187: Hal Elrod | Fulfill Your Goals with The Miracle Equation

Transcript for Hal Elrod | Fulfill Your Goals with The Miracle Equation (Episode 187)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. Today's guest has almost died twice. He actually did die twice temporarily and has not only recovered from a severe car accident and an extremely rare form of leukemia, but he's also gone on to be one of the best-selling authors of the last few years. He's also one of the most positive and energetic guys I've ever met, which is probably why despite him being told he'd never walk again, he not only did so but ended up running a 52-mile ultra-marathon as well. Today, Hal Elrod and I discussed the concepts of unwavering faith and extraordinary effort, how we make those consciously and consistently over an extended period of time to overcome resistance, and achieve some pretty incredible things. I've been friends with Hal for years and he's always been so incredibly generous of spirit and has really created something special with his Miracle Morning community and I'm excited to have him here on the show today.

[00:00:56] Hal and I both strongly believe in relationships and networking. And honestly, my network has brought me so many amazing friends, so many amazing professional opportunities. And I'm helping you build and maintain yours for free in Six-Minute Networking, which you can find at jordanharbinger.com/course. Go grab that jordanharbinger.com/course. In the meantime, enjoy this episode here with Hal Elrod.

[00:01:20] I've known you for a long time, so I'm going to give you a hard time --

Hal Elrod: [00:01:23] I love it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:24] -- on my show. I mean, you're staying at my house so you can't escape. So there's a lot of love here that I just can't wait to use against you on camera and on tape. I want to know how you made a living out of telling people to get up early. Because my dad's been trying to do that just to tell one person to get up early for like 39 years and he hasn't been successful. So I want to know how you've been successful literally getting millions of people to do it.

Hal Elrod: [00:01:48] So it's interesting so the Miracle Morning was, it wasn't a book idea. It was my own attempt in 2008 when the economy crashed. I was like, "What successful people do?" A friend of ours, Jon Berghoff was like, "Hal, go find out what are the world's most successful, happy, productive people -- what are they doing? Do what they do and you'll get similar results." I'm like, "Yeah, that's common sense." So I went on a Google search. Nothing sophisticated here. And I kept coming across morning routines and morning rituals, but I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm not a morning person. Like swipe left. What else do they do?" Like where's the, I get up at eight, you know, --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:22] Like a normal person.

Hal Elrod: [00:02:23] Like a normal person and I'm still successful. Like where's that plan? And I literally don't remember the article headline, but there was some headline grabbed me about morning routines and they weren't very prevalent.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:33] So this is before you made it a pop culture thing to talk about how you get up at 3:00 a.m. and do 17 different things.

Hal Elrod: [00:02:40] So 2007 was when this was happening. Economy's crashing. I'm searching Google, right? Like morning routines or they're not this big thing like they are now. But some article grabbed me and it basically framed what's a morning ritual. Like how you start your day isn't just something you might consider maybe to add into your toolkit for success. It's arguably the single most important determining factor because of the improvement you can make because one thing we all share in common is we start today, right? And if you start it in a way, it kind of sets the tone and the context for the rest of the day. So if you win in the morning, you can win the day. And I was like, I was like, "All right, I have to give this a shot." And so long story short, it changed my life really quickly. I went to my wife within two months. I'm like, "Sweetie, with this morning ritual, we just doubled our income. I'm going to run an ultramarathon. My life has changed so fast. It feels like a miracle." She goes, "It's your miracle morning." I'm like, "Yeah, miracle morning." But yeah, sorry to answer your question, it was really writing the book authentically, this is how it helped me. Hopefully, it helps you. I didn't think it was going to be this worldwide phenomenon. I didn't think it was going to sell a million copies. I just feel like this will help a few people. And so I owe it to share it because it helped me. And then if I get real technical, it's in the weeds of the book. There's a chapter in there on how to actually beat the snooze button if you've never been a morning person in your entire life. And that chapter is the linchpin. It's a four-page chapter. If it wasn't for those four pages, everybody would have read the book. They're like, "Oh yeah, this makes sense. I should totally be a morning person." But after the excitement wears off, they would not have done it.

[00:04:17] Right. Because, of course, if you talk to Jocko, who's a good friend of mine, Jocko Willink, I love that guy. But the one sort of little tiny hitch I see in his strategy of, "Hey, just get up really early and do stuff." And that's not all he talks about obviously, but that's one of his things. He's like just do it. And it's like, yeah, there's a lot of people like myself included who can just do that. I'll set an alarm. I usually wake up right before the alarm anyway. I get up and I go, I don't really want to be up right now, but Jocko is lifting weights and I want to feel bad about myself. So here I am. But there's a lot of people who read The Miracle Morning or would have read the miracle morning without your four-page chapter and gone, "I just can't."

Hal Elrod: [00:04:54] Yup.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:55] So what's in that four-page chapter? I mean there are other things in the book, so it's not going to spoil it. But how the hell do you beat the snooze button? Because that's where people around the world are going, "I would love to get up earlier, but F that I'm tired. I need my sleep." There's a lot of excuses and a lot of them are really good and frankly credible.

Hal Elrod: [00:05:13] Sure. So the chapter is, it's a really long, obnoxious, silly title. It's called the Five-Step Snooze Proof Wake-Up Strategy. I wrote an article for Entrepreneur where I kind of shared it and I called it, It Takes Five Minutes to Become a Morning Person, which I think is more accurate.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:27] That is better.

Hal Elrod: [00:05:28] Yeah, exactly right so --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:29] Your copy game has been stepped up since --

Hal Elrod: [00:05:31] Since I wrote that one.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:32] Headline years ago.

Hal Elrod: [00:05:35] And I'll give it all the way. I don't care. I'll give everything away that I can. But so it's five steps that take about five minutes. Here's the most significant, if you only do one -- In fact, I was speaking to a group of CEOs like three years ago and the guy that introduced me, who was the CEO, David Sherman, that brought me in, he goes, "I don't know how if Hal was going to share this, but like there's this one little tip, he gives in the book. I've never been a morning person if it wasn't for this one tip." He said, "I hope he shares it because it was the game-changer for me." And so here's the tip and it's of those five steps and I'll give all of them, but here's the one that makes all the difference. You have to move your alarm clock. And by the way, this sounds like a kindergarten can do this across the room as far as humanly possible.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:12] Yeah, I know that makes complete sense.

Hal Elrod: [00:06:14] Think about it. Most of us keep our alarm clock within arm's reach and when the alarm goes off in the morning, you're able to turn it off without even opening your eyes. So your level of discipline on a scale of one to 10 to get out of bed is at a one, right? But if it's across the room -- now for me, I keep it in my bathroom on the counter next to where I'm going to take the next step, which is simply brushing my teeth and washing my face. And here's a fundamental understanding, that you have to understand, every minute that we're awake, right? So yeah, what I would call your wakeup motivation level or your level of discipline. Just by getting up out of bed and walking to the bathroom, it's gone from a one to like a three or four. You're way more awake than you were reaching over, fumbling for your phone.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:51] This is how I started running. I would get up and I'd be like, I don't want to run it's cold in Michigan. It's five degrees outside, it's seven, 8:00 a.m. whatever. And I'd go, "You know what? I don't have to run. I just have to go outside of my shoes on or my gear on, or just put my gear on." And it's like right in front of my bed, so I step out and then I'm like, "I just had to go outside and feel the cold air for like 10 seconds, stretch my calves, whatever." By the time you're out there, you're like, "I'm outside in the cold and I'm dressed. I'm not going back inside to take it off and go to bed again.

Hal Elrod: [00:07:23] That's actually one of the most important strategies I think to how you get yourself to do what you want to do or need to do but don't want to do. Don't have the motivation. John Maxwell taught that in his book Failing Forward. It's called act your way into feeling and he said, most of us are sitting on the couch going, "I wish I had more energy. I wish I had more motivation." And then Brendon Burchard says, "You have to generate it. You have to move and then you create the motivation." And to your point, I always say like if you want to get in great shape but you're overwhelmed too, "Oh, I got to go to the gym and I got to work out." And that's overwhelming. So in our mind, we never get out the gate because we get overwhelmed thinking through all these steps. But all you have to do, if you want to lose weight, get in the car every day to a specific time with a gym backpack. What are you going to do? You're going to drive to the gym. When you pull in the parking lot, you're probably going to walk inside. When the music's blaring and people are on the treadmills, your energy is going to go, "I'm going to work out." And then, all you did was you packed a gym bag and jumped in the car at a time, which takes zero discipline. But that lead domino is what we talk about. The one thing that led to all the rest of them.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:24] What else goes into this? Okay, you set your alarm clock a few feet away so that you can't reach it. You start getting up early but that's not just the thing. A lot of people get up early and they read the newspaper cover to cover, their income is not doubled. There's more going on here.

Hal Elrod: [00:08:39] So what led to the miracle morning wasn't the idea for a morning routine. So I was in debt. I was losing my house and I called Jon Berghoff and I'm like, "Dude, I don't know what to do?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:53] Why were you in debt so deeply.

Hal Elrod: [00:08:55] In 2007 when the economy crashed, I always walked that fine line between optimism and delusion.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:01] We know that about you.

Hal Elrod: [00:09:01] Yeah. And then people were like, "Dude, are you conservative economy? Right? There's all this news." I don't watch it and watch the news. And I literally was like, "No, I create my own economy. Like I'm empowered. I'm not going to fall prey to the government or whatever."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:12] I'm glad that we can now laugh at that not working out for you.

Hal Elrod: [00:09:14] Yeah, there's actually reality.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:16] Unfortunately. But that's an important point because there's a lot of people talking about like, "No, you create your own reality. You manifest what you want." And I won't even get into that because that's like the height of bullshit. But there's a lot of people that will cross that line and they're like, "No, I just create my belief system." And later on, and we'll talk about the limits of this, but you do some of this with your emotional state, which is good. But then, we have to kind of respect the fact that like there's still gravity and physics and things like that.

Hal Elrod: [00:09:45] Exactly. And so for me, what led to the miracle morning was John recommended that I listened to this Jim Rohn audio. The godfather of self-help or whatever, Jim Rohn. And so I heard a quote and this quote is what --Jim passed away. I wish I could thank him for this because it's what gave birth to a miracle morning. It's what gave birth to all of this. And Jim simply says, "That your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become." And, of course, the word attract a little flower --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:16] Yeah, that word got ruined by the secret.

Hal Elrod: [00:10:20] Because of the secret. Yeah. But the point is this, right? And here's a real practical way to understand this. Jordan, if we're measuring success on a scale of one to 10 and when I say success, I mean in every area of life, your emotional wellbeing, your physical wellbeing, your happiness, your finances, your relationships, as a parent -- on a scale of one to 10, we all want level 10. Human being shared that innate desire. Like I want my life to be as good as it can possibly be. Well, when I heard Jim Rohn's quote in my head I went, wait a minute, I want level 10 success in every area, but I'm not a level 10 person. I haven't developed the qualities that characteristics, the knowledge, the skills, the habits. And that's how I define personal development. It's actually who you are as a person in all of your faculties. And so --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:00] Not just how much you want something or believe that you deserve it.

Hal Elrod: [00:11:03] Yeah. Not just a vision board on the wall. No.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:07] Thank you.

Hal Elrod: [00:11:08] And here's a way to think of it is we all want level 10 success. So through daily personal development, you develop yourself to be a level 10 person, right? Or a level five-person or level six, you keep developing your qualities and characteristics, your internal, the components that will enable you to become the person that has the ability to create the results you want in your life. And so, I've got to go home and create the most extraordinary personal development ritual known to man. I'm tired of struggling. I mean I'm losing my house. I'm a mess. And it was because I lost half of my clients because the economy affected them. I was coaching salespeople. Nobody was scheduling with them. Everybody was just a trickle-down effect. So I lost half my clients in two months and that's how I lost half of my income and then I couldn't pay my mortgage. So that's how I got there. And so this Jim Rohn's quote, I went, "Okay, I got to figure out what are the world's most successful people do for personal development?" To me, that was a vague topic. I didn't understand it. And I came across six practices for half an hour of Google search. It was meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling. None of them were new. And I almost did what a lot of people do, which is dismiss it. We're always looking for what's the new app, what's the quick fix. There's nothing new here. Our brain is always searching for nothing that I know of has ever worked for me, even though we usually don't actually do it. I'm like, wait, but I don't meditate. I don't read affirmations. I don't visualize every day. I'm not exercising consistently. I'm not reading as much as I should be. And I'm not journaling at all. So what if I did some of these things. And then the epiphany was -- I was trying to figure out which was the best. I go, "What if I did all of them? Like what if I woke up tomorrow and did the six most timeless proven practices that the world's most successful people in all many industries have done for centuries. And so that was my first -- it wasn't called the miracle morning. I woke up the next morning, I did all six. And even though my bank account was negative, I was 52 grand in credit card debt. My house was in foreclosure. I felt incredible and I thought if I start every day like this with this much like clarity and energy and passion whatever -- I like the word passion, but if I start with this much --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:27] But passion can be -- again, a word that's been ruined by self-help.

Hal Elrod: [00:13:31] Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:31] Well, I would say like us but probably not. I'm going through this whole not being part of the self-help industry at all anymore, but that's a different show for a different day. The idea that you're doing all these different things that are proven -- I mean it kind of doesn't matter if they're proven or not. If you're doing all of them, you're doing a catchall. It's kind of like having cancer surgery and taking chemotherapy medication and de-stressing your life and eating right. You don't know which one it is that did it or if all of them did it, but it kind of doesn't matter because you don't have cancer anymore, which in your case is literally --

Hal Elrod: [00:14:13] Accurate thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:13] Let's finish the morning thing, but I do want to talk about how you have the worst luck but also the best luck somehow of any of my friends.

Hal Elrod: [00:14:21] Yup. Oh, so the morning thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:23] Yeah. So yeah, the whole book thing that you wrote.

Hal Elrod: [00:14:24] Yeah. The whole book, I wrote Miracle Morning. So yeah, I woke up the next morning, I did all six of the practices and I was terrible at them. Like I had never meditated. Affirmations, I always thought, were these cheesy things.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:36] That's what I think of them, yeah.

Hal Elrod: [00:14:37] And I love to talk about it at some point because I've completely redefined them in a way. People ask me sometimes, "Hal, do you have a favorite of these six practices?" And for anybody listening, just for you to have a visual of this, I was writing the book one day and I went to my wife. I was frustrated and I was writing Miracle Morning. She goes, "What's wrong?" I said, "I've got these six practices but they're not structured or organized. I didn't invent any of them." And I said, "All these authors, they have like a framework so that the reader can remember what they're teaching them or they can organize it in their brain." Like Robert Kiyosaki has got the Cashflow Quadrant and Stephen Covey has got The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And I go, "I don't know how to make these sticky and memorable." And she goes, "Why don't you get a thesaurus and see if any of the words have other words with the same meaning? And you can create an acronym that people can remember and then just go through it in their head."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:26] Your wife is a non-native speaker of English.

Hal Elrod: [00:15:29] Yeah. Polish is her first language.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:32] Because I'm thinking, she came up with the title of the book. She knows English better than you I think at this point. I was just wondering how that --

Hal Elrod: [00:15:39] She doesn't have brain damage like I have, but --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:41] You lean on that excuse all day long.

Hal Elrod: [00:15:42] I told you I didn't get a financial settlement. I got a brain damage settlement.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:47] Right.

Hal Elrod: [00:15:49] I remember in the hospital and brain damage was really bad. I said, "I'll be smacking waitresses on the butt when I'm in my 60s and saying, 'Oh, sorry, I'm brain damage.'" Yeah, that was my settlement.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:57] They're going to be like, "You're about to get some more if you smack me on the butt again."

Hal Elrod: [00:16:00] So anyways, the six practices, it feels like serendipity -- I mean, it's weird, it's an acronym, but if it wasn't for this acronym, I don't think Miracle Morning would have been sticky in the same way that if I hadn't taught people how to beat the snooze button in the book, it wouldn't have been sticky. It wouldn't have stuck. And so the acronym is -- these are called the SAVERS and meditation became silence and journaling became scribing. So it's silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing or the SAVERS. And I felt like the acronym was perfect because these are the six practices that essentially will save us from missing out on the life that we really want to live. These will enable us to develop ourselves further and be more capable and be able to create more of what we want.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:46] Right, so it's not just like get up early, zero inbox, get started on the day. That's my miracle morning, unfortunately.

Hal Elrod: [00:16:53] Yeah. It's a mediocre morning.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:53] Put out fires. Mediocre morning. Put out a bunch of fires and then I actually can do work the rest of the day because all the crap that people threw on my desk, the piles of turds are now cleaned off because I got up at 5:30.

Hal Elrod: [00:17:08] Some people will ask me, "Well, Hal, could I do the SAVERS any time of the day and still get the benefit?" And the answer is yes and no. Yeah, you're going to get a benefit if you meditate or exercise any time of the day. It doesn't matter. Here's the difference though. There, there are immediate and short-term meanings like that lasts throughout the day benefits of each of the SAVERS. So for example, meditation, it's proven to lower your cortisol levels. It will lower your stress levels. And so why would you want to miss out on that benefit throughout the day and waiting to have it before you go to bed. Exercise, it releases endorphins. You get blood throughout your entire system, your oxygen to your brain. It increases your energy. Why would you not want that benefit first thing in the morning to affect your entire day? So it goes back to when you win the morning and you put yourself in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual state to start the day, you're at your best throughout the rest of the day.

Hal Elrod: [00:18:03] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Hal Elrod. We'll be right back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:08] This episode is sponsored in part by Eight Sleep. I am so pumped for this mattress, Jason. This is a mattress that -- and I know it sounds dumb when I say this out loud, smart mattress. They may or may not call it that, but it's the bomb for sleep tracking. It's going to be amazing because what it does is it doesn't just track your sleep pattern. It doesn't just do everything that you might do with the wearable without having to wear a freaking wearable to bed, it also heats and cools the mattress. It's called The Pod by Eight Sleep and it's super high tech. It will help you achieve optimal sleep fitness. I cannot wait to put this on my bed frame. Time Magazine calls Eight one of the best inventions of the last year. Essentially what it does is it regulates the temperature of the mattress dynamically and yes, you and your partner can have different temperatures so it's got sleep tracking and it will heat and/or cool the mattress depending on what your body actually needs. So if your partner likes the bed warm but you're always too hot, you can have both at the same time. It's going to be insane. I cannot wait. No more alarm clock, no heating blanket, and it learns what your sleep pattern is and basically tells you exactly what you need and then just does it automatically. I am beyond excited for this, Jason.

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[00:20:51] Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Hal Elrod. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. And thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you've just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes in your podcast player as they're released so you don't miss a single thing from the show. And now back to our show with Hal Elrod,

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:27] And I don't think any of this is going to be super new for people who listened to the show for a while. Of course, the way that you structure the morning is new and better, but nobody's like, "Get up early. I had not thought of that." That's what was so funny about the book because at first, I was like, "Well, Hal is a friend. We'll talk about The Miracle Morning. But then it was like years later people are still like, "Yeah, I do this every day." And there's just a lot of people that are not really like trendy entrepreneurs, circle influencer people that follow that get up early and have really interesting things that they do in the morning and they're all kind of from your first book. Not necessarily that they got it by reading it, but there's just too much correlation between successful people and those that like get up, workout, attack the day --

Hal Elrod: [00:22:11] Totally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:11] -- get up, do the different things. Journaling is one of those things that I found at first and thought it was like super cheesy and then you see people who are like, "No, it clarifies my thoughts and then I clarify my priority. Even if they're journaling the same crap pretty much with a different shade of gray every morning. It just gets them focused. It's like a defrag of the mental hard drive somehow.

Hal Elrod: [00:22:31] It does. There are a million thoughts in our brain a day, right? Infinite thoughts and when you put them in writing you're forcing yourself to clarify what is most important. Otherwise, it's not going to make it into the journal.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:41] It's kind of like your emotional brain has a conversation with your thinking brain for the first time and it gets really clear.

Hal Elrod: [00:22:47] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:48] You can write like, "I feel bad today because I feel like I haven't done enough in my life." And then it's like, "I realized this makes absolutely no sense. I've done a lot of stuff, never mind," underlined, circle, smiley face, go eat breakfast. Even that kind of thing can help because you realize the negative thought loop you're in is ridiculous or whatever it is that you do. And that's, for me, journaling can be like two lines and sometimes it's just -- I had a bad dream. It was literally just a dream and has no basis in my current reality.

Hal Elrod: [00:23:17] And now you move on.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:18] Obviously I ate too late last night. That always happens when I eat too late. All right, I'm good. It can save me hours of rumination about something that's completely irrelevant, that would have screwed up my mood.

Hal Elrod: [00:23:29] You pull it out of your subconscious, put it on paper, and now you've let go of it and you don't keep it with you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:34] It's not some sort of like woo-woo my subconscious brain, blah blah. We do know that our emotional brain makes their decisions and our thinking brain rationalizes all that stuff.

Hal Elrod: [00:23:42] Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:43] So if we can get whatever it is that we're feeling out on paper, which forces us to put it into our thinking brain, our thinking brain can then sort of rationalize it away, which is usually a good move for a guy like me who wakes up and goes, "I didn't do enough to make my social media --" "Oh, who gives a crap? Get up a grip on yourself, Jordan. Like none of this is going to help you with your two interviews today and all the stuff you got to do." So that I've found to be really helpful. And of course meditation, exercise, that kind of thing. You now talk about The Miracle Equation. I know you're leaning into this miracle thing, pretty heavy duty. I get it. It's been successful for you in the past.

Hal Elrod: [00:24:19] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:20] Tell us about this because you know, the idea that we put forth this effort on a consistent basis is, of course, nothing super new. So what's going on here?

Hal Elrod: [00:24:31] So Miracle Equation, what's interesting is, like what you said is to me public perception what it would be, right? Which is like, "Oh, Hal's The Miracle Morning did so well. He's now spinning off this miracle brand." What's interesting is that The Miracle Equation was something that I created six years before The Miracle Morning when I was in sales. I was 20 years old. I was trying to break an all-time sales record and obviously, I died when I was 20 for six minutes. So miracle has been --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:01] You want to go ahead and talk about that for a second.

Hal Elrod: [00:25:03] Oh yeah. Should I not just throw that in and just to go over.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:05] Thanks to the one-liner.

Hal Elrod: [00:25:09] When I was 20 years old, I was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour and it bounced off the drunk driver. My car spun off the drunk driver. The car behind me crashed into my driver's side door at 70 miles an hour.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:19] Ooh.

Hal Elrod: [00:25:20] Yeah. I mean, if you're listening, I always say like put your hands on the steering wheel, look over the left shoulder, imagine a car hits you at 70 miles an hour in your door. And what you would imagine happened is what happened. The entire left side of my car was smashed in the left side of my body. I broke 11 bones instantaneously. My femur broke in half. My pelvis broke in three places. My humerus behind my bicep broke in half, shattered my elbow, severed my forearm nerve. My eye socket broke in three places. My ear was almost completely severed. The top of my skull was fractured by the ceiling buckling and cutting through my skull and I started bleeding to death. It took them an hour then the rescue crew to pull me out of the car. When they did, I had lost so much blood that my heart stopped and I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes. They rushed me onto a medevac helicopter, used defibrillators, hooked me up to an IV, rushed me to the hospital. They got me back to life, breathing again on the helicopter. And then I was in a coma for six days. I flatlined twice more. I came out of the coma and was told by doctors that I had permanent brain damage. I would never walk again. And you know, at 20 years old I had a lot of goals that involve walking.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:26] So it was like walking around.

Hal Elrod: [00:26:27] Yeah. It was like, "Ah, this is not what I wanted, however --"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:31] You run all the time now.

Hal Elrod: [00:26:33] No, I don't. I hate it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:33] Why were you always breathing heavily when you come upstairs then?

Hal Elrod: [00:26:36] Because I have bad stamina from my cancer.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:38] Well, sorry that got dark. Dang. I thought you were downstairs like doing some jumping jacks.

Hal Elrod: [00:26:46] I do a seven-minute workout. I do a little something. I ran an ultramarathon and checked it off my bucket list and was like, never again.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:52] Okay. That was afterwards?

Hal Elrod: [00:26:54] That was after.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:54] Okay, that's fine. So you can still run. At least I don't look like a total a-hole. Continue.

Hal Elrod: [00:26:59] I was told I would never walk again and a week after I came out of the coma -- so timeline, six days in the coma, week after that, so two weeks after the crash, the doctors called my parents in and they said, "Physically, we're going to give you an update. He's made it through the worst. He's stable." Because I had flatlined twice more. It was me living at that point. I was in critical condition. So they said, "Physically, he's stable, he's going to be with us for a long time." We've made it to the worst. Mentally and emotionally, we're concerned. We believe that Hal is in denial. And this is something we see with accident victims sometimes where his new reality of never walking again is so unimaginable he can't handle it. So instead of going into a depression, he's like kind of gone on the other side where he's just checked out like, 'Oh, everything's fine, no big deal.'" And they said, "He's hiding emotions right now, like anger, sadness, fear, depression, and eventually he's going to have to face this and we want him to do it here while he's in a safe environment and we can support him through it versus out in the real world when he could turn to drugs or alcohol or even suicide. He might lose his mind."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:07] Little do they know you've already turned to drugs and alcohol without any sort of thing whatsoever.

Hal Elrod: [00:28:13] Yeah. For fun. So my dad comes in that day, right? And you know, my parents, of course, are going, "We thought Hal it was actually doing good mentally, but now we find out, he's delusional. he's in denial." And so first of all, my dad comes in and I look over at him and his eyes are welling up, his face is red. And I knew he met with the doctor, but I didn't know what happened. So I'm going, "Oh God, what --"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:37] Am I going to die now?

Hal Elrod: [00:28:38] Yeah, pretty much. I'm like, "Oh God, I'm going to die. What did he just find out?" He's in real somber and he says, "Hal, I want to talk to you," and explains the doctors’ concerns. And he says, "Hal, I know you're a positive person, but it's okay to feel sad and scared and angry and depressed. Your mom and I are feeling that and you went through it. We can't imagine what you're really feeling. The doctors say, "You've got to admit these feelings. How are you really feeling, Hal." And I'm looking at my dad's face and the pain and I really went inside myself and I went, "Am I covering my emotions? Am I really scared and sad and angry and depressed?" And literally, Jordan, it took me 30 seconds maybe to come to a very real conclusion, which 10 years later or 19 years later, the same conclusion, I looked at my dad and I smiled. I said, "Dad, I thought you knew me better than that." He said, "Well, what do you mean?" And I said, "Remember, I live my life by the five-minute rule." And he was like, "Well, remind me what that is?" And I said, "I've told you and mom this so many times and it's so much happier."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:38] He was like, "Look, I don't listen to all your self-help bumper sticker, bullshit, man. I had enough."

Hal Elrod: [00:29:42] And I said, "Dad, I learned it in my Cutco sales training on like day two of training. It's okay to be negative when something goes wrong, but there is no value in dwelling on it." So our manager, my mentor, who was the top manager in the history of the company, and he's a very smart guy, he would literally say, "When you encounter a failed expectation -- a no sale, rude customer. You have a set of goals you've worked your ass off to get to it, you don't reach it." He said, "You set your timer on your phone for five minutes and you get five minutes to bitch, moan, complain, cry, vent, punch a wall, whatever, feel all your emotions. Don't deny them." "But after five minutes," he said, "You turn your timer off and you take a deep breath and you say, three really powerful words, can't change it." And he said, "It's a conscious reminder as an intelligent human being that there's probably not any value in you to be depressed or upset over something that's now in the past, whether it's five minutes or five months or whatever." He said, "You take a deep breath and your mind yourself, I can't change it. So there is no value in wishing it didn't happen, in feeling bad about it, feeling sorry for myself." And he said, "You flip the switch and you move, you focus all your energy on. Okay, well now that I can't change what just happened, what do I want to change or affect moving forward? And you focus all your energy on that." And I said, "Dad, it's been two weeks since the car accident. My five minutes is long up. And if I'm in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, like the doctors are saying, I will be the happiest person, the most grateful person you've ever seen in a wheelchair because I won't let my circumstances define my emotional wellbeing and my quality of life." I said, "But that's only one possibility. The second is I will walk again. Dad, I don't know if that's possible. That might be impossible. The doctors, they don't know and I don't know." I said, "So I've accepted the worst-case scenario so it has no control over my emotional wellbeing and all of my energy is going into, I visualized walking again. I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining it." Like I'm even reading up online on the mind-body connection and how our thoughts do affect our biology. Bruce Lipton wrote a great book, The Biology of Belief.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:40] Well, don't get me started on that.

Hal Elrod: [00:31:41] Okay. All right. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:43] Let's not go down that road.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:44] I haven't read it for 10 years, so I might have the same opinion you do now. But here's the thing, I don't have a graph, Jordan, that says, well, look at how my acceptance of what I couldn't change. Therefore, there was no stress over it. No inner turmoil, no pain. My acceptance of that and my focus on what I wanted, and putting all my energy into that. I don't have a graph that shows you the way that healed me. I have a picture a week later the doctors came in. So it's anecdotal, but it's reality, right? They come in and they go, "We don't know how to explain this. Hal, your body is healing so quickly that we're changing our diagnosis from, you're never walking again to you can walk today in therapy." And I have a picture of that day where I took my first three steps.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:29] That's incredible. Yeah. I mean look anecdotal, some small sample size.

Hal Elrod: [00:32:34] Totally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:35] And look, there might've been a lot of people that thought the same thing and are still in a wheelchair that said, you know, this is your story and it makes sense that your diagnosis did change. And I know you really well and I also know you have this simultaneously the worst luck and also really good luck. You had that car crash. I've seen you like we've gone swimming and stuff. You have all these little holes and scars. You're like, "Oh that's from a pin and that's from glass and that's from the screws that hold me together right now or whatever." And also like I think two weeks ago you got in another car accident. I mean, you're fine.

Hal Elrod: [00:33:12] A couple of months ago I totaled my car. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:14] Yeah. Okay. So it's a couple of months ago. All right, fair. And then you also didn't just get any cancer, you got one of the most rare forms of leukemia.

Hal Elrod: [00:33:24] Yeah, one of the rare forms. Yeah, it was two years ago. I couldn't breathe. I woke up struggling to breathe and my wife woke up, and she's like, "What's wrong? I'm like, "I don't know." And she's like, "Sit up." And she propped up all these pillows and I always joke, like that night I was like, "I will never get on her for all these decorative pillows on her bed anymore, like actually on purpose." So I'm sitting up and I couldn't breathe and I went into Urgent Care for diagnosis the next day and they missed diagnosed with pneumonia. And they were like, "Take the Z-Pak, most generic antibiotics." The doctor was really unsure of his diagnosis. He's like, "If you don't feel better in a couple of days, you should go get a second opinion." I'm like, okay. So I get a second opinion a couple of days later and the doctor calls me the next day and the nurse says, she's like, "You need to come in, the doctor wants to see you." I'm like, "Do you know what's wrong." "He wants to see you." And I'm like, "Okay." You know, I live like an anti-cancer lifestyle. I eat very healthily. I'm like a hippie. Like I don't have any chemicals in my house. I watched a documentary years ago on how to heal cancer naturally. And I'm like, I'm just going to live this way now. And just instead of waiting. So I go in and he's like, "Hal, there's definitely something wrong. It could be like an infection or a virus, but it also could be a form of lymphoma, which is cancer." And I was like, "It definitely can't be cancer."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:38] Like, no way. I've been eating the side berries for like five years."

Hal Elrod: [00:34:42] Yeah with antioxidants. I'm like, "Okay." And he's like, "So we need to do more tests." So do more tests, come back. It is called acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which has a 30 percent survival rate, adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So I always say, if you're a pessimist, that's 70 percent, you're going to die in the next few weeks to months. I had to face this a couple of years ago. I mean, I'm still dealing with it. I take chemo every day. I'm still going through this. I go get checked every three months. They stab a thick needle through my hip and take my bone marrow out, which is the most horrific, painful process. And every three months, literally, my wife and I are with pins and needles going, "Is the cancer back?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:27] Oh man how long is that going to be?

Hal Elrod: [00:35:30] For the rest of my life. But it will eventually go to like twice a year and then once a year. I'm like a year in remission now and once you hit the five-year mark, they consider that likelihood of always staying cancer-free is much better.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:45] Yikes, but then you have all this good luck too. And it seems like it's a little crazy actually, but a lot of it is what you focus on and I think that's the thing. Our mutual friend Omar Zenhom from the $100 MBA Show, which is a great podcast. He's like, "You know, Jordan, you never celebrate any wins." And I was like, "That is so true. And that is such a Midwest Michigan thing." Like you did good and don't let it go to your head. Focus on the next thing, you know, don't celebrate the win. You are very good at looking at all these positive things that happened and being like really thankful for it. And then thanking the people that brought that to you and then it brings you more opportunity. It seems like something that you've systematized a little bit in the new book.

Hal Elrod: [00:36:29] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:30] You don't think of it as luck. Well, actually do you think of it as luck? It looks like luck from the outside until you really break it down.

Hal Elrod: [00:36:37] Yeah, It feels like luck, you know, because I'm like, man, if that wouldn't happen -- we were talking about this, right? The miracle morning right now is the number one best-selling book in Brazil and it sold over 500,000 copies. And that's all because in Brazil or over--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:51] Just in Brazil.

Hal Elrod: [00:36:52] Oh wow. It sold almost two million I think overall. Yeah, which I didn't know. The foreign publishers don't report. So if somebody asks me how many copies I sold in Brazil, I'd be like, "Probably like 50,000." And then I get down there last week and my publisher is like, "We want to present you this plaque. You've sold 500,000 copies of The Miracle Morning in Brazil." I'm like, "What?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:12] Thanks for the plaque. Where's my check?

Hal Elrod: [00:37:14] But here's the point. It is because one of the top reality TV stars in Brazil, Adriana Sant'Anna, her friend gave her the first-ever self-help book she ever read The Miracle Morning and she posted it to her four-million Instagram followers because it changed your life. I can't predict that. You can't plan that. You can't write a book proposal or a business plan on that. And kind of with the new book, The Miracle Equation, it goes back to the adage, the quote or whatever you want to call it, "The harder you work, the luckier you get." Instead of luck, I would call it serendipity almost because it's happened so consistently, so many times. The way I approach life with this mindset, these two decisions that we talked about or we're going to talk about is I feel like these are what unlocked that luck, that serendipity. And when you, when you study the world's most successful people, and when say study, I just listen to their interviews, they all talk about how -- they call it luck or they call it serendipity. They call it chance, they call it something like that. But it's part of their success. I rarely do you find someone that's like, "Yeah, I had an exact plan and it worked exactly as I wanted and nothing unexpected happened." Like, no. "Oh, dude, I met this person. I never could have imagined I met this person," and that led to this and that's how I got to this point in my life.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:32] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Hal Elrod. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:38] This episode is sponsored in part by BiOptimizers. Here's a shocking fact about probiotics that -- well, first of all, those things are trending. I take them, I feel like everyone else takes them. It's like if you don't take them, you're crazy. It's probably the colonics from the '80s or '90s. But according to my friend Naveen Jain, who's recently on the show, he studies poop in parts and the at-home test that shows gut bacteria count that he created, well, almost no probiotics are showing up in people's gut analysis. This means like 99 percent of probiotics that you're spending money for do not colonize your gut as they claim. Still, research does show that we need the good bacteria to fight the bad guys. So the solution, there's a single strain proteolytic probiotic called P3-OM. And what P3-OM does? It uses a natural process to upgrade a well-researched probiotic strain, so this is kind of like the super strain. Some people call it the Navy seal of probiotics. It kicks bad bacteria's butts and my brother-in-law's been using this. I've been using this a lot, especially after heavy meals. You can actually watch it dissolve a piece of raw steak. If you go to p3om.com/jordan. That's p3om.com/jordan. It's a pretty cool, interesting little video there of what's going on in the digestive system. Jason.

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[00:41:48] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going and keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Hal Elrod.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:09] So tell us about the new book and the new equation. I actually really liked the simplicity of this. You studied a lot of achievers, innovators in some of this, to be fair, seems like a survivor bias because we're hearing from people who are successful because they've done a lot of the things that we talked about and they had their morning routine or whatever. There are plenty of people that follow that. They're like living in their mom's basement. So how do we know that this stuff is actually working and not just sometimes it works for people who are already going to be successful?

Hal Elrod: [00:42:40] Well, here's the thing, right? Again, that old adage, the great truth is truth. Success leaves clues. If you study a hundred successful people or a thousand successful people and you go, "These are the things they had in common." Well, if you're living in your mom's basement, you're probably not applying these things. Because if you did, you'd probably see different results in your life. And here's a simple way to do it. The subtitle of the book really teaches what it's after, which is the two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable. And so these are the two decisions where if you do study the world's most prolific achievers, and maybe we'll use some athletes like I really like using Michael Jordan as an example. He's someone who achieves at the highest level. He's one of the best in the world, performs beyond what the average person could ever imagine performing at. But when you actually break it down, you find that every successful -- or let's not say every but most successful people, they live by these two decisions and they don't just make them once like to try to get rich quick or something. It's literally the fundamental way that they approach every adversity that they encounter. For me, the miracle equation is how I walked again after my car accident, although I didn't come up with a miracle equation until two years later. But then I look back and I'm like, "Oh, that's why I was able to walk again even though they said I wouldn't." When I had cancer, and this was literally the first day that I was diagnosed with cancer. So if you could imagine if you're listening, you're given a 30-percent chance of surviving. And for me, it was way harder than the accident because I have two kids now. I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old. So then, they were seven and four. And the thought of losing my kids and leaving -- I'm not losing my kids, but leaving them without a dad and leaving my wife without a husband, that's the most horrific, scary thought or possibility in my life.

[00:44:30] The day I was diagnosed with cancer, I called my wife. She was in tears or she was just terrified and devastated. And I said, "Sweetheart, I know this is going to be hard for you to hear. You're not going to believe what I'm going to say. I believe this is the best thing that will ever happen to me." And I have a reference point to that where the car accident is, up until this point has been the best thing that ever happened to me because it enabled me to become the person that I needed to be by overcoming those challenges that it allowed me to create what I want for my life. But ultimately it gave birth to my life's work. I wouldn't have gone into the work that I went into helping people if I hadn't felt like, "Wow, I have this calling now because I went through this unbelievably ridiculous challenge, life-threatening thing. And then now I have to share with people." I said, "I think the cancer is just a high, a bigger opportunity for me to reach more people and impact more people." And I said, "Sweetheart, that'll probably be the hardest thing we've ever had to do." It sounds weird, but I said, "You remember my miracle equation thing that I've talked about before that I came up with when I was like 20?" And she was like, "No." And I go, "Okay, well, look, this is this formula that I have used to defy the odds in the past. And I've done it so many times and it's worked for everyone I've taught it to, to where I have such conviction in the validity of if I approach my cancer with these two decisions like I have unwavering faith, which is one of the decisions. That I will beat this." And of course, there were moments of doubt, I mean, and fear every day of like, "God, what if I really die?" And like you said, Jordan, I'm sure there are people that had faith or that really tried and put whatever, but they didn't make it. So that logical brain, I'm like, "What if, what if, what if?" Like I couldn't stop that, but here's the point and I want to, I want to bring this and then we can get into the decisions.

[00:46:28] If you study Michael Jordan, right? I'll use Michael Jordan as an example. Pick any elite athlete, but we'll use athletes. Michael Jordan made a decision at some point in his life, in his career, his basketball career. Maybe it was in high school, maybe it was thanks to a mentor, maybe it was of his own accord, I don't know. But he decided he would have unwavering faith and he might not use that language. But basically, he decided that he would make every shot that he ever took. Now, Jordan, let me ask you a rhetorical question, but has any basketball player ever made every shot they ever took?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:55] No, of course, not.

Hal Elrod: [00:46:56] Maybe 50 percent, right? So they literally miss half of the shots. But Michael Jordan and the world's most successful people, again, it's a fundamental way of living where they believe they're going to make every shot they take. And shot is a metaphor for anything we attempt in life. Most people, if they miss a shot, in a game of basketball players miss a shot, all of a sudden doubt and fear creep in. And he's like, "Oh-oh, maybe I'm off today." And again, if he missed a second, they won't shoot again. They passed the ball, but the world's most successful -- I called them Miracle Mavens in the book. The word maven comes from the Yiddish word, meyvn, which means one who understands. So it's someone who understands that this is how you create extraordinary results in your life. Is that Michael Jordan? He's like, "Give me the ball. I'm going to shoot again." And he'll shoot over. And you see these players like LeBron or Jordan or Kobe where they'll have three quarters, the first three-quarters of the game, they don't make a single shot. Every other player would have stopped shooting a long time ago. They have unwavering faith that they can make every shot that they take. I had unwavering faith that I was going to beat cancer even though there's never a guarantee.

[00:48:02] And that's the thing in life is we are so center around certainty and comfort that that's what keeps people stuck in the life that they're living is they go, "Well, I know that if I show up to work, I'm going to get a paycheck and that's better than if I start my own business. I might fail."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:19] Right, there's uncertainty.

Hal Elrod: [00:48:19] It might not work out. Exactly. But if you want to create the extraordinary life that you really want, that you deserve, that you've dreamt about since you, whatever, and you're tired of the rat race or the bullshit, like you have to step out on the faith that you can do something that you've probably never done in your life. And when you check your rearview mirror, if you will, and look at your past, there is no evidence right there. But every successful person, that's what they did. They had to step out on faith that they could do something they had never done before.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:47] I think for me, I was just more delusional in my 20s and I was like, "Even if this goes horribly wrong, I have all this time to start another career."

Hal Elrod: [00:48:55] Yeah, but if you're 40 or 50 right, it's like, "Ah, yeah, I don't have."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:57] Yeah, so I get why those people have doubts. And I also think just to be clear, and I don't know if you'll agree with me, we'll see people shouldn't do this whole I'm quitting my job and going all-in on the business thing.

Hal Elrod: [00:49:07] No.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:07] Okay. So you do agree because of a lot of these entrepreneur influencers.

Hal Elrod: [00:49:09] Burn your bridges.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:11] Burn the ships. Maybe not the bridges.

Hal Elrod: [00:49:13] Yeah, sorry.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:13] Definitely don't do that. But don't burn the ships either because now you're just increasing your surface area for bad luck and uncertainty when really you can scale up slowly. You have to have that unwavering faith. But if you're wrong, you don't lose your house.

Hal Elrod: [00:49:30] I used to coach people. I haven't coached for many years, but when I coached and people would be like, "I hate my job and I think I'm just going to quit. I'm going to go all in." I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. Save up enough money so that you have six months' reserve so that you can quit and go all in and not be stressed out to the max because you're trying to survive on something that you haven't even created yet."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:48] Right. Exactly.

Hal Elrod: [00:49:49] Yeah. That's always my advice. And that's what I did when I left Cutco when I left my sales job. I saved up enough money to transition into entrepreneurship, and that was the kind of the brand.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:58] Okay, cool. So I love the idea that a lot of our emotional pain -- you touched on this earlier -- is essentially caused by resistance, right? And the doctors thought you were actually doing, that you're in denial.

Hal Elrod: [00:50:08] Resisting reality.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:08] Yeah. Look, it's not happening. And you discussed these emotional invincibility concepts, which is essentially acceptance. Like, "Okay, this is what's what the doctors say I'm going to focus on the upside. Because if I just focused on what is never going to happen, then that essentially --" you kind of flipped it on its head. Like you're resisting in that respect and I get that. But this has to be a practice. Like if my cat dies tomorrow, I'm going to be sad.

Hal Elrod: [00:50:38] Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:38] I can't just flip the switch or whatever. Like it doesn't matter what conversation we had this morning. How do I, how do I flip that switch? Like you just, you have the five-minute sadness timer or whatever.

Hal Elrod: [00:50:48] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:49] That's a good idea.

Hal Elrod: [00:50:49] Can't change it mantra if you will or whatever.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:51] Right. Can't change it mantra. Yeah.

Hal Elrod: [00:50:53] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:53] What happens when the emotions come back at some point? And you go, "Oh, I never really dealt with this. I sort of just like capped it in five minutes."

Hal Elrod: [00:51:00] Here's what you have to understand. Every negative emotion that we have ever felt in our lives that we are feeling now or that we could ever feel is self-created. It's self-created by us and it's completely optional. I won't say completely optional because I mean, we're human beings and we are emotional creatures. But you can literally train yourself to what I call emotional invincibility, which is where you're invincible. You're not affected by your emotions. You choose the emotions that would best serve you in any given moment. And so for me, the cause, so if all of our negative emotions or destructive emotions are self-created, you go, "Okay, well, what's creating them? What's the cause?" And it is one word which you just mentioned. It's resistance to the degree that we resist our reality, which shows up as wishing and wanting that this thing didn't happen or that it was different, determines the degree of emotional pain that we create for ourselves. So the opposite of resistance, which has been the solution to free yourself from emotional pain, is acceptance. It's accepting all things that you can't change as they are. And when you accept all things as they are, it doesn't mean you're happy. Like I wasn't happy I was in a car accident, I wasn't happy I got cancer. When you accept all things as they are, you accept life unconditionally. It's more powerful than happiness because happiness is an emotion, which is fleeting, right? We've all been happy one minute. Phone call changed out like what? You know?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:12] Oh yeah.

Hal Elrod: [00:52:13] Right. But when you accept things you can't change. And you live in this state of unconditional acceptance. It doesn't produce an emotional state. It's emotional neutrality where it's neutral. It's in between happiness and sadness is a state of peace. It's a state of unwavering peace. It's a state of being where you're emotionally neutral and then you can go, "Okay, I can't change it. So there's no point in feeling bad about it. Okay, I get that. I'm a smart person," and it takes training. Like I always say do a 30-day challenge. And at first, when I speak on this, I go, "Raise your hand if you think five minutes feels like kind of a short time and you're going to be upset longer." And they're like, "Oh yeah, I need more than five minutes. Can I get like five hours to be pissed off." And I go, "That's what I thought when I learned this." And here's what happened. I set my timer for five minutes the first time and I'm like, "Oh, this is bullshit. Argh." Five minutes timer off. I'm like, "Nah, I'm still mad." But I went, "Okay, deep breath, I can't change it. Okay, still I still have these resonate negative emotions, whatever." I mean, it was literally a few days, maybe the third, fourth, fifth time, I'd set the timer. I set the timer and I'm like, "Son of -- I can't believe this lady canceled the appointment, this was huge, I needed this." And then I'm like, "Ah, it's bullshit, man." And I picked up my phone and I'm like, I have four minutes and 17 more seconds. And I go, "What's the point of being upset for four more minutes when I could just get on the phone and schedule another two appointments and make up for this?" So it was extraordinary how I went from thinking, based on my current paradigm and my reality and my emotional patterns, five minutes is not enough to within like a week or less than a week, I'm like, "Oh, I don't need five minutes. I need five seconds to like get mad," and then be like, "Oh, can't change it and move on." And so you recondition this. And that's why when I had cancer, I was able to accept it within five minutes and not even though you have a 70-percent chance of dying and leaving your kids. I'm like, "Okay, well, if that happens, whatever, I'll deal with that. I mean, I'm going to have to process this, but I'm not going to let emotional pain be part of the journey because I don't have to." So when you hear this, it sounds foreign.

[00:54:20] Let me give you one more example, Jordan, for people to really understand and then we dive back into the two equations, I mean the two decisions, but traffic is a great example. Most people, I'm like, "Hey, raise your hand, if you don't like traffic." They're like, "Yeah, of course, I hate traffic." I'm like, well, why would you hate traffic? Like you can't change that the cars in front of you are going slow. You can't change that you're going to be late. You can't change any of those things, but you can choose to accept all the things that are out of your control and then just turn up the radio or smile and feel happy or focus on things you're excited about in your life or focus on what you're grateful for, whatever. And so I love traffic because it's a microcosm for life to realize that, oh, I get to choose whether or not I enjoy the journey. I can be upset over the traffic, upset over the things I can't change, upset over the fact that I got cancer, upset about the fact that I lost my job. I can let this destroy me and make me depressed and angry. Or I could take a deep breath and say, "Hey, I can't change these things, but I can choose to be happy." And that's for me with cancer, I said, "I will be the happiest and the most grateful I've ever been in my entire life while I am in the midst of going through the most difficult thing I've ever experienced." And that was my reality that I created.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:26] Yeah. Yeah. And I can see that being extremely useful when you're getting poked with needles and stuff like flying to the hospital all the time away from your family. I like that we've sort of redefined the word miracle in a way that gives us the ability to make this a little bit tangible. Because the word miracle is obviously, that has been laid in with magical thinking and pseudo-spiritual woo garbage.

Hal Elrod: [00:55:46] Let me give you the definition. Can I define it?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:50] Yeah.

Hal Elrod: [00:55:50] The way I defined it in the book -- because that's the thing, miracle has a bad rap. Often it's thought of or whether it's the magical woo-woo or it's just thought of as random, right? So it's not reliable. It's like, "Oh yeah, I hope a miracle happens. I'm praying and I'm waiting. Like that's the strategy." No, no, no, no, no, no. How do you make miracles? How do you redefine them so that they're tangible and they're measurable miracles and that you have a degree of control over creating them? So the way I defined a miracle, it's real practical. It's an outcome outside the realm of what you believe is probable for you. So therefore when you achieve that outcome, it does feel like a miracle. Because you're like, "Oh, I really didn't know if I could do this. I couldn't imagine. I didn't know if it was possible." Right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:29] Yeah. Like restarting my entire show and business from the ground up in one year after getting fucking fired.

Hal Elrod: [00:56:36] You made these two decisions.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:38] That's miracle.

Hal Elrod: [00:56:38] You established unwavering faith even though you were afraid. I mean we talked, you called me, we talked. You were terrified, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:45] Yeah.

Hal Elrod: [00:56:45] But you established unwavering faith that you could do this, you could rebuild your show, you can rebuild an audience even though you didn't know for sure. You didn't know what it would look like. There were all sorts of uncertainty. And then, Jordan, the second decision of the miracle equation is extraordinary effort. You put forth extraordinary effort. And I want to break that down a little because it is such -- the miracle equation, in general, is deceptively simple in the explanation. If you just said it to someone, they're like, "Oh, that helps me? Not at all."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:11] They're like nobody wrote a book about that. That's making any money today. Did they?

Hal Elrod: [00:57:14] Yeah. I think to go rich, we talked a lot about faith and effort and all that but -- the point is before the extraordinary effort until, and that word, until you do have to circle it, you dot have to underline it because one thing is to establish the faith that something's possible and they call it uninformed optimism. You're like, "Oh yeah, I listened to Tony Robbins. Like I can do anything right?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:33] And then I'm like, "Call me in three months.

Hal Elrod: [00:57:34] But as soon as you run into an obstacle or roadblock, you're like, the faith goes out the window. You're like, "Ah, who was I kidding? I tried. It didn't work." The people that are successful, nobody, it didn't work out the gate. It's like they had to maintain -- that's why the faith that has to be unwavering until. It might take you 10 years to get where you want to go. In The Miracle Morning, I wasn't some overnight sensation. It took me, you know, years of hundreds of interviews and dozens of TV shows and dozens of speaking engagements before The Miracle Morning actually took off. I busted my ass and I wasn't getting paid. The book sales weren't happening even though the effort was there. So the faith and the effort had to both be maintained over an extended period of time, which is what makes the miracle equation work.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:15] So we were talking about uninformed optimism and how you've redefined miracle as any outcome that's essentially beyond what you thought possible. So it's not some sort of like freak metaphysical experience that's caused by anything. It is just the fact that you're buckling down on those two fronts.

Hal Elrod: [00:58:33] That's it. And so if you think about the two decisions are, like I said, deceptively simple in their explanation, but they're even more rare in their execution. That's like in most things. To be successful, usually, it's not simple. It's not easy at all, but it's really simple. You just have to do these things, you'll line up the success you want. So with The Miracle Equation, think how counterintuitive or counter to our human nature it is to do these things. Like we talked about the unwavering faith part, right? We crave certainty. And so establishing an unwavering faith, most people don't do, if they're in the self-help world and they're like, "Oh, I believe in the optimist creed that anything is possible." But possible isn't enough to get us out of bed in the morning with the drive to do what we need to do because possible it's just an idea. There's no merit. There's no certainty. We have to move our goals from possible to probable. That's like the first step. So that you go, okay, there's, there's more of a likelihood. And that's what the first thing that miracle equation does is you go, well, wait, if I do what the world's most prolific achievers do, and I establish unwavering faith that I can do this thing and then I commit to maintain unwavering faith and move forward in the direction of this one primary objective.

[00:59:45] In the book I talked about you've kind of along the lines of the one thing, you've got to have a mission. Like if you're scattering your focus across 10 different goals, you know, like an Olympic athlete, they major in one sport, right? Unless they're like in a multiple-sport athlete?

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:02] Yeah, probably.

Hal Elrod: [01:00:02] But anyway, they focus on one thing, until they become the best in the world at it, right. But with extraordinary effort, I think that the important part is you have to make it feel ordinary. Like just the name of it. It's like, okay, I got to work hard. Either I don't want to do that. Or like, yeah, I know I have to work hard. Well, no, no, no. How do you make the extraordinary effort feel ordinary to where you actually feel compelled to do it? The way I define extraordinary effort is if I put it into one word, it's what makes extraordinary is consistency. It's not that you're Gary Vaynerchuk in 80 hours a day. Think about it, if you establish your mission, which is the single most important goal that will, A, enrich your life the most, but also, B, by pursuing it with unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. It will enable you to become the type of person that you need to be with the abilities to achieve everything else that you want. It doesn't matter if you hit any individual goal, but by approaching it with these decisions, you become the type of person that can achieve anything that you put your mind to, so to speak, right?

Hal Elrod: [01:01:13] So with extraordinary effort, it's defining what your mission is and then it's understanding that every result, every outcome, every goal, dream, whatever word you want to use, it's preceded by a process. And the process is what makes the goal inevitable. For example, if you want to lose weight, well, if you go exercise every day and you commit to that process and you limit your caloric intake, unless you have some weird genetic dysfunction, it's almost impossible that by burning more calories than you consume, you will achieve that goal. It's only a matter of time. If you want to become a millionaire, right? Or a billionaire or become wealthy, if you define, okay, well -- this to me is like if you want to be wealthy 1.0, read books on how to become wealthy from people that have done it, and do the things that they tell you in the books every day, schedule one hour a day and do something that moves you in the direction of that wealth. Well, now it's inevitable. It might not happen in a year. It might take you five or it might need you 10 or whatever, but you inevitably now achieve the result that you're after. And I think one of the most important lessons that I've ever embodied and it's just a kind of philosophy, is that we all want instant results. We want quick fixes. "I want everything to happen now." And we look at other people that we are envious of and like, "We'll look at where they are and I want to get there now." If you're listening to this right and you want to improve your business, your life, whatever, and you're feeling impatient, you're feeling like I'm behind. You're just feeling scarcity. When you finally get to the point in your life or your business or any area that you've wanted to be for so long or you've worked so hard for so long, it may have taken you so much longer than you wanted, when you finally get there, you almost never wish it would've happened any sooner. Like once you get there, you look back and you're like, "Oh, the journey was exactly as it had to be." All of the challenges, the adversities, the depression, the fear, the failure, the bankrupt, like I had to go through that. And so when you can understand that value of hindsight now, it means don't wait for 10 years to live a life where you're not stressed out every day and feeling like you're behind the eight-ball and behind everybody else. Like, no, go, "Okay, I understand that when I finally get there, I'm going to have realized that this was all perfect and part of the journey."

Hal Elrod: [01:03:31] So what that enables me to do every day instead of feeling stressed, and I've been doing this for 10 years since I kind of realized this and woke up to this is I'm going to be at peace with where I'm at every single day. I'm going to maintain unwavering faith that I will get to where I'm going because I'm putting forth extraordinary effort every single day. And if I keep maintaining unwavering faith that I can get to this place, that I can create these results that I want, if I put forth extraordinary effort every day, which isn't 80 hours a day working, it's simply one hour a day doing one thing that moves me in the direction of my miracle, my mission, whatever you want to call it, I know that I'll get there. And so you can be at peace with where you are while you maintain a healthy sense of urgency to get move in the direction of where you want to go. And to me, that is the recipe for life. Like that's the recipe for a happy life, a fulfilled life, and creating an extraordinary life.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:25] Yeah, this sounds like, I didn't even come up with this as a bumper sticker, but when I was talking with Tom Bilyeu, I said something like action ends suffering. And what I meant by that was if you're sitting there lamenting about where you're at right now. The one thing I've found that cures that, is just move in that direction. Like, yeah, you won't have your business up and running by next week by doing this, but at least you're going in that direction. That made me feel infinitely better. Because if you're the kind of energetic person, and I don't mean that in any metaphysical way, I mean you just have a lot of energy, you either drive yourself crazy or you focus that laser beam at a goal and you go for that instead. Otherwise, you're just like a blender with the top off. Everything's just going everywhere and that's where I was when I found myself starting over. It was like, Oh my gosh, social media, email list, website, show content, booking dah, dah, dah, all that stuff. And I was like, "Let's just pick out these goals, and then you know, knock them down one by one and have a plan and actually focus on that." That way I'm not spinning up in the air and doing all that. And I think that's really important to note because otherwise it just sounds great. So all I have to do is work hard every day. It's like well the focus is what matters and then putting in the effort consistently because a lot of what a lot of people do is lament where they're at. Do an hour of work, take tomorrow off, have a bunch of errands to do the next day. Well, I've got kids, I got --

Hal Elrod: [01:05:44] And then falls off.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:44] And then you end up lamenting again because you didn't do anything. It's that consistency. Even if you don't have that hour a day, you have to do something every day to move the ball forward and that's what causes you to be able to move forward or allows you to move forward. There's a lot here and we didn't nearly get into it because that's what happens when I have my friends on the shows. We go off on what I hope are useful tangents instead of just focusing on the book content. But tell me about the faith effort feedback loop because I actually really liked that. That was something a little bit new for me. 20/20 hindsight worked for me because it was the action ends suffering put in the work and then go well wait a minute, now that I'm doing this, I see the speed at which I'm heading towards this and I don't feel like I'm trying to get lucky again or something like that.

Hal Elrod: [01:06:28] So when it comes to the two decisions in The Miracle Equation, there's this feedback loop where they feed into each other and they get easier and easier and easier over time. And that's the thing is like I said earlier, they're counterintuitive. It's counter to our human nature to make these decisions. So with the first decision, unwavering faith, two parts to it, you've got to establish it, which is the easy part, but then you have to maintain it. But once you establish the faith that you can do something, and for me, it's by establishing and putting it in writing. You've got to solidify in writing, which the way I phrased unwavering faith is I am committed to achieving a blank result. No matter what. There is no other option. Or I'm committed to giving it everything I have to achieve this result. So I'm reinforcing my commitment to do whatever it takes. And that's where it starts, right? You want to achieve something, you have to be fully committed. In the simplest term, if you're committed, you get there. If you're not committed, you don't get there.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:07:19] At what point do we need to change that? Because if you're like, "I'm going to walk again and it's like, okay, I'm not making progress in this area." At what point do we go, this is not realistic and I'm wasting my time.

Hal Elrod: [01:07:32] I mean I think that you constantly, like in the book I talked about you've got to have consistently, like daily reassess how is this going. Is my approach working? Do I need to change it? So, but when you start with the unwavering faith, what it does is it fuels your effort because once you start reinforcing that you can do this thing, you're like, Oh actually now I feel compelled to do something that would move me in that direction. And where it really starts the rubber meets the road if you will, once you put forth extraordinary effort, you start just taking one step followed by another each day. One thing each day that moves in the direction. Now you feel deserving, you feel deserving of the result that you are working towards. And when I had cancer, I started by establishing unwavering faith and I read this in my affirmations every day, which said I am committed to doing whatever it takes to beat cancer and live to be 100-plus-years-old with my wife and children. No matter what, there is no other option. So that was the unwavering faith piece and whenever I had fear with which I had all the time and self-doubt, I pulled that -- it was on my phone -- it was this affirmation I wrote. And I read it and it refocused my mind on instead of being consumed with fear, which most people that are given a slim chance of living, live in fear. I had very little fear. Fear was one percent of my reality and 99 percent was unwavering faith. Then I go, okay, well to beat cancer, I'm not just going to sit back and let the doctors stick me with chemo and expect that that's it. I have to take responsibility for my recovery. I'm going to put forth extraordinary effort in the way that looked for me. And if anybody is listening to this that knows someone with cancer, I'd encourage you or have cancer consider this. The doctors knew nothing about holistic practices and there are extreme amounts of merit and people that have cured themselves naturally. Like their bodies cure themselves, not with just chemotherapy. And so I decided my extraordinary effort was I will do every single natural holistic practice that's available in addition, in combination with the traditional allopathic medicine that my doctors are giving me. So I took 70 vetted out supplements every single day. I did acupuncture. I did, of course, the miracle morning and I meditated. I did coffee enemas every day. And I would say there is no effort more extraordinary than sticking a tube up your butt and shooting a liter of coffee into your colon. But here's the thing, Jordan, I say this in all seriousness, every time I was sitting there on my bathroom floor with a tube in my butt doing a coffee enema -- I want to give you the visuals.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:01] Yeah, thank you for that.

Hal Elrod: [01:10:04] But here's the feedback loop. I go, "Dude, I'm going to beat cancer because I am doing everything in my power. I deserve to beat cancer," which is very different from, I have a vision board that has a picture of me being healthy. And so I'm going to stare at it and I'm going to pray and I'm going to wait for cancer to heal itself or the higher power to heal cancer. I've tapped into all that too but that wasn't it. I wasn't relying on luck or chance. I was putting forth extraordinary effort and maintaining unwavering faith every day. And the doctors just like with my car accident, they're like, "We can't believe how well you're responding to this chemo." Like to be clear, the chemotherapy regimen that I had was it may be the single most aggressive that there is. I have an aunt, for example, it has breast cancer and she goes in for like an hour a month for an infusion. I got a hundred hours of chemo every three weeks. I had four drugs or five of the most powerful chemo drugs that were administered via a tube that had to go into my artery because the chemo will burn through your vein. It's that strong. And I had to get four days of non-stop chemo and then the next session was five days. The next session was four days. Every three weeks. The reason my cancer is a 30-percent chance survival rate, most people die from chemotherapy. Not only did I not die, but my side effects were also minimal compared to people that get one hour a month when I was getting over a hundred.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:37] Ugh, it sounds so awful.

Hal Elrod: [01:11:39] It's horrific, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:40] And look at the very least, the most sort of pessimistic skeptic could just say, "Look, all of this boils down to at least you're doing something with your energy other than freaking worrying and keeping yourself up at night, freaking out about the fact that you might die."

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:54] Absolutely. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:55] And that's like the worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario, putting coffee in your colon, which sounds just messy and I won't get into that. The best-case scenario that actually did something, I'm skeptical of all of that stuff, but I can totally see that if I were diagnosed with, "Hey, there's a really likely chance you're going to die." I'd be like, "Give me that tube." Because otherwise, I'm going to sit here watching Netflix about -- oh God, I don't even want to think about it. Like horrible, depressing things and like buying life insurance and trying to figure out how to leave money to my wife and kid. That sounds like a much more energy-draining thing to do than what you were doing, which knowing you all this stuff makes you even more high-spirited. You're like, "I put two coffee enemas in today. I'm doing twice the effort."

Hal Elrod: [01:12:45] I did try that. I'm like, "How much can I fit up there?"

Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:47] Yeah. And the doctors are like, "Look, man, we can only do so much for you if you're going to fill your entire lower GI tract with coffee. It's just making it worse." I get this, right, I understand this and I know a lot of people that are practicing this kind of thing. And looking at what we've talked about before, a lot of what you're saying is actually how I got through the last year, a year and a half in a way that didn't drive me actually insane or through a hardcore depression of some kind. Because I look back now and I'm like, why wasn't I more depressed and the reason is because I was working my ass off and didn't have time.

Hal Elrod: [01:13:22] Yeah, you're focused on what you wanted.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:24] Yeah. But I'm not saying that people who suffer from depression just need to put in -- there's a level at which it's clinical and I want to acknowledge that. And the reason I didn't get myself down to that level by just thinking about negative stuff is because I cut myself off and focused on work, which would have been unhealthy but was less unhealthy than laying on the couch and drinking or whatever people do when they're depressed. It depends. Right? We all have our own flavor.

Hal Elrod: [01:13:50] Our own vices, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:50] So yeah, vices is one way to do it. Well, Hal, thank you very much. I know the book is coming out really soon, The Miracle Equation. We'll link to it in the show notes. I really thank you for coming in and it's cool spending the last few days with you at my house and seeing how crazy you really are.

Hal Elrod: [01:14:04] I love you guys.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:04] Yeah.

Hal Elrod: [01:14:05] Thanks for that.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:05] And thanks for signing my copy of the book. If you're watching on YouTube and I'll read it to you, it says, it's got The Miracle Equation here. To Jordan and Jen, I love you both and I'm so excited that you'll soon be giving birth to your miracle son. Although -- and by the way, a lot of people might be like, "What? You're having a baby?" Because I haven't announced it.

Hal Elrod: [01:14:23] Now, they know.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:24] Yeah, yeah. I mean it's on social media, but not everybody cares about that. And of course, it continues -- if I know Jordan, the effort it took to conceive probably wasn't that extraordinary, if you know what I mean. Love, Hal. Thanks a lot, Hal.

Hal Elrod: [01:14:36] You got it, brother.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:41] Great big thank you to my friend Hal. The book title is The Miracle Equation, and if you want to know how I managed to book all of these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out our Six-Minute Networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Don't wait, don't do it later. You got to dig the well before you get thirsty. Once you need relationships, you are way too late and the drills are designed to just take a few minutes per day. That's why it's called Six-Minute Networking, people. So go grab that jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking to building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Hal Elrod. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.

[01:15:23] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason "Miracle Brunch" DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. And I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So the fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

[01:15:53] A lot of people ask me which shows I recommend. One of my favorites, of course, is Mind Pump. You've heard me talk about it a bunch. It's not just a bunch of bro fitness stuff. There are some bros and there's some fitness, but there's a lot of really solid science in there as well and I love these guys. They live in my town here, San Jose. I've got Sal here from Mind Pump as well, Episode 980. This was kind of one of those, this sounded like a men's health magazine at an airport headline. I almost didn't listen to it. Five Steps to Your Best Body by Summer or Five Most Important Steps to Your Best Body by Summer. These were surprisingly unsexy, but I think that's what people actually need, right?

Sal Di Stefano: [01:16:27] Yeah. And the reason why we did that episode is we get questions like this constantly. And so what we wanted to do is list the five, not just the most important things, but really the five of the only things you need to do because everybody focuses on the small stuff like the supplements you need to take and all these ridiculous things that don't really move the needle. But one of the most important steps in there was learning how to lift weights properly because modern life is naturally sedentary. And what you want to do is you want a faster metabolism. It protects against that sedentary life and it allows you to eat more of these hyper-palatable foods that we're constantly surrounded by. So building muscle is actually one of the most important things you could do to get your body lean and stay lean in modern life.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:17:09] So basically if I want to keep eating a bunch of crap, I need to have like giant quads to burn all of it off?

Sal Di Stefano: [01:17:15] Well, it'll help to build more muscle, but I don't know if it's going to help you that much so you can eat crap all the time.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:17:20] Damn, all right, next. You guys can find that. Of course, there are more steps than just that. That's one that I found interesting and that's Episode 980 on Mind Pump Five Steps to Your Best Body by Summer and of course, we'll link to that in the show notes as well.