a purpose and a goal tomorrow.
StoryShot #4: Create a Morning Routine that Instills Motivation
Hal recommends a few things you should incorporate into your morning routine to improve your motivation levels.
- Before going to bed, you should remind yourself that you will wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed. Looking forward to the next day will make waking up feel like less of a chore
- Place your alarm clock on the other side of the room to where you will be sleeping. Try and make turning the alarm off a more challenging choice than going back to sleep
- After switching off your alarm and getting up, you should brush your teeth straight away. Brushing your teeth will give you a feeling of freshness after waking up
- Next, you should head to the kitchen and drink a glass of water as fast as you can comfortably manage. We lose large amounts of water overnight, so we must rehydrate ourselves. Dehydration can make us feel more tired
StoryShot #5: Fight Stress Through Purposeful Silence
Stress is a part of everybody’s lives. However, our morning routine has a significant impact on how much stress we experience throughout the day. Meditation is a popular example of purposeful silence. Hal outlines the steps you can take to engage with purposeful silence.
- Take a break from your worries and concentrate on yourself
- Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit. Try and sit cross-legged and upright
- Close your eyes
- Bring your attention to your breath. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth
- Breathe slowly into your belly rather than your chest
- Set a pace for your breaths by breathing in for three seconds, then out for three
If meditation doesn’t work for you, then there are alternatives. Hal suggests that people can pray if they are religious. Alternatively, you can merely reflect on your life and the things you are grateful for.
Rating
We rate The Miracle Morning 3.9/5. How would you rate Hal Elrod’s book based on our summary?
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