614: The Life-Changing Impact of Eternal Optimism with Matt Drinkhahn

Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod

Hal Elrod

Business, Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When life feels overwhelming, the natural reaction for most people is to retreat, drift into some form of depression, and assume the pain or challenge they're experiencing is permanent.

But what if the hardest season of your life could become the catalyst for your greatest transformation? Today's episode is all about accessing inner strength, gratitude, and possibility when life tries to knock you down.

I'm joined by my good friend Matt Drinkhahn, author of The Eternal Optimist: It's Never Too Late and host of The Eternal Optimist Podcast. Matt is an executive coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, a devoted husband and father, and one of the most genuinely positive human beings I've ever met. But what makes his wisdom so powerful isn't that life has been easy for him—it's that he became an eternal optimist when life literally knocked him down so bad, he could barely walk for 9 months.

In our conversation, Matt opens up about the most challenging period in his life when a devastating zipline accident left him in a wheelchair, virtually unable to stand up, handle chores, or provide for his family. He shares how he battled excruciating pain, which tested his marriage in addition to fears of losing his career, and the possibility he may never walk again—and the three principles he used to rebuild his life from the ground up.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Power of Eternal Optimism
Setting Your Intentions to Transform Your Day
The Zipline Accident That Changed Everything
How The Miracle Morning Anchored Matt's Recovery
The First Two Principles to Overcome Overwhelm
Acceptance vs. Resistance: The Serenity Prayer
The Third Principle to Overcome Overwhelm
Remember that This Too Shall Pass
How To Set Goals When You're Struggling
Why It's Never Too Late to Change
How to Connect with Matt and Get His Book

Get The Full Show Notes

To get full access to today's show notes, including audio, transcript, and links to all the resources mentioned, visit MiracleMorning.com/614

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams.
0:09.6	I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level,
0:16.6	as well as interview world-class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals
0:21.9	themselves and we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you
0:26.5	need to do to do the same ready here we go hello my friends welcome to the achieve your goals. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today I'm talking to my friend Matt Drink on. And we are talking about what do you do when everything is overwhelming when life knocks you down? And this is based on the principles that he teaches in his book, The Eternal Optimist. In fact, I'll probably call this episode the power of
0:55.7	eternal optimism, because I do really believe this is a superpower. And what I love about Matt and the way
1:01.5	that he thinks and even just the premise of his book, which when his book came out, by the way,
1:04.9	I bought a copy not only because I love Matt, but because I love what this book is about.
1:09.6	And the tagline really clinches it for me. So the book is book is about. And the tagline really clenches it for me.
1:12.8	So the book is the eternal optimist and the tagline is it's never too late. And that's what I
1:18.1	love about the premise of this book is even if you've been a pessimist your whole life or you've
1:22.3	been negative or maybe you were an optimist in the past, but then life knocked you down and you became pessimistic.
1:29.0	I think a lot of us, we become jaded when life just beats us up. You're like, I can't,
1:33.5	I like, screw it. I used to be happy. I used to be positive and optimistic, but you know what,
1:38.9	screw it. I'm done. Life isn't fair. This isn't supposed to be this way. And so I love Matt because I love this message of
1:47.7	you're never too late. You're going to hear today when he talks about he was an angry person in his
1:54.0	mid-40s and he yelled a lot and he had young kids and he realized that this was an area that he needed
2:00.5	to transform and that just because he was an area that he needed to transform. And
2:01.4	just because he was an angry person for the verse 45 years of his life, it was never too late to
2:06.0	change. And so he now says he's very proud and grateful that he has a five-year yell-free
2:13.8	household. And as the father of three young daughters, he is married, he's 48 years old,
2:19.7	40 years young as he would tell you. And again, he's the host of the Eternal Optimist podcast,
	...

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