The Miracle Morning – The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life Before 8am
The author of this book, Hal Elrod, has an amazing story. He took a crisis level event that would have devastated most people and created an amazing life using his Miracle Morning routine.
These rituals are essentially a system of daily practices to optimize one’s life.
Success is what we repeatedly do.
Success is what we make time to do.
Successful people have successful systems.
Hal looked at best practices of top performers to create something simple, yet sustainable, and powerfully effective.
I am a systems guy. If there is something that I nerd out on in life, it is creating and refining an effective system. I’m fun, I know.
I am not going to go deep into the actual practices in his S.A.V.E.R.S. formula. The book is a quick read and it is worth implementing into your mornings.
What I want to do in this article is talk about the mindsets that you can learn from this book.
Lesson 1: Create Systems
Don’t leave things to chance. Don’t leave things to motivation.
Use systems because systems have major benefits:
- Tracking progress
- Avoiding making the same mistake multiple times
- Ensuring you complete essential steps
- Staying efficient with your time
Science shows that we have limited bandwidth when it comes to making decisions. This is called decision fatigue. In a nutshell, we only have a certain number of good decisions we can make in a day.
If you have a system in place you don’t have to recreate the wheel daily for tasks the need to get done.
Put things in your calendar, write it down, create a checklist. Use the momentum of action rather than trying to rev up your motivation to overcome inaction.
The system itself needs to be flexible. Just because you thought it out initially doesn’t mean things won’t change in the future.
Always be tweaking and refining. Ensure that you are executing, analyzing the results, testing the new procedure, and executing again.
The system gets better and you get better.
Let’s take a classic REI example like a Yellow Letter campaign.
In the beginning you are likely to throw everything against the wall to see what will stick. But once you have data you can start testing different aspects of the marketing system.
- Are letters better than postcards?
- Does mailing a certain day of the week get more calls?
- Should you make adjustments to the actual mailing list parameters?
- Should you slow down or speed up the follow up pieces?
Execute. Analyze. Test. Execute.
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own – Bruce Lee
Lesson 2: Be Consistent
Consistency is one of the most important factors to success in any endeavor in life.
If you want a better physique you cannot just go to the gym every few weeks and eat salads on the weekend.
If you want to be a great piano player then banging on the keys randomly when you have time won’t cut it.
If you want to do well in real estate investing then you have to constantly be watching the market, learning, and honing the many skill sets needed.
But what if I mess up? Start again.
Meditation is one of the recommendations in the Morning Miracle. I have been working to implement this into my daily routine already but it has been difficult. I am one of the those mind is always racing, can’t focus on not thinking, kind of people. Honestly, I was getting frustrated at my inability to be perfect at zen, immediately.
Simply, start again.
That is something you learn with meditation. It is ok to mess up.
Simply, start again.
That is the practice. To be consistent with the practice will lead to improvement. As always, easier said than done, but an important lesson, mantra even, for many things in life.
The uncomfortable thing with consistency is that you need to make the time.
For me, if it isn’t in my calendar then I am not doing it. The exception is tasks that can be done in under two minutes. Those are completed right away because I don’t have to spend the mental bandwidth to write it down or plan it out.
You can find that technique and other helpful ones reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. Perhaps a How to Apply It to REI future post.
Time management is one of the most important skills of a real estate investor.
Things need to be prioritized to get done.
This is especially true if you are still working another job full time. This business is tough for those who procrastinate, fall behind on communication, neglect necessary tasks, and time wasters.
Sacrifice the things that are not absolutely necessary to your success.
If investing in real estate is what you want to do ensure that you are dedicating the necessary time. Your social media, Netflix, and the news are not going anywhere.
Hopefully, you are!
Lesson 3: Success is Within Ourselves
I am not saying you have all the answers and need to listen to the voice inside you. I am saying it is ok to not have all the answers. I am saying you can develop yourself to know answers.
Be more.
Be more educated, healthy, happy, emotionally intelligent, and disciplined. To reach the heights of achievement that most do not see you must be better than most are.
Check out these statistics:
http://www.landlordstation.com/blog/american-real-estate-investing-statistics-and-trends/
Only 11% of Americans investing in real estate. 11%, with only 3% actively looking!
You are here working on yourself to be better each day, improving your REI skill sets to drive your REI business. 89% of Americans are NOT doing that. I commend you. I know it isn’t easy and often times the temptation to quit is at the forefront of your mind.
Persevere.
It absolutely takes effort to accomplish all this. To create a system that we use to reflect on our own actions and take responsibility for our improvement can seem like a daunting task, but there is nothing in this world worth having that is just handed to us.
The better we become the better we do.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure” – Colin Powell
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better” – Maya Angelou
Leave a Reply