Hal Elrod

“My eye sockets were broken,” he said.

Everything broke.

Eleven bones. His arms. His femur.

Everything.

“I was clinically dead for six minutes.”

“I was hit head-on at 70 mph by a drunk driver,” Hal Elrod said.

The doctors told him “You’ll never walk again.”

He was 20 years old.

His dad said, “It’s ok to be scared, son.”

Hal saw two possibilities:

I’ll never walk again.

Or the doctors are wrong.

That’s the first lesson I learned from Hal about “The Miracle Equation,” his new book that teaches you how to have more authority over your own life.

LESSON 1: DECIDE THERE ARE OTHER POSSIBILITIES

Hal told his dad, “Dad, the way I see it is this: there’s only two possibilities. Number one the doctors are right and I will never walk again. I’ve now accepted the worst case scenario. It has no power over me. I don’t even think about it.’ I said, ‘Dad, now all of my energy is available to focus not on what I’m afraid of, but on what I want in my life.”

LESSON 2: PICK THE MOST FAVORABLE OUTCOME

A week later, Hal took his first step.

Then he got cancer. He had a 30% survival rate.

“I had the fear of dying at least once a day,” he said. “But James here’s the thing, most of us have a seed of fear planted in our mind. And then we water it by focussing on it. And it expands. It’s the old adage, ‘What we focus on expands.’”

Hal gave himself five minutes to be upset.

That’s it.

Then he grabbed a journal and asked himself, “How am I going to beat this cancer and live a long healthy life with my family?”

He got the answer 15 minutes later.

“I decided I’d consume my mind with faith instead of fear,” he said.

“Ok, but what does that mean?”

It sounded too mystical.

“I make it practical,” he said. “Not woo woo.”

He gave me the steps:

1. FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT
Hal had one of the most intensive chemo regimens in the world.

He had 100 hours of chemo.

Nonstop.

Every three weeks. For eight months.

“Did it hurt?”

“No, actually, you don’t feel it at all,” he said. “However, it hits you days later. So what happens is, you get chemo, you feel fine. And then all of a sudden it hits you like a truck. First, it’s fatigue. You’re out of breath walking from the bed to the bathroom.”

It was bad.

“I went from 165 pounds to 127 pounds,” he said. “I lost 25% of my body weight. And I’m 6 foot.”

He had a million reasons to be afraid.

But he didn’t give in.

He told me step one of “The Miracle Equation.”

“Replace fear with faith.”

“How do you make faith practical?” he said. “You put it in writing. And you read it every day so that it overrides your fear. The more you read it, the more you feel it and believe it. The fear just becomes a distant memory.”

That’s step 1: Write what you WANT.

Hal wanted to not die.

He wanted to be with his family. And support them. Watch his kids grow up, etc.

So that’s what he wrote.

It said:

“I am committed to living to being 100+ years old with my wife and children no matter what. There is no other option.”

Step 2: Read it every time you feel scared. Read it over and over again.

Let’s say you’re scared of getting fired. Write down what you want to happen. (Or write down what you don’t want to happen and reverse it.)

Step 3: Then take action.

“Without the process, there is no outcome,” Hal said. “If you make a vision board and just magically wait for shit to happen, well, there’s no process there. You actually need the process.”

Hal gave me an example from when he worked in sales.

He was making 100K a year. And wanted to double his income.

Not for the money. He just wanted the challenge.

So he went through the steps: he wrote down what he wanted, read it over and over again. Then he built the process.

“I saw, on average, I made 20 sales calls a day.”

If he wanted double his income, he’d have to double his effort.

“40 calls a day? I can do that,” he said.

He made 200K that year.

But when Hal got cancer, he couldn’t just say “I’m going to double my health.”

Or could he…

“I told this to my wife. This was a huge Ah-ha for me. I said, ‘Sweetheart! I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to research every holistic practice available to me as if I weren’t doing chemo. I’m going to detox from the chemo. I’ll detox my liver. My kidneys. I’m going to build up my immune system.”

He took 70 supplements a day, went on juice cleanses, did ozone saunas to hyper oxygenate his cells and more.

“Did you see results?”

“Well, here’s the thing. I don’t know,” he said. “I did everything. I looked at risk–reward. Chemo was the worst of it. But with all the natural stuff, I thought, ‘Could this work? Maybe. Does it work? I don’t know. Does it hurt me? No. Then I’m gonna take it… It’s my life.’”

That line stuck with me.

“It’s my life.”

He meant it. He really cherishes his life. And knows that it’s his.

A lot of people don’t know that. So they let other people take control of their dreams and future.

We forget we’re going to die.

We forget we’re alive.

OR we brush it off. I always say, “I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. No one knows.”

As if I’m destined to live half my life.

But now Hal is making me wonder…

Can I die at the end of my life?

Links & Resrouces:

• Read Hal’s new book, “The Miracle Equation: The Two Decisions That Move Your Biggest Goals from Possible, to Probable, to Inevitable“
• Also read “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod
• And his book “The Miracle Morning for Writers” (I wrote the forward!)
• Check out Hal’s courses and podcast at halelrod.com
• Follow Hal on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
• Follow The Miracle Morning on Instagram
• Join The Miracle Morning Facebook group