The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

Our Second Challenge: Doing What’s Most Impactful
Then I encountered another challenge—what was I going to do for that
hour that was going to make the biggest impact and improve my life the
fastest? I could read, but I’d done that before, and I wanted this to be special.
I could exercise, but again, that wasn’t getting my juices flowing. So, I pulled
out a piece of blank paper and I wrote down all of the most life-changing
personal development practices that I had learned over the years, but never
implemented—at least never consistently. Activities like meditation,
affirmations, journaling, visualization, as well as reading and exercise.
I chose the six activities that I thought would have the most immediate
and dramatic impact on my life, assigned 10 minutes each, and planned to try
all six the next morning. The interesting thing was, looking at this list got me
feeling motivated! All of a sudden the idea of waking up early went from
something I dreaded to something more and more appealing. That night, I
could hardly fall asleep, I was so excited for the morning to come!
When the alarm clock went off at 5:00 a.m., my eyes shot wide open and
I sprung out of bed, feeling energized and excited! It was effortless, it was
invigorating, and it reminded me of being a kid, waking up on Christmas
morning. There had been no time in my life when waking up was easier, when
I felt more energized and excited about my day, than I did as a kid on
Christmas… until today.
The Morning That Transformed My Entire Life
Teeth brushed, face washed, and a glass of water in hand, I sat up
straight on my living room couch at 5:05 a.m., feeling genuinely excited
about my life for the first time in a long time. It was still dark outside, and
something about that felt very empowering. I pulled out my list of life-
changing personal development activities I had learned over the years but
never implemented. One by one, I implemented each one.
Silence Sitting in silence, praying, meditating, and focusing on my
breath, for 10 minutes. I felt my stress melt away, felt a sense of calm come
over my body and ease my mind. This was different from the typical chaos of
my hectic mornings. For the first time in a long time, I felt peaceful.
Reading Having always made excuses why I couldn’t find time to read,
I was excited to make time this morning and start what I had always hoped
could become a lifelong habit. I grabbed Napoleon Hill’s classic, Think and
Grow Rich, off the shelf. Like most of my books, it was one that I had started,

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but never finished. I read for ten minutes, and picked up a few ideas that I was
excited to implement that day. I was reminded that it only takes one idea to
change your life, and I felt motivated.