The Miracle Equation by Hal Elrod -Book Summary and Notes

The point: In order to meet our biggest goals we have to have unwavering faith and work extremely hard. 

Who is the book for: Those filled with doubt about changing their life into one that fills your greatest dreams.

Key points: 

You will first need to envision your ideal future, see it clearly, and then establish the belief that it’s possible. 

The goal you decided to tackle does not necessarily have to be world changing. It can be as big or small, as easy or complicated, as you like. The key is that it must be meaningful to you. 

The key it not to come from a place of I’m not good enough but rather from I am limitless, and I have more to give.

This book is about the kind of tangible measurable miracles that require your active participation in producing them. They are more akin to making you biggest, scariest, and most improbable goals come true. These are the types of miracles that you have a significant degree of control over, meaning that you can consistently create them again and again in your life because you will understand how the process works. But to create this kind of miracle, first you must believe that the results you are seeking is possible and that you can produce it.

If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.

Notes:

From the beginning of time, otherwise ordinary people have catapulted themselves beyond the limits of what was thought to be possible. They, too, have had to overcome the same types of fears and insecurities that chain us all. We are all born with unlimited potential, but these people have figured out how to tap into it. When you discover how to do the same, everything changes.

Though you can also find a variety of synonyms to replace effort -work, productivity, exertion, or action -ultimately those who achieve meaningful goals and live Leve l10 lives do so by putting forth the necessary (and typically extraordinary) effort until they create their desired outcomes.

What makes the effort extraordinary is that it is sustained over an extended period of time. And without it, you will have nothing to fuel your faith.

The more you’re willing to put yourself out there and attempt to create miracles by putting forth Extraordinary Effort and maintaining Unwavering Faith over an extended period of time, the  more unpredictable and invaluable resources will show up in your life.

“The purpose of a goal is not to reach the goal. The purpose of a goal is to become the type of person who can achieve any goal, by always giving it everything you have, regardless of your results. It’s who you become through that process that matters more than actually reaching any one goal.”

Through no fault of our own, we’ve been unknowingly sabotaging ourselves, and it only gets worse as we get older. I know that’s not very encouraging, but it’s true. We’ve up against some harsh obstacles in life, both inside our own heads and in the world around us. And these obstacles can be a bit sneaky. Oftentimes, we don’t even know they exist.

Our inborn human nature leads us to take the easy road, doubt ourselves, and give up when things get difficult.

Here’s the rub (and where you need to step in): It may or may not be your fault if you’re not living the life you want, but it is your responsibility to make changes necessary to go to the next level.

Enlightened Entitlement, which is what we should all strive for, is characterized  by the fundamental belief that each of us is just as deserving, worthy, and capable of creating and having anything we want for our lives (that is anything we are willing to put effort to achieve) as any other person on Earth. 

In many cases, Enlightened Entitlement is what you’ll use to ignite your Unwavering Faith. You’ll find it’s often easier to believe that you deserve the end result than believing that you can accomplish it.

The standard life track is to go to school, get a steady job, and work until you’re sixty-fice, when hopefully you’ll have enough money for a mediocre retirement.

We’ve all been hurt, let down and disappointed. We’ve all experienced situation that we wish had gone one way but didn’t. And, yes, all of those things sucked. But what sucks even more is when we allow such experiences to color our whole world. Our fear of being hurt again prevents us from taking risks and pursuing opportunities. It keeps us living small. 

Negatively charged emotions shouldn’t be viewed as the enemy. In fact, there ais value in all emotions. If you lose something or someone important to you, feeling said and grieving are not only natural, they can be healthy. And sometimes we need to feel the pain that resulted from a choice we made so that we won’t make that choice again. The distinction here is for you to be in control of your emotional state, rather than allowing circumstances and events that are out of your control to dictate your emotions. 

After all of the goal setting and figuring out the baby steps we need to (hopefully) achieve our intended result and then following those steps until the end, we still have only about a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding (or failing) when all is said and done.

Reaching a goal, as in the tangible result, is not the ultimate purpose, nor is it the most significant benefit, of setting a goal. It’s not the highest value. In fact, in this new paradigm, whether or not you reach a goal is inconsequential to the true purpose of your goal’s endgame.

The purpose of setting a goal is not to hit the goal. The real purpose of setting a goal is to develop yourself into the type of person who can achieve your goals, regardless of whether you hit any particular one or not. Some goals you’ll reach, and some you won’t. It is who you become by giving it everything you have until the last moment -regardless of your results -that enables you to develop the mindset and behaviors that will help you achieve giver and bigger goals for the rest of your life.

Once you understand and embrace the real purpose of a goal, you realize that failure is nothing to be feared, because you cannot fail. Who you’re becoming is always more important that what you’re doing, yet the irony is that it’s what you’re doing that is always determining who you’re becoming.

To improve your life, you must first improve what you habitually think about. The most effective way to do that is to craft written statements (so that you’re not relying solely on your memory) that are strategically designed to guide and focus your thinking on what matters most to you, what’s possible for you, who you need to become, and what you need to do in order to make what’s possible inevitable. 

Clarifying which single goal was most important and making it my mission for the year made a tremendous impact on the way I went about achieving both it and all of my other goals.

You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be ok ay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.

A 2009 Stanford study found that people who often multitask using several different forms of media are actually less effective. They have more trouble screening out nonessential information and switching between different tasks. 

When you choose and commit to one mission, achieving your other goals will become more probably, because you will be living in alignment with your highest priority.

What if, instead if giving yourself twelve months to achieve your goals, you have yourself one? What if every single month your New Year began? What if every month were an opportunity to reflect on your progress, to set new goals, and give yourself a fresh start?

Establishing a monthly mission -a single goal each month that supports your larger mission -will provide you with a laser focus on your highest priority each and every month.

Extraordinary Effort has three components: Actions that move you closer to your ideal results, Actions that will most likely take you our of your comfort zone, Consistent effort over an extended period of time (regardless of your results along the way)

Consistent effort over an extended period of time (regardless of your results along the way) is the glue that holds all of this together.

Articulate why your mission is deeply meaningful to you. This is the reason why you’re committed to your mission and committed to staying committed until your mission becomes your reality. Your deeply meaningful why is the most significant benefit that you’ll experience through your pursuit and attainment of the mission.

Write down your process, the one that is made up of the primary action step(s) that you’ve determined will be necessary to accomplish your mission and be sure to include when you’re committed to taking those actions. Make this as clear and concise as possible. 

Remind yourself of the universal truth that you are just as worthy, deserving and capable of achieving everything you want (and are committed to) as any other person on earth. 

The key to creating miracles is consistency. You must stay committed as long as it takes you to get to the place in your life where you’ve always wanted to be.

Related Readings:

The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller. Simple Summary: We need to focus on one thing at a time to make everything else easier or unnecessary.

Atomic Habits by James Clear. Simple Summary: Putting systems in place allows us to consistently implement small changes that lead to bigger changes over time.

Read my Book Notes on The One Thing

Read my Book Notes on Atomic Habits