“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”
—William S. Burroughs
“To make profound changes in your life, you need either inspiration or desperation.”
—Tony Robbins
As much as we prefer for life to be easy and enjoyable, our greatest opportunities for growth are often masked by misfortune. It is on the other side of seemingly insurmountable circumstances, rising from the depths of despair, that we emerge as a better version of ourselves.
I’ve been fortunate to hit what you might call “rock bottom” twice in my relatively short life. I say fortunate because it was the growth I experienced and the lessons I learned during the most difficult times in my life that have enabled me to become the person I’ve needed to be to create the life I’ve always wanted. I am grateful to be able to use not only my successes, but also my failures, to help others in a way that can empower them to overcome their own limitations and achieve more than they ever thought possible.
The Miracle Morning didn’t come to me as I was relaxing on a beach drinking mimosas (that certainly would have been much easier and more enjoyable). Instead, it emerged out of true desperation when I was enduring one of the lowest points in my life. Perhaps this is why it has resonated so powerfully with millions of readers.
My First Rock Bottom: Dead at the Scene
I consider my first rock bottom to be when I was hit by a drunk driver, a story I shared in the introduction. I woke up from a coma to face a much harsher reality than I could have ever conceived, and I was very fortunate to have an abundance of love, support, and encouragement from other people during that time. In the hospital, someone was always there to take care of me. I was constantly surrounded by my loved ones as family and friends came by daily to check on me. I had an incredible staff of doctors and nurses overseeing every step of my care and recovery. I didn’t have the everyday stresses of work and bills. My only responsibility was to heal, and even that I had help with. Although my recovery was painful and certainly not without its challenges, I felt completely supported and life in the hospital was relatively easy.
My Second Rock Bottom: Deep in Debt and Deeply Depressed
My second rock bottom took place in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession. The economy had crashed, and I had crashed along with it. Like millions of Americans, I was experiencing my own personal financial crisis. Seemingly overnight, my successful small business was no longer profitable. My clients were suffering from the effects of the recession and couldn’t afford to pay me for coaching. In a matter of months, my income dropped by more than half. I was suddenly unable to pay my bills and began living on credit cards. I had recently bought my first home and now I couldn’t afford the mortgage. I was engaged to be married, and we were planning our first child. Drowning in debt and behind on my mortgage, for the first time in my life I became deeply depressed. I experienced a complete mental, emotional, and financial breakdown.
Why Debt Was Worse Than Death
If you were to ask me which was more difficult, my car accident or my financial crisis, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you it was the latter, by far. Most people would probably assume that being hit head-on by a drunk driver, breaking 11 bones, suffering permanent brain damage, and waking from a coma to be told that you may never walk again would be harder to overcome than relatively common financial struggles. It’s a fair assumption. However, this wasn’t the case for me.
Not being able to pay my bills, watching my business fail, going deeper and deeper into debt, and having my house seized by the bank were new experiences that I wasn’t mentally or emotionally equipped to handle. The abundance of love and support that I had while I was recovering from my car accident was nowhere to be found. Nobody felt sorry for me. I didn’t have any visitors. There was no one there to oversee my care and recovery. I was on my own. People had their own problems to deal with.
Feeling alone made this time of my life much worse. Yes, I had emotional support from Ursula, and she did her best to encourage me, but she couldn’t solve my financial problems. She couldn’t fix the economy, let alone my business. Every day was a struggle. I was consumed with so much fear and uncertainty that the only comfort I found was retreating to the safe haven of my bed each night. It offered temporary relief as I could escape having to face my problems for seven or eight hours. But, of course, my problems were there waiting for me when I woke up.
I had never felt so hopeless, and the thought of committing suicide plagued my mind daily. I contemplated how I might do it in a way that would create the least amount of pain for the people I loved. Looking back, it feels like an overreaction. But at that time, I felt helpless and afraid, and I desperately wanted to end the emotional pain I was experiencing. However, considering how much taking my life would devastate my parents was enough for me to suck it up and keep moving forward.
Deep down, I always believed that no matter how bad things get, there is always a way to turn it around. But the thoughts and feelings were still there. I just didn’t see a way out of my financial crisis, and I hated feeling so incapable.
The Run That Changed My Life
Not wanting to burden anyone with my problems, and probably a little embarrassed that I couldn’t handle my responsibilities, I kept all of this to myself. That is, until Ursula suggested it was time to swallow my pride and reach out to one of my friends to ask for help.
I called my longtime friend Jon Berghoff, who had been exceptionally successful in business and was known for being wise beyond his years. I felt a sense of relief as I finally confessed how badly I was struggling. I held nothing back. And while he expressed his genuine concern, his initial advice caught me off guard. He asked me if I was exercising every day.
Feeling confused by his question, I responded with, “What does exercising have to do with me not being able to pay my bills?”
“A lot.”
Jon went on to explain that whenever he was feeling stressed or overwhelmed, going for a run enabled him to think more clearly, lifted his spirits, and helped him come up with solutions to his problems. I immediately objected, “Jon, I hate running. What else can I do?” Without hesitation, he retorted, “What do you hate worse, running . . . or your current circumstances?”
Ouch. Touché. All right. I was desperate. I had nothing to lose. So, I decided to go for a run.
The next morning, I laced up my Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes (I’m telling you, I wasn’t a runner), grabbed my iPod so I could listen to something positive that I hoped would improve my mindset, and headed out the front door of my soon-to-be-bank-owned home. I had no idea that, on my very first run, I would hear a quote that would change the course of my entire life.
I was listening to a personal development audio from Jim Rohn, and he said something that, although I had heard it before, I had never really understood or applied it. You know how sometimes you have to hear something at the right time for it to finally click? That morning I was in the right state of mind—a state of desperation—and I got it. When I heard Jim proclaim with certainty, “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become,” I stopped in my tracks.
I rewound the audio and replayed that line again. Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become. It was like a tidal wave of reality came crashing down, and I suddenly became present to the fact that I had not been dedicating time to developing myself into the person I needed to be to attract, create, and sustain the levels of success that I wanted in my life. On a scale of 1 to 10, I wanted to experience level 10 success, but my level of personal development was hovering at around a two—maybe a three or a four on a good day.
It suddenly made sense. While my problems and the causes of my depression appeared to be external—a failing business, not enough money to pay my bills, having my home foreclosed on, the state of the economy, and so on—the solution was internal. If I wanted to live a level 10 life, I needed to first become a level 10 person who could create that life.
Over the years, I’ve realized that this is the disconnect for most people. We all want to experience each aspect of our lives—health, happiness, relationships, spirituality, financial security, you name it—as close to a level 10 as possible. No one wants to settle for less. But only a relatively small percentage of the population has a daily personal development practice that enables them to continuously evolve into the person they need to be to create that life. Back then, I definitely didn’t have one. What I needed was to start dedicating time to my personal development, each day, so that I could become capable and deserving of the life I wanted.
Feeling inspired and hopeful for the first time in a long time, I turned around and ran back to my house. I was ready to become the person I needed to be to transform my life.
The First Challenge: Finding Time
It made sense to me that making personal development a priority in my daily life was the solution to most of my problems—the missing link that would enable me to evolve into the person I needed to be able to change my life. Simple enough.
However, my first hurdle was the same as it would be for anyone else: finding the time. As important as I knew this was, I didn’t know how I was going to fit one more thing into my packed schedule. I already felt so busy and overwhelmed, just trying to make it through the day, that the idea of finding “extra” time for my personal development seemed like it would add more unwanted stress to my life. Maybe you can relate?
This brought to mind something I had read in Matthew Kelly’s book, The Rhythm of Life: “On the one hand, we all want to be happy. On the other hand, we all know the things that make us happy. But we don’t do those things. Why? Simple. We are too busy. Too busy doing what? Too busy trying to be happy.”
I grabbed my planner, sat down on my couch, and committed to finding the time—making the time—to start incorporating a daily personal development ritual into my life. I considered my options.
Maybe the Evening?
My first thought was that I could find time in the evening, either directly after work or late at night after Ursula went to bed. But I quickly realized that evenings were the only time we spent together during the week. Not to mention, after a long day of work I was usually mentally and physically drained. I just wanted to relax. I was hardly coherent, let alone in an optimal state of mind to engage in personal development. The evening was not going to be an effective time.
Possibly the Afternoon?
Next, I considered the afternoon. Maybe I could schedule it in the middle of the day, possibly on my lunch break. Or maybe I could find some extra time somewhere in the middle of my never-ending to-do list. But it just wasn’t realistic. The afternoon was not going to work, either.
Aw, Come On . . . NOT the Morning!
Finally, I contemplated doing it in the morning. Immediately, I resisted. To say that I was not a morning person was an understatement. I had always resisted the idea of waking up early. It was something I despised almost as much as I despised running. You would have never caught me running for the sake of running, just as you would have never caught me waking up early unless I had somewhere I needed to be. But the more I thought about it, the more a few things started to make too much sense to ignore.
I figured that if I started each day with a personal development ritual, I’d probably be in a much better state of mind for the rest of the day. I remembered a blog post that I’d read on StevePavlina.com titled “The Rudder of the Day.” Steve compared the morning to the rudder on a ship: “If I’m lazy or haphazard in my actions during the first hour after I wake up, I tend to have a fairly lazy and unfocused day. But if I strive to make that first hour optimally productive, the rest of the day tends to follow suit.”
Second, if I got my personal development done first thing in the morning, I could avoid all of the excuses that accumulate during the day (I’m too tired, I don’t have time, I’ll do it tomorrow, etc.). By carving out time in the morning, before the rest of my life and work got in the way, I could all but guarantee it would happen every single day.
The morning was clearly the best option. But it was hard enough to drag myself out of bed every day at 6 AM when I had to, so the idea of voluntarily waking up an hour earlier was borderline inconceivable to me. I was about to close my planner and forget the whole idea when I heard the distinct voice of one of my mentors, Kevin Bracy, passionately shouting in my head: “If you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different first!”
Damn it. I knew Kevin was right. It was time to see if I could overcome my life-long, albeit self-imposed, limiting belief that I was not a “morning person.” I wrote “Personal Development” into my schedule at 5 AM the next morning.
The Second Challenge: Doing What’s Most Impactful
Then I encountered another challenge: What could I do for that hour to make the biggest impact and improve my life the fastest? I needed to figure out what highly successful people did for their personal development and then model it. I wanted to discover what the most effective practices and methods were so that I could get the most bang for my buck.
I grabbed my computer and googled phrases like “best personal development practices” and “what do the world’s most successful people do for personal development?” I pulled out a piece of blank paper and began writing down what I discovered. What I found were all timeless practices. None of them were new. At first, I was disappointed. I had been conditioned by society to always be on the lookout for “new.” We’ve all been trained by marketers to value the newest iPhone, the new season of our favorite show, and the latest, most cutting-edge, never-before-seen solutions to our problems. Simultaneously, we are taught to devalue things that are timeless, proven, and effective, which we mistakenly dismiss as old and outdated. What my search was yielding were activities that weren’t just old, they had been around for thousands of years. I ended up with a list of six practices: meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and journaling.
It occurred to me that what each of these practices had in common was that many, if not most, of the world’s most successful people from all walks of life have credited one or more of them as being essential to their success. Each of these was time-tested and proven. It also occurred to me that I wasn’t doing any of them consistently. But which one should I do? Which one was the best? Which of these practices would enable me to change my life the fastest?
Suddenly, I had an epiphany: What if I were to wake up tomorrow, one hour earlier, and do all six practices? I thought. That would be the ultimate personal development ritual! I quickly divided 60 minutes by 6 practices, assigned them 10 minutes each, and planned to try all six the next morning. The interesting thing was, looking at this list got me feeling motivated! All of a sudden, the idea of waking up early went from something I normally avoided to something I was actually looking forward to. That night, I fell asleep with a smile on my face. I was excited for the morning to come!
The Morning That Changed Everything
When the alarm clock sounded at 5 AM (which would have previously been an unthinkable time for me to wake up), my eyes shot open, and I sprang out of bed feeling energized and excited. It reminded me of being a kid on Christmas morning. There had been no time in my life when waking up had been easier and more enjoyable . . . until today.
Teeth brushed, face washed, and a glass of water in hand, I sat up straight on my living room couch at 5:07 AM, feeling genuinely excited about my life for the first time in a long time. It was still dark outside, and something about that felt very empowering. I pulled out my list of life-changing personal development activities, and one by one, I implemented each practice.
Meditation. I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I sat in silence, praying, meditating, and focusing on my breath. Initially, my mind was racing with thoughts. Am I doing this right? How do I quiet my mind? Why can’t I stop thinking?! Although I initially felt frustrated with the chaos of my mind, as the minutes passed by, time seemed to slow down. Though I had never meditated before, and I was sure that I was doing it wrong, I felt my stress melting away and being replaced by a sense of peace. With each breath, my mind felt more at ease. This was radically different from the mental chaos and reactivity that I typically began each day with. For the first time in months, I felt peaceful.
Affirmations. The next activity was the one I was arguably the least excited about. Telling myself “I am wealthy” when I was anything but seemed to be delusional at best. However, during my search the night before, I had come across the self-confidence affirmations from Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think and Grow Rich. These provided a simple reminder that we can all source our confidence from within based on the unlimited potential that is inside each of us. They affirmed that we are all inherently just as worthy, deserving, and capable of overcoming and accomplishing anything we desire as any other person on earth. Reading them aloud, I felt empowered.
Visualization. I figured that if many of the world’s most elite athletes and performers used visualization to mentally rehearse performing at their best, there was no reason it couldn’t help me to do the same. I found that closing my eyes and visualizing myself going through my day feeling focused, confident, and happy was as much about the feelings I generated as it was about what I pictured. I generated a compelling emotional experience that fueled my desire to take actions that were in alignment with what I visualized. I felt inspired.
Reading. Having always made excuses about why I didn’t have time to read, I was excited to make time this morning and start what I had always hoped could become a lifelong habit. I grabbed Think and Grow Rich off the shelf again. Like most of my books, it was one that I had started but never finished. I read for 10 minutes and picked up a few ideas that immediately improved my mindset. I was reminded that it only takes one idea to change your life. I felt motivated.
Journaling. Next, I opened one of the many blank journals I had purchased over the years. Like all the others, I had only written in it for a few days—a week at the most. On this day, I wrote what I was grateful for in my life. I also penned a few possibilities for the future, optimistically expressing gratitude for the better life situation that I was committed to creating. Almost immediately, I felt my depression lifting like a heavy fog that had been weighing me down. It was still there, but it felt lighter. The simple act of writing down the things I was fortunate to have in my life but often took for granted lifted my spirits. I felt grateful.
Exercise. With 10 minutes left on the clock, I was ready to move my body and get the blood flowing. I stood up from the couch and did 60 jumping jacks. As out of shape as I was, that was enough to get me breathing heavy. Then, I dropped down on the living room carpet and did as many push-ups as I could (I’ll keep that number to myself). Then I flipped over onto my back and did as many sit-ups as my out-of-shape abs could muster. With six minutes to go, I pressed play on a five-minute yoga video that I had found the night before on YouTube. Though I had a long way to go before I got back into shape, I felt energized.
Sixty minutes had gone by in a flash, and I felt incredible! I had experienced what was one of the most peaceful, empowering, inspiring, motivating, grateful, and energizing days of my life—and it was only 6 am. I was hopeful. I thought, If I start every day like this, it’s only a matter of time before I become the person that I need to be to create everything I want for my life.
When Ursula woke up, I couldn’t wait to tell her how my morning went! I enthusiastically walked her though each step and expressed that I believed this morning ritual could be the one thing that changed everything for us. She was noticeably skeptical. “So wait, let me get this straight. You’ve been feeling depressed and hopeless for six months, and now, after just one morning, you are somehow feeling confident that you can turn things around. Are you on drugs?” she asked with a laugh.
“No, but I’m telling you, sweetheart, it feels like a miracle!”
Nothing Short of a Miracle
For the next few weeks, I continued to wake up at 5:00 AM and follow through with my new 60-minute personal development ritual. And I was so incredibly happy with the way I was feeling and the progress I was making as a result of my morning routine, I wanted more of it. So, one night while getting ready for bed, I did what was unthinkable at the time; I set my alarm clock for 4:00 am. Falling asleep that night, I wondered if I was out of my mind. Surprisingly, it was just as easy to wake up at 4:00 AM as it was 5:00 AM, and waking up at either time was ten times easier than waking up on any day in the past.
My stress levels dropped dramatically. I had more energy, clarity, and focus. I felt genuinely happy, motivated, and inspired. Thoughts of depression were quickly becoming a distant memory. You could say I was back to my old self again, only I was experiencing so much growth, so rapidly, that I quickly surpassed any version of myself that I had ever been in the past. And with my newfound levels of energy, motivation, clarity, and focus, I was able to set goals, create strategies, and execute a plan to save my business, get more clients, and increase my income. In fact, less than two months after my first Miracle Morning, I had more than doubled my monthly earnings. Not only was my income back to the level it had been before it crashed, but it was higher than it had ever been before.
I found myself consistently reflecting on the transformation I was experiencing, how profound it was, and the speed at which it was happening. I told Ursula that it felt like a miracle, and she started calling it my “miracle morning.” That resonated with me, so I changed “Personal Development” to “Miracle Morning” in my schedule. And I began to think about sharing my morning routine with others. I figured if this was working so well for me, even though I wasn’t a morning person when I started, then maybe it could help other people, too. So, I felt compelled to pay it forward. But before I got a chance to figure out how I was going to do that, someone took the initiative to ask me about it.
Hey, If Katie Can Do It . . .
A few weeks later, I was still working out how best to share what I’d discovered with others in a way that would be easy to replicate when my coaching client Katie Heaney brought up the topic of mornings herself. “Hal, I keep reading about successful people who swear by their morning routines. How do you start your mornings?” she asked. I could hardly contain my excitement as I told her all about my new Miracle Morning ritual and the benefits I was experiencing. Like I had, she immediately pushed back: “Yeah, that makes sense. But I just don’t know that I want to wake up any earlier. I’ve just never been a morning person.”
“Neither was I!” I assured her. I offered her some encouragement and gave her some tips on beating the snooze button. She committed to waking up at 6 AM, one hour earlier than her usual wake-up time, and giving the Miracle Morning a try.
On our next coaching call, two weeks later, Katie showed up with more enthusiasm than I’d ever heard from her! When I asked whether she woke up at 6 AM every day to do her Miracle Morning, I got an unexpected reply: “Nope. I woke up at 6 AM on the first day, but you were right—I had such an awesome morning that I wanted more of it! So, I woke up at 5 AM the rest of the week! Hal, it was amazing!”
I was so inspired by her experience that I immediately began sharing the Miracle Morning with all my other coaching clients. Like Katie, most of them were initially resistant to the idea, each proclaiming they weren’t a morning person. However, with a little persistence and encouragement, and using Katie’s example as evidence of what was possible, everyone committed to waking up at least 30 minutes earlier to implement the Miracle Morning.
Within a few short weeks, 13 out of 14 of my clients were doing the Miracle Morning and telling me that they were experiencing profound benefits similar to the ones that Katie and I had seen. Just the fact that they were meditating, reciting affirmations, visualizing, exercising, reading, and journaling every day was worth celebrating. Some of them started proudly telling their friends and coworkers that they were doing the Miracle Morning, and it was changing their life. A few began posting daily updates about it on social media. Suddenly, the idea began spreading, and I started to see strangers—people I had never met—posting about their Miracle Morning online.
Crazy, right?
Who the Heck Is Joe?
To help support people who were just discovering the Miracle Morning, a friend suggested that I buy the domain name Miracle Morning.com (I couldn’t believe it was available!) and post some video blogs. I wasn’t comfortable being on camera, but I decided to give it a shot. I started recording short videos, uploading them to YouTube, and putting them up on my new homemade website.
One morning, sitting on my living room couch, I was uploading one of my videos to YouTube when I typed my name into the search. (Hey, don’t judge. You know you’ve googled yourself before.) A video popped up that was titled “Miracle Morning at Joe’s.” It was from some guy that I had never seen before in my life, and my first reaction was not very positive. I got defensive and said out loud, “Who the heck is Joe, and why is he copying my Miracle Morning?!” I didn’t know what to think. Boy, was I about to be pleasantly surprised.
I hit play on the video, and this is what I saw. “Hello, it’s your friend, Joe Diosana. Let’s look at the time.” Joe showed his alarm clock, which read 5:41AM. “It is 5:41 in the morning—on a Sunday! And you must be wondering, ‘Dude, Joe, what in the world are you doing up at 5:41 in the morning on a Sunday?’ Well, check out MiracleMorning.com. Look at the information and download it. It feels like Christmas to me, honestly, and I’ve got a lot of energy. It’s like Christmas every day now. Check it out, and I hope your life will be blessed.”
I sat staring at my computer screen, my mouth hanging wide open. I was in awe and almost in tears. I was beginning to realize that, while I never intended for the Miracle Morning to be anything more than my own personal development ritual, I now felt a sense of responsibility to share it with as many people as possible, so that it could impact their lives the way it had mine.
It was becoming clear that if the Miracle Morning worked for me, Katie, Joe, and nearly everyone I had shared it with—and none of us considered ourselves to be morning people—it could work for anyone.
How Will You Use the Miracle Morning?
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in this chapter explaining how the Miracle Morning came to be and telling you how the practice has enhanced other people’s lives. Now that you have a better understanding of what’s possible, it’s time to shift the focus toward how the Miracle Morning can enhance your life.
The following chapters are about taking yourself to the next level so you can take your success to the next level. Remember, it only happens in that order. By making consistent daily progress toward becoming a level 10 version of yourself, you can create the level 10 life you truly want and deserve.
I won’t ask you to sleep any less, nor will I harp on you to get up an hour earlier. Remember, the Miracle Morning is completely customizable to fit your lifestyle. Many people do a 30-minute Miracle Morning (roughly five minutes for each practice), and it can be done in as little as six minutes, total (see “Chapter 7: The 6-Minute Miracle Morning”). You’ll also see that there are other times of the day when you can implement this if mornings simply do not work for you.
I would ask that you start to consider the risks versus the benefits. Is settling for less than you truly want in any area of your life worth hitting the snooze button for those extra 30 minutes of sleep in the morning? Or would creating everything you want for your life be worth waking up a little bit earlier? Don’t answer that question yet. Just keep it in mind as you read the next chapter.