Why Accepting The Worst-Case Scenario Is Step One Toward Success

Kalika Yap, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member in Los Angeles, is founder and CEO of Citrus Studios, a branding and design agency. As the host of EO’s Wonder podcast, Kalika recently revisited Dave Will’s EO 360 podcast featuring Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning. Here’s what she shared:

In a year unlike any other, how are you positioning yourself for success? What new habits, rituals, or patterns are you implementing to extract every possible ounce of inspiration and perspiration from yourself as you pursue your goals?

If ever there was a time to try an extraordinary new process, it’s now. That’s what led me to the EO 360 podcast where host Dave Will interviews Hal Elrod, best-selling author of The Miracle Morning, which has been translated into 30 languages.

Hit by a drunk driver going 70mph at age 20, Hal was clinically dead for six minutes. He awoke from a coma six days later with 11 broken bones, permanent brain damage, and the prognosis that he would never walk again.

So what did he do? He not only walked, he ran a 52-mile ultra-marathon, became an international keynote speaker, success coach, and bestselling author.

Then, years later, at age 37, he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of leukemia. Doctors said he had only weeks to live. Yet, once again, he emerged triumphantly into remission. But how?

Hal’s unique brand of motivation and visualization proved doctors very wrong — twice! That fascinates me. How did he do the impossible?

Hal says acceptance makes all the difference.

“I thought about how my life would be if I were in a wheelchair — I could be very happy, or I could be miserable. I decided I wanted to be the happiest, most grateful person in a wheelchair,” he said. “Once I accepted the worst-case scenario, it had no power over my emotions. Then, I put every ounce of energy, visualization, and prayer into walking again.”

Hal decided to be grateful, happy, and make peace with the worst-case scenario so it wouldn’t have emotional power over him.

He did the same thing after his cancer diagnosis, explaining, “The quality of our lives has nothing to do with what’s going on outside of us — or very little — but has everything to do with what’s going on inside of us.”

Hal also believes that adversity serves us because when we share those lessons with others, it helps people.

“If something is out of my control, like having cancer or being in a wheelchair, I don’t see any value in wishing it was different or didn’t happen. The greatest lesson I learned is this: Every negative emotion we ever feel is self-created. And it’s self-created by the degree of resistance we have to our reality.”

So Hal’s lesson is that if you can’t change it, you may as well be happy in the midst of it. By accepting the worst-case scenario and making peace with it, you become emotionally invincible. Outside things that happen to you no longer dictate your emotions. Instead, you are free to choose your emotions based on what serves you.

Accept the things outside of your control, so they don’t affect your emotional state negatively.

It’s that same simple, brilliant philosophy that led Hal to develop his Miracle Morning routine during a very dark era in his life that once again taught him valuable lessons that he shares to help others.

Here’s the backstory: Hal decided to dedicate an hour per day to personal development. He researched powerful personal rituals that successful people swear by. He couldn’t decide on just one, so he integrated the six most impactful habits into one hour per morning — which he kicks off at 5 a.m. after his five-step, snooze-proof wake-up strategy.

The acronym SAVERS describes Hal’s process: Silence (meditation, prayer, gratitude), affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing (journaling). The all-encompassing hour has attracted a mass of devoted followers.

Here’s a surprise: Though getting up in the dark to better yourself sounds like something only morning people do, Hal found that 72 percent of the half-million people in his Miracle Morning community had never been morning people and didn’t believe they could become one. And yet, they did it.

When you think about success, you might not consider waking up in the dark as a key element. But Hal believes that a successful life starts with a morning ritual that prepares you for productivity.