By: Raisa Musharrat Hossain, Campus Ambassador of Help The Future-HTF
The Miracle Morning is a personal development book that provides simple and small approaches to daily life that, if followed, might have transformational and cathartic impact in the long run. The tenor of the book is that if you have a healthy and revitalized morning routine, it will automatically model the rest of your day in a positive light which will then lead to a better life. The author, Hal Elrod, used his own life story of how he changed having disability and brain damage as a result of an accident into a successful life as the premise of the book.
As a reader, a few main ideas jumped out to me while reading this book. Although, it would be doing major injustice to the book to say it is only limited to only a few, but suffice it say, I’ll still give it my best shot. The first idea that I really reflected on was what Elrod described RMS or Rearview Mirror Syndrome was. The concept that most of our future actions are decided as a direct consequence from the past is truer than I believed them to be. I’ve had instances in my own life where I turned down a good academic or career opportunity because I simply haven’t experienced them in the past. And this has happened more often than not. I think labeling this repetitive occurrence in my life has “Rearview Mirror Syndrome” really shed some light on how directly proportional the past is to the future, at least in my case. My opinion on this is that the concept is a genius in itself. Learning and knowing about this was an eye-opener because I have experienced it so many times in my life, I never actually realized it was a problem before reading this book. The next few ideas were more generalized ideas than not. Waking up early, working out, reading, meditating are what every other life coach or guru advices. However, Elrod, in my opinion, found a way to really dig deep into these generalized concepts. For one, changing our entire perspective on sleep was something new to me. For instance, during finals week, every university student like me has a maximum of two hours of sleep, three if you’re extra smart and lucky. Every morning, we are so strung up on the fact that we got only two hours of sleep, that we let it affect our moods, our productivity, and our relationships. The book simply recommends to not think about the fact that you only had two hours of sleep, but to just not let it affect you, because after all I am a college student, and with college comes less sleep. It is normal; all college students go through this. I think such nonchalant attitude towards things that stress us out is amazing. It is definitely something new I learned from the book.
Other ideas like isolating events and getting accountability partners were also quite interesting to read. The take on these concepts were very neatly written. The subsequent actions that are advised to follow up these instances is are also very unique and well-thought out.
I would 100% recommend this book to anyone of any age. The Miracle Morning, I believe, is not just a personal development book but also an eye-opener in my experience. It serves as a phenomenal catalyst to lead a productive lifestyle. It truly was a great book and I had an amazing time reading it and learning from it.
