“If you want to, you can find a million reasons to hate life and be angry at the world. Or, if you want to, you could find a million reasons to love life and be happy. Choose wisely.”
—Cari Welsh
“What you’ll find is that the only thing you really want from life is to feel enthusiasm, joy, and love. If you can feel that all the time, who cares what happens outside? If you can always feel up, if you can always feel excited about the experience of the moment, then it doesn’t make any difference what the experience is.”
—Michael Singer
I magine, for a moment, that I was to magically appear in front of you, right now, as a genie. Picture it: I’m floating in front of you, legs crossed, levitating in midair (stick with me, I know this just got weird), and I tell you that I can grant you one wish, but it is a very specific type of wish.
I can’t give you a fancy mansion or a pile of money. I can’t make you younger or change your physical appearance. I can’t make any person in your life more enjoyable to be around (sorry, I know that one would probably be super helpful), and I definitely can’t grant you a thousand more wishes.
The one and only wish I have the power to grant for you is to give you the limitless ability to choose how you experience every moment of your life, regardless of how difficult your circumstances or the people around you may be. In other words, you could choose your optimal mental and emotional state in every moment—to live unconsumed by fear, stress, and worry, to wake up every day and truly love your life, live in a state of bliss, be the happiest you’ve ever been, experience heaven on earth, you name it—every day, for the rest of your life. What would you wish for? How would you choose to experience every moment of your life?
The problem is that we’ve been conditioned to believe that our mental and emotional well-being are dictated by outside forces. We mistakenly believe that when good things happen, I feel good, and when bad things happen, I feel bad. So, we allow circumstances, events, and other people to determine how we feel and, ultimately, our experience of life. The Miracle Life offers us a new, far more empowering paradigm: no matter what happens, I feel however I choose to feel.
The solution is learning how to take control of your mental and emotional state so that you can proactively choose how you experience each moment of your life—a concept you’ve already been introduced to earlier in the book with Emotional Optimization Meditation.
The Miracle Life is a concept that evolved out of over a decade of practicing the Miracle Morning with a focus on elevating my own consciousness. To understand the fundamental difference between these two and how they complement one another, consider that the Miracle Morning is a practice for personal development, while the Miracle Life is a paradigm for personal fulfillment. The Miracle Morning enables you to develop the mindset, habits, and capabilities you need to create the circumstances you want for your life, and the Miracle Life unlocks your ability to experience optimal states of consciousness so that you can be genuinely happy and enjoy the life you have—no matter what your circumstances are.
The Miracle Life is your path to Inner Freedom, and Inner Freedom is the fundamental state of consciousness from which you are free to choose how you interpret and experience each moment. This state of consciousness is inherently available to every single one of us regardless of our circumstances. We gain access to this state of consciousness when we stop mistakenly believing that outside forces are responsible for why we feel the way we do, learn how to be at peace with things we can’t change, and no longer allow ourselves to get upset over the aspects of life that are out of our control.
Imagine being able to consciously choose your ideal mental and emotional state in each moment, to be completely at peace and undisturbed no matter what you’re facing in life. Imagine discovering that you have a superpower that enables you to decide how you want to feel, to be genuinely at peace and as happy as you’ve ever been, even during the most difficult circumstances you’ve ever faced. This is what the Miracle Life enables you to do.
In other words, the Miracle Life isn’t a change in your circumstances; it is a complete transformation of how you experience your circumstances. It is a process of elevating and then conditioning your consciousness to a state of Inner Freedom so that you are completely free to choose what you think and how you feel in each moment. As the quote from Cari Welsh that opened this chapter so clearly stated, “If you want to, you can find a million reasons to hate life and be angry at the world. Or, if you want to, you could find a million reasons to love life and be happy. Choose wisely.”
The Primary Obstacle to Inner Freedom: Inner Turmoil
Consider that two different people can have nearly identical circumstances or endure similar tragedies, and one person is miserable—constantly suffering and complaining about how bad their life is—while the other person is completely at peace, genuinely happy, and consistently expresses and experiences gratitude for how blessed they are to be alive. How is that possible? Despite having the same circumstances, two radically different paradigms create two radically different ways of experiencing life. Which would you choose? Are you aware that you have a choice?
When choosing between these two paradigms, most if not all of us would surely choose to be the person who is completely at peace, genuinely happy, and consistently experiencing and expressing gratitude for how blessed we are to be alive. We all want happier, more peaceful, and more fulfilled lives. Unfortunately, most of us don’t allow ourselves to be happy and experience sustained feelings of peace and fulfillment because we’ve unconsciously agreed that outside forces—other people, events, circumstances, and our past—have the power to determine how we feel.
As a result, most of us go through life enduring suboptimal mental and emotional states such as stress, fear, anxiety, anger, guilt, shame, resentment, hate, and other forms of emotional pain—and we miss out on states of peace, love, joy, gratitude, confidence, happiness, and even bliss, which are always available to us.
We continue to suffer because no one taught us how to harness our inherent ability to consciously choose how we experience each moment. This is especially true during times of adversity when life is difficult or painful, or when we’re facing challenges that may seem insurmountable and feeling hopeless.
To elevate our consciousness to a state of Inner Freedom, we must identify and transcend any underlying obstacle that is preventing us from doing so. And while we could certainly come up with an endless list of external obstacles for why we’re stressed out or unhappy (our financial situation, our past trauma, the actions of other people, or any difficult circumstances that we blame for the way we feel inside), we can narrow all of them down to one, single, fundamental, underlying internal obstacle that prevents us from living in a state of Inner Freedom.
What is this underlying obstacle? Inner turmoil.
We experience inner turmoil in the form of suboptimal mental and emotional states, such as fear, shame, guilt, regret, anger, or helplessness. Although Inner Freedom is the state that we were born into and is always available to us, inner turmoil prevents us from experiencing love, joy, peace, happiness, clarity, confidence, and other positive mental and emotional states that we desire. When you endure any degree of inner turmoil, you block yourself from experiencing your inherent, liberating state of Inner Freedom. You cannot experience both simultaneously, so you are always choosing between the two.
Choosing to experience life in a state of Inner Freedom requires that we transcend the obstacle of inner turmoil. To transcend any obstacle, we must identify the causes so that we can overcome them. If we’re not clear on what’s causing us to endure suboptimal mental and emotional states, we won’t be able to address the root cause and overcome it.
The Causes of Inner Turmoil
There is both an overarching and an underlying cause of inner turmoil. The overarching cause is our allowing outside forces to determine our mental and emotional well-being. We naturally (and mistakenly) think the things we’re upset about are what’s causing us to be upset. On the surface, that seems completely logical, but it’s not the case.
When we face any degree of adversity, whether a minor annoyance or a major tragedy, we naturally resist reality and wish things were different. What we are unaware of is that our resistance to reality is the cause of our emotional pain—not the thing we’re upset about. And the degree to which we resist reality and wish things that we have no control over were different determines the degree of emotional pain that we create for ourselves.
The underlying cause of all inner turmoil and emotional pain is our unconscious resistance to reality—wishing things that are out of our control were different.
What’s worse is that resisting our reality doesn’t change things; it only causes us to create and perpetuate unnecessary feelings of stress, fear, anger, resentment, and any other form of emotional pain that perpetuate suffering and rob us of our freedom to be at peace and enjoy life.
Your Path to Inner Freedom
The Miracle Life is based on a timeless concept but one that escapes most people: we were born with the inherent freedom to choose how we experience each moment. This ability is harnessed by actively elevating and conditioning our state of consciousness to that of Inner Freedom.
Inner freedom is not a new concept and has been a primary aim of not only sages and philosophers but also anyone who has aspired to experience life in a truly liberated state. In 1941, Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, wrote that “inner freedom is the ability to do all things guided by wisdom.” Deepak Chopra advocates that “the most precious freedom is inner freedom.” In the 21st century, millions have been introduced to the concept of Inner Freedom through Michael Singer’s books The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered, in which he states, “Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. It doesn’t matter what others do unless you decide that it matters to you.”
While emotions are short-lived and fleeting, states of consciousness are our underlying way of experiencing life. Inner Freedom is a fundamental state of consciousness that is based on being completely at peace with all aspects of life so that nothing external has the power to determine your mental or emotional states. When that is the case, you get to choose how you experience any given moment that you are alive.
Most people have very little awareness that Inner Freedom is available to them. Their inner state is at the mercy of their external circumstances. If they wake up late for work, get into a fight with their spouse, or receive an angry email from a customer, they allow it to affect how they feel even to the point of letting it ruin their entire day. If they miss a flight, they are upset and stew over it for hours.
While most of us may have never realized that we have unlimited access to our inherent Inner Freedom and continue to suffer from varying degrees of inner turmoil, emotional pain, and instability, there are countless examples of people throughout history who have shown us that this liberating state is available to all of us, no matter how difficult our circumstances may be.
Consider famed psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes that in 1942, he and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where his father died. Then in 1944, he and the members of his family who were still alive were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered. His wife would die in yet another concentration camp. He endured all this while under the harsh conditions of starvation, sleep deprivation, and psychological torture.
We can all agree that what Frankl experienced was horrifying to a degree beyond what most of us have ever experienced. And yet, drawing on his studies as a psychologist, he was able to find meaning in his life regardless of his circumstances. How did he do this? By realizing that though his external freedom was being restricted by other people, he could focus on his inherent Inner Freedom to choose his experience of life amid death and destruction.
In Frankl’s words, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
In other words, Inner Freedom is realized not by changing your circumstances but by elevating your consciousness so that you are free to choose how you experience your circumstances. No matter how difficult your life has been, is now, or may be in the future, you always have the freedom to choose how you experience each moment.
Could it be that human beings were born with the freedom to be genuinely happy and enjoy this one life we’ve been given? Is it possible that there is nothing to pursue and that life itself contains an unlimited supply of true, sustainable joy, but our collective problem is that we unconsciously adhere to society’s paradigms that block us from experiencing all that life has to offer?
Happiness Is a Choice
When I was 19 years old, my mentor Jesse Levine taught me a way of taking total responsibility for my happiness and never blaming my emotional state on anyone or anything else. Although I didn’t fully comprehend the impact that lesson would make in my life, it would ultimately transform my ability to choose how I experienced every moment that was to come. This would become particularly invaluable in preparing me to face the unimaginable adversities that lay ahead.
Jesse taught me that “happiness is a choice—it’s up to us to choose whether or not we’re happy.” I don’t know how you react to that statement, but when I first heard this, I wasn’t buying it. My paradigm was, “When things in life are going well, I feel happy. When things aren’t going well, I don’t feel happy.” Pretty standard.
Then, he explained that in life, there are essentially two metaphorical pages that we can choose to focus on at any given moment. One page lists everything that we have to feel bad about (our problems, fears, regrets, physical pain, past traumas, people we don’t like, etc.—the list is endless), and the other page lists everything that we have to feel good about, much of which we often take for granted (our health, our life, the present moment, the roof over our head, the people we love, the food we have to eat, our connection with God, nature, etc.—this list is also endless).
Every human being on planet Earth—from those who are suffering unimaginable pain or tragedy to those we assume have it easier or better than we do—has access to both pages. The key is understanding that which page we consciously choose to give our attention to is arguably the most significant influence on how we feel at any given moment.
This is why there are people who are considered to be “highly successful” in modern society (e.g., millionaires, celebrities, etc.), and who seem to have everything they’ve ever wanted, who are noticeably miserable, while some villagers in developing countries who live below the poverty line (but are deeply grateful for everything they have) smile from ear to ear at the difficult life they’re blessed to live.
You may know someone who constantly complains about their life and then justifies their complaining by saying something like, “I’m not being negative; I’m just being realistic.”
Really? Let’s ask ourselves how it is any more realistic to dwell on and complain about the aspects of ourselves and our lives that make us feel bad than it is to dwell on and celebrate the good in our lives? Both perspectives are equally realistic, but which page we choose to focus on (most of the time) determines how we feel (most of the time).
So, maybe Jesse was right. Maybe happiness is a choice, and we do get to choose whether we’re happy based on which page of life we choose to focus on, more often than not.
When I woke up from a coma at age 20, after barely surviving a head-on car crash with a drunk driver, I made the conscious decision that I would strive to be the happiest and most grateful I had ever been while I endured the most difficult time in my life. Thanks to the empowering paradigm that Jesse had taught me just 18 months prior, I was able to do exactly that. By accepting my circumstances exactly as they were, being at peace with all that I couldn’t change, and focusing my energy and attention on the page in my life that listed everything I had to be grateful for (while proactively doing everything in my power to create the outcomes I wanted), I was able to enjoy each moment amid my seemingly insurmountable adversity.
I know from experience that life can be both chronically and unexpectedly difficult. I also believe we may look back one day and regret all the time we spent blaming our outside forces for how we feel and not allowing ourselves to be happy. You already have everything you need to be the happiest you could ever be. It’s called life. Either you enjoy it, or you don’t. But we must understand that blaming our inner turmoil on external forces is robbing all of us of being happy and enjoying our lives.
Let’s explore how you can use three simple steps to accept the aspects of life that are out of your control, allow yourself to be at peace with what you can’t change, be the most grateful you have ever been, and give yourself permission to be happy and enjoy this one life you’ve been blessed to live.
The ABCs of the Miracle Life
Like the S.A.V.E.R.S. for the Miracle Morning, the Miracle Life can be remembered and implemented using a simple, memorable ABC formula. This is intentional. Mnemonic devices (like S.A.V.E.R.S.) have proven to be a highly effective technique for improving our memory retention and our ability to recall and implement information. The easier something is to remember, the more likely we are to retain it, which naturally increases the probability that we will continue to implement it.
Although the following formula is simple, like anything worthwhile it takes consistent practice to elevate and condition your consciousness so that it becomes automatic and nearly effortless. I recommend integrating these steps into your daily Miracle Morning practice so that the Miracle Life paradigm becomes deeply rooted in your subconscious. We’ll address how to do that in the coming pages.
The good news is that most people find an immediate transformation in their awareness of how they experience each moment. Within a few weeks, or even days, it can dramatically impact your happiness and ability to remain at peace during situations that may have previously been a source of emotional pain and instability. Practicing it daily on the minor things (e.g., being stuck in traffic or a conflict with another person) builds your skills for the big things (e.g., enduring financial hardship, health challenges, loss of a loved one, or the breakup of a relationship).
A: Accept life exactly as it is. In life, things happen that we don’t like. We encounter bumper-to-bumper traffic when we’re running late. Our child struggles at school. Our spouse does things that drive us crazy. Our customer cancels an order. We get fired from our job. We get diagnosed with a serious illness. Someone we love passes away unexpectedly. It’s human nature to get upset and reject these realities, wishing so badly that they were different. But our rejection of reality doesn’t change anything. It just causes us to suffer and prevents us from being able to react constructively to the issue at hand. Once we understand that the cause of our emotional pain is our resistance to reality, we can see that the solution is learning how to accept life exactly as it is and allow ourselves to be at peace with reality.
B: Be grateful for each moment. Gratitude is a universal lens through which we can interpret and experience quite literally any moment of our lives, including the most difficult, unpleasant, and painful ones. While it’s easy, natural, and extremely beneficial to feel grateful for the aspects of our life that are favorable, it can be even more beneficial to learn how to be genuinely grateful when faced with adversity. While being grateful for our adversity may seem counterintuitive, consider that every adversity provides us with an opportunity to learn, grow, and become better versions of who we were when we first encountered the difficulty. It is often the most difficult or painful times in our life that gift us with the greatest opportunities to evolve.
C: Choose your optimal state of consciousness. Remember that while emotions are often short-lived and fleeting, states of consciousness are underlying and ongoing ways of experiencing every moment of your life. In the moment that someone cuts you off in traffic, you may not have control over that flash of anger you have, but you can control how you feel next by choosing what you will focus on and which state of consciousness you will dwell on. You can decide the state to embody next is empathy. Perhaps that person was racing to the hospital to see their injured child. Perhaps they were just fired from their job. Or perhaps they simply didn’t see you and made a mistake. Whatever the reasons, you can’t change what happened. You can only choose how you experience each moment.
Let’s dive deeper into understanding the nuances and benefits of each step.
Step A: Accept Life Exactly as It Is
Whether we face an unexpected challenge or chronic adversity and find ourselves feeling upset and wishing reality were different, we essentially have two fundamental choices:
•We can continue to unconsciously resist reality, wishing things that are out of our control were different and causing ourselves to experience ongoing inner turmoil, emotional pain, and instability.
•We can consciously choose to accept life exactly as it is, be at peace with what we can’t change, focus on changing what we can, and identify our optimal mental and emotional states so that we can choose how we experience each moment of our lives.
When I began a career in direct sales at ninteen years old, another lesson I learned from my mentor was that the profession of selling is a microcosm for life, only with amplified adversity. In other words, he explained that, as a salesperson, I would experience challenges nearly every day (failure, rejection, disappointment, etc.) that most people only experience occasionally.
To effectively manage my mental and emotional states amid such challenges, he taught me another powerful strategy that I use to this day: the 5 Minute Rule. The rule states that when something happens that we don’t like—whether a minor inconvenience or a major tragedy—it’s okay to get upset for a short period, but there is no value in dwelling on something long after it happened, wishing it didn’t happen, and feeling bad about it for an extended period of time.
He taught me to literally set a timer for five minutes, during which time I was allowed to bitch, moan, complain, cry, vent, feel sorry for myself, or indulge in whatever emotional response came up. Then, when the five-minute timer went off, he taught me to consciously accept whatever happened (or didn’t happen) and move on. He also taught me to say three very impactful words when the timer went off, “Can’t change it,” as a reminder that there was no point in continuing to resist reality and wish the past were different. He explained that the only logical choice was to accept life exactly as it was and immediately focus 100 percent of my energy and attention on what was in my control.
When I first learned the 5 Minute Rule, I scoffed at it and thought, “Yeah right, I’m not going to get over something in five minutes just because I set a timer.” But I also committed to sincerely trying it. After all, what did I have to lose?
A few days later, I experienced my first no-show. I had scheduled a Cutco presentation with a woman and drove 45 minutes to her house, but when I got there, no one was home. A note on the door read, “Sorry, we don’t want any knives!” I couldn’t believe it. Rather than at least giving me the courtesy of calling to cancel our appointment, she had allowed me to waste my time and drive all the way out to her house to find a note.
I went back to my car, grabbed my cell phone, and set a timer for five minutes. As I drove away, I started stewing over how disrespectful it was to let me drive that far and then miss our appointment. I thought about the income I lost out on by wasting my time when I could have been at another appointment. I worried about not reaching my goals. I considered whom I could complain to about this and rehearsed what I would say to make the story sound as dramatic as possible. Maybe you can relate?
Suddenly, I was startled when the alarm on my phone went off. I turned it off and said out loud to no one, “I’m still pissed off!” At least I felt justified in my assessment that five minutes wasn’t enough time to get over being upset.
For the next few weeks, I continued applying the 5 Minute Rule. Surprisingly, it started making a major impact. After the five-minute timer would go off, I would take a deep breath and say, “Can’t change it,” a simple but powerful reminder that because I can’t change what happened in the past—whether it was five minutes, five days, or five decades ago—the only productive choice I had was to accept life exactly as it was and take action to move forward. Whenever I felt myself getting upset, I would grab my phone and set the timer. It became automatic, and the results were promising. I noticed that, although I would usually still feel upset for longer than five minutes, the time it took me to accept whatever happened and get to a place of being at peace with it was happening faster and faster.
Then, something extraordinary happened. Two weeks after I began using the 5 Minute Rule, I faced the most significant setback in my budding sales career. It happened on a Sunday night. I had woken up that morning determined to reach my goal for the week. Orders were due the next morning, and I was $2,000 short of where I needed to be. Selling $1,000 in a day was significant, so selling the $2,000 I needed—on a Sunday—was unlikely. However, I was able to schedule two appointments for that afternoon, and although the first person didn’t buy anything, the second one placed an order for over $2,300 and put me over my goal for the week! I called Jesse and excitedly shared the news. He told me that not only did I reach my goal but this order moved me into being the number one sales rep for the week. I was elated!
I spent the next hour imagining what it was going to be like when Jesse recognized me at our Wednesday night team meeting as the top sales rep for the week. I thought about how I was going to spend the money that I earned from my commission. Then, around 9 pm, my phone rang. It was the woman who placed the huge order. She explained that her husband was upset when he found out she spent so much money on knives, and she needed to cancel her order. My heart sank. I pleaded, reminding her of the 15-day trial and how much she loved the knives, but her mind was made up. No . . . how could this happen?! A few hours earlier, I was celebrating my largest order, having reached my goal and being the number one rep for the week, and now that was all gone, as was the commission I had already spent in my mind. Feeling extremely disappointed, I ended the phone call and instinctively set my timer for five minutes.
As the seconds began counting down, I naturally began resisting reality. I can’t believe she canceled. Stupid husband. If only he had been there to see the presentation, he probably would have loved Cutco as much as she did! This sucks. I wish that didn’t happen . . . but it did. And I can’t change it. So, what am I going to do now? I guess the only logical choice I really have is to stop resisting reality, accept that she canceled and that I didn’t reach my goal for the week, and focus only on what I can control—waking up tomorrow morning and making calls to schedule more appointments.
I took a deep breath and, on the exhale, said aloud, “Can’t change it.” I felt my tension subside, which prompted me to pick up my cell phone and look at my five-minute timer. Four minutes and thirty-two seconds remained. I thought, What’s the point in staying upset for the next four and a half minutes when I can just choose to accept my reality and be at peace with what I can’t change, now, so that I can move on? I turned my timer off, breathed a sigh of relief, and felt a surge of energy as I realized that I was now in control of my inner state. It felt like a superpower, to think that I now had the ability to accept anything that happened in my life, stop resisting it, and immediately be at peace.
No matter what happened, I could either resist reality and cause myself to be upset, or I could accept reality and be completely at peace with whatever happened. The choice was obvious. After only a few weeks of implementing the 5 Minute Rule, I went from thinking that five minutes wasn’t enough time to realizing it wasn’t necessary to stay upset for that long.
Looking back, I now see that my consciousness was elevated the moment I became aware that the fundamental cause of emotional pain is resisting reality and that we all have the power to let go of resistance and replace it with acceptance. Doing this enables us to stop creating emotional turmoil by resisting reality and wishing we could change things that are out of our control. Whether it happened five minutes ago or five decades ago, we can’t go back and change the past. We can only choose whether we allow it to upset us or accept it and move on.
The objective of the 5 Minute Rule is to give yourself space to feel your emotions and then get to the point of acceptance. The end goal is to get to the point where you stop resisting reality and accept life as it is. You can do that by using the “Can’t Change It” mantra as a reminder that if you can’t change something, the most effective choice you have is to accept it and allow yourself to be at peace with whatever you can’t change. Combining these two tools gives you an extremely powerful way to allow yourself the space to experience all your emotions without dwelling on things you simply cannot change for an extended period of time. To be clear, this only applies to things we truly cannot change (such as the past, other people, or global issues that are out of our immediate control). As the serenity prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Accepting life as it is doesn’t mean resigning yourself and giving up on making life better. Quite the contrary. When we are upset over something, our thinking is not clear, so we are not in an optimal state to make effective choices. However, when we are at peace, our thinking is clear, and we can both choose our optimal state of consciousness and make level-headed decisions that lead to proactive behaviors. When you constantly accept life exactly as it is, you are free to focus your energy on changing the things that are within your control. The faster you can get to the point where you say “Can’t change it” and mean it, the faster you will achieve Inner Freedom.
Acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to Inner Freedom, and these three words, “Can’t Change It,” are like a key that unlocks the emotional handcuffs we constantly place on ourselves by self-creating and perpetuating emotional pain as a result of resisting reality. And whether it takes you five minutes or five months to get to the point where you consciously choose to say them, the moment you do is the moment you stop resisting reality and give yourself the gift of being at peace with life exactly as it is.
I’ve taught the 5 Minute Rule and “Can’t Change It” mantra for more than 20 years, and I’ve received pictures from dozens of people who found it so impactful that they actually got permanent “Can’t Change It” tattoos to remind them that they never again have to experience unhealthy and unnecessary emotional pain, because they now understand that they always have the power to accept life exactly as it is and allow themselves the Inner Freedom to be at peace.
Step B: Be Grateful for Each Moment
If I were to ask you to tell me about the best moment of your life, how would you respond? I imagine you’d probably take a few moments to search your memory and attempt to recall an extraordinary occasion or accomplishment, such as the birth of your first child, your wedding day, the time you achieved a significant goal, or the moment that you experienced your first _________ (insert any once-in-a-lifetime experience). It would likely be a meaningful event that, combined with the positive emotions you felt during or after, would prompt you to identify it as your “best” moment, one in which you almost certainly felt deeply grateful for whatever you experienced. You might even feel a sense of sadness as you look back and think that the best moment of your life is behind you, and you may never get to experience that again.
But wait—what if the best moment of your life isn’t dependent on external conditions or a one-time event? What if it’s actually something you have the ability to consciously choose rather than something that happens to you? Could it be that the best moments of our lives are determined by the depth of presence and gratitude that we allow ourselves to experience in and for the moment at hand, and thus, you can choose to experience quite literally any moment as the best moment of your life?
Yesterday, I played whiffle ball with my 10-year-old son in our backyard. As we played, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and thought to myself, This is the best moment of my life. And it was. This morning, as I did my Miracle Morning, I wrote down what I was grateful for and then spent 10 minutes meditating in a state of genuine, heartfelt gratitude. And I thought to myself, This is the best moment of my life. And it was.
The best moment of your life isn’t a competition between other moments. The best moment of your life exists in isolation and can be repeated and experienced as often as you want. It’s simply a matter of being fully present and deeply grateful for each moment, no matter what you are experiencing.
If acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to Inner Freedom, gratitude is the doorway to sustained happiness. You simply have to walk through it every day. Walking through it means spending time focusing on what you’re grateful for and hardwiring it into your nervous system, ideally first thing in the morning, last thing before you fall asleep, and as many times in between as possible. When we focus on what we’re grateful for, we feel good. We foster feelings of joy and happiness. You could even say that the amount of gratitude you allow yourself to consciously focus on and experience determines how you feel about your life. In practice, this can be done during your Scribing time by writing down what you’re grateful for, and during your period of purposeful Silence by using Emotional Optimization Meditation to deeply feel and hardwire gratitude so that it becomes one of your default states of consciousness.
Consider the ratio of time you spend complaining versus feeling grateful. Seriously, stop reading for a moment and consider the ratio. How much of your day is spent feeling deep, heartfelt gratitude for each moment, each life-giving breath, your loved ones, your safety, the roof over your head, the comfortable bed you get to sleep in, the food that gives you energy and enables you to sustain life? Versus how much of your day is spent feeling upset or complaining about things you don’t like, people you don’t like, or what you’re worried about happening in the future? Consider that gratitude and complaining cannot coexist simultaneously; you must choose the one that best serves you in any moment.
By using the 5 Minute Rule and “Can’t Change It” mantra to accept life exactly as it is, you’re able to foster a state of Inner Freedom, which allows you the space to choose the next state of consciousness that best serves you. Gratitude exists as both an emotion and a state of consciousness. It is the emotion we feel when we appreciate something. It is the state of consciousness we embody when we appreciate everything.
Is it possible to be genuinely grateful for (literally) everything?
Every moment . . . even the painful ones?
Every experience . . . even the difficult ones?
Every adversity . . . even the unfair ones?
In a recent interview, Michael J. Fox was sharing how difficult and nearly unbearable it has become to live with his ever-worsening Parkinson’s disease. “I recognize how hard this is for people, and I recognize how hard it is for me. But I have a certain set of skills that allow me to deal with this stuff, and I realize that with gratitude, optimism is sustainable. If you can find something to be grateful for, then you can find something to look forward to, and you carry on.”
It is often the most difficult or painful times in our life that provide us with the greatest opportunities to learn, grow, and evolve.
It is also often said that hindsight is 20/20, and most of us have had the experience of looking back at difficult times in our lives and feeling grateful for the lessons learned or the growth we experienced. So, with that awareness, why allow ourselves to suffer in the present and delay seeing the benefits that we will gain from the challenges we face? Why not be grateful for every moment as we’re experiencing it?
While gratitude (little g) can be a momentary “feeling” we have, usually due to some positive event or aspect of our lives, it becomes transformative when Gratitude (big G) becomes our state of consciousness—the lens through which we choose to experience each moment of our lives. I realized how crucial this distinction is when I faced another unimaginable life crisis.
At 37, I woke up in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe. My left lung had filled with fluid, and my heart and kidneys were failing. After many visits to different hospitals, late nights in the ER, having my lung drained seven times, and a lot of confusion from doctors, I finally made my way to MD Anderson Cancer Center, where I was diagnosed with an exceptionally rare and extremely aggressive form of cancer—acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Given a 20–30 percent survival rate, my odds of living more than a few weeks were grim. I had a wife, a seven-year-old daughter, and a four-year-old son at home, and being told that I had a 70–80 percent chance of dying was both terrifying and heartbreaking.
I dug deep and went back to the life lessons I had learned and used to overcome previous adversities. I told Ursula that I had decided there was a 100 percent chance that I would be among the 20–30 percent of those who beat this cancer, and I would maintain unwavering faith in that outcome every step of the way. I committed myself to fully accepting life exactly as it was and making peace with it, so that I could create the needed space to be genuinely grateful and maintain a positive and proactive mindset.
At the same time, I refused to complain or feel sorry for myself, and I made the conscious choice to be the most grateful I had ever been. I realized that I could choose to be genuinely grateful for each moment—including the difficult and painful ones. There is actual footage of this taking place, a scene in the Miracle Morning documentary where you see me uncontrollably bawling my eyes out. I had been in excruciating pain for 11 consecutive days after a nurse accidentally injected chemo into a nerve in my spine, which caused non-stop migraines. Despite being in unbearable pain, I say to the camera, “How hard this has been doesn’t change my overall outlook, which is that I’m grateful for all of this, because the more difficult life is, the greater the opportunity for us to learn, to grow, to become better than we’ve ever been before, and then go out and make a difference for others with what we’ve learned and who we’ve become.” When we consciously choose to be grateful in the midst of adversity, the adversity loses its power over us.
After enduring one of the most difficult time periods in my life, withstanding more than 650 hours of highly toxic and equally life-saving chemotherapy, combined with countless holistic protocols, I am grateful to say that I am now in remission and on a lifelong journey to remain healthy and free from cancer. In the end, despite the incredible hardships, the experience proved to be my greatest opportunity for growth—as a father, a husband, and a human being. And among the many invaluable lessons it taught me, one stands out:
Gratitude liberates us from suffering.
So, while focusing on what we’re grateful for in each moment fosters positive mental and emotional states, it is when we’re struggling and life is difficult that being in a state of Gratitude is even more consequential to our mental and emotional well-being. Gratitude is a universal lens through which we can interpret and experience every moment of our lives, including the most difficult, unpleasant, and painful ones.
Step C: Choose Your Optimal State of Consciousness
While emotional states are fleeting, states of consciousness are deeply rooted, ongoing, and present regardless of our changes in emotion. For example, Peace (often referred to as inner peace) is a state of consciousness. If you’ve elevated and conditioned your consciousness to live in a state of Peace, and a disturbing event upsets you, your state of consciousness doesn’t change. You may still experience challenging emotions, such as frustration, anger, or sadness, but they will be short-lived, as you’re able to quickly return to a state of Peace even amid tragedy, adversity, and uncertainty.
Similarly, if you’ve conditioned Gratitude as one of your default states of consciousness, then even when you’re facing difficult times in your life, you will naturally feel grateful for all that you have. On the other hand, if the state of consciousness you’re embodying is Fear, then you’ll experience any disturbing event while in a fearful state, thereby amplifying the inner turmoil that the event causes you. We naturally resist things we are afraid of. Remember that our resistance to reality is the source of our emotional pain and instability.
After basking in feelings of gratitude, you are free to choose how you want to experience this next moment. You may want to feel love, joy, peace, playfulness, confidence, or possibly even sadness if you feel that you need to grieve, or anger, if you feel you need to process something that upset you. The fundamental distinction is that you are consciously and thoughtfully choosing your optimal state rather than allowing outside forces to determine it for you.
Obviously, you won’t be perfect at embodying the Miracle Life immediately, but the goal isn’t to be perfect; it’s to make progress. Just like exercising in pursuit of your optimal physical state, it might take you months of daily practice before you get to where you want to be. By implementing your Miracle Mornings each day and incorporating the ABCs of the Miracle Life, you will develop the ability to choose your optimal state and enjoy spending each day in happiness and gratitude or whichever states you choose. I find it helpful to think of it like an ongoing game, where I get to choose my “prizes” (the elevated states of consciousness), and then I get to play the game every day to inch closer to the prizes.
Some days I feel like I’m “winning” when I successfully embody optimal states of consciousness and can effectively navigate adversity with grace and ease. Having practiced these tools for many years, I’m able to experience most of the day feeling at peace with anything that’s out of my control and genuinely grateful for each moment, despite any challenges that might arise.
On the days, or in those moments, when I struggle—when I fall back to lower levels of consciousness and experience mental and emotional turmoil—I simply see it as losing a round of the game, and the next day I wake up and start fresh to play a new round.
When you see elevating your consciousness as a game, you will certainly struggle at times, especially when you’re first learning how to play, but you can’t fail. Even if you lose rounds, as long as you keep playing, you will continuously learn, grow, and become better each time you play.
Through daily repetition, you’ll condition your optimal states of consciousness so that they become your default states of consciousness. The ultimate objective is to condition yourself to experience profound, all-encompassing states of inner peace, love, and gratitude, as well as unshakable confidence, motivation, and focus during each moment of your life.
I encourage you to use your Miracle Mornings to practice embodying the Miracle Life. As a Miracle Morning practitioner, you already have the framework (S.A.V.E.R.S.) to elevate your consciousness, so that you can be at peace with life exactly as it is, be genuinely grateful for each moment that you are alive, and consciously choose your optimal state of consciousness each day. And while all six of the S.A.V.E.R.S. can each uniquely serve as practices for integrating the Miracle Life (such as meditating while in an optimal state of consciousness or Scribing in your journal about what you want to accept and be at peace with), I want to keep this simple for you and focus on the one practice that I believe is most effective: affirmations.
I’ve created a relatively short (one printed page) set of affirmations that encapsulate the key lessons from this chapter so that you can remember and recite them daily and begin living your Miracle Life. You can also download and print the Miracle Life affirmations at MiracleMorning.com/resources.
The Miracle Life Affirmations
I am committed to elevating and conditioning my consciousness to a state of Inner Freedom so that I can choose how I experience each moment of my life. I’ve been blessed with one life, and I deserve to be genuinely at peace and happy. To do this, I will maintain the ABCs of the Miracle Life:
A: Accept Life Exactly As It Is
Now that I’m aware that emotional pain (aka inner turmoil) is self-created and perpetuated by my resistance to reality—focusing on things that are out of my control and wishing reality were different from what it is—I will accept life exactly as it is and choose to be at peace with all things that are out of my control. While I can’t always control what happens in my life, I am always free to choose how I experience each moment of my life.
To help me overcome my unconscious resistance and accept life exactly as it is, I will apply the 5 Minute Rule (setting a timer and giving myself five minutes to feel whatever emotions naturally arise within me). Then, when the timer goes off, I will simply say, “Can’t change it” to acknowledge and remind myself that, since I can’t go back in time and change whatever happened, my only logical choice is to accept and be at peace with what I can’t change so that I can experience Inner Freedom. Remember, acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to Inner Freedom.
Last, I will remember that being at peace with something doesn’t necessarily mean I’m happy about it. But thankfully, peace is a state of consciousness that is far more powerful and sustainable than any short-lived emotion. Peace is emotionally neutral, and from that state, I can choose to be happy, grateful, or any other state that serves me.
B: Be Grateful for Each Moment
Once I’ve chosen to accept reality exactly as it is, thereby allowing myself to experience the peace that is always available in a state of Inner Freedom, I am committed to moving beyond mere acceptance by choosing to be genuinely grateful for each moment.
I understand that gratitude is the lens through which I can choose to experience and enjoy every moment of my life— including the difficult ones. Even when I am enduring difficult times, I can choose to be grateful for the lessons and growth that will result from facing and overcoming my adversity with a positive mindset, enabling me to become a better, more capable version of myself.
I recognize that every moment exists in a state of inherent perfection, and I get to choose how I experience each moment. I realize that my life is the present moment, so I choose to allow myself to feel genuine, heartfelt gratitude for each moment. Remember, gratitude is the doorway to happiness.
C: Choose My Optimal State of Consciousness
While emotions are often spontaneous and short-lived, states of consciousness are underlying ways of experiencing life. Dwelling on negative states such as guilt, shame, fear, or anger causes me to suffer unnecessarily and miss out on states like love, happiness, peace, gratitude, and joy.
The default state I choose is Inner Freedom because it enables me to be at peace with what I can’t change so that I can choose how I experience each moment that I am alive. No matter what happens, even when my circumstances are difficult or painful, I choose to be at peace and grateful so that I can enjoy this one life I’ve been blessed to live. This is my Miracle Life.
Elevating your consciousness is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing process that is accomplished through consistent conditioning, like increasing your physical strength is accomplished through consistent exercise. I highly encourage you to begin by reading these affirmations every day for the remainder of your 30-day Journey, then continue for as long as it takes to condition your consciousness so that Inner Freedom becomes your default state.
While you can read/recite these affirmations during your Miracle Morning to help you start your day in an optimal state of consciousness, you might also find it beneficial to reread them during your Miracle Evening to remind yourself that you have the ability to accept life exactly as it is, be grateful for each moment, and choose your optimal state of consciousness as you prepare to fall asleep.
I’d also like to leave you with a handful of my favorite books that I’ve found to be the most helpful when it comes to continuing to learn how to elevate our consciousness, so that you can add them to your reading list. Here are a few of my favorites (which I initially read during my Miracle Morning and continue to reread my underlined text at night, before bed, to help me feel peaceful as I fall asleep):
•The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered by Michael Singer
•Loving What Is by Byron Katie
•Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
•The Inner Work by Mathew Micheletti and Ashley Cottrell
•Awareness by Anthony De Mello
Final Thoughts on the Miracle Life
The Miracle Life is available to all of us but is only lived by those who are willing to accept life exactly as it is, be grateful in each moment, and consciously choose their optimal state of consciousness.
I know firsthand how difficult and painful circumstances can be. I also know that we can choose how we interpret and experience each moment. We can be at peace and even be the happiest and most grateful we have ever been—while we endure the most difficult time in our life. If we do not allow ourselves to experience peace and gratitude now, what makes us think the future will be any different?
No matter what life throws at you, you can choose how you experience every moment that you are alive. You can choose to be at peace. You choose to be grateful. You can choose to be happy. You can choose to enjoy every moment of this one life you’ve been blessed to live. You can choose to live the Miracle Life.