Marriage Startup Episode 29
[Intro music]
LESLIE
Welcome to the Marriage Startup Podcast, Episode 29: 30-Day Miracle
Morning Challenge: Our Living Review. In this episode we tell all about our
experience living out The Miracle Morning for 30 days.
LAURA
We also cover our experience with The Five-Minute Journal after 30 days.
LESLIE
We have some community news to share, plus an important reminder
about our mid-season break.
LAURA
And as always, we'll end with the what I'm going to do for you this week
segment where we offer instead of ask.
LESLIE
I'm your co-host, Leslie Camacho, and honestly that's enough for this
episode. The rest of my accomplishments can take a break, except of
course for being the Chief Espresso Officer of the Camacho household.
LAURA
I'm Laura, the wife of this operation [laughter].
LESLIE
Well said, well said. All right, so I want to start out the community news by
an ask. I feel a little embarrassed to ask like this because part of it's an
ego thing and part of it's also a plea to just help us with the show here. We
haven't gotten one review yet for February and February's almost over,
there's only a few days left. We would love at least one review for
February. We're 26 reviews in. Actually, someone might have left us a
review. We can't see international reviews.
LAURA
What?!
LESLIE
You have to do some fancy magic because the iTunes Store separates out
the reviews so the podcast is in all the internationals. You don't have to do
anything else to distribute your podcast internationally through iTunes but
you can't actually see reviews. So if someone's in another country and left
us a review, we can't see it without paying for some other service.
LAURA
Oh, I'm sure we have someone in Denmark who's left us a review.
LESLIE
Yeah, so - I just forgot her name.
LAURA
Claudia.
LESLIE
Claudia. So Claudia, if you left us a review, we can't see it but thank you.
If you haven't left us a review, thank you anyway for listening. So if
someone would be kind enough to do that for us, it doesn't - or if someone
doesn't like the show and you love to listen to the show because you
disagree with us all the time, leave us a one-star review -
LAURA
Yeah, who cares?
LESLIE
- out of just -
LAURA
Spite!
LESLIE
Yeah.
LAURA
[chuckles].
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LESLIE
Or to have your voice heard. We'll take it. All right. We have - so I'm
going to switch this up a bit because you have some community news too,
I think, right? No?
LAURA
Yes, I do. Well, I have an important announcement to make.
LESLIE
Okay. Go ahead and let's do your announcement.
LAURA
We have a special guest in studio with us tonight. My mom is sitting just to
my left and she is going to watch us live [chuckles].
LESLIE
That's right. We have an in-studio audience. We expect clapping.
GAIL
[claps enthusiastically] You two are the best!
LESLIE
We'll see if that makes it - if the mics will pick that up.
LAURA
That was - did I have something else?
LESLIE
I thought you did but let's keep going. The other really important
announcement that we have is that this is our mid-season - this is the last
show before our mid-season break. So to recap, after Season 1 we
decided we were going to take a month off, recoup, retool parts of the
show and get re-energized so we could start the New Year. What
happened, we discovered, is that if you take four weeks off you eventually
take six weeks off and you lose the momentum. We really regret doing
that in terms of how we lost momentum on the show and because this
show is good for us. We miss doing it on a regular basis. But we also
know that it was really good for our hearts. It was really good for us to
recharge, to have just a little bit of rest time to recuperate.
For Season 2 what we're doing is we're going to do seven episodes, take a
one-week break and come back with another seven episodes to close out
Season 2, then we're going to take a two-week break before Season 3. So
basically every seven episodes we're going to take a break - take a
Sabbath rest, if you will, to get all Jewish and Biblical about it - and we're
going to see if that works, if that allows us to recharge and keep the level
of honesty and openness and energy that we really want to give to all of
you out there.
So the next show's going to happen on - I think it's March - next show's
going to be March 12, Thursday March 12, so on March 5 there won't be a
show. The very first show in the second half of the season is going to be
our community feedback where we answer your questions, we share your
stories and any feedback and resources and advice that we get from you.
We did one in 1st Season, it was really well received and it was one of our
favorite episodes to do.
So far we have one question in from Teresa from Facebook, we have some
great advice and feedback from Randy that we're also going to share on
this show about his experience with The Miracle Morning and some of his
advice and examples on affirmations, and just this week we got an
absolutely beautiful email that was incredible in terms of some advice for
the show, but I don't have his permission to share it yet so we're not going
to do into details yet. But hopefully we can share some of that part on the
show, and we're looking forward to that one as well.
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Do you have any advice yet or have you gotten any feedback yet that I
haven't seen?
LAURA
I'm trying to think. I might have some stored up somewhere but I don't
have any off the top of my head.
LESLIE
Okay, so again, you can send us feedback on Facebook, ask us questions
on Facebook, on any of the comments on the show. We get notified on
that. You can ask us on Twitter or you can always email us at
[email protected].
Just as a reminder, any time you send us an email we consider that private
and we don't share any of it without your confirmation, just like in the
example I just gave. In the email I received, there's nothing personal about
it, it's not a deeply personal story, it was just some advice and feedback on
the show. But because it came through email, we just assume everything
is private and we want to get permission and really have the chance to
dialog with you guys privately before we share like that.
So yeah, let us know because we'd really like to serve you by giving back
that way and exploring topics and expanding on things that we've covered,
because we've covered a lot of ground very fast.
I had one more thing, because I don't think you have anything else. I have
a confession and I wanted to share it because I felt like it was really
important when I realized - and I didn't realize it until this morning, because
something was bothering me in the back of my head.
In the book that Randy sent me to read, the first one called Freedom Flight:
The Origins of Mental Power, it is about a military person or it's written by a
military person and it's written in a parable format. The book itself is in
large print and it's a short book. So I realized when I started this book,
when I first picked it up, I thought, "It's a military story by a military author
and it's in large print. This is going to be easy reading."
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
I confess that sort of humorously but it also exposed some biases. I
assumed that if someone from the military writes it that it's not going to be
intellectual. It might have great advice, it might be something I could really
learn from so it's not like I disregard it as not worthwhile, but I don't - I have
a bias against the idea that there can be military intelligence, so to speak.
LAURA
Huh. That's a really interesting bias.
LESLIE
I just want to say it openly because that's a really stupid bias to have
[laughter]. Of course there are incredibly smart people in the military. Just
because it's that - but I think that combined with the fact it's a large print
book also made me think, "Large print books are for dummies," and I have
no idea where that bias comes from. I really don't. That's just a bias
floating round in my head and I want to get that out.
I just wanted to say that because one of the things I've been thinking
heavily about is - especially since we're starting new businesses, is that
your biases can really screw up your assumptions when you're trying to do
something of significance and create something of value for other people.
So I've really had a heads-up about what are my biases that I'm bringing
into this new business, into this new perspective.
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When we were reading the book together this morning, we didn't get past
three paragraphs before we had to stop and think. I mean, Randy, this is a
great book. I'm so glad you sent it. I thought, "Man, I'm just going to read
this in a day. This is a day's reading." But no, we got three paragraphs in
and we had to stop and we had a 40 minute discussion about three
sentences, and I love those kind of books so I'm really looking forward to
going through the rest of it.
I just wanted to admit my biases and get you guys to think about your own
biases that you're inadvertently bringing into a relationship or into the
business or whatever you're doing. So I wanted to confess that and say it
loud, just to flush it out of my system.
Anything else you want to share?
LAURA
No. Let's go.
LESLIE
Okay. So, today we're doing our Miracle Morning 30-Day Challenge
review. If this is your first time listening to the show or as a brief reminder,
kind of our thing on the show is that we don't just review things, we actually
do our best to live out the advice given in whatever resource we've decided
to try out. We give it an honest shot, we actually see if it adds value to our
lives, we warn you if it doesn't, and we try to get a mix of experiences
because already we've tried things where there's some people in the
community that it's really connected with where it hasn't connected with us,
and vice versa.
We're going to go over that today and I thought we were going to have a
short show, like, "Really? This is the only thing we're covering -
LAURA
You always think we have a short show.
LESLIE
I have a page and a half of notes of just me [laughter]. So I might have to
watch myself and cut it short. The Miracle Morning, let's do a quick recap
of what this is about. We already covered that in previous episodes but we
want to be conscientious to first-time listeners here because good news,
our listenership has gone up.
LAURA
Woohoo!
LESLIE
We have more downloads this morning than we did in January and in
December.
LAURA
Nice.
LESLIE
December's not surprising since we weren't podcasting but it was really
nice to see the uptake in February, so thank you everyone who's listening
and subscribing.
So, The Miracle Morning is by a guy named Hal Elrod and it's a system
that he has developed from various sources including his own really
compelling life experience. It's meant to get you into a routine that starts
your day - hence the name Miracle Morning - that significantly improves
your life by practicing what he terms Life SAVERS. The idea is to do your
Life SAVERS every single morning and that carries momentum into the
day that gets you on your way by small steps at a time towards a better
life.
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The SAVERS part of Life SAVERS is an acronym and it stands for Silence,
Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading and Scribing. By his own
admission, scribing is just finding a word for S that means journaling
[laughter]. Fancy term for "write daily". If you want to hear a more in-depth
take from us about the book, you can go back and listen to Episodes 24
and 25 where we introduce the topic, we give our first update, and we go
into all these things a little deeper. But I think during our review you'll get
the gist of it. Basically, this is a way to kickstart your morning and that was
the challenge.
In the book itself, in addition to the information there's a part of it called the
30-Day Challenge which I did following the instructions to the letter and
Laura, as usual you found your own path.
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
You're like, "That's nice, Hal. Thank you for these great ideas that I will
build on."
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
So why don't you go first?
LAURA
I have actually been following the SAVERS acronym since I got to the
SAVERS chapter. I didn't get much farther than that chapter [laughter]. I
still haven't finished the book but I am doing the SAVERS. I've built that
into my morning routine.
Aside from trying to start with silence, I've been pretty faithful to it. It is
very hard to begin your morning with silence when you've been woken up
by a toddler, but I'm trying and I'm trying to help him learn some meditation
skills too. So when I get him up in the morning or when he calls me from
his crib and I go rush him out so he doesn't wake up his sister and the rest
of the house, we sit in front of the fire. We turn the fireplace on - we have
a gas insert - and then we sit very quietly and we look at the flames
together, and we do that for a couple minutes, however long he can handle
it. That's really been a sweet way to wake up in the morning.
I feel like it's been going pretty well but two weeks ago I really hit a wall
and I didn't quite realize how much it was going to affect me to start
backsliding on The Miracle Morning practice. But Ethan had been waking
up between 3:45 and 4:30 for almost a month - I've been complaining
about that for the last few episodes - so I was really tired. Then he started
sleeping until 5:00 but he was waking up in the middle of the night, like at
2:00 or 3:00 every night, sometimes at 11:00 and then 2:00 or 3:00. So
those middle of the night wakeups are the worst, man. I can handle the
early morning but being woke up in the middle of the night and then having
to go back to sleep for just a couple more hours is really hard.
LESLIE
Yeah.
LAURA
I didn't have that same kind of bounce out of bed energy that I was having
before. Even at 3:45 in the morning I was still like, "Woohoo! Let's do it
and embrace The Miracle Morning" but getting woken up at 2:00 and then
waking up for the day at 5:00, that just - that’s a totally different experience.
My body does not handle it as well.
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So I started letting things slip. I succumbed to the temptation to try to doze
a little bit longer on the couch while he was up and eating his snack.
Everything kind of got pushed back. I'd kind of do it but I wasn't really
focused on it. I was preoccupied with how tired I was and then I started
forgetting to write in my journal in the evenings. It would be this shock to
me the next - I was very faithful in the morning to do it at some point, but I
would realize, "Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about this last night."
That had a cascade effect.
Then a couple weeks ago I had a ton of client work and I let it take over.
Instead of spreading it out and scheduling people appropriately, I tried to
barrel through it in my morning time when just Ethan was awake and no
one else is. That took over my personal heart space time - that just
disappeared. I get a lot of really great emotional and spiritual stuff out of
the work that I do but the work I do is for others, it's not for me, and so it
doesn't have the same effect for me as actually focusing on my own heart
work.
So it compounded and built up and then yesterday I had a really bad day.
It finally just all built up and broke and I realize I have not been taking care
of myself well. I have been going to bed too late and not taking into
consideration the fact that I am going to be woken up at inopportune times
in the night, so I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm not planning ahead to get
more sleep and I really started backsliding on The Miracle Morning.
I realized that yesterday and said, "Okay, I'm back on the wagon." I did
everything to the letter today and I had a much better day today. I feel a lot
more optimistic about life in general and I really do credit The Miracle
Morning routine for that. There's something really quite powerful about this
particular protocol. I don't know what it is, it feels weird. The book feels
like an infomercial a lot of the time and I want to be cynical about it, and yet
when I actually do it, it works.
LESLIE
Yeah, there is something about the tone of this book that is outside our
normal reading. We don't read ra-ra, everything is beautiful, positivepositive, fluffy kitten books. That's just a lot of the self-held fad out there.
That's been around for a long time but the Internet has taken this to a
whole new level. We were talking - we won't mention it specifically by
name but we were discussing a training series today that was a lot of
money and if you look at the online reviews and everything else, it's all
flash and no substance, highly polished video that you pay thousands of
dollars for, and there's no love behind it, right? It's just, "Hey, thanks for
your $2,000, here's some videos."
LAURA
Yeah, it’s a "Here's how to be like me," kind of thing.
LESLIE
There's a lot of that out there. In my space, in the Web professional space,
there's more and more. In the business I'm starting, I'm really cognizant of
that because I want to provide training videos, I want to do stuff like that,
but I don't want to promise the world and do stuff like that.
You're holding up a book that I'm really looking forward to reading called
Love is the Color App. I hadn't planned to talk about that in this show but I
found that through another book I'm reading called Book Yourself Solid
which I'll get to in my part.
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I wanted to ask you something. Is there anything - what was the most
surprising thing you've discovered by following this over the last 30 days?
Was there anything that really stood out to you?
LAURA
I think it - realizing about myself that I do really well on a structured kind of
schedule and yet I really hate developing and maintaining that structure
myself. It's why I thrive so much in academia because I know when I have
to be at class and they tell me what I need to read and I read it. It's all laid
out for me and I do really well with that. I like it when people tell me what
to do [chuckles]. It's like being an adult is hard because no one tells you
what to do anymore, you have to figure it out and then you have to tell
other people what to do and it's just terrible.
So that's been one of the things where - it's been hard for me to create the
schedule and the structure and then stick with it without any sort of
external force holding me to it. Because honestly, I just don't have that
type of personality. I don't have the internal drive to keep maintaining that
forever. It just starts getting boring.
LESLIE
I wonder how actually using the physical checklist would've changed it for
you, if at all.
LAURA
I hate checklists like that -
LESLIE
Like I did. That doesn’t equate to academia for you?
LAURA
No!
LESLIE
See, that's what - when I think academia, I just think, "Oh, someone has a
list of things for me to do."
LAURA
No, because academia is like being part of a group. I show up at class and
there's my professor and there's my fellow students, we're all in this
together. That's the part I like. I feel like being an adult and being a parent
especially is very isolating for me. I feel like I'm in charge of everything so
I'm making all the rules, it doesn’t matter what I do, and I kind of deflate.
LESLIE
Was there any particularly negative? Was there something that you
experienced where you just felt, "No, this doesn't really work for me," or,
"It's not just not working for me but I fundamentally disagree with it"?
LAURA
I can't really talk to that because I didn't finish the book and I probably - I'm
probably not even doing what he says, so… [chuckles].
LESLIE
I did not know to this moment that you hadn't finished the book.
LAURA
I'm sorry. I'm a terrible podcast partner.
LESLIE
Well, no, I think it's valid, so let's talk about that. Why did you not finish the
book?
LAURA
I have no idea. I just got - I just felt like I got what I needed out of it and felt
like I was doing enough to be doing it. It was working for me, and still is.
Whatever weird extrapolation I got from the book, from reading at least up
to the SAVERS part, it's working for me, so it just felt kind of non-essential
to finish it.
LESLIE
I have no criticisms about you not finishing it. I think that's a legitimate part
of reviewing a resource. If you don’t get through the resource, I just want
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to know why and was there a stuck point or - I really like your answer and
again, that shows how different our personalities are.
LAURA
I know [chuckles].
LESLIE
Which we're going to dig into more in the second half of Season 2. Teaser
[chuckles]. But yeah, that's very you, where you're like, "Here's a valuable
part, I'm going to go live it right away" and I really love that you did that. If
finishing the book would've prevented that then yeah, it's great that you
took action right away.
So you didn't get into any of the deeper questions or really dig into what
the actual 30-Day Challenge was?
LAURA
Nn-nn.
LESLIE
Okay. Is there anything else you want to add about your experience?
We'll come back to you at the - after mine, but I wanted to see if there's
anything else you wanted to throw in here.
LAURA
Yes. One thing that I've been really consistent with and I'm really happy
about is with my exercise. I've been - I started out just doing the yoga, the
Sun Salutation, and I've since added Pilates to it, a core Pilates routine,
and then pushups. Then I do core exercises with the girls each individually
when they wake up at their individual time, so I'm actually doing three sets
of exercises, which has been really good for me. I feel like I've really
excelled there and that's one of the things that I have the hardest time
sticking to usually and yeah, I've actually maintained consistency with that
better than anything else.
LESLIE
That's really good that it had that effect and that has encouraged you to do
that, because I know that's something that's been really important to you,
to get back into that habit for a bit. I mean, I remember we were both
talking about that at the end of the year during December about that being
- us getting much more serious about that this year.
Okay. I'm going to move onto my part and you're free to interrupt me and
ask questions along the way, because this week I've been in fire hose
mode and I don't know if it's the meds. I'm in my third week of being on the
antidepressant meds and my energy level's back up. I've noticed this
week in particular that I can start going and then it's even more so than
usual for me. So yeah, that's just a heads-up, dear listeners [chuckles].
All right, so the 30-Day Challenge. At the beginning of this year I made a
commitment to follow the directions. I've mentioned this several times on
the show already but I feel like it's worth bringing up every time, because
the reason the directions are important to me is for as much as possible
this year, especially early in this year, I want to concentrate on doing the
work. In order to do the work, I don't want to think about what the structure
has to be, I just want to concentrate on getting the value out of it. So the
less I have to think about the structure and order, the more I can
concentrate on the value and my own development or the service I'm trying
to provide to somebody else.
This is going to get a little bit detailed about how the 30-Day Challenge
actually works. It's a five-step process. Step 1 is called Clarity Questions
and this is a PDF handout that you download and you print out, or of
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course you can just open a document and write it on the computer, but for
me I actually wanted to write it out because again, I'm being a stickler for
the directions. It says print, I print. I don't even let myself get into a debate
about which is better for me, I just do it.
With the Clarity Questions, I found these to be really challenging. They're
actually quite sharp, insightful questions that made me analyze where I'm
actually at. The purpose of it is just to provide some headspace and some
direction about how to actually in a more objective way clear away the mud
and just say, "Where am I right now?" As honestly as possible, what am I
like right now?
The second step is called the Wheel of Life Assessment. I've seen similar
things and this is a literal wheel with degrees on it. I will see if I can post
an example of this online for you guys, or I might just link to the packet so
you can download it and see it yourself because it's free from his website.
Basically the Wheel of Life is split into a bunch of categories. They are
Family and Friends, Personal Growth and Development, Spirituality,
Finances, Career, Business, Significant Other and Romance, Fun and
Recreation, Contribution Giving, Health and Fitness, and Physical
Environment/Your Home and Office.
The idea is to, in kind of a pie chart fashion, create a spread of how healthy
you feel in each of these areas. The less you put in, the less healthy you
are and so you get a really good visual picture of how you see yourself in
all these areas.
LAURA
Wait. So the less pie, the less healthy?
LESLIE
Yes.
LAURA
Okay.
LESLIE
Yes, you need more pie. The more pie you have, the healthier you are. It's
a lesson in life.
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
You go through the Clarity Questions so you have an idea and then you
think about these deeper, and he calls it getting idea of success and
satisfaction and I feel that's kind of open-ended so I translated it to healthy.
That let me get my brain around it, but I also did use those two words to
help measure these things. Each one's a scale of 1 to 10 but it's
represented visually quite well so that when you're actually looking at it,
you get a clear picture of where your weak areas are, at least from your
own perception.
My weak areas were definitely Spirituality, Finances, Contribution Giving,
and Fun and Recreation. I scored the lowest in all of those and it was eye
opening. I think I knew inside that I was suffering in those areas and I think
those were red flags to get me to go on and get me assessed for
depression, but it was quite eye opening to actually see that physically on
paper and to have a tangible idea of where I was at and the need for
improvement there.
The third step is called Level 10 Vision and here we get into that kind of
weird life coachy stuff which I've been reading a lot since I've been calling
myself a coach lately. I'm kind of still uncomfortable with the vocab here
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but I actually think the idea behind it is really solid. The Level 10 Vision is
simply getting clear on your ideal conditions for each area of your life. It
takes each of those areas we just talked about and you are asked to write
a paragraph describing what would success and satisfaction look like for
you in concrete terms.
Am I earning $100,000 a year, $1 million? Do I have ten friends, five
friends? Do I describe my friendships in numbers? Maybe I describe it
some other way. Maybe I describe it as I'm on the phone three times a
week with someone important to me or I've written a heartfelt email whatever that looks like. Same thing with your relationships, like my
relationship with you. What would a Level 10 marriage look like with you?
LAURA
I'm so curious. What did you say?
LESLIE
It's private [laughter].
LAURA
Can I read it?
LESLIE
No, no.
LAURA
Okay.
LESLIE
This is something I may share with you later but this was a really raw
experience and I feel like this is still mine. I'm not ready to share my exact
answers to any of those areas yet. It was really personal because I took it
- again, I'm following the instructions. I took it really seriously. I think it
took me probably three or four days to answer these questions because I
went back and circled back.
I found that of everything, it was this that was the hardest because I had to
open myself up to the possibility that there may be a day when I could
consider myself successful in these areas and it might look like this. So I
found my first pass on the questions being really small picture, like maybe
I'll make $100,000 again one day, maybe, if I'm lucky. Maybe I'll have
some real friends. Maybe I might connect with my family. They were these
really tentative, bordering on helpless, sort of victim sounding questions
and I knew that was not the spirit of the thing. I knew for certain that's not
what success looked like but that was the honest first pass on those
questions. So it took - I'm going to use the word courage. It required a lot
of courage in me to admit that this might be possible to come around to
these areas.
The next step then is called Level 10 Habits. Here's where he asks you to
go through each area there and list one to four habits - I think it was four,
but list a small number of habits that I can do that's going to get me just
one step closer. He's not asking you to, "What's the thing you can do to
get you from 0 to $5 million a year? Go!" Of course you're frozen, you
can't think of those things. Instead, it's just an invitation to, "Hey, now you
have clarity in where you want to be, what one small change could you
make to get you a little bit closer to that?"
Again, this took me a couple of days. Some of them were really obvious
and I got through those fast but some of them weren't and I really took the
time to consider them. I think that overall that's one of the takeaways I
took away from this and even going back to Season 1 when we went
through Essentialism and some of the other resources that we've talked
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about. I am relearning something really important in that - and I think I'm
paying extra special attention to it because so much of my actual work is
coaching people that it doesn't matter how well someone coaches me, like
Hal is coaching us through this book.
It doesn't matter how good Hal's advice is if I don't put in the work, so I
think that's again me taking seriously that I need to put in the work and
especially if I'm going to have clients that I'm asking them to put in the
work. I cannot treat my coaches any less. I have to know if this stuff
works and what techniques work. So I did that. I had habits listed for
everything there.
Step 5 is the 30-Day Transformation Tracker. That's his fancy way of
saying, "Okay, now here's the work you're going to do for the next 30
days." The way the Tracker works is it's a grid you print out and basically
he asks you to do ten habits each day. Six of those are the Life SAVERS.
You do your Life SAVERS and then he wants you to pick the four habits
you want to start with that are from Step 4, the habits that are going to get
you there.
I picked habits from my weakest area - the Spiritual and the Financial then I did one that I knew was going to be good for our entire family, most
especially you. In addition to the Life SAVERS, the four habits I picked are
read Scripture every day and in particular I chose to read the New
Testament. I did not want to get lost in the theological aspects of the Bible
because I wanted to re-establish a relationship with Jesus and I find that
particularly in the Book of John in the New Testament, so that's where my
commitment was to starting there.
I committed to reading Book Yourself Solid: The Illustrated Edition because
I know that the biggest obstacle for me in my own success is learning to
sell myself and my own value. I don’t have any problem selling someone
else's stuff that I believe in. Like in my old job, I was fantastic at selling
ExpressionEngine. I sold million dollar ExpressionEngine installations
without batting an eye, with full confidence. Walked into virtual rooms,
walked into real rooms, stood up against multi, multimillion dollar
competitors compared to our small 15-person shop and stood toe-to-toe
with the big guys with full confidence.
I do not have a problem with selling. Last year I sold $40,000 websites, I
sold $90,000 websites. I went in because I had full confidence in my
partners doing the work. The guys I worked with - Derek, Noah and
Garrett - I could walk in there and say, "I'm going to kick some butt for you
guys." I had no - there was no lack of confidence repping those guys and
their skillsets.
But when it comes to myself, it's just like, "Maybe you should pay me $5?
Am I worth $5?" I'm exaggerating somewhat but I know that a key switch I
need to make - because I need to understand my own value and how to
sell that. I've read a lot of different books on sales over the years but the
Book Yourself Solid is the first one that has really connected with me in
terms of an ethical, grounded, love-based even way of serving people and
also selling your services along the way.
I've tried to read it for a year-and-a-half. I've owned it for a year-and-a-half
and I've been putting it off that long. We all buy books that sit in the shelf
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and this one has been burning a hole in my heart for that long. It's like,
"Okay, this is the time to do it." So that's one of the habits I made a
commitment to - reading a little bit of that every single morning.
The third one was train for the Tough Mudder. This was the push goal I
identified for the year. I know if I train for that it's going to push me through
everything else. So with this one, I didn't want to do the same exercise
every single day so I'm doing a FitStar routine called The Tough Mudder.
That's a 35-minute workout from hell. I love it [chuckles]. It really kicked
my butt in a really serious way.
So I did that one day and then the next day I would do pull-ups. I want to
do 20 pull-ups throughout the day using a technique I heard from a
strength-based trainer on the Tim Ferris podcast. Then on the last day I
wanted to do an exercise back from my boot camp days called
countdowns. That's a super mix of cardio and strength training. Then on
the fourth day I rest and repeat. That was my exercise routine.
The very last one is I wanted to clean the kitchen every single morning. If
you beat me to it, which occasionally you did but not too often, then I would
make a commitment to clean the kitchen at least once more throughout the
day. So those are my ten.
If you do the math on this, what is really being asked of you is you're being
asked to make a total of 300 potential commitments. Because I committed
to - and you're allowed to skip in advance. For example with my exercise, I
can't exercise seven days a week, I will destroy my body. I know because
I've done that. So if you minus out every fourth day I took off, I had a total
of 293 commitments in a 30-day period. I missed nine of them so I
completed 284 of my commitments in a 30-day period.
LAURA
Nice.
LESLIE
Hopefully that doesn't make it sound overwhelming but the idea is I wanted
to put those into numbers because if I start out asking you, "Hey, can you
do 300 things for me in the next 30 days?" or, "Can I do 300 things for
myself that are going to improve my life in the next 30 days?" the answer's
no.
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
But can I do ten things a day? Then the way the book puts it is that there's
even a version of Life SAVERS where you can do your Life SAVERS in 10
minutes, all six in 10 minutes. So the amount of time I actually spent on
this every single morning would vary from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. The
workouts took longer, of course, but nine out of my ten commitments I
could complete in 30 minutes.
So it wasn't a huge time suck but it was amazing the progress that I made.
I just made a short list of some of the results I got. When I started doing
pull-ups I could only do two in a single set. At the end of the 30 days I
could do five.
LAURA
Nice.
LESLIE
I'm doing the strength-based pull-ups. They're the full extension on a nonsolid bar. I hang it, it's a free floating pull-up bar which makes the pull-ups
even more difficult.
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LAURA
It's a rake handle.
LESLIE
Yeah. Let's not get into the intricacies of my expensive gym, but I'm really
proud of it. I have these slings and I just hang up a rake handle and do
pull-ups in my office, it's awesome. So I went from two to five in a single
set. Then the other thing, I do knuckle military-style pushups that I learned
in kung fu. At the beginning I could only do nine of them in a single set and
at the end of 30 days I can now do 21 quite easily.
LAURA
Dang!
LESLIE
Full extension pushups, chest to the floor, military-style on my knuckles.
I'm really proud of that. My cardio is back in shape. It's not as in shape as
I want to be but it was real progress from where I started.
I have read almost all of Book Yourself Solid and more importantly, I've
actually implemented a good deal of it. I only read sometimes one or two
pages so it's not like I did a comprehensive study every single morning.
Again, the idea is just small, incremental progress. So if I stopped and saw
something I should be doing in my business, I actually wrote it down, then I
would share it with my partners and talk about it. If you talk to the guys in
Haywire Consulting, they'll tell you, "Les can't shut up about that book right
now." It's been amazing, I love it.
I doubled the amount of income that I earned in February from January.
Now, I just need to be honest that that wasn't difficult to do. January was
harsh, very, very harsh on our income.
LAURA
I think maybe I made more than you did in January.
LESLIE
Yeah, you might've made more in January than I did and that's how bad
January was. December was awesome, January was the exact opposite.
So even though I doubled my income it's not nearly enough but I am really
happy with that progress. I don't want to denigrate the progress I made
and I know that part of it was just being open to the possibility, not getting
stuck in depression about the small amount of money I did make, but
instead looking forward to, "Okay, we're going to follow these leads and
we're going to do it."
But I just want to be honest about this here because hey, this is a stern,
serious reminder that when you start a new business, it really doesn't
matter what you've done for someone in the past. It only matters what
you're doing for them right now and you have to earn a whole different type
of trust. Anyway, I will get off my soapbox about that. But I am really
happy that we have - actually, it's a little bit more than doubled our income
in February and I'm really hoping for similar results in March.
I launched both my new business and the new business website. The
other podcast I do, the Haywire podcast, I kept my commitment to publish
all of those on time and I wrote the show notes to all of them except one.
No, two if you count the one that went out today. That is a huge
improvement over last year. The Haywire podcast has now been
consistently published every single week since the beginning of this year
and that's something that me and my teammates over there were super
proud of doing and getting that figured out.
I got my very first coaching clients.
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LAURA
Yay!
LESLIE
I got my first coaching leads. When we launched the business we got
three leads off the bat. We got another lead yesterday. My former
partners have been telling other people about it and I'm just really happy
with the momentum going forward. I helped you redo your website. I
actually secured the guys that I've been working with as actual business
partners. I guess technically we don't have an LLC formed yet but that
discussion has happened. We've got a plan, we're heading that way, and
I'm feeling really positive. I journaled every single day.
Just honestly overall, I feel significantly better than I started at the
beginning of the 30-Day Challenge. Questions so far? Because I've got a
little bit more to cover [laughter]. I warned you guys, this was a lot. I was
surprised when I started writing this down.
LAURA
This list is really cool. It makes me feel like I should go back and look at
everything I accomplished, because I know that I did, I just - I didn't keep
as good a track as you did.
LESLIE
I was pleasantly surprised by how practical affirmations and visualizations
are. I think of everything in the book this was the one I was most wary of
because I didn't know how - is this New Age-y? Is it old stuff? Is it woowoo? Despite what people might assume, I am not that guy [chuckles], not
by a long shot, and you would think I would be. But it was amazing the
impact that these had almost immediately, especially doing the affirmations
before bed, having those before bed and then doing them first thing in the
morning.
I think the most powerful thing about the whole experience was about how
it really got me back into relationship with God in the way that I wanted.
What I discovered during the 30-Day Challenge was that if I practiced
silence, Scripture reading, journaling and then my affirmations followed by
visualizations, doing it in that order invited God into the entire process for
me, which for my own belief system has been critical to flipping my mind
and being open to the possibilities of what can be accomplished and open
my eyes to the significance of what I'm really trying to do, yet giving myself
the grace to know that this is the long haul game.
I don't need to be there tomorrow, there's not a rush. Change of plan are
okay, bumps in the road are okay, tightening belts this morning it's okay,
because I found what's more important. Again, the theory of this podcast
that we are living out is God, marriage, everything else. If we do it in that
order, we're testing in real time whether that actually leads to the lives that
we want. These 30 days I felt like okay, there's something to the theory. It
gets a little bit more personal than that but not much. Again, I can't point to
any particular day where it started clicking for me but I just noticed about
halfway through that when it went in that order, those were my best days.
LAURA
You just played around with the order and suddenly figured it out?
LESLIE
You know, it was the affirmations that were the key because when I took
someone else's affirmations and used them, they were good starting points
but I felt like it was using someone else's wand, to use a Harry Potter
analogy, or someone else's lightsaber. It's like, "This is a really cool
instrument of potential and power but it's not mine, it's yours."
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To get my affirmations to the way I wanted, I found I had a difficult time
writing affirmations without inviting God into them. I think it goes back to
how I think of myself. There's a part of me that has very old wounds that
devalues myself every chance I get. Even though I've significantly
improved, when you're asked to be open to the potential of what you can
be versus my ability for other people's potential, again it's like a completely
closed door to me.
So I just asked God to help me write my affirmations every day and I found
that my ability to ask God was much better if I just had silence and then
Scripture and then writing and then affirmations. Once I had the affirmation
then I had the visualization and those lined up for me. Now, I still feel like a
novice at affirmations and visualization. I don't consider myself an expert
by any stretch of the imagination but just the default starting points offered
in this book were really powerful for me.
LAURA
Did you have any areas that you disagreed with?
LESLIE
Yes. I had one, one major one, and that is Hal's approach to sleep or his
assertions that your mind can tell your body how much sleep it needs and
basically the idea that the body is subservient to the mind to the extent that
you can do it. I've heard variations on this before. My initial workout
trainers would really push me and say, "It's all mental, it's all mental. You
think you could only do 10 pushups but you can really do 15. Just push
your mind past it, make your body obey you." I did that for a long time and
I have injuries to prove it. I did get my body into the shape but the two
recurring injuries that I've had for years now are because I practiced that
sort of belief. So yes, you can beat your body into submission but beating
it you are.
So my analogy is if you take your favorite kitchen knife, like your chef knife
we talked about during the cooking shows where this is your knife, and you
use that to cut metal, you're going to ruin your knife. It doesn’t matter how
much mental willpower I say, "No, knife, you can cut this metal. You can
do it. I order you to do it. Just try harder, you're going to push past it
mentally," the knife eventually is going to break. Your body can be
influenced heavily by your mental power but it is still a physical object that's
going to break. You cannot push it past where it can't go.
I would say the second week was really terrible sleep-wise and it wasn't
just because of that but it was also because that was my first week on the
full dose of my antidepression meds, which screws with your sleep
anyway. But I used one of the things that I learned from kung fu and
Pablo, my kung fu teacher, I am forever thankful for you giving me really
good wisdom on how the body and mind work.
Yes, you can beat your body into submission but why would you? Your
body wants to work with your mind. You are not separate from your body.
However you believe about the metaphysical nature of it, you can't escape
that your soul and your mind dwell inside your body and you are a unit that
needs to work together.
The change that I made is I simply started asking my body how much
sleep it needs. Most of the time it would tell me 5 hours. I would literally
ask it exactly like this out loud before I went to bed, "How much sleep do
you need today, body?" and I would just hear in my mind, "5 hours, 6
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hours." Then what I discovered was Friday it would say, "Please give me
8. Let me sleep in until 7:30." This was not me. This was not me saying,
"It would feel so wonderful to take a break from this stupid Miracle Morning
and I'm so tired and I'm so worn out."
It was me going, "I'm loving this so much I want to keep it going. How do I
keep this going?" I just felt like my body was telling me, "I will give you
your 5 hours to 6 hours of sleep and I will give you my very best on that
amount of sleep five days a week. But Friday night you're going to let me
sleep in and you're going to take a nap and you're not going to do the
intensity - you can still do workouts if it falls on a workout day but you're
going to dial back the intensity and you're going to let me recover. We're
going to make that deal."
The inner play between my subconscious, that voice in your head, the
body, it was amazing. Again, I'm not a woo-woo guy but I was taught that
in kung fu and I don't pretend to understand it but doing it here, it's been
amazing. I would say - only being 30 days in I would hesitate to call it life
changing still but it's been really good.
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
I warned you it was a lot [chuckles].
LAURA
Are you going to keep doing The Miracle Morning?
LESLIE
Yes. I've already started my new 30-day stuff and I've picked four new
habits to continue building on. I've kept the Mudder.
LAURA
You kept the kitchen.
LESLIE
I kept the kitchen.
LAURA
Thank you.
LESLIE
But the Mudder, I'm changing up my workout routines so I'm escalating
some and keeping others the same. I want to continue - the month I'm
focusing - the next 30 days I'm focusing on cardio and increased strength
training, so I want to actually run, do some running. I haven't committed to
a distance, I just want to start with the practice of it and see if my leg and
knee continue to hold up. I'm going to use the same technique with my
body with sleep with running - "How do I get this back into shape? What is
the limit? How far can I run today? Is it a quarter-mile, half-mile? Can I do
a mile, 2 miles?" I want to see how that interplay works versus forcing it to
do something, I'm going to invite it to do something and see how that turns
out for the next 30 days.
The book I mentioned earlier, Freedom Flight, I'm alternating between
Book Yourself Solid and Freedom Flight as my reading and study material
for the day. It was really important for me to slow down on Book Yourself
Solid because I'm into the meaty parts of implementing marketing and I
want to use it right away in Haywire, so I want to make sure that I'm taking
the time to implement and teach myself by doing it versus just reading it,
so I'm really okay with going slow and I really want to get through Freedom
Flight and the other book he gave me.
I think the last points I want to touch on are the things that I - are the
mistakes that I made. One was that my two worst days are when I did not
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do the affirmations before bed. When I skipped the affirmations before bed
I had terrible days the next days.
LAURA
Interesting.
LESLIE
The affirmations prior to sleep turned out to be way more important than
the affirmations in the morning, because I did skip my morning affirmations
a couple of times and those days weren't so hot either but they weren't as
bad as skipping them in the evening.
The hardest part of actually living out this SAVERS part was that I fell to
the temptation of doing the Silence whilst still being in bed. So I thought,
"I'm just praying and I'm practicing silence and I'm up, so I'm just going to
stay here under the covers." Then suddenly it would be an hour later
[laughter].
LAURA
It's funny how that happens.
LESLIE
That's against the directions. Hal's very clear - you get your ass out of
bed. You get up and you move, you do something. Have your Silence
afterwards. So I really had to break that habit. I don't think I ever quite
experienced the jump out of bed full of energy, no matter how many times I
gave myself affirmations to do that, but it definitely got better. I could
definitely get up a lot faster than I used to and I definitely got into my
morning routine a lot faster than I used to.
LAURA
You're a lot more cheerful to be around in the mornings now. It's been
really nice, and you're very much more present too when you have - you
finish your routine and it's time to involve yourself in the family life. Even
before coffee you are a much more pleasant person in the morning. I
really appreciate that.
LESLIE
Good. See, I feel like I'm talking - I feel like this is a really braggy episode
but yeah, this has been seriously good. I think it's been obvious by my
excitement, how I'm talking about all this stuff. If you had asked me at the
beginning of this Challenge do I think it would've really had this effect on
my life, my answer would've been no. I think -
LAURA
No. Well, we have that on tape. You didn't. You were pretty cynical about
it.
LESLIE
Yeah, I did not think it would have this impact in my life and you're right,
because I've tried other morning books before like I mentioned. But you're
right when you were talking about your experience with it. There is
something to Hal's formula that is pretty unique that has obviously really
worked well for us, and for thousands of other people. I mean, he's got a
really big fan following and he runs conventions and meet-ups and stuff
like that, so he's had a serious impact. I'm very happy we did this.
LAURA
So is The Miracle Morning aptly named?
LESLIE
Yes.
LAURA
Would you put a ring on it?
LESLIE
Yes.
LAURA
Me too.
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LESLIE
Yeah, I plan to keep doing this for the foreseeable future, definitely.
LAURA
Yeah. I might even finish reading the book [laughter].
LESLIE
I would be really interested to see how you would respond to - even if you
don't actually do the checklist part, the Step 5 of the Challenge, I would
really like to know whether going through the Clarity Questions and the Life
Assessment Wheel or whatever it's called, whether that has an impact on
you or not, whether that's just something that is good for my personality
type or whether that's something that would - that you find actually helpful
just to go through and do that for yourself.
LAURA
I feel kind of meh about it for myself -
LESLIE
I'm not asking you to make that commitment.
LAURA
No, no, I just - it's interesting because I can tell it's been really great for you
and when I think about myself doing it, I'm like, "Meh," but I might do it just
for fun.
LESLIE
All right. So this is exactly one hour [chuckles].
LAURA
Let's wrap it up.
LESLIE
It's wound up being a long show. Let's wrap this up. We're going to take a
quick break that's imperceptible to you, then we'll be back with what we're
going to do for each other this week.
Okay, and we're back with what we're going to do for each other this week.
If this is your first time listening, this is a segment where we're really
proactive about how we're going to show each other love, respect,
affection, without the other person asking for it. We're just going to be - it's
a gift. Would you like to go first?
LAURA
Sure. This week I'm going to clean and tidy your office for you, which is
really our office.
LESLIE
[chuckles].
LAURA
Part of the reason this needs to be done is because your stuff is
encroaching upon my desk and we've had to offload it every time I need to
use my desk. But I know that that kind of thing overwhelms you and you
need help, and I love cleaning.
LESLIE
I do need help and I will gladly accept.
LAURA
Awesome.
LESLIE
What I'm going to do for you this week is I'm actually going to start thinking
about how we would implement the suggestion we got by email this week.
We're going to talk about that a little bit more in Episode 30. Don't go
looking for the email! Just let it be -
LAURA
[chuckles] I can't remember it.
LESLIE
But we got some advice about how to possibly retool this segment or make
it more powerful and I think there's - I'm not sure I agree with it but I think
there's a lot of value in finding out. I want to know if there's a way I can
even figure out how to give better things to you. The email we got, got a
potential direction on how to do that.
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So this week and over break, because this is starting our break so we'll
have the time to do it, instead of the time I would normally take to do my
part of the script and edit and publish the show, I'm going to spend that
time looking more into this idea and doing - researching some of our past
episodes. In Episode 30, I think we're going to give it a try, as a living
review of community feedback [chuckles].
LAURA
Awesome.
LESLIE
No pressure, person who emailed us. But yeah, I think there's something
to it, especially with some of the topics that we want to do for the second
half of Season 2. I think it'll be a nice fit.
LAURA
Okay, so none of our listeners have any idea what you're talking about and
I don't really either because [chuckles] I don't remember the email well
enough.
LESLIE
It's a surprise for everybody but it is a gift.
LAURA
Okay.
LESLIE
It's a gift of my time and research to make me a better gift giver to you.
LAURA
That sounds good.
LESLIE
That's the end result of this, so that's the thing.
LAURA
I accept.
LESLIE
I want to know how to give better gifts to you by better understanding of
you.
LAURA
I love that. I like to be understood.
LESLIE
Okay. That's the show. Again, iTunes, begging for reviews. Please one in
February for the United States and thank you for any international reviews
that we got and don't know about. The easiest way to do that is to go to
marriagestartup.com/itunes - that's going to take you right to our show
page in iTunes so you can leave us a review. You click how many stars it
is, you write some words and press Submit. It'll take you 15 seconds, it's
awesome.
If you want to comment on this episode specifically and you want to leave
a comment on the blog - most of you right now seem to prefer our
Facebook which is just fine but if you want to comment on the blog for this
episode, it's marriagestartup.com/29. That's the secret shortcut to these
episodes. You can always just put in marriagestartup.com/the number of
the show and it'll take you right to that show's page where you can leave a
comment.
If you want to comment on Facebook and leave us a post on our page, it's
facebook.com/marriagestartup and for the few very brave people on Twitter
to whom we have almost no interaction there [laughter]
LAURA
Sorry.
LESLIE
It's @marriagestartup but hey, we love you guys and thank you for being
there and following us there. But if you're following us on Twitter and you
never hear from us, venture over to Facebook or the blog. I know
Facebook's the dark side to a lot of you. It's the dark side for me too. I
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hate that I have to use it but I love that you guys are there and we can talk
with you there. So I sacrifice my uppity, snobby, tech morals to - I put them
on the altar for the sake of conversing with all of you.
LAURA
[chuckles] Geez.
LESLIE
How's that for some ego and snobbishness? You guys are totally worth it
and then some so I have no regrets about doing it.
You can also email us, [email protected], and as I mentioned
earlier your emails are always considered strictly confidential, even if it's
just casual. In particular we love to hear your stories, your feedback, your
advice. Like I said, we got some beautiful feedback and some advice on
the show this week and we've had some great interactions in February that
are way more important to us than reviews, by the way. So if you have to
decide in your head, if there's some weird decision of "Should I leave them
a review or should I share something with them by email?" share
something with us by email.
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
That is 1,000 times more important to us than a review. Hearing from you
directly, we'll take that every single time over everything else. Especially
since Episode 30 coming in two weeks is going to be the community
feedback and questions answered show, which we're really looking forward
to.
Okay, that's going to do it. We will see you guys in two weeks and as
always, be kind to each other.
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