The Miracle Morning (15 page)

That’s the beauty of incorporating exercise into your
Miracle Morning
; it happens before your day wears you out, before you have a chance to get too tired, before you have an entire day to come up with new excuses for avoiding exercise.
The Miracle Morning
is really a surefire way to avoid all of those excuses, and to make exercise a daily habit. (More on the easy way to implement positive habits into your life, like exercise, in
Chapter 9:  From Unbearable To Unstoppable – The Real Secret To Forming Habits That Will Transform Your Life (In 30 Days)
which will enhance your quality of life for years to come.)

Legal disclaimer: 
Hopefully this goes without saying, but you should consult your doctor or physician before beginning any exercise regimen, especially if you are experiencing any physical pain, discomfort, disabilities, etc. You may need to modify or even refrain from your exercise routine to meet your individual needs.

Life S.A.V.E.
R
.S.

R is for Reading

A person who won’t read has no advantage
over one who can’t read.
—MARK TWAIN

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body and
prayer is to the soul. We become the books we read.
—MATTHEW KELLY

R
eading, the fifth practice in the
Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
, is the fast track to transforming any area of your life. It is one of the most immediate methods for acquiring the knowledge, ideas, and strategies you need to achieve
Level 10
success in any area of your life.

The key is to learn from the experts—those who have already done what you want to do. Don’t reinvent the wheel. The fastest way to achieve everything you want is to
model
successful people who have already achieved it. With an almost infinite amount of books available on every topic, there are no limits to the knowledge you can gain through daily reading.

I recently heard someone say in a mocking,
I’m too cool for this
tone, “Uh, yeah, I don’t read ‘self-help’ books,” as if such books were beneath him. Poor guy. I’m not sure if it’s his ego or just lack of awareness, but he’s missing out on the unlimited supply of knowledge, boundless growth and life changing ideas he could gain from some of the most brilliant, successful individuals in the world. Who in their right mind would choose
not
to do that?

Whatever you want for your life, there are countless books on how to get it. Want to become wealthy, rich, a multi-millionaire? There are plenty of books written by those who have achieved the pinnacles of financial success which will teach you how. Here are a few of my favorites: 

§
 
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

§
 
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

§
 
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Want to create an incredible, loving, supportive and romantic relationship? There are probably more books on how to do exactly that than you could read in a decade. Here are a few of my favorites: 

§
 
The Five Love Languages by Gary D. Chapman

§
 
The SoulMate Experience by Jo Dunn

§
 
The Seven Principles For Making a Marriage Work by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver

Whether you’d like to transform your relationships, increase your self-confidence, improve your communication or persuasion skills, learn how to become wealthy, or improve any area of your life, head to your local bookstore—or do what I do and head to
Amazon.com
—and you’ll find a plethora of books on any area of your life you want to improve. For those who want to minimize our carbon footprint or save money, I also recommend utilizing your local library or checking out one of my favorite websites,
www.paperbackswap.com
.

For a complete list of my favorite personal development books—including those that have made the biggest impact on my success and happiness—check out the
Recommended Reading
list located at
www.TMMbook.com
.

How Much Should You Read?

I recommend making a commitment to read a minimum of 10 pages per day (although five is okay to start with, if you read slowly or don’t
yet
enjoy reading). Let’s do some math on this for a second:  reading 10 pages read per day is not going to break you, but it will
make
you. We’re only talking 10-15 minutes of reading, or 15-30 minutes if you read more slowly.

Look at it this way. If you quantify that, reading just 10 pages a day will average 3,650 pages a year, which equates to approximately eighteen 200-page personal development/self-improvement books!  Let me ask you, if you read 18 personal development books in the next 12 months, do you think you will be more knowledgeable, capable and confident—a new & improved
you
? Absolutely! 

Final Thoughts On Reading

§
 
Begin with the end in mind. Before you begin reading each day, ask yourself why you are reading that book—what do you want to gain from it—and keep that outcome in mind. Take a moment to do this now by asking yourself what you want to gain from reading this book. Are you committed to finishing it? More importantly, are you committed to implementing what you’re learning and taking action, by following through with The Miracle Morning 30-Day Life Transformation Challenge at the end?

§
 
Many Miracle Morning practitioners use their Reading time to catch up on their religious texts, such as the Bible, Torah, or any other.

§
 
Hopefully you took the advice I gave and you’ve been underlining, circling, highlighting, folding the corners of pages, and taking notes in the margins of this book. To get the most out of any book I read and make it easy for me to revisit the content again in the future, I underline or circle anything that I may want to re-visit, and make notes in the margins to remind me why I underlined that particular section. (Unless, of course, it’s a library book). This process of marking books as I read allows me to come back at anytime and recapture all of the key lessons, ideas, and benefits without needing to read the book again, cover to cover.

§
 
I highly recommend re-reading good personal development books. Rarely can we read a book once and internalize all of the value from that book. Achieving mastery in any area requires repetition—being exposed to certain ideas, strategies, or techniques over and over again, until they become engrained in your subconscious mind. For example, if you wanted to master karate, you wouldn’t learn the techniques once and then think, “I got this.” No, you’d learn the techniques, practice them, then go back to your sensei and learn them again, and repeat the process hundreds of times in order to master a single technique. Mastering techniques to improve your life works the same way. There is more value in re-reading a book you already know has strategies that can improve your life than there is in reading a new book before you’ve mastered the strategies in the first. Whenever I’m reading a book that I see can really make an impact on an area of my life, I commit to re-reading that book (or at least re-reading the parts I’ve underlined, circled and highlighted) as soon as I’m finished going through it the first time. I actually keep a special space on my bookshelf for the books that I want to re-read. I’ve read books like Think and Grow Rich as many as three times, and often refer back to them throughout the year. Re-reading requires discipline, because it is typically more “fun” to read a book you’ve never read before. Repetition can be boring or tedious (which is why so few people ever “master” anything), but that’s even more reason why we should do it—to develop a higher level of self-discipline. Why not try it out with this book?  Commit to re-reading it as soon as you’re finished, to deepen your learning and give yourself more time to master The Miracle Morning.

Life S.A.V.E.R.
S
.

S is for Scribing

Whatever it is that you write, putting words on the page
is a form of therapy that doesn’t cost a dime.
—DIANA RAAB

Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The
problem with making mental notes is that the ink
fades very rapidly.
—ROLF SMITH

S
cribing is the final practice in the
Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
and is really just another word for
writing
, but please allow me to keep it real—I needed an ‘S’ for the end of
Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
because a ‘W’ wouldn’t fit anywhere. Thanks Thesaurus
TM
, I owe you one.

Journaling

My favorite form of Scribing is journaling, which I do for 5-10 minutes during my
Miracle Morning
. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them in writing, you gain valuable insights you’d otherwise never see. The Scribing element of your
Miracle Morning
enables you to document your insights, ideas, breakthroughs, realizations, successes, and lessons learned, as well as any areas of opportunity, personal growth, or improvement.

While I had known about the profound benefits of journaling for years—and I had even tried it a few times—I never stuck with it consistently, because it was never part of my daily routine. Usually, I kept a journal by my bed, and when I’d get home late at night, nine times out of ten I would find myself making the excuse that I was too tired to write in it. My journals stayed mostly blank. Even though I already had many mostly blank journals sitting on my bookshelf, every so often I would buy myself a brand new journal—a more expensive one—convincing myself that if I spent a lot of money on it, I would surely write in it. Seems like a decent theory, right?  Unfortunately, my little strategy never worked, and for years I just accumulated more and more increasingly expensive, yet equally empty journals.

That was before
The Miracle Morning
. From day one,
The Miracle Morning
gave me the time and structure to write in my journal
every day
, and it quickly became one of my favorite habits. I can tell you now that journaling has become one of the most gratifying and fulfilling practices of my life. Not only do I derive the daily benefits of consciously directing my thoughts and putting them in writing, but even more powerful are those I have gained from reviewing my journals, from cover to cover, afterwards—especially, at the end of the year. It is hard to put into words how overwhelmingly constructive the experience of going back and reviewing your journals can be, but I’ll do my best.

My First Journal Re-view

On December 31
^st
, after my first year doing
The Miracle Morning
and writing in my journal, I began reading the first page I had written that year. Day by day, I started to review and
relive
my entire year. I was able to revisit my mindset from each day, and gain a new perspective as to how much I had grown throughout the year. I reexamined my actions, activities, and progress, giving me a new appreciation for how much I had accomplished during the past 12 months. Most importantly, I recaptured the lessons I had learned, many of which I had forgotten over the course of the year.

Gratitude 2.0
– I also experienced a much deeper quality of gratitude—in a way that I had never experienced before—on two different levels, simultaneously. It was what I now refer to as my first
Back to the Future
moment. Try to follow me here (and feel free to picture me as Marty McFly stepping out of a 1985 DeLorean). As I read through my journal, my current self (which was also the
future
self of who I was at the time I wrote those journal entries) was now looking back at all of the people, experiences, lessons, and accomplishments that I took note of being grateful for throughout the year. As I was in that moment reliving the gratitude that I felt in the past, I was simultaneously feeling grateful in the present moment for how far I had come since that time in my life. It was a remarkable experience, and a bit surreal.

Accelerated Growth
– Then, I began to tap into the highest point of value I would gain from reviewing my journals. I pulled out a sheet of blank paper, drew a line down the middle, and wrote two headings at the top: 
Lessons Learned
and
New Commitments
. As I read through my hundreds of my journal entries, I found myself recapturing dozens of valuable lessons.

This process of recapturing
Lessons Learned
and making
New Commitments
to implement those lessons aided my personal growth and development more than almost anything else.

While there are many worthwhile benefits of keeping a daily journal, a few of which I’ve just described, here are a few more of my favorites: 

§
 
Gain Clarity
– The process of writing something down forces us to think through it enough to understand it. Journaling will give you more clarity, allow you to brainstorm, and help you work through problems.

§
 
Capture Ideas
– Journaling helps you not only expand your ideas, but also prevents you from losing the important ideas that you may want to act on in the future.