Show Notes:

Hal’s life-changing accident. “I was in sales at the time and driving home at 11:30 at night. I was hit head-on by a drunk driver at over 70 miles an hour and I instantly broke 11 bones. I began bleeding to death, and an hour later I died. I was clinically dead for six minutes. Six days later I came out of a coma in the hospital and I was told I would never walk again and that I had permanent brain damage.”

Creating the ultimate morning ritual. “If one of these will change your life, all six of them [silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, scribing] would be the ultimate morning ritual. So I woke up the next morning and did all six of these practices. Within two months I had more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically, having not exercised in six months, to committing to run a 52-mile ultra marathon.”

The true source of pain. “All emotional pain, every painful emotion that you have ever felt in your entire life or that you’re feeling right now or that you could ever feel in the future is self-created. It’s self-created by your resistance to your reality. Something happens to you and you go, ‘No, no!’ You don’t want it to happen. You wish it didn’t happen. The degree that you resist your reality determines the degree of emotional pain that you feel. Now the opposite of resistance — which will help you understand how this is true — is acceptance.”

Taking total responsibility for your emotions. “However you want to feel, ultimately that’s up to you — and most people blame things outside of themselves as to why they don’t feel good. ‘Of course I’m upset. Look at what’s going on in the world. Look at what happened. Of course I’m sad. Look at what I lost. Of course I’m angry. Look at what he or she did.’ No, no, no, no. You have to take responsibility for your inner world.”

The daily process to move yourself forward. “Just do one thing every day that moves you in the direction of a predetermined outcome that for you is meaningful, that will enrich your life in some way. There are three components of each day: We accept what we can’t change, we focus on our inner world, and then we focus on what we need to do to create better circumstances in our life. Those components can be filtered through that Miracle Morning practice that we talked about earlier.

Our misunderstanding of affirmations. “The first problem with affirmations as they’ve been taught is that they’re lies you tell yourself. You speak something that is not true as if it is, and you trick yourself through repetition. Lying is never going to be the optimum strategy. The second problem with affirmations is we’re taught to do them in this flowery way that promises something for nothing. You tell yourself, ‘Money is flowing to me. Life’s going to get better.’ That’ll make you feel better for a few moments, but that’s not going to actually bring income into your life.”

Wanting something vs. committing to it. “We don’t get what we want. We get what we’re committed to. The list of what we want is infinite. The list of what we’re committed to can’t be infinite. The committed-to list is where we actually see results.”

A new definition of miracle. “Most people look at a miracle as some random, passive event that’s out of their control. You just hope, pray, sit back, and wait for miracles with a very passive approach. The way I define a miracle is any measurable, meaningful outcome that is beyond the realm of what you believe is probable for you.”

The practicality of faith. “I was committed to walking again, and I had an unwavering faith in myself, in my body’s ability to heal. With unwavering faith in God, there’s no limit or confinement on faith. It should be faith in all things that you believe, but it centers around yourself and what you can do, because most people that have faith think, ‘I’m going to put faith in God, and I’m going to do nothing. I’m just going to sit back and wait for God to fix all my problems.’ No. You have to fix your problems.”

The journey is necessary. “When you finally get to the place in your life or your business that you’ve been working so hard for so long… when you finally get there by applying this miracle equation, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead, you can look back in hindsight and go, ‘Oh man, I wasted a lot of energy wishing and wanting that things would happen faster than they were because now I see the journey was necessary.”

What does being a game changer mean to you? “To me, being a game changer is about optimizing or fulfilling your potential while leading other people to do the same. To me, that’s a game changer. A game changer first puts their oxygen mask on as they say, and you focus on becoming the best version of yourself, and you do that in service of other people.”