The Miracle Equation Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: The Miracle Equation is a simple, step-by-step process to make achieving your goals inevitable by bridging the gap between knowing and doing.

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Everyone should be interested in personal development, right? But if you have no money, crave meaningful connection, and still work at a job you hate, will the number of books you’ve read about self-help make any difference in your life? 

Most of the time we don’t even need a bunch of new strategies to achieve our goals. For example, if you want to get in shape, you most likely already know you need to eat healthy food and exercise. So how come many of us don’t see any tangible results when going through a situation like this?

What you lack in such situations is a method to implement what you already know. And this is exactly what The Miracle Equation: The Two Decisions That Move Your Biggest Goals from Possible, to Probable, to Inevitable gives you: a practical guide to moving your biggest dreams and goals from impossible to inevitable.

This same method was used by Hal Elrod, bestselling author of The Miracle Morning, to beat all odds and recover from cancer, near-paralysis and a traumatic accident that left him clinically dead for 6 minutes. 

Let’s look at the 3 key-lessons Elrod shares and lives by:

  1. Every negative emotion you’ve ever felt and could ever feel in the future is self-created.
  2. You can become emotionally invincible if you realize there is no value in resisting something you can’t change.
  3. Achieving your goals boils down to two things: unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. 

Ready to finally start creating the results you want in life? Let’s begin!

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Lesson 1: You create your emotional pain and it has almost nothing to do with what is happening to you.

When did you last you feel angry, sad or frustrated? Surely, your emotional state was a response to something that was happening to you at that time. Or was it?

Elrod lost his baby sister when he was 8 years old. A decade later, he suffered a life-threatening accident that left him with brain damage and 11 broken bones. This was after being pronounced dead for 6 minutes. Doctors told him he would never walk again. Yet, he recovered in just a few short months. 

In 2016, Elrod woke up one night, struggling to breathe. Days later, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that has a 30% survival rate. He made a full recovery and now teaches others about the power they have to create miracles in their own lives. 

The tragic circumstances of Elrod’s life taught him that our emotional pain rarely has anything to do with what is happening to us. Instead, suffering is the direct result of resisting our reality. 

In every situation, you can choose resistance – wishing something didn’t happen, dwelling on how unfair everything is, wanting things we to be different. Or you can choose acceptance and see how your life transforms as you become free from emotional pain.

Lesson 2: The key to becoming emotionally invincible is to stop resisting what you can’t change.

Now you might say: “Are you telling me to be happy if I get cancer?” No, that would be silly.

What Elrod is saying is that there’s no point in being upset over something that is out of our control. And dwelling on how negative and terrible a situation you can’t change is will keep you from noticing what you actually can change and from taking action where it really matters. 

Happiness is a fleeting emotion – one minute it’s there, the next it’s gone. But there is something more powerful than any emotion, good or bad, and that is peace. 

Being at peace with things as they are doesn’t necessarily mean you’re happy with them. But by unconditionally accepting what you can’t change in life you can rise above adversity and focus your efforts where you know they will have a meaningful impact. 

Elrod calls this “the five-minute rule.” And the secret to becoming emotionally invincible. 

What you need to do is simple: when something bad happens, set a timer for five minutes during which you do whatever you want. Cry, complain, punch something, scream and curse the world. When the time is up, you say “can’t change it” out loud and move on. 

All of this sounds interesting, but how does it help me achieve my goals?

This brings us to the next lesson!

Lesson 3: Extraordinary effort and unwavering faith make achieving your goals inevitable.

If you’re like most people, you have a lot of goals you want to accomplish. The problem with trying to do them all at once leads to overwhelm. You end up not sticking to any of them in the long run. 

The solution? Prioritizing. Choose one primary goal that’s most important to you at this moment, and commit to it 100%.

This is what unwavering faith refers to. Making a vow to yourself that, no matter what’s going on externally or how you feel internally, you will stick to this one goal and make it happen – no excuses. 

Once you have an unshakable conviction that your goal is within reach, you need to put forth an extraordinary effort to make sure you achieve it. 

According to Elrod, an extraordinary effort is just a fancy term for consistency. 

The key to success is not one remarkable action, but a series of small actions that you take every day which, if repeated week after week and month after month, naturally lead to achieving your goal. 

The barriers to this kind of consistency are all the limiting beliefs and negative emotions that plague our everyday lives, desperately trying to get us to quit. 

Combine unwavering faith with extraordinary effort, and you have Hal Elrod‘s Miracle Equation! These two things are his way of overcoming emotional pain and making achieving your goals inevitable. Keep going every time your mind tells you to give up and achieving your goal becomes only a matter of time, a natural consequence and the inevitable result of your consistent effort.

The Miracle Equation Review

Hal Elrod takes the mystery out of miracles and explains how to stop waiting for change and instead start creating it yourself. The Miracle Equation gives you an unconventional, but highly effective method for overcoming challenging situations and the emotional pain attached to them. It’s a collection of practical tools that guide you through a measurable process for achieving your most meaningful goals.

Who would I recommend The Miracle Equation summary to?

The 24-year-old who wants to see more results from his self-help practices, the 45-year-old who wants to learn how to let go of painful memories from the past, and anyone who’s interested in forming healthy habits and sticking to them long-term.

Last Updated on August 17, 2022

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Luke Rowley

With over 450 summaries that he contributed to Four Minute Books, first as a part-time writer, then as our full-time Managing Editor until late 2021, Luke is our second-most prolific writer. He's also a professional, licensed engineer, working in the solar industry. Next to his day job, he also runs Goal Engineering, a website dedicated to achieving your goals with a unique, 4-4-4 system. Luke is also a husband, father, 75 Hard finisher, and lover of the outdoors. He lives in Utah with his wife and 3 kids.