MOTUC #38: Unpacking the Introduction and First Chapter of the Miracle Morning

This bitch right here.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

So listen to this, people.

Listen to Keith.

This is the Masters of the Universe club.

This is a podcast and we are a club, literally that, whose goal is to help you master your universe in bite sized chunks one little bit at a time.

So today we're going to try to keep this podcast kind of short if we can, but we're going to try to help you master your universe one little bite sized chunk at a time.

And we are.

I'm holding a book, Dan was holding a book a moment ago called the Miracle Morning.

And we are reading this book chapter by chapter and we're bringing you our favorite parts chapter by chapter.

And we're reading chapter one today, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

We're talking about chapter one.

This is our first Masters of the Universe podcast.

Yeah, I've put out a few, but this is the first, like official I put out.

I've done two books reviews of two books chapter by chapter on the channel.

But.

But I.

But I think, you know, so I'm gonna call this.

I don't even know.

All right, well, it's my first time joining Dan's first.

Yes.

And Keith and I have been friends for most of our lives since our early college days.

And I'm just thrilled to be here because this, the self improvement thing.

I think, Keith, you.

You really started this before I did the road to this Kind of stuff.

And spoiler alert, you read this book and you're already a practitioner, if I'm not mistaken about a lot of what's going on in here.

But this is my first time, my first read through, so you're getting my sort of first reactions here.

Good.

And then of course, you'll have some more insights having read it, reading it for the second or third time or however many, and being a practitioner.

Okay, so let me stop you there because I want to just clarify.

I'm not exactly a practitioner because I haven't exercised in three days.

I meditated.

I would say I meditated this morning, but I haven't journaled in a while.

There's a lot of prescriptive bits in this book with regards to what you're supposed to do to become this optimized person.

And I won't even say it that way.

Actually, I'd rather put it in these terms if you don't know what it looks like to love yourself.

I think that this book is.

I don't think he says that in this book, but I feel like this book is like, how do you Love yourself.

How do you do the things that make you feel good?

How do you take care of your body and your mind and your soul?

You know, so there's meditation, all these things.

Anyway, but.

So we don't want to spoil it, because the book goes into each of these things.

Sure.

We're just talking about the first chapter.

The first chapter.

Call me a practitioner.

I have reminders to do all these things on my phone, but I don't do them all every day.

And maybe that's okay.

It is okay.

You know why?

Because there's a saying that we have in recovery, actually progress, not perfection.

Okay, beautiful.

So.

And I know that's a big part of our philosophy as Masters of the Universe is just making progress every day.

You know, don't.

You don't have to rack up.

You don't have to tally all the points, like, negative points that you didn't do.

You know what I mean?

Like, anyway, sins of omission, if you will.

But so full disclosure.

I read the first chapter, but I also read the introduction, and I'm gonna be honest with you.

I found the introduction to be very impactful.

Beautiful.

And I suppose that was by design, because he's like, why are you gonna.

Look.

Why are you gonna read my book?

Well, here's why.

Here's a little story, you know, about.

He was our age when he was in this car accident.

Our age.

Our age when we met in college.

I'm sorry, I was imagining being.

Going through that when I was.

Do you want to describe Herman Barker?

A.

We were doing that.

You know what I mean?

That's where we were in our lives.

And so, yeah, for the.

So this.

This.

This author sets up the, you know, introduction, talking about.

He was super successful.

He's having a great career early in life.

In his 20s, he was just working for some company, you know, just.

Just any Cutco knives, if I go knives, but whatever.

You know, I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, he was 20.

He was.

He just actually got an award company at an award dinner.

He gave a great speech.

He got a standing ovation.

He's driving home.

He's just like, oh, man, I'm the master of my universe.

Boom.

Gets hit by a drunk driver and the list of injuries.

This guy should be dead.

And it was a long.

Anyway, long road to recovery, but I found it really inspirational.

And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna read this guy's book, if nothing else, because if he went through this and the outcome was he's this Incredibly helpful, impactful person.

That's how he dealt with that adversity.

This guy probably has a few things worth absorbing.

And he did recommend grabbing a pen in the introduction.

He's like, grab a pen before you start.

There it is.

So grab a pen.

And then it says, grab a pen.

And I went.

And I grabbed one and a little check mark there to make sure it was working.

But the first.

There actually wasn't too much in the first chapter that really needed it.

And upon going through here, the only thing I kind of bracketed was at the end of the day, parentheses and the beginning.

The only thing we control is ourselves.

What we do, who we become, and how we choose to show up for others just stood out to me.

I was like, I like this guy.

So.

And then I. I have it.

The first chapter really seems like just a warm up.

There wasn't a ton.

It's like he's sort of just like laying the ground and part whole.

Part of it, whole half this chapter was, but what if I'm not a morning person?

I'm like, don't worry about.

I am a morning person.

It's fine.

Like, you know, I don't need.

I don't need.

I don't need the.

The pat on the shoulder.

Like I actually am.

Right.

I'm cool with that.

That's part of actually why I got this book.

You recommended it.

I'm already up in the morning.

I'm a morning person.

And I realized that I had like the shittiest morning routine.

I was like, well, this is my alone time in the day before everything gets going and what am I doing?

So I was like, oh, this seems perfect.

So that's.

That's my first reaction.

I'm gonna add to what you said because actually not only did he.

So that car accident when.

When Dan said that he got into a horrible car accident.

It's.

It's horrible.

It's horrible to the point where you read it and it is quite graphic.

Yeah.

And he wasn't supposed to live.

He wasn't supposed to walk again.

They weren't sure if he was gonna keep his eye.

Yeah.

Or even see again.

His.

He was like.

It was.

He was one.

He and his car were one in the same.

He was just really sandwiched in there.

It took them like.

I can't remember how long it took him to get him out.

He died.

And he was dead for like six minutes where it's like brain dead zone, you know?

So regardless of what this guy says, he's clearly exceptional in A lot of ways, with or without the book.

But on top of that, he actually.

So I don't know if you remember this.

This may or may not be in the chapter.

In the first chapter, in the introduction, rather.

But he also had cancer.

He mentioned.

He mentioned it in passing.

Yeah.

And he used some of the stuff in this book to, you know, get through cancer as well and beat cancer, in addition to having this whole, like, you know, I guess, maybe countrywide or potentially worldwide movement where lots of people are doing the miracle morning.

And like I said to Dan, I'm not doing the miracle morning.

I'm doing it whenever I do one or more of these things every day or every other day as I can.

But I do find them helpful.

I'll boil it down just to give you, like, an idea of the introduction.

There's also a documentary on Amazon that you can watch if you want to get kind of the nutshell picture of it as well.

But it's.

He did.

He was having a hard time in life.

He was broke or not succeeding in his job or whatever.

And he said, well, what can I do to.

What can I do to become successful?

He.

He asked his friend.

His friend said, you have to exercise.

That's number one thing.

Then he said, I'm going to just do research and see what other people said.

And then a bunch of wealthy, successful people said different things, but he noticed that it was the same six things, the Savers.

And they stand for silence, which is meditation, A, affirmations, V, visualizations, E, exercise, R, reading.

And then the last S is scribing or journaling.

So for the sake of the acronym, he made up other words to make the acronym Savers, but it stands for.

Well, I just said it, but I'll say it one more time.

Meditation, silence, meditation, affirmations, visualizations, exercise, reading, and journaling.

Those are the six things that.

And he thought, if I cram all these things into every single morning, I'll be a superhuman.

Right.

So that's the gist of the book.

I did pick out two little things from the first chapter.

The introduction was very long, but it was.

It was very impactful.

Yeah.

But I picked out two quick little blurbs from the first chapter, but I'm not going to read the first one.

I'm actually going to read the second one because it actually has a lot to do with what we do on what we're planning to do on this podcast.

This is page three, creating your level 10 life.

And he basically just says, the problem is this is a negative statement.

But so, you know, take that with a grain of salt because I don't want to ever be negative.

But the problem is that few people are dedicated, are dedicating time each day to becoming the level 10 person.

They need to be the person who's capable of creating and sustaining that life, this great level 10 life.

He goes on to say, and this is the important part.

I believe a commitment to daily personal development may be our greatest opportunity as individuals and collectively as a society.

So for me actually just thought that was kind of like resonated with what we're doing on this podcast.

Two things.

I think that the better we are as individuals, the more we can, you know, impact others and give back and raise the level of society which will also raise us individually.

And I'm not kidding, when you and I got on this call today and this is the first one we're doing, we've been planning this for a long time.

I actually teared up a little bit that we actually got this started because I feel so happy that we're actually making this happen.

Because this I think is probably the most important kind of like, you know, mission we could have in life.

And it can start with just me and you, but the more people we bring into the fold, the better our lives are going to be.

And what really struck me today was that you getting on here with me, like I just told you, you said, oh, you're a practitioner.

No, I'm not really a practitioner.

I've been doing this really half assedly for a while.

But just getting on this call with you today is making me feel like and I probably would exercise later today and I probably meditate a little bit probably too, no matter what happens.

But getting on the call with you today actually is more inspiring for me.

And it's like, okay, you're going to do one of those things or both of those things today.

And there's six things but like the exercise is the non negotiable for me.

But so even though I brought this project to you, you're just getting on this call with me is you're bringing it to me, you're helping me by doing this.

And my hope is that we're helping someone else.

And whether it's somebody who just watches this or we actually physically bring another person into the fold and say, okay, now you're part of this and it's this book now, but it could be, it's like we've talked about other books too.

There's going to be a million of them.

We'll just keep it going whenever we can.

So that's what I think is sort of like the mission is that commitment to daily personal development may be our greatest opportunity as individuals and collectively as a society.

We could actually change the world just by doing this.

That's possible.

That's my belief.

You know, I had an emotional reaction, started reading this book, too.

Yeah.

And I think it wasn't so much.

I mean, the writing, straightforward.

It's cool.

It's cool as information.

But he's not, you know, whatever.

It wasn't like that.

The writing was just so amazing that I started getting an emotional reaction, But I just sort of realized.

Well, I'm not exactly sure why I had such a reaction, but maybe it was the sense.

Like, geez, I. I really have been wanting to do this.

I really have been.

It was a sense of relief almost.

I don't.

It's a little hard to describe, but I was getting.

I was getting a little emotional.

I was like, I'm just, okay, all right, I'm gonna go with it.

I think it is a good reaction.

Like, I like.

You know, I don't shy away from having emotional reactions.

You know, feeling numb and shut off is like, you know, it's the opposite of where I want to go in life.

Mm.

I was like, oh, okay, let me go.

Let's go.

Mm.

You know, and maybe I'm bringing some accountability, because now I'm here, and you're like, oh, he called me a practitioner.

Uh, oh, maybe I'll journal tomorrow morning.

I've never journaled.

It's the one thing on that list that I've never done.

And I was just thinking, oh, what does that mean?

What does that mean?

But let's discuss that as we go through the book.

These things will come up, so we'll get ahead of ourselves.

I just want to say the reading, the introduction and the first chapter has gotten me totally jazzed.

And, you know, I'm so.

I'm really happy to hear you say that.

Part of me gets nervous when I start going.

We.

Like.

I feel like we're going in the right direction, and I feel like, oh, God, what could go wrong?

But, you know, that's my.

Whatever.

That's my trauma or whatever.

But I do think that what it makes me think of is that we.

If.

As long as we keep at it, you know, as long as we, you know, have a.

Some level of consistency, you know, we're gonna be okay.

And I think, yeah.

So.

Yeah.

And it's a very powerful.

The dude has A very powerful story.

So it is very moving.

And then also the fact that he was able to help other people and change people's lives.

Like, I don't, you know, if I, I don't get sad if I hear about somebody.

I don't want everybody to think I'm an asshole.

But I don't get sad when I hear somebody like dying or sometimes I get sad if there's some horrible tragedy.

Certainly I do get sad about things like that.

But what really gets me emotionally is when someone does something good for other people.

That is so moving for me.

You know, triumph people who, you know, rise above and help other people.

And, you know, so like, that's the type of stuff that I get really emotional about.

So I get emotional when I have been emotional when I read this book because it's like this dude has been through all this stuff and he decided to put that energy into something positive, you know, and that's so, that's like, you know, like where humans are so lucky because we're so different from.

I may presume this, but I'm pretty sure we are different from other organisms.

You know, we are the universe.

We're like the self aware universe, you know, and it puts us in a powerful position and we could use this power for good or bad, you know, or we could just be neutral.

We could just be organisms.

But I feel like there's an opportunity here, you know, so anyway, you froze up.

You froze up there.

Okay.

Because it was the Matrix.

As soon as you said self aware universe, it froze because typical, the power, the higher powers were like, hold on now, too much.

And Daniel was not ready for that information.

You know, he blanked out after that.

This one is.

We have, we have somebody.

He's trying to leave the Matrix.

Exactly.

So, so good.

Cool.

So let's, let's keep it short.

Yes, I am totally jazzed.

I think it's a great recommendation, Keith.

Yeah, thank you.

Not only is it going to be great for us on our project, but I think personally there's going to be a lot in here for me because I am ready.

Yeah.

And I'm someone who needs structure and I'm hoping there'll be some structure in here for me.

I think.

So before we go, just know that you can buy the book.

We do have a.

We do have a Patreon.

If people want to support the show, they can pay at the Patreon.

I will leave a link and you can buy the book through our affiliate link, which I'll.

Which will be the top link as well.

If you want to follow along with us and read along with us.

Very good.

Cool.

All right, let's keep a good thing going.

Keith, I hope you have a wonderful day.

You too, man.

Love you, brother.

Love you, man.

Bye.

See ya.