The Miracle Morning

Overview

Hal Elrod describes a morning routine of six practices, which he calls SAVERS, to be done before the working day begins. He tells two stories from his own life: a car crash at twenty that nearly killed him, and a period of debt and depression during the 2008 financial crisis, which is when he worked out the routine. The book's claims about early rising rest mostly on his experience and readers' reports, not on research.

In brief

The argument for the first hour

Elrod's case is simple. Most people want a better life but spend no regular time working on themselves, because the day fills with work, family and the phone. The early morning is the one slot that nobody else has claimed yet. If you wake an hour before you need to and spend it on your own growth, the most useful work is done before the day's demands begin.

He leans on an idea from the speaker Jim Rohn, that your success rarely rises above your level of personal development. In other words, results in your career, money and relationships follow from the kind of person you are becoming, so that is where the effort should go.

Elrod also looks at how we usually wake up. We press the snooze button, which he sees as starting the day by resisting it. The habit of delaying, repeated every morning, leaks into how we treat everything else.

Where the routine came from

The book is built on two low points in the author's life. At twenty he was in a serious car crash. His heart stopped for several minutes, he spent days in a coma, and doctors warned he might never walk again. He recovered and went on to a successful sales career.

The second fall came with the financial crisis of 2008. His business lost much of its income, he fell into debt and he became depressed. A friend told him to go for a run and listen to something uplifting. On that run he heard the Jim Rohn idea mentioned above, and he decided to study what successful people did for self-improvement. He found a handful of practices that kept coming up. Unable to choose one, he decided to do all of them every morning before work. He says his income and mood recovered within months, and he began teaching the routine to his coaching clients.

The six practices

Elrod arranges the practices under the word SAVERS. Silence comes first: a few minutes of meditation, prayer or quiet breathing, so that the day starts calm. Affirmations are written statements of what you want, why you want it, and what you commit to doing, read aloud daily. Visualisation is picturing both the result and yourself doing the work needed to reach it.

Exercise is next, and it can be short. Even a few minutes of movement wakes the body and clears the head. Reading means about ten pages of a book that teaches you something, which adds up to many books in a year. Scribing is his word for writing, chosen because he needed an S. It is a journal where you note what you are grateful for, what you did and what you learned.

The order is flexible and so is the length. Elrod suggests an hour in total but lets you divide it as you like.

Getting out of bed

A routine is useless if you sleep through it, so the book gives a wake-up method in five steps. Decide before sleeping how you want to feel in the morning, since your last thought at night tends to be your first on waking. Keep the alarm far from the bed so that you must stand up to stop it. Brush your teeth straight away. Drink a full glass of water. Then put on exercise clothes.

Each step is small, and each makes going back to bed less tempting. By the time you have crossed the room and rinsed your mouth, the worst of the sleepiness has passed.

Readers who already rise early for the dawn prayer have solved the hardest part. For them the change is staying awake afterward and using that quiet time with a plan, instead of returning to bed or picking up the phone.

Short versions and the first thirty days

For mornings when an hour is impossible, Elrod offers a six-minute version with one minute for each practice. You sit in silence, read your affirmations, picture the day going well, do some jumping jacks or stretches, read a page, and write a few lines in a journal. His reasoning is that keeping the habit alive matters more than doing it perfectly.

He describes habit change in three phases of about ten days each. The first phase feels unbearable, because the novelty has gone and the body protests. The second is uncomfortable but easier. In the third the habit starts to feel like part of you. Most people quit in the first phase and conclude that they are not morning people.

To get through it he recommends an accountability partner, someone who is doing the routine too and will message you if you miss a day. He also asks you to rate each area of your life out of ten, so you can decide what the morning hour should serve.

Try this week

1. Tonight, put your alarm on the other side of the room and place a glass of water next to it.
2. Try the six-minute version for five mornings before you attempt a full hour.
3. Write a short affirmation that states one goal, why it matters and what you will do daily, and read it aloud each morning.
4. Ask one friend to follow the routine with you and message each other by a fixed time every morning.

"Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become."

— Jim Rohn, quoted in the book

If you liked this

The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma for the ceremonial version of the same idea. The Power of Habit if you want the behavioural science.