Book Review: The Miracle Morning
This post was originally published on 3/9/22 and updated on 2/16/24 for my Greatest Hits blog series.
TL;DR;
Have you ever read a book that legitimately changed your life? So often I read a book (especially in the Personal Development genre) and its messages quickly turn hazy and I oftentimes cannot recall much from the book a few months later. I try hard to take notes and make action plans these days when I read a good book, but I did not always do this. Instead, I would get very excited for some of the new ideas and then promptly forget them. Not very productive, I must say.
A few years ago, when I started reading more Personal Development books, I found a book called “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. To this day, I still have no recollection on how I found this book or what called me to read it. I may have watched a YouTube video that mentioned it, or maybe I googled “how to be productive” as I was a fairly new mom and needed to find about 15 more hours in my day.
Either way, I found this book during a time when my morning routine was non-existent. My husband would get up at 5:00am to get to his job by 5:30am. This would cause me to wake up for a few minutes but then go back to sleep for a completely useless hour or so. Then I would get up, scramble to get my kids and myself ready, and off we would go to daycare and work.
I knew I needed to revamp my morning, and even to start using that time better in between when my husband awoke and when I needed to get the kids up. I read this book and my mornings were never the same.
In the book, Hal discusses one of the hardest days of his life. He was returning home with his girlfriend from an awards ceremony for his employer where he had received awards and acknowledgement for his great work. He was flying high and feeling amazing when a drunk driver came down the one-way freeway road from the opposite direction and hit him head on. His car was destroyed along with his body. He was declared clinically dead but was revived and spent six day in a coma. He had to learn to walk all over again and find his way back to happy. He made the decision to stop asking “Why did this happen to me?” Instead of complaining about how life SHOULD be, he embraced how things were and took life on from there.
He reached new levels of success at work and started speaking to groups and became a life and business coach. However, when the economy crashed, his business did also. He had to learn to start all over again in a new way, and the catalyst for him coming out of his depression and taking control of his life (again) was his friend asking “Are you exercising?”
From that one question, he realized he was not doing the things he needed to do to become the person he wanted to be. This developed into his idea of The Miracle Morning, where he would set aside time in the early morning to do the routine he needed to do in order to improve himself. He realized he needed to set aside time each day to work on becoming the person he wanted to be to reach a Level 10 in all areas of his life.
To accomplish this, he wrote down the most impactful personal development activities and decided to do them every day. The activities were meditation, affirmations, journaling, visualization, reading and exercise. He knew the only time he had available in his schedule to do these activities was in the morning, so he started getting up earlier in the morning to dedicate 10 minutes to each of the six routines. The night before his first Miracle Morning, he said he felt like it was Christmas and he was so excited to be getting up early and tackling these new activities.
Something even more amazing occurred when he realized after that first Miracle Morning that he wanted to get up even earlier, so he started getting up at 4:00am just to dedicate time to himself and his personal growth.
In his book, Hal outlines a few ways to “snooze-proof” your wake up strategy. Here are his five steps to getting up earlier without hitting that snooze button:
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Intention Setting Before Bed
Before you go to bed, think positive thoughts about what you are going to do when you get up in the morning and set a positive intention about your routine.
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Put Your Alarm Clock Out of Reach
Make sure you alarm is out of reach so you need to physically get up to turn it off. This will prevent you from snoozing your alarm and since you’re already up, might as well stay up!
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Brush Teeth
Brushing your teeth will send the signal that you are up and ready for the day.
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Drink a Glass of Water
After sleeping for so many hours without water, you’ll need to hydrate your body. You may want to have it ready for right when you wake up to help you jump-start your day.
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Get Dressed or Take a Shower
If you’re planning to work out during your Miracle Morning, you may want to wait on the shower and just get your workout clothes on.
The purpose of these tips are to make sure that once you are up, you are up and don’t need to hit the snooze button to get in another 9 sad, unproductive minutes of sleep.
So, now that you’re up, what exactly do you do during this extra morning time?
Hal’s Miracle Morning is made up of six activities that he has abbreviated as the SAVERS. The SAVERS stands for:
Silence
Affirmations
Visualization
Exercise
Reading
Scribing
Silence
The Silence activity is to prepare your mindset for the day ahead and to be fully present before you start your day and everyone else pulls you in a million different directions. This time can be used to meditate or to sit in prayer. You can also use it to for reflection or just deep-breathing. However you use it, the goal is to spend some quiet time with your mind so that you are refreshed for the day.
Affirmations
Self-talk is something we can all do better at and during your Miracle Morning is a good time to make sure you start your day with positive words for yourself. Affirmations can be difficult to create and recite since you may feel like you’re being fake, but they are important. Get clear on who you want to be and what you really want and turn these into statements you can recite to yourself. Hal suggests you add inspirational quotes to these and to also read them out loud while standing tall or making fists to harness the mind and body connection.
Visualization
Visualization is the mental-rehearsal of a goal or something that you want to be or accomplish. Many athletes and successful people use this technique to imagine themselves accomplishing their goals. Instead of thinking about and replaying your past, our thoughts should focus on our future. Hal’s suggestion for this SAVER activity is immediately following his affirmations, he visualizes himself living his perfect day, doing everything he needs to accomplish and enjoying the process. He recommends breathing deeply and turning on some inspirational music. Then, you visualize what you truly want (the bigger the better). Any goals, desires, and big dreams should be detailed in your mind. You can visualize all the steps of your day, and then visualize your future.
Finally, after you have visualized what you want, Hal suggests you begin to visualize yourself living in alignment with these desires and being the person you need to become to achieve them. See yourself enjoying the process and completing the smaller tasks to your bigger goal. If you can start with just five minutes, this tactic can change your progress.
As a bonus, Hal recommends creating a vision board to use during your visualization activity. You can look at this vision board (or more importantly, an action board) during your SAVERS to help you focus on what you want to achieve.
Exercise
This SAVER is my second favorite morning activity (reading is number one, of course). Exercising even just a few minutes every morning gives you a boost of energy and improves your self-confidence and concentration. Getting physical exercise in during your morning routine is very important instead of leaving it until later in the day when you likely to skip it. There are so many options for exercise, from yoga to walking to HIIT or even just a gentle stretch. Just a few minutes can leave you feeling more awake and ready to face the day.
Reading
The fifth activity is Reading, and this is my absolute favorite activity in the SAVERS. I would read all day if I could, so giving myself “permission” to read every morning is a wonderful way to start my day. Hal describes the importance in learning from experts that have already accomplished what you want to accomplish, and we can do that through reading. Hal recommends at least 10 pages per day, which could end up being around 18 books in one year. Imagine what you could learn to do in 18 books a year. You could read Personal Development books, How-To books, or even religious texts. Anything that will improve your life and help you on your way to the life you want to live.
Scribing
Hal chose “scribing” as another word for “writing” since it fit well with the acronym. For Hal’s Miracle Morning, he spends 5-10 minutes journaling. He uses this as an opportunity to document his successes, lessons learned, and any other personal growth he is working on. He also likes to review his journal entries at the end of the year to track his progress and remind himself of his accomplishments. The benefits of journaling he lists include: Gaining clarity, capturing ideas, reviewing lessons, and acknowledging your progress.
Hal suggests first deciding whether you want to go with a digital or traditional (paper) format for your journal. Once you’ve decided on the format, you can purchase a journal (either using an app or buying a nice physical journal). Hal recommends a dated journal so you’re inspired to make an entry every day. Finally, you need to decide what to write. You can write about your dreams and goals, what you are grateful for, your accomplishments, anything you want to track. Even just a simple few sentences about your day would help you to keep the writing habit. One final suggestion from Hal is that if your goal is to write a book, this “scribing” activity in the morning is the perfect time to work on that goal.
These six activities will change your morning and change your life. When I first started doing the SAVERS, my Miracle Morning was over an hour long due to my 30+ minutes of exercise. However, there have been some seasons of my life where I absolutely could not fit in all of the SAVERS in the morning and I found myself sometimes doing my affirmations and visualizations in the school parking lot after dropping off my kids. Hal understands this can happen, and in his book he gives tips on how to achieve the SAVERS in only six minutes!
Six Minutes of SAVERS
In minute one, you spend one minute in silence breathing deeply and meditating, or spending one minute in quiet prayer. You keep present and relax your body.
In the second minute, you get out your Affirmations and read them out loud.
For the third minute, you close your eyes or look over your vision board, and visualize your desires. Think about your day going well and about accomplishing the tasks that will lead you to your goals and dreams.
Then, for the fourth minute, you write down things that you are grateful for and what you are proud of, and even what you want to accomplish that day.
For the next minute, minute five, you grab your current personal development book and read for one minute. One minute is enough time to learn something new which can improve your day.
Finally, for the last and sixth minute, you get in some movement. This could be some pushups or jumping jacks. These movements will get your energy up and you will be focused and ready for the day.
In a society where we are all so busy and trying to squeeze in just one more thing, it can seem overwhelming to think we need to fit in a new morning routine for a full hour in the morning. I like having this 6-minute option available to me whenever time is tight.
The rest of the Miracle Morning book focuses on taking the SAVERS activities and customizing the routine to fit your lifestyle. I have definitely tweaked some of Hal’s ideas and made the Miracle Morning my own. In my next blog post, I will describe how I have customized each of the six SAVERS and what my Miracle Mornings look like. My Miracle Morning routine has evolved through the years and hopefully I can help you find your perfect routine as well.
Finally, Hal suggests that we try the Miracle Morning process for 30 days in order to form a habit. He describes the first 10 days as the “Unbearable” phase where the newness starts to wear off and reality sets in that this will be hard. Then, days 11-20 bring the “Uncomfortable” phase, where we are still tempted to fall back to our old behaviors but you’re starting to see the benefits. Finally, in days 21-30 you will hit the “Unstoppable” phase, where you now see this as a positive habit and the transformation has occurred.
I highly recommend you get this book and start reading it today. I reread this book to support my writing this blog post, and I become inspired all over again to revamp my Miracle Morning routine and to set even higher goals. I have found this book in my library and also for purchase online. Don’t wait, it’s a must read for anyone wanting to take their life to the next level.
I’d love to hear from you! Do you have a morning routine? What are your morning activities? Please comment below and let me know if you’ve read Hal’s book!
