The day that changed my life started like any other day. It was a weekday, I was at the office working, using my stand-up desk, and listening to a real estate podcast by BiggerPockets (back then I had just started a real estate company and was trying to learn as much as possible). But this episode was different (episode #157). Even though it was a real estate podcast, this episode was not. They were interviewing Hal Elrod, a guy that in his 20’s got into a horrible car accident – died for a couple of minutes – then recovered and had written a book about why you should wake up early, called: The Miracle Morning. I was not a morning person, I would wake up with just enough time to make it to work (late most of the time), but the story sounded very interesting, so I paid attention and listened.
He talked about his story, his struggle recovering, his depression during the economic downturn, and how he had discovered a morning ritual that had changed his life. By the end of the podcast, I was amazed, inspired and ready to make a change. He gave the listeners a challenge: set your alarm an hour earlier than usual! Don’t wait until the right time, just do it today, no excuses. It was a crazy idea. For me that meant waking up at 5 am. Even waking up at 6 am was already a struggle, but I went all in and did it. I set up my alarm for 5 am, and decided I was going to read a book during that extra hour of time. And it worked! The first day I was feeling tired, but I was not about to quit on my first day, so I kept going. I ended up waking up at 5 am for a whole week, since I realized how productive it was to have all that time to read and learn in the morning.
This was perfect timing, since the following week I was leaving on a 1,000-mile solo road trip to Northern California to visit friends and attend my first Vipassana Meditation retreat. This meant I had over 15 hours of driving, plenty of time to listen to “The Miracle Morning” audiobook during the drive. The audiobook was so good that I ended up listening to it all in one go. By the time I got to San Francisco, I had finished, and I was hooked. I decided that as soon as I got back to San Diego I would do my miracle morning every day. At the meditation retreat I learned how to meditate (the part of the miracle morning that I was struggling with, since I didn’t know how to meditate) and that was it, my gameplan was ready.
It’s been over a year since I started doing the miracle morning, in December 2017, and life could not be more different. Now, I wake up 2 hours earlier (I realized 1 hour was not enough), I meditate, read, write, exercise and read my goals every morning. I also get to work early every day, feel more awake, more productive and I started eating healthier. And all of this because of a podcast…
Lesson: stay curious and keep learning, you never know when that life-changing moment will come.
