Podcast #1,089: The 6 Practices of the Ultimate Morning Routine

Podcast Archives | The Art of Manliness

There’s been a lot of talk about morning routines in the last few years. But the idea is hardly new; famous men from Thomas Aquinas to Benjamin Franklin structured their mornings to accomplish great deeds and live flourishing lives.

A modern advocate of this age-old practice is Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, first published nearly twenty years ago. Long before morning routines became a trend, Hal was experimenting with his own — researching and refining what actually works. Through his experiences and those of the millions who’ve tried his approach, he’s cut through the aspirational noise to offer a doable, effective framework for starting your day right. Today on the show, Hal shares the six practices of the Miracle Morning routine, why he chose them, and how they set up your day for success. We also discuss how long the routine takes and how a shortened version can be done in just six minutes, as well as how to make it work if you’re not a morning person. Along the way, I share what my own morning routine looks like.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• The Stockdale Paradox
• AoM Article: Bookend Your Day — The Power of Morning and Evening Routines
• AoM Article: How to Hardwire Your Happiness

Connect With Hal Elrod

• Hal’s website
• Hal on IG
• Hal on FB
• Hal on X
• Hal on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Brett McKay:

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. There’s been a lot of talk about morning routines the last few years. The idea is hardly new famous men from Thomas Aquinas to Benjamin Franklin structure their mornings to accomplish great deeds and live flourishing lives. A modern advocate of this age old practice is Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning. First published nearly 20 years ago, long before morning routines became a trend, Hal was experimenting with his own researching and refining what actually works through his experiences and those of the millions who’ve tried his approach, he’s cut through the aspirational noise to offer a doable, effective framework for starting your day right, today.

On the show, Hal shares the six practices of the Miracle Morning routine, why he chose them, and how they set up your day for success. We also discuss how long the routine takes and how a shortened version could be done in just six minutes, as well as how to make it work if you’re not a morning person along the way. I also show what my own morning routine looks like. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/morningroutine.

Hal Elrod, welcome to the show.

Hal Elrod:

Brett. It is good to be here, man, like you and I were just speaking that we’ve both been around a long time, man, so it took a while to connect, but better late than never.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. So you wrote this book called The Miracle Morning back in 2012. It’s all about setting up a morning routine for yourself to set yourself up for a day’s success. And you’ve been blogging about it. You’ve built up this community around the Miracle Morning, and then recently, a couple years ago, you released an updated version of The Miracle Morning where you’ve expanded and added some things you’ve learned over the past decade on how to amplify someone’s morning routine. But let’s talk about the origin of the Miracle Morning. It was two personal setbacks that led to its development. The first was a near fatal car accident you had in your twenties. Tell us about that.

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, so when I was 20 years old, I was one of Cutco Cutler’s top sales rep. I had just finished my first year of college and I started a career because a friend pressured me into going into an interview and I just wanted him off my back. So I got hired to sell Cutco and I started doing pretty well with them. And so they had me giving speeches at their events. And one night after a speech, I was driving home when my car Ford Mustang was headed on by a drunk driver at 70 to 80 miles an hour, and I was found dead at the scene and my heart stopped for six minutes. They revived me on a helicopter, airlifted me to the hospital. I spent six days in a coma. When I came out of the coma, I was told by doctors that I had permanent brain damage and that I would never walk again.

And I had this dual mindset where I went, okay, if I never walk again and I’m in a wheelchair the rest of my life, and that is my reality, I’m not going to allow that to dictate my mental and emotional wellbeing. And I told my parents, I said, mom and dad, I know you’re worried about me. Don’t worry if the worst case scenario is the doctors are right and I never walk again. I’ve decided I’ll be the happiest, most grateful person you’ve ever seen in a wheelchair. And then on the flip side, I was like, but I’m not accepting that as my only option. I’m maintaining unwavering faith that I’m going to walk again while I simultaneously accept that I might not. It’s a lesson for a lot of us, right? It’s like, how do you expect the best? Go out there with faith, approach your life with this confidence and optimism, and then also be at peace with like, Hey, sometimes things go my way.

Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I’m down. Sometimes the down and out period lasts way longer than I want it to, so how can I be at peace and grateful and happy and keep moving toward the future that I want? And so I took my first step a few weeks later and then kind of the rest is history and how that tied in indirectly to the miracle mourning is in that experience in the hospital. I decided that I was going to use that experience to help other people. I thought, I’m going to write a book. I’m going to start speaking about this. Maybe that’s why God put me through this. There’s a bigger purpose. And so when the Miracle Morning became my morning routine, and it changed my life so profoundly that my wife called it a miracle, then I just felt like I have a responsibility to share this with other people.

Brett McKay:

That idea of where you’re holding those two different ideas in your head of, okay, I’m going to have faith that things will get better while at the same time accepting, maybe they won’t, and maybe this is my reality, reminds me of the Stockdale Paradox from Jim Stockdale. He was an admiral in the military in the Navy who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam at the Hanoi Hilton, one of the most brutal prisoner of war camps. And before he was a prisoner of war, he studied stoicism. And while he was there, he developed this paradox. He calls it the Stockdale Paradox, or it’s become known as the Stockdale Paradox of holding these two different ideas in your head. He’s like, well, maybe I’m going to hope I’m going to get out, but I’m also at the same time going to accept maybe I’m not going to get out. And that reminds me exactly what you did.

Hal Elrod:

Thank you for that. I just Googled it and I’m going to watch videos and read articles, and I’m going to start incorporating that because I had never heard of that before. But yeah, that’s exactly it.

Brett McKay:

So the Miracle Morning, it’s got six practices. It’s silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. And that’s just another way of saying writing and you use the acronym SAVERS for this routine. Your recovery from the car accident laid the foundation for the Miracle Morning routine because it got you thinking about resilience and goal setting, but it was another personal setback that led you to actually creating this concrete morning routine for yourself. What was the story there and why did you end up choosing the Six Savers practices for your morning routine?

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, so the Miracle Morning specifically was born out of the 2008 financial crash, millions of entrepreneurs. My business started to fail and I couldn’t pay the bills, and my house was foreclosed on, and it was kind of a six month downward spiral. And then my wife gave me some advice. Actually, her advice was, call your friend John and get some advice. Because I was struggling, man. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it around and I’m drowning in debt. And then the house gets foreclosed on, and I call my friend John, and he essentially tells me to listen to a Jim Roan audio. He goes, this audio will change the way you think, Hal, and it will teach you to solve your own problems and turn your life around. I was like, all right, so I listen to the Jim Roan audio, and this one quote changes everything for me.

It stands out and it’s “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development.” And I went, well, okay. And if anybody’s listening, you can kind of take this and apply it to your life right now, which is on a scale of one to 10, if you’re measuring the level of success, fulfillment, happiness, success in every area, your finances, your relationships, your mental health, everyone wants level 10. I’ve never met anyone that’s like, well, I don’t want to be too happy or too financially secure, or it’s like, no, no, no. There’s this human drive and desire to self-actualize and be like, I want to be the happiest and healthiest and most financially secure and most harmonious in my relationships that I possibly can be. So I determined I want a level 10 in terms of my success. And then my question was, as Jim Roan is saying, your level of success won’t exceed your level of personal development.

It’s like, well, what’s my level of personal development? Am I developing myself to the degree that I need to become the level 10 version of me day in and day out so I can show up at a level 10 and create that success I want in my life? And when I was honest with myself, and again, if you’re listening to this, do this assessment right now, what’s my level of success? Do you want, on a scale of one to 10, probably a 10 or at least like an eight or a nine. You want to be up there. What level is your personal development at right now? And you can assess that based on your daily habits, your daily rituals, your daily routines. Are you doing things each day to develop your mindset, your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing and capacities to be at as close to level 10 as possible?

And for me, it was a no. It was like I’m like it a two or three. My personal development is all over the place. I start a book. I don’t finish it. I’ll try a journal. I don’t do anything consistently. And so I just Googled what do the world’s most successful people do for personal development? And that’s where these six practices, I had a list of six. I was looking for one. I’m like, oh, yeah, okay. The world’s most successful people, they swear by meditation. I found this article, fortune 500 CEOs who swear by meditation. They said, this is what gave us our biggest breakthroughs that took our companies and our revenue and our income to new heights. I was like, all right. I got to meditate for that clarity and that mental wellbeing. And then I read articles on affirmations and the world’s best athletes visualize, and a lot of people attribute the books they read.

And so I go, well, which of these is the best? And to keep a long story, not too long, it was, wait a minute, what if I did all of these? What if instead of picking one of the world’s most timeless proven personal development practices, what if I created a simple ritual that combined all six of them? And that would be the ultimate personal development routine. And so that was it. Day one, it was like I did 10 minutes of each of these practices, and most people do anywhere from five to 10 each. So it’s like a 30 to a 60 minute miracle morning. This isn’t like the 5:00 AM club where you have to wake up super, super early. It’s just starting your day with these practices whenever you do wake up. And so yeah, that’s how the SAVERS were born. And it was these six practices. I did all of them the next day, and I’ve done all of them more days than not for the last 17 years.

Brett McKay:

Well, let’s talk about these different components in detail, because in the book you go into detail on what these different parts of the SAVERS routine could look like and the benefits of it. The first one is silence. Why start with silence as the first thing in the routine?

Hal Elrod:

So you think about it, when do your greatest insights come to you? Is it when you’re busy, when your mind is racing with a million things on your to-do list when you’re checking emails or staring at a screen or scrolling your phone? And the answer is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your greatest insights and ideas and breakthroughs and perspectives and realizations always come in moments of peaceful, purposeful silence. And that’s often unintentional where it’s like you’re in the shower or you’re falling asleep at night, or you just write the calmer and quieter your mind is, the more there is space for you to access your highest truth, your highest wisdom, depending on your belief system, the wisdom of God. And so because of that, and because our smartphones have robbed us of those periods of silence, that used to be part of our, inherently, if you’re waiting in line, if you’re riding on a bus, if you’re, we were with our thoughts a lot in the past, but now because that smartphone’s with us pretty close to 24/7, it’s like we’re not left alone with the benefits from silence.

So this is about starting your day with anywhere from one minute of peaceful, purposeful silence. It could be prayer, it could be meditation. For me, it’s both. It’s a little bit, I always start with a prayer to ask for guidance and really calm my mind and express gratitude. And then I’ll set my timer on my phone usually for five to 10 minutes, depending on what my schedule’s like and what the availability is. And I just sit there and I have my journal next to me. By the way, a lot of the savers, you combine them. So you can, for example, silence and scribe and all my journal right there, and as a thought emerges, I’m like, oh, that’s it. That’s what I need to do today. Or that’s the most important thing. I’ll open my journal, jot it down, close the journal, go back into silence. But again, that’s where my greatest breakthroughs come from, insights, realizations, clarity, peace of mind. And so to start your day with that every single day, the benefits are immeasurable.

Brett McKay:

Before reading your book, I’ve been doing this for years. First thing I do when I wake up, I’ll get out of my bedroom and go to my couch, and I just sit there and I pray, and I just sit there for a couple minutes in silence. That’s all it is. And it’s nice. And it is interesting. You do get these insights, I think particularly after you wake up, but not at the first thing you do is dive into your texts and emails on your phone.

Hal Elrod:

So my rule is that my smartphone, I don’t check it until after silence is done. Yeah. So that’s crucial because if as soon as you start checking notifications, your brain goes into reactive mode.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, no, I remember a long time ago I’d get in the habit. The first thing I’d do is check my phone and it just ruins everything. You’re a big proponent of meditation, particularly this thing called emotional optimization meditation, what’s that?

Hal Elrod:

So it’s as simple as choosing your optimal mental and emotional state. And in the book, of course, it’s like four pages that walk you through how to do this, how to identify it, but you identify your optimal mental and emotional state, and then you essentially get yourself in that state. And I give different ways to do it. One is to remember, when was the last time I felt that way or what makes me feel this way? For example, let’s say you want to be in a state of gratitude. Well, it’s like, okay, so for me, I imagine my kids and I just smile. I mean, literally, I smiled as soon as I said my kids, and I pictured them right now, I just smile. And so you get yourself in the state, and then you set your timer and you cultivate that state. You meditate in that state, and what you’re doing is you’re creating neuro pathways in your brain so you can access your optimal mental and emotional states at will.

It’s kind of like exercise for your muscles, but it’s for your mind. And so that way as you do it day after day after day after day, and you continue to cultivate your optimal states, you hardwire them in your brain and your nervous system, and it literally changes your quality of life and gives you access to those states in the middle of the day or whenever you need them. So whether it’s the state being joy, happiness, peace of mind, confidence, love, empathy, whatever that state is, by hard wiring it in the morning through emotional optimization meditation, you gain access to it all day long. Yeah.

Brett McKay:

We’ve had a podcast guest, Dr. Rick Hanson on the show. He’s a psychologist and he does something similar. He calls it hard wiring, happiness, same sort of thing. You should just think about these optimal states that you want to be in. This is particularly useful if you have a tendency to be an ior, and you kind of have that negativity bias is to really sit with those positive emotions, really absorb them what it feels like, enrich them. And the idea is, like you said, you’ll hardwire yourself for those more optimal or positive emotions instead of just being a Negative Nelly all the time.

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, absolutely.

Brett McKay:

So the next part of the SAVERS routine is affirmations. Now, affirmations, I think they got a bad rap. I think most people think they’re cheesy. They think of Stuart Smalley from SNL saying, I’m good enough. I’m smart enough.

Hal Elrod:

I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Brett McKay:

Right? Well, you argue the reason why they might have a bad rap is because most self-help authors talk about affirmations in the wrong way. What do they get wrong?

Hal Elrod:

So I think there’s one of two problems. Number one is they tell you to affirm something that you don’t actually believe. So if you’re struggling, it’s something that’s not true. If you’re struggling financially, they’ll say, just affirm, I am wealthy. I am. And if you’re affirming something that is not factually true or doesn’t resonate as true for you, then you create an internal conflict as if we don’t have enough of them. And you go, I am wealthy. And then you’re like, no, I’m not. I’m struggling financially right now. This is bs. So that’s the first problem. The second problem is we’re taught to often create affirmations in this flowery passive language that makes us feel better in the moment, but is actually diluting us into thinking something is going to happen without our effort. I’ll give you an example. So we’ve all heard the affirmation, I am a money magnet.

Money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. And if you’re affirming that and you’re struggling financially, that feels good in the moment you’re like, oh, wow, I’m a money magnet, and money is going to magically flow to me effortlessly and in abundance. That’s awesome. God, that feels so much better than my reality that I’m struggling financially. But that’s diluting yourself. And so I think those are the two biggest problems, is we’re taught to affirm something that we don’t believe in, and it’s cheesy and it’s not true, or we’re affirming some magical result that’s going to happen independent of our efforts to give us relief from our stress.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. Is that kind of manifesting secret stuff?

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, exactly.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. So what’s a better way to craft affirmations so they’re actually effective instead of cringey?

Hal Elrod:

So for me, I use three steps, and to me, they’ve got to be rooted in truth. They’ve got to be practical, and they’ve got to be actionable. So the three steps, number one, step one is affirm what you’re committed to. Step two is affirm why it is a must for you. And step three is affirm which actions you’re going to take and when. So this is a very, again, practical, actionable, results oriented. So it’s like you’re affirming what you’re committed to. So not I am wealthy, but I am committed to increasing my income by 30% this year, or what It’s like you’re committing to some sort of meaningful, measurable outcome. And then step two, why is it a must for me? Why is it important? Who’s this going to benefit? You’re getting clear on the why that is so compelling for you. And usually I have 2, 3, 4, 5 reasons why I’m willing to commit to this thing for me, for my kids, my wife, whatever the benefits are.

And then number three, okay, well, what am I going to do? When am I going to do it? Okay, Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM and it’s going to go to my schedule. I’m going to commit to focusing on business growth, period. I’m going to read books on it. I’m going to take action on it. I’m going to work with chat GPT to figure make a plan. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And so when you create affirmations that are following those three steps, really the only way you can fail is to live out of integrity with what you’re affirming every day because, hey, this is what I’m committed to. This is why, this is what I’m going to do. That to me, it’s my North star. It’s the anchor for the rest of my miracle morning. The other savers really support what I’m affirming every day.

Brett McKay:

And so I imagine you want to take some time before you start your miracle morning routine to write this affirmation out.

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, I always make ’em on a Microsoft Word or a Google sheet, because to me, affirmations are always a rough draft because as we continue to learn and grow and gain new insights and perspectives and strategies, I’m always editing and updating my affirmations. I’ll make my rough draft, I’ll print a copy, and then I’ll go in usually multiple times a week, often during silence or during reading, I’ll read something or I’ll think I’m like, Ooh, I need to remember that. So I’ll put in my affirmations. I always usually scribble on the sheet. And then after the sheet’s gotten messy enough, I go back into the word doc or the Google Doc, update the affirmations, print a new copy, and just kind of rinse and repeat. And I’ve been doing that for 17 years.

Brett McKay:

And then when you got your affirmation written out, do you read it to yourself? Is that what you do, or do you read it aloud?

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, I just read it to myself quietly. I’ve had people in the Miracle Morning community that go, it’s more powerful when I read it out loud. So I’m like, Hey, whatever works for you. And then I have another Honor a Quarter who is my co-creator of the Miracle Morning book series. She reads her affirmations, so she types ’em out, then she reads them into her voice, into her app, and then while she’s on the treadmill, she listens to them. So she’s handling, we’re going to get to the Ian Savers exercise, right? She’s doing exercise while she’s doing her affirmation, and she’s listening to affirmation. So it’s like she’s killing two birds with one stone. She doesn’t have to separate ’em. And there’s a lot of the savers that you can combine in that way where you’re doing ’em at the same time.

Brett McKay:

Something I did when I was a young man, this is back when I was in law school, and my goal was I wanted to do really well in law school, get on law review. And so I had these goals for myself. And every morning what I would do, I would read these goals out loud to myself, but I’d also write them out five times. So I had these old journals full of just pages of me writing out my affirmations slash goals over and over again. I guess it helped because law school went pretty well for me. I guess it was a way for me to reinforce what I was doing and why I was doing it.

Hal Elrod:

Nice, nice dude. Yeah, I always say in the simplest form, and affirmation is nothing more than a reminder of something that you have deemed so important that you want to remember it, that you want to integrate it into your thinking, into your belief system, et cetera.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so that’s affirmations. The next part of the routine is V for visualization. This is, I think another thing that I think a lot of people think is hokey or cheesy. What does visualization look like?

Hal Elrod:

So visualization is, there’s two parts to it, I think for it to be effective, and most people leave out the second part, which in my mind is the most important. And the first part is see the ideal outcome, and that’s what they teach. Yeah, yeah. Make a vision board, put pictures of your ideal outcome and see it and feel it. That’s great because A, it’s a reminder like, oh, yeah, that’s important to me. I need to stay focused on that and not get distracted and not lose sight of that. So I’m going to visualize it, but more importantly, I’m going to see it in a way where it’s so compelling, where I’m creating, I’m literally generating a compelling emotional experience. Similar to that emotional optimization meditation, I’m now creating a compelling vision that makes me feel so inspired that fuels my motivation to do the things today that’ll get me there.

But the most important part of visualization, that second part is mentally rehearsing the things that are going to get you there that you must do today. And in the same way, compelling, seeing yourself following through with things that might be out of your comfort zone. They might be scary, they might be difficult, but they’re necessary. And so you use that visualization and only takes a minute or two to see yourself tying your shoes, heading out the front door, going on that run for that marathon, or opening the Word document, the Google Doc, and starting on your book, whatever it is, or having that difficult conversation with your coworker or picking up the phone and calling prospects. Whatever it is, you mentally rehearse doing the thing. And this is what world class athletes do on a regular basis. The best athletes in the world, one of their strategies is, I’m going to visualize, I’m going to mentally rehearse performing at my best, whether it’s Tiger Woods when he was at the top of the game on 18 holes or Michael Jordan on the basketball court. It was seeing themselves and mentally rehearsing doing the thing so that when it was time to actually swing that club or step onto that court, they had already been there in their mind. It wasn’t like the first time they had experienced it. They had felt it. They had seen it, and now it was just time to go do it in real time.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. The way you describe visualizations, it reminds me of the WOOP method of goal planning. Have you’ve heard about this?

Hal Elrod:

Sounds familiar, but I don’t know.

Brett McKay:

So it was developed by the psychologist named Gabriele Oettingen. WOOP is an acronym that stands for W is Wish. So you identify a desirable but achievable goal O. The first O is outcome. So it’s visualize the best possible outcome. I create a positive mental image of that, see what it looks like. Then this is the most important part. The second O in WOOP is obstacle. So you got to identify a significant internal obstacle or external obstacle that might prevent you from reaching that goal. And then P is plan, and then you create an if then plan to address the obstacle. So it’s positive thinking, but also adding in some negative thinking, but then coming up with a positive plan to overcome that obstacle.

Hal Elrod:

I love that. I love that man.

Brett McKay:

And then with these visualizations, I imagine they can change every day. So if you got a big thing going on that day, your visualization will be for that big, I don’t know, sales call or something.

Hal Elrod:

For me. I’ll actually, before I do my visualization, I will look over. Well, here’s the thing. I’m looking over my affirmations typically, and then that leads to the visualization. I have an affirmation for each one of my goals and each one of my roles. So my most important goals, I’ve got an affirmation for, here’s the financial goal I’m committed to as a father, here’s what I’m committed to as a dad, here’s what I’m committed to as a husband. So again, a goal or a role, an affirmation appropriate. And then once you’ve read the affirmation, now you’re just visualizing yourself doing the thing that step three of your affirmations was, which actions are you going to take and when? And that is the last thing you affirm before you go into visualization. Giving it a real life example, when I was a year into my Miracle morning, I decided that my level 10 fitness school was going to be to run a 52 mile ultra marathon because I hated running ironically.

And I thought, man, the person I’d have to become to run 52 consecutive miles when right now, I couldn’t even run one mile. At that point, I was like, I want to become that person, so I’m going to make this commitment publicly. It scares me, right? The Miracle Morning just got me thinking so big, and so I did. I committed to it. And what I would do is I would read my affirmations. I’m committed to running 52 miles on October 29th, 2009. No matter what, there’s no other option. This is a must for me because it’s such a fear and limitation that in order to overcome it, I will be able to overcome anything else in my life. And then the third step, which actions will I take and win? I will read the book, the Non-runners marathon trainer, and follow the training plan to a T, whether I feel like it or not.

So I just have affirm that now I go into visualization, part one, I visualize myself with the outcome. I see myself crossing the finish line of the alter marathon, and I see it. I imagine what it’ll feel like. I smile. I take a deep breath. I’m like, that’s going to be fricking awesome when I do that, even though I’m scared, even though part of me doesn’t even believe that I’m going to do it. I’m going to visualize it as if it were true. And then the second part, and the most important part is I would mentally rehearse my cell phone going off at 7:00 AM when it was time to run. I’d visualize myself reaching out, turning the phone off, walking into my bedroom, getting dressed in my running clothes, walking to the front door of my house. I can still see it today. It was yesterday.

Open the front door. I would see my driveway slanted down to the sidewalk, and then I would read my affirmations one more time in my head. I’d recite ’em one more time while I visualize the sidewalk. I am committed to running 52 miles, right? Yada, yada, yada. And then I would visualize myself running out the door with enthusiasm and energy and excitement. Now, think about how that impacted real life. When the alarm on my phone went off at 7:00 AM human nature, if I had not affirmed and visualized would be like, I don’t want to run. I’ll just do it tomorrow. Or I’m not even going to do the marathon, man, who was, I kidding? But that’s not what happened, Brett, because that’s not what I mentally rehearsed. It’s not what I visualized. So what would happen is I was a robot that I programmed that morning. The alarm would go off on my phone at 7:00 AM I would turn it off. I would get off the couch, walk into my closet, get dressed, go to the front door open. It was literally, it would play out exactly as I’d visualized it that morning. So you can apply that practice, that two-step practice of outcome, and then the mental rehearsal to any goal, any role, any aspect of your life. And again, the affirmations essentially lead right into the visualization.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so the next part of the routine is E for exercise. Are we talking like a full-blown workout in the morning for this?

Hal Elrod:

No, and I mean, this is one of the simplest, this requires the least explanation. It’s move your body first thing in the morning or relatively quickly after you wake up because it wakes up your lymphatic system. It gets your blood and oxygen flowing, including flowing to your brain. So you think clearer, you feel better. And if you ever wake, there are days where I wake up and I’m like, I’ll even start meditating. And I’m like, oh my God, my brain is not on right now. I am falling asleep. It’s not working. I will stand up and do 60 seconds of jumping jacks, or I’ll just count to my age. I’m 46, so I’ll just do 46 jumping jacks usually. But here’s the thing, you go from, I’m so tired and lethargic to now you’re breathing heavy. After 60 seconds of jumping jacks, you’re breathing heavy, you’re alert, you’re awake, the blood is flowing, the oxygens flow, and you sit down and now your mental acuity is significantly improved then before you did that exercise. But then on an average day, it’ll be like five minutes of stretching. Sometimes it’s two or three minutes. I’ll do like 60 seconds of plank, 60 seconds of downward dog and 60 seconds of back bend and 60 seconds of jumping jacks. That’s actually my standard four minute workout that I do every morning. It’s 60 seconds of each of those four activities. But you can do whatever you want.

Brett McKay:

No full blown workout. Just the goal is to move your body.

Hal Elrod:

And then I go after my miracle morning and after I’ve got the kids ready for school, when I go into my, I have a home office with a little workout, like a little tiny mini gym in the back. The first thing I do is I do a 20, 30 minute full blown workout. So yeah, the Miracle Morning part of my exercise is just to get the blood and oxygen flowing and wake myself up.

Brett McKay:

For me, my routine is I wake up, I do the moment of silence, pray, and then I take a morning walk. It’s a mile. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes depending on how fast I go. And during that time, I’m thinking about what I got to do for the day. Maybe I’m unintentionally doing some affirmations and some visualization during that morning walk.

Hal Elrod:

I love that. And you’re combining silence. You’re combining nature, you’re combining affirmation. You can go for a walk and while you’re on your walk, you can listen to your affirmations. If you record ’em, you can meditate and pray. For me, when I go on a walk or a jog around our property, that is almost always almost 10 out of 10 times, probably nine out of 10, I gain some sort of profound insight solution to my problem, and I go back and I implement it.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, you’re right. Taking that walk does wake me up.

Hal Elrod:

Yeah,

Brett McKay:

I’m good to go after that. Alright, so let’s move on to ours for reading. So in this reading part, what kind of reading are you doing? What kind of books are you reading?

Hal Elrod:

So I have a unique kind of self-imposed rule where family is my top priority. Well, health is my top priority, but I’ve got that pretty dialed in. I’ve read many, many books on optimizing health, and so I’ve got my health routines in place with diet and exercise and all of those things. So family is my number one priority or right behind health, and it’s the one that does require attention because with human beings, they’re never stagnant, they’re always growing, they’re changing, they’re evolving. You don’t just get in the same routine where it’s going to work. If I do the same thing every day for my wife and kids, nope. They need me to mix it up and adapt to them. So I have a self-imposed rule that I have to read what I call a family book, which essentially just means either a book on marriage or a book on parenting before I read any other book, which is usually a business book that I’m excited about. So right now I’m rereading the book Raising a Modern Day Knight. You heard of that book before?

Brett McKay:

I’ve heard of it, yeah.

Hal Elrod:

And so that’s a great book. My son just turned 13, so I’m reading it for him. And then after that book, the business book I read right now is called Wealthy and Well-Known by my good buddies, Rory and AJ Vaden. So that’s it. So first I read at least a few pages out of a family book so I can learn one thing, so I can apply to my family, and then I go into the business book.

Brett McKay:

So you’re doing a lot of nonfiction reading during this time?

Hal Elrod:

It’s all nonfiction for me, all nonfiction. In the evening, sometimes I’ll do fiction, but during the morning it’s all nonfiction. I’m trying to optimize my mindset and learn something that I can actually apply to improve my marriage, my family, my business, et cetera.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, lately I’ve been reading fiction in the morning. I love reading nonfiction books, but I’ve been doing a lot more fiction reading.

Hal Elrod:

Interesting. How come?

Brett McKay:

Well, first, because I just want to, I read plenty of nonfiction. It’s like I need to do some more fiction. It’s enjoyable, but something that I’ve found as a unintended side effect of this, you actually pick up a lot of cool personal development insights while reading fiction. Interesting. Right now, my son and I are reading The Count of Monte Cristo together, the unabridged version. It’s like 1200 pages. Crazy story, but there’s a lot of cool insights just about patience, and these characters will drop these little insights about life, about business that I’ve been highlighting. I’m like, this is really good. I can use this in my day-to-day life. So I know you’re big on nonfiction, but fiction, I think you can find some really cool insights.

Hal Elrod:

How old is your son, by the way?

Brett McKay:

He will be 15 here next or this month.

Hal Elrod:

Okay, sorry. So I’m wondering if I’m already on Amazon adding Count and Monte Crito to my cart, so great. You think at 13, is that appropriate or?

Brett McKay:

Well, I think there’s some 13 year olds who could do it. It’s a beast of a book, but he’ll feel awesome once he finishes it, he’ll feel cool. Alright, so you’re going to spend some time reading. The final part of the SAVERS is the final S, and that is scribing or writing. What’s the purpose of writing in the morning and what are you writing?

Hal Elrod:

Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting, I think this is the one that I hear from people that they find the most challenging. And for me, and I find it visualizations my most challenging, this one’s pretty easy. The reason why to do it is that there’s multiple reasons. One of them is that when you put pin to paper or typing, either way, you are forcing yourself to qualify your thinking. When you’re just sitting there thinking, if you’re just letting your mind race, you could think about 10 things in the span of a minute. You could be thinking about this challenge in your business, and then all of a sudden you’re thinking of, oh wait, I got to remember to do this at the grocery store today. And then you’re thinking about, oh man, my wife was mad because I didn’t. Your mind just goes all over the place.

You can’t write like that. Nobody, when you put pen to paper, you’re forced to be coherent, to qualify your thoughts and determine, discern those that are most important to articulate. So that’s one of the benefits is you are focusing your thoughts and qualifying them in a way that is worthy of putting them in writing. So you’re basically improving your quality of thinking. Also, you’re keeping a record of your thinking and of your life. Right now, I’m going through my journals from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, which were my first four years of Miracle Morning. It is so profoundly beneficial for me to one, it’s enjoyable. Like, wow, this is so cool to revisit. I am writing like, man, Ursula’s the one for me. I’m going to marry her someday. I have no doubt in my mind. And I’m literally texting her pictures of my journal entries, like, Hey sweetie, check out this journal entry.

And same thing with ones with my friends and stuff. So it’s this beautiful record of my life and of where I was at the time, and there’s so many parts of my mindset that when I was in a beginner’s mindset that I’ve actually lost sight of. I’ve lost sight of a lot of the basics and the things that got me to where I am, and now I’m like, man, I’m not thinking the way I used to, that I actually need to get back to where I was thinking in certain ways in 2008, my mindset back then when I was young and hungry and still learning and growing in that way. Not that I’m not still learning and growing, but it’s invaluable. So those are just a couple of benefits. And the last one I’ll share is going back to that emotional optimization meditation. I believe that gratitude is one of the most important keys to optimizing your mental and emotional wellbeing.

There’s a million things that are going wrong in our lives, and there’s a million things that we could be grateful for. And so I write those things down every day, one, two or three of ’em, and then it’s important. My hand goes on my heart and I look at each of them, and then I close my eyes and I’ll spend 30 to 60 seconds in silence, smiling and feeling deeply grateful for whatever I wrote down. It might be my wife or my son or my daughter, or that conversation I had yesterday, or I helped my friend move yesterday, for example. I wrote that down, that was on my gratitude list today, is that I got the opportunity to help my friend move into his new house last night and we connected and he felt so grateful and it was right. And so when you do that, you’re again, going back to hard wiring, these emotions of gratitude and joy and feeling like, oh wait, my life’s not totally, it’s not all lack. I have so much in my life, it’s so rich. But if I don’t actually pause and take time to think about it and even better write it down and solidify it, then look at it, then contemplate it. It’s one thing to have gratitude on a checklist. Yeah, yeah, I’m grateful for my house and my kids and my wife and my money and whatever. That’s intellectual gratitude. But having heartfelt, soulful gratitude that you ponder for a moment, that’s where gratitude has a meaningful impact in your life.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so journaling can help you with your thinking. It can help you see a record of your thinking so you can get some new insights, and then you can also do the gratitude work in that journal. Do you write by hand? Is that your preference?

Hal Elrod:

Yes, and I’ve done both, and I actually still do both. The Miracle Morning has a journaling app, so I’ll write there when I’m on the road. I don’t always have my journal with me, so I’ll write there, but then I do prefer to journal by hand because there’s something about putting pen to paper and that isn’t there, the visceral experience when you’re just typing away on a keyboard.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, something I’ve thought about experimenting with. I haven’t been a regular journal keeper in a long time. I was, then I kind of gave it up because I wasn’t getting much out of it, I didn’t think at the time. But if I decided to start up again, I’ve thought about doing it on a Google Doc and then using chat GPT to look for insights, tell me, find insights about myself based on my journal entry. Have you found anyone in your community doing that?

Hal Elrod:

I’m sure there are many. We have millions of people that are doing their Miracle Mourning and using, in fact, I just did an AI survey for our community. I was curious. I was like, I don’t know where they stand. Are they into ai? Are they anti ai? And it was something like 93%, I think give or take, said like, oh yeah, we are using ai not necessarily during their Miracle Morning, but just in general. So yeah, I’d imagine. I like that. I like that as a very strategic way to optimize your journaling.

Brett McKay:

Okay, so we’ve talked about the six practices of the Miracle Morning. We got silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. If someone were to implement these practices, how long would the routine take?

Hal Elrod:

One thing with the Miracle Morning, it’s completely customizable, and I talk about starting with whatever time you have allotted and then dividing that equally by the savers for the start to keep it simple, put a lot of thought into it, so it’s like, all right, I got 60 minutes. I’ll do 10 minutes each. That’s how I started My Miracle Morning in 2008, 30 minutes, five minutes each, six minutes, one minute each. Just keep it simple and try all the savers. And so for me, I always do a one hour miracle morning. I’ll usually do five to 10 minutes of silence, depending. Affirmations takes me usually five minutes. Visualization usually takes me between zero and five minutes, meaning that’s the one saver that I personally do not do every single day. It resonates with me. The least exercise takes me under five minutes. I’ll usually read for 15 to 20.

So my reading is the longest of my savers because I want to go as deep as I can, and I have so many books that I want to read, and then journaling takes me about five minutes. So it’s totally customizable to fit your needs, and it can change on any given day, but by starting with a really simple, let’s just keep it simple, divide it by six. Okay, great. And then as you do the savers, you find which of them you want to allocate more time to and which it’s okay to allocate less time to.

Brett McKay:

Okay, so depending on how much time you allot each practice, the routine could take 30 minutes to an hour, and you even mentioned you can give each practice a minute and make it a six minute routine.

Hal Elrod:

That’s not hyperbole. It’s not like six minute abs or whatever. On days where we’re pressed for time, we often have this all or nothing mentality, which is, let’s say you like to go to the gym for an hour and you only have 20 minutes. You’re like, well, I’m not even going to make the drive or I’m not going to go. There’s no point. And I love the quote, the philosophy, don’t let what you can do get in the way of what you can’t do. I can’t do an hour, but I can do six minutes. I can sit for one minute in silence and I can say a prayer of gratitude and God for guidance, and I can just calm my mind and feel at peace. Then I can pull up my affirmations. I might not get through the full page in a minute, but I might get through half of it, and that’ll remind me, oh yeah, these are some of the most important things in my life that I’m committed to. Now I’m reminded of why I’m committed and I’m reminded which actions I’ve clarified that will ensure that I follow through. Then you go into visualization. You visualize yourself. You mentally rehearse yourself doing the things for a minute, 60 seconds of jumping Jack, 60 seconds of reading one page out of a book in six minutes. The amount of growth you can experience when you do this, it’s pretty profound.

Brett McKay:

So this is something that’s adjustable. It can be shortened, but let’s say there’s someone listening out there who thinks, okay, this sounds awesome, and they want to do the long version, the full version of the Miracle Morning, but they’re like, I’ve got kids, so if I’m going to do this, I need to wake up before them, or I got a job that I got to get to in the morning, so I’d have to wake up earlier. They’re not sure about doing it because they feel like they’re just not a morning person. Any advice on waking up earlier to do this if you’re not a morning person?

Hal Elrod:

Yeah, and I’ll say that when I was writing The Miracle Morning, I mean the original edition back in I was writing in 2009, 10, 11, that was my number one fear, or you could say insecurity is how am I going to convince there’s a large part of the world? I don’t know the exact stat if it’s half, but let’s just say it’s half. If half the people that pick up this book have a lifelong belief that says, I am not a morning person. Actually, I do have a stat. What am I talking about? It’s 72% of Miracle Morning practitioners that we have surveyed over and over and over again over the last 17 years. That’s the average. 72% say they had never in their life been or believed they could become a morning person. When they read The Miracle Morning. Usually it was a friend that convinced them to read it, and now they do the Miracle Morning every day, so 72%.

It’s like, join the club if you’re not a morning person, and because that was my biggest fear and insecurity is that how am I going to convince people? Yes, I know they’ll be convinced that the way I can explain starting your day in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state with the six most timeless practices that the world’s most successful people have swarmed by for centuries. It’s a compelling case that would definitely benefit my life. How could I argue that starting my day in a peak way and then going off into the day at my best self got it, but I’m not a morning person. You don’t understand. I’ve tried. You don’t understand. I can’t wake up. So because that was my fear. The entire book is holding someone’s hand mentally, emotionally, psychologically, overcoming the limiting belief of not being a morning person from start to, Hey, okay, I could do this.

Okay, what’s the first baby step? So it’s not overwhelming. Okay, so I always tell people, don’t start with all six SAVERS. Your first Miracle Morning should be waking up just like 10 minutes earlier, not an hour, 10 minutes earlier, and doing one of the SAVERS, and if you’ve never read The Miracle Morning, people will just do the R. They’re like, all right, I got the book on Kindle, or I ordered it, or it’s on audio book, and they go, I’m going to wake up 10 minutes earlier. I’m just going to listen to the audio book for 10 minutes. That takes next to zero effort, and they do that every day, and they’re like, all right, it’s easy. It’s 10 minutes. I’m listening to the book. It’s changing my mindset. And then they get to the chapter on silence, and then they integrate silence into their next Miracle Morning, which again, super easy. They wake up, maybe it’s 15 minutes earlier, and for five minutes they do silence. They do nothing, and then they listen to the audiobook, and then they get to their chapter on affirmations, and then they integrate that. So it’s like you’re just baby stepping your way and all of a sudden a few weeks into it and you’re like, dude, I’m getting up 30 minutes before I used to. It’s effortless now, and I’m doing all six of my savers. So that’s the way that I would kind of lay this out for somebody.

Brett McKay:

I like that. Something that had been useful for me for my own morning routine. I have these things I want to do in the morning, but sometimes I can’t do them for whatever reason. Going back to the idea of don’t let what you can’t do, get in the way of what you can do, I

Hal Elrod:

Love that.

Brett McKay:

If I can get something done later on in the day, I’ll break it up. Okay. If I can do my silence, not first thing in the morning, but while I’m in the car, I’ll do that. If I can’t get my walk in first thing in the morning, well, I’ll do it at lunch, but as long as I get it done, it feels good. Again, I think the same sort of thing you’ve been talking about, this is adaptable. You don’t have to say, you have to do this thing, and if you don’t do it, then you’re toast.

Hal Elrod:

Yeah. No, that’s exactly it. It’s not all or nothing, and that mentality is what stops us from doing or even starting anything, right? It’s like we have this perfectionist mind, and I do too, and we all suffer from this perfectionist mindset of if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not even going to try.

Brett McKay:

For someone who doesn’t currently have this kind of morning routine, how would you summarize the benefit of implementing one? How does it set up your day in life for success?

Hal Elrod:

The way that I look at it, it’s kind of like hitting the reset button every day. We all have bad days. Life throws stuff at us that we’re not prepared for. We don’t even know if we can handle it, and it affects our mental health. We’re all human beings, but for most people, if you go to bed going, oh my God, I’ve got this problem in my life and I can’t sleep. I’m stressed out. I got to wake up tomorrow. I got to deal with it. People go to bed with heightened levels of cortisol and stress and inner turmoil, and then they don’t sleep well because their mind is replaying and racing. It was when they went to bed. Then they wake up in the morning and their first thought as their eyes open is, oh my God, I’ve got to face the problems that I’m dealing with in my life.

I don’t wake up that way. If you’re a Miracle Morning practitioner, like you go to bed, you’re like, all right, I got problems, but there’s no benefit in worrying about them right now. I’m going to think peaceful, grateful thoughts. I’m going to think about the things in my life that I’m grateful for, so I fall asleep in a state of bliss that feels good, and then you sleep better. Then when you wake up in the morning, you’re not waking up going, oh my God, it’s 8:00 AM I’ve got to get out the door and get to work and deal with my stressful life. Now you’re like, ah, I’ve got to wake up and I’ve got to meditate and pray, and then read my affirmations that make me feel empowered, then visualize, then I’m going to read. Then I’m going to journal what I’m grateful for. Oh, that’s a really nice way to start my day. So it’s like hitting the reset button every day and creating this, it’s a self-care routine, right? Self-op optimization. So that to me, yes, is why it’s so important.

Brett McKay:

Well, Hal this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book in your work?

Hal Elrod:

You need the book. Audible, if you’re an audiobook person, Amazon, Kindle, et cetera, the best spot for everything, the book, there’s a movie. There’s a 90 minute documentary that features Mel Robbins and Brendan Burchard and Robin Sharma and Robert Kiyosaki and Louis Howes and me. But miraclemorning.com is a great hub because that’ll point you to the book. It’ll point you to the app. It’ll point you to the movie, and you can watch the movie for free on YouTube or again, miraclemorning.com is a great hub.

Brett McKay:

Fantastic. Well, Hal Elrod, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure,

Hal Elrod:

Brett, man. I am so grateful, dude. Thanks for having me on.

Brett McKay:

My guest here is Hal Elrod. He’s the author of the book, The Miracle Morning. It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, halelrod.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/morningroutine where you can find links to resources to delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com. You find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter. It’s called Dying Breed. You sign up dyingbreed.net. It’s a great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support, and until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.