From Ordinary to Extraordinary
A little less than a year ago, I was having something of a difficult life. I had just recently lost my mother and had become the administrator of her estate, and my brother was not happy about it. What was already a pretty stressful time became even more so when he vehemently opposed everything I did. He objected to my appointment as administrator. He refused to vacate the home, making it very difficult to sell the house, even though the only other option was foreclosure. He told anyone who would listen what a terrible person I was and when I went to visit the property he refused to let me in and called the police, claiming that I was hostile towards him. With the police present, he proceeded to publicly and loudly spew curses at me in the front yard, going so far as to call me the devil and saying that mom’s passing was my fault.
Around the same time, my ex-wife aka the mother of three of my children assaulted my fifteen year old son. Being concerned for the safety of my children, I immediately stopped her bi-monthly visits and filed court paperwork. In retaliation, she called the Department of Children and Family Services and made all manner of false accusations against me and my wife. As a result, I was visited by a social worker the same day I returned home from hearing my brother’s verbal tirade. Needless to say, it was a rough day.
The night yielded no peace. I tossed and turned for much of the night, unable to rest. The next morning, my wife saw how agitated I was and proceeded to tell me about Hal Elrod. My friends and followers of this blog pretty much know the story from that point. I read his book The Miracle Morning and adopted his five minute rule, namely not allowing any situation, no matter how negative have more than five minutes of my time. I took things a step further and implemented the Miracle Morning into my day, and I can honestly say that things have never been the same for me. I have never had another bad day and I am actively improving my life in leaps and bounds.
How did I do it? How did I take one of the worst days of life and use it as a springboard to improve my life in leaps and bounds?
Well, much of it has to do with daily implementation of what the Miracle Morning calls the Life SAVERS. These are six simple things that many successful people do every morning. It may sound a little cheesy, but for me these things work and are essential to my life.
Each letter in SAVERS refers to one of six actions:
S – Silence. Every morning I take time to meditate and pray. I have a certain area of my house dedicated to just that. I sit quietly and talk to God, not asking him for things like some kind of spiritual Santa Claus, but instead thanking him for already blessing me with everything I need to excel in the coming day. Then I just sit, quiet my mind, and enjoy the peacefulness. I’ll admit that when I first started doing this, it was pretty hard for me to quiet my mind. I had to constantly make myself stop thinking about issues and problems and everything else. But with time I got to a place where I could tell myself to just stop and enjoy the silence. Again, it might sound hokey, but this actually works, so much so that I now also take the time to do it every night before I go to bed.
A – Affirmations. This one was a little hard for me to get into as well. I just felt silly standing in front of a mirror talking to myself. What I have found works best for me is doing written affirmations. In the morning, once I’m done with my meditation, I go to the computer and begin writing an affirmation for the day. Everyday I write something different, because for me it keeps things fresh and keeps me from just blindly repeating the same thing over and over again. Also, writing them down helps me see how much I’m progressing, and also brings things to light that I would have otherwise missed.
V – Visualization. Being a person who connects more with writing than any other medium, I also elected to daily write down my visions. Again, I can see them progress with each passing day. The first vision I wrote was pretty simple; I just wanted to be a writer. Now my visions are more along the lines of publishing multiple books and having a successful and well-read blog that I add to weekly. Trust me, once you make your visions something tangible that you can see, you will begin to make those things happen both consciously and subconsciously.
E – Exercise. This is actually my favorite part of the Miracle Morning. I wouldn’t call it a full-fledged workout, but I do spend ten minutes or so doing light exercises. Jogging in place, jumping jacks, push-ups, and sit-ups are a regular part of my regime, and they do a great job of getting my blood flowing without tiring me out too much before work.
R – Reading. I spend at least ten minutes every morning reading a book that will help me focus my mindset and prepare me for taking on the day. My favorites so far have been The Miracle Morning, T. Harv Ekers’ Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, and Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule. Just by doing this, I average reading a book a month, nowhere near the sixty books a year the highly successful claim to read, but much better than the zero books a year I was previously reading.
S – Scribing. I end my Miracle Morning with another ten minutes of writing, usually in the form of journaling, blog writing, or working on the book I am going to publish this year. I would strongly suggest keeping a journal, if for no other reason than to keep track of all the things you learn during your reading time, and also to capture the moments of enlightenment that will no doubt come as a result of doing these things every morning.
And that’s it. That’s how I went from being a mostly miserable person trudging through life to becoming an overwhelmingly positive person who realizes that I can make any dream or wish I have ever had come true. Yes, it really is that simple. If you can change your mindset, if you can change the way you see things, you can change your life. Every day your eyes open is another day of hope, another opportunity to begin creating the life you dream about, the life you’ve always wanted.
Make today the day you start tapping into the potential that exists inside of you. Make today the day you decide to go from ordinary to extraordinary.
