Miracle morning

Last week I finished another book on self-development (call it self-help if you like, I don’t care). This time it was a book by Hal Elrod called The Miracle Morning. The reading experience was good. The only downside was that the author is a salesman, so, you’ll find a lot of ads and self-promoting stuff throughout the book. This bothered me a bit, but not to a point that made me give it up. It contains some good ideas that by far made it worth the reading. Below, you can find a brief summary of what I found interesting.

tl;dr

“There is no point in dwelling on or feeling bad about the aspects of our lives that we can’t change. Accept total responsibility for every aspect of your life and refuse to blame anyone else. Dedicate time each day to becoming the person you need to be.”

Reality check

According to the Social Security Administration, if you take any 100 people at the start of their working careers and follow them for the next 40 years until they reach retirement age, here’s what you’ll find:

Rising above mediocrity

#Step 1: Acknowledge the 95% reality check

If we don’t live differently than most people now, we are setting ourselves up to endure a life of mediocrity, struggle, failure and regret — just like most people.

#Step 2: Identify the causes of Mediocrity

• Rearview Mirror Syndrome: limiting our true potential in the present, based on the limitations of our past. It’s the belief that: who we were is who we are (obviously wrong).
• Lack of purpose: most people just focus on getting through the day, taking the path of least resistance, and pursuing short term, short-lived pleasures along the way, while avoiding any pain or discomfort that might cause them to grow.
• Isolating incidents: we make the mistake of thinking that skipping that workout only affects that incident, and you’ll make a better choice next time. We must realize that the real impact and consequence of each of our choices and actions — and even our thoughts — is monumental, because every single thought, choice, and action is determining who we are becoming, which will ultimately determine the quality of our lives.
  “How you do anything is how you do everything”.
  Every time you choose to do the easy thing, instead of the right thing, you are shaping your identity, becoming the type of person who does what’s easy, rather than what’s right.
  Alarm goes off -> snooze button (easy thing) -> send message to the brain that it is ok to not follow through with the things we intended to do.
• Lack of personal development: our levels of success will rarely exceed our level of personal development, because success is something we attract by who we become. When we fail to make time for personal development, we are forced to make time for pain and struggle.
• Lack of urgency: now matters more than any other time in your life, because it’s what you are doing today that is determining who you’re becoming, and who you’re becoming will always determine the quality and direction of your life.

#Step 3: Draw your line in the sand

This is enough! Take action.

Life S.A.V.E.R.S.

Silence

Silence is one of the best ways to immediately reduce stress, while increasing your self-awareness and gaining the clarity that will allow you to maintain your focus on your goals, priorities, and what’s most important for your life, each and every day.

Affirmations

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. Once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” — Muhammad Ali

Consciously design and choose your affirmations:

• Step 1: what you really want?
• Step 2: why you want it? (being crystal clear on your deepest whys will give you an unstoppable purpose)
• Step 3: whom you are committed to being to create it?
• Step 4: what you’re committed to doing to attain it?

Visualizations

Jim Carrey wrote himself a check in 1987 in the amount of 10 million dollars. He dated it for “Thanksgiving 1995” and added in the memo line, “For acting services rendered”. He then visualized it for years, and in 1994 he was paid 10 million dollars for his starring role in Dumb and Dumber.

Most people are limited by visions of their past, replaying previous failures and heartbreaks.

Exercise

“If you don’t make time for exercise, you’ll probably have to make time for illness.”- Robin Sharma

Reading

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read” — Mark Twain.

Scribing/writing

“Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly.” — Rolf Smith

Benefits of journaling:

• Gain clarity: writing something down forces us to think through it enough to understand it.
• Capture ideas: journaling helps you not only expand your ideas, but also prevents you from losing the important ideas that you may want to act on in the future.
• Review lessons: it enables you to review all of the lessons you’ve learned.
• Acknowledge progress: it’s wonderful to go back and re-read your journal entries from a year ago and see how much progress you’ve made.

Feedback

“Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing.” — Steve Jobs

Feedback avoidance: most people don’t enjoy negative feedback, so they completely avoid asking for feedback. Big mistake.

Solution: actively seeking and learning from the honest feedback of people who know you (in various capacities) is one of the most effective and fastest ways to gain a new perspective and accelerate your personal development and success.