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1-Page PDF Summary of The Miracle Morning

The Miracle Morning presents best-selling author and speaker Hal Elrod’s antidote to living the kind of mediocre life that most people accept as normal. Elrod argues that everyone is capable of achieving their dreams in every area of life, including relationships, finances, career, health, spirituality, and happiness. The answer is committing yourself to personal development by getting up early and following a simple daily routine of silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and writing, which can empower anyone to transform any area of life in a surprisingly short time.

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3) A Mediocre ‘Circle of Influence’

We emulate the people we spend the most time with—our circle of influence.

If you’re surrounded by negative, complaining, lazy, people, you’ll be like them. Likewise, if you spend time with positive, successful people, their attitudes will rub off and you’ll become more like them. This is true of every aspect of life, including happiness, health, and even income. Spend less time with people who pull you down (this can include family) and associate instead with those who believe in and encourage you.

A ‘Level 10’ Life

There’s no reason to settle for less than extraordinary success in any area of your life—happiness, health, money, freedom, love, or success. Of course, no one consciously chooses to accept less in a given area. For instance, on a fulfillment scale of 1-10, we don’t decide we’re okay with a level 5 relationship, in which we’re unhappy half the time. Yet most people still end up accepting mediocrity in most areas.

However, you can achieve top-level success in every area of life by:

1) Devoting time each day to work on becoming the person you need to be to attract and achieve the success you want.

2) Changing the way you start your day. A morning routine focused on personal development leads to productive days, which create a successful life.

Your Miracle Morning

You can literally change your life by changing how and why you wake up.

If you’re like most people, you delay waking up for as long as possible. You hit the snooze button and, ultimately, only drag yourself out of bed because there’s somewhere you must be. However, what you’re doing when you hit the snooze button is resisting your life, your day, and creating the life you want.

The secret to waking up feeling energized and excited is to make each morning feel like Christmas morning felt as a kid. The Miracle Morning routine creates this experience by giving you purpose and excitement around developing into the person capable of creating the life of your dreams.

Starting your day with personal development creates energy and focus that carry over into the rest of your day. Also, when you do your routine immediately upon getting up, you face fewer temptations to skip it than you would later in the day—for instance, feeling tired or too pressed for time.

If you have trouble getting up, try these wake-up tips: Place your alarm clock across the room, so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. After you turn it off, brush your teeth, drink a glass of water to rehydrate, and dress in your workout clothes. Then move to another room for your morning routine so you aren’t tempted to go back to bed.

The Miracle Morning consists of these practices (the Life S.A.V.E.R.S.)

  • Silence: Starting your day with silence calms and centers you. There are five ways to practice silence: meditation, prayer, reflection, deep breathing, and gratitude. You can practice just one or combine them. Many people choose meditation, following these steps: close your eyes or look down at the floor, quiet your mind by letting go of intrusive thoughts, focus on breathing, be present in the moment.
  • Affirmation: Affirmations are positive, constructive statements that you repeat to yourself as a tool for reprogramming negative thinking to help you change or accomplish something. An effective affirmation is read aloud and states what you want and why, how you’ll change, and what steps you’ll take.
  • Visualization: Through visualization, you increase your chances of success by imagining yourself achieving the results you want. Use your senses to see, hear, feel, touch, smell, and taste every aspect of your dream. Then, envision yourself achieving your goals. Also visualize the person you need to be to achieve them.
  • Exercise: Aerobic exercise, such as jumping jacks, pushups, and situps get your blood moving and raise your energy level. Alternatively, you could follow along with a yoga video.
  • Reading: Reading self-help or inspirational literature gives you the ideas, strategies, and knowledge you need to achieve your goals. Learning from people who have already done what you aspire to do saves you from reinventing the wheel. Reading ten pages a day adds up to 3,650 pages a year or about eighteen self-improvement books.
  • Scribing: Writing in a journal allows you to record insights, ideas, successes, lessons, and opportunities for development. Try listing what you’re grateful for, your accomplishments, and areas for improvement plus the steps you’ll take to improve. Or just write a synopsis of your day.

The Miracle Morning can be customized to fit everyone’s work schedule and lifestyle—for instance, you can spend ten minutes on each practice for a total of an hour or spend as little as a minute on each for a six-minute routine. You can spend less time on some practices and more on others and vary the sequence. Whether you’re a “morning person” or not, you’ll learn to wake up earlier, excited to start your day. Your Miracle Morning experience will become the key to unlocking your potential.

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PDF Summary Introduction

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Elrod concluded that everything happens for a reason and it’s up to us to choose the most empowering reasons for our challenges and circumstances. Ultimately, he viewed his accident as a positive because it changed his life for the better.

After recovering from his accident, Elrod suffered a second rock-bottom experience six years later—this time, financial ruin during the 2008 recession. He pulled himself out of depression by developing a morning routine that motivated him to get out of bed. On a friend’s advice, he started his days with running, while listening on earphones to motivational speakers, in order to feel better and think more clearly.

His depression began to lift and he continued to develop his morning routine, experimenting with his sleep schedule and various personal development methods, such as affirmation and journaling. He came up with a daily sequence of six practices. The routine was so successful in helping him turn his life around that he began calling it his Miracle Morning and sharing it with coaching clients and friends, who also found it transformative.

To share it more widely, Elrod wrote The Miracle Morning, which became an Amazon...

PDF Summary Chapter 1: Introducing the Miracle Morning

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A Journey of Discovery

Here’s how Hal Elrod used the Miracle Morning to advance in less than a year from his lowest point—a failing business, debt, and depression—to renewed financial success, achieving his dream job, and even completing an ultra-marathon.

Although he’d recovered from a debilitating car accident, he found overcoming financial failure, debt, and depression to be more difficult. After his accident, he had family, friends, and medical professionals taking care of him and encouraging him. In contrast, when financial disaster struck, he didn’t have anyone feeling sorry for him—others had their own problems as a result of the recession.

It was a struggle to get out of bed until a friend suggested that running would lift his spirits and help him think more clearly about his problems. With nothing to lose, he went for a run, during which he listened to a personal development talk by Jim Rohn. He experienced a breakthrough when he heard the message: Your level of personal development determines your level of success; you attract success by who you become. This philosophy changed Elrod’s life.

The ‘Success Parallel’

It struck Elrod that he hadn’t been...

PDF Summary Chapter 2: Reject Mediocrity

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We measure every new opportunity against our past experiences and capabilities—for instance, thinking: “I’ve never done anything like that before; I’ve never succeeded at that.”

Thus, we limit our future development based on the limitations of our past. Even though we want to change, we’re stuck on the way things have always been.

Most people process up to 60,000 thoughts a day, but 95% are recurring thoughts, including fears and worries from yesterday. Instead, you must recognize these as limitations, move past them, and imagine a future without limits. Overcome limitations by repeating affirmations that inspire confidence that anything is possible and that you can make it happen. Focus on what you want, reprogram your beliefs about what’s possible, and move in the direction of your goals until they become reality.

Remember: your past doesn’t dictate your future. Your present is a result of who you were, but your future will be determined by who you are from now on.

2) Lack of Purpose

The average person can’t tell you their life purpose, the reason they keep getting up every day. They just do what they have to do to survive; they take the easiest path,...

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PDF Summary Chapter 3: Waking Up to Your Life

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Taking responsibility for every aspect of your life includes using the power of mind-body connection to wake up feeling good regardless of the amount of sleep you get. Elrod experimented with different amounts of sleep while telling himself he would feel either exhausted or energized. When he told himself he’d feel exhausted on four, five, or six hours of sleep, he felt exhausted on each of those amounts. The converse was true when he told himself he’d feel energized, using the affirmation: “I believe I create my experience of reality, and I choose to create the reality of waking up tomorrow feeling energized…”

The real secret to waking up feeling energized and excited is to make each morning feel like Christmas morning felt as a kid. The Miracle Morning routine creates this experience by giving you purpose and excitement around developing into the person capable of creating the life of your dreams.

Increasing Your Wake-Up Motivation

On a scale of 1 to10, most people’s motivation level for waking up starts at a 1 or a 2. However, you can make waking up easier by gradually increasing your “wake-up motivation level” with a series of simple “snooze-proof” steps:

**1)...

PDF Summary Chapter 4: Life S.A.V.E.R.S.

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With everything ready, you’ll be able to jump into your Miracle Morning without delay.

PDF Summary Chapter 5: S—Silence

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5) Be present in the moment. If you have trouble quieting your thoughts, focus on a word or phrase, repeating it to yourself as you inhale and exhale. (For example, “I breathe in peace… I breathe out love.”)

Think of your daily meditation as a mini-retreat from your problems. Although your problems won’t go away, you’ll be able to handle them more calmly and effectively.

At first, sitting in silence may be difficult, but you can master it with practice. Start with about five minutes. It won’t be long before you begin to experience the benefits. (Shortform note: For a deeper exploration, read the Shortform summary of Mindfulness in Plain English here.)

PDF Summary Chapter 6: A—Affirmations

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In reading the book Think and Grow Rich, he realized how this thinking was limiting him, so he created his first affirmation: “I let go of the limiting belief that I have a horrible memory. My brain is … capable of healing itself and my memory can improve …” He repeated it daily.

A few months later, a friend asked him to remember to call her, and he responded without hesitation, “Sure, no problem.” His affirmation had begun changing his mindset and his memory improved.

Create Your Own Affirmations

Here are five simple steps for creating affirmations. Affirmations need to be in writing so you can post and read them aloud frequently. You can download free Miracle Morning affirmations here.

1) Specify what you want. Spell out what you want your life to be like in every area (write an affirmation for each)—for instance, health, relationships, career, finances, contributions, and spirituality.

2) Explain why you want it. Everyone wants to be healthy, happy, and successful, but you need more than just desire to achieve success. Knowing why a goal is important...

PDF Summary Chapter 7: V—Visualization

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2) Visualize the results you want and see yourself achieving them: Use your senses to see, hear, feel, touch, smell, taste every aspect of your dream. The more detailed and real you make the mental picture, the more motivated you’ll be to take action. Then, envision yourself achieving your goals (in the way Elrod visualized people enjoying and recommending his book). Imagine how good it will feel to have followed through and achieved your goals.

3) Visualize the person you need to be and what you need to do: With a clear mental image of what you want, imagine yourself changing, living, and acting in ways that enable you to achieve your vision. See yourself studying, writing, making calls, or doing whatever you’ll need to do to reach your goals. Picture yourself with a look of confidence or determination on your face.

You may also want to create a vision board as an additional visualization aid. A vision board is a poster board on which you post images of what you want to become, have, and do. You can use photos, magazine cut-outs, internet printouts, quotes and inspirations representing your purpose and ideal future.

This technique is described in the book and film,...

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PDF Summary Chapter 8: E—Exercise

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While everyone knows it’s important to exercise consistently to maintain good health and increase your energy, it’s easy to make excuses for not exercising—for instance, feeling tired or not having time. However, the Miracle Morning routine provides a structure (a designated time when you’re not tired) that eliminates these excuses so you can make exercise a habit.

PDF Summary Chapter 9: R—Reading

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3) Re-read good self-improvement books. You can’t retain and apply everything of value after a single reading. You need repetition to embed the ideas in your subconscious.

It can be more useful to re-read a book that you know can help you than to start a new book before mastering the ideas of the first one. Elrod maintains a special shelf for books he wants to re-read. Try it with this book—commit to re-reading it to reinforce the Miracle Morning concepts and practices.

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PDF Summary Chapter 10: S—Scribing

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However, making journal writing part of a Miracle Morning routine is more successful because the routine provides a consistent time and a structure for writing.

There can be a downside to reviewing your journal, especially if you’re a perfectionist or high achiever: focusing too much on how far you have to go (your potential gap). This can lead to minimizing your accomplishments and beating yourself up for not making enough progress. To avoid this, make a point of being grateful for what you’ve done, then tell yourself you’re doing the best you can in the moment and will continue to do better.

Writing in your journal should remind you that you do many more things right than you do wrong. Always record what you accomplished, what you’re grateful for, what you’re committed to doing better. This should keep things in perspective as well as motivate you.

PDF Summary Chapter 11: Implementing Your Miracle Morning

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When and What to Eat

Digesting food takes energy—the more you eat, the less you feel like doing. Forgoing breakfast until after your Miracle Morning routine ensures that you’ll be alert and focused—your blood will be going to your brain instead of your digestive system.

But if you need to eat first thing in the morning, start with something light and easily digestible.

Eating for Energy and Health

Many people choose what to eat based on taste, convenience, or dietary restrictions they may have. We get emotional enjoyment from the way foods taste—for example, fried chicken, fast food, ice cream, or soda. However, for more energy and better health, it’s better to choose foods based on those criteria. Food that’s healthy and gives you energy can still taste great—for instance, fresh fruits and vegetables.

Elrod created a Miracle Morning fruit smoothie to provide a healthy, energy-boosting breakfast. It includes protein, antioxidants, Omega 3 essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals.

Here’s the recipe:

  • 1 cup water, orange iuice, or almond/soy milk
  • 1 banana (can be frozen)
  • 1 handful of spinach (can be frozen)

Optional additions:

  • ...

PDF Summary Chapter 12: Getting into the Habit

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Phase 2: Uncomfortable (Days 11-20)

Having survived the first phase will generate confidence, but you still need commitment and discipline to get through Phase 2. You’ll be tempted to backslide into your old behaviors—for instance, sleeping in instead of getting up early to exercise. However, you can overcome the temptation by focusing on and looking forward to the next phase, in which change will prevail.

Example: Elrod’s second phase of running was a bit less painful, he hated it less, and getting up and running every morning started to feel normal.

Phase 3: Unstoppable (Days 21-30)

In the first two phases, you’ve formed and established a new habit, but you’re not done yet. (Many people think they’re done after twenty days.) Phase 3 is important because it sets you up to sustain the new habit. Completely replace the pain of first twenty days with positive reinforcement and enjoyment of the new habit, and it will become part of your identity. You’ll move from trying to living the habit.

Example: In this phase, Elrod forgot that he had hated running and began to enjoy it. Instead of battling mentally to keep going, he occupied his mind with...