2022-12-28_Encouragement_for_your_New_Years_Resolutions
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.360 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:08.000 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:11.240 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:12.240 | I'm your host.
00:00:13.240 | And today I want to talk with you about New Year's resolutions, goal setting.
00:00:17.480 | I want to talk with you about how awesome it is to set goals.
00:00:21.160 | I want to encourage you to establish New Year's resolutions.
00:00:24.940 | And I want to give you some thoughts and ideas that will help you to be more accomplished
00:00:28.160 | and effective at doing that for yourself.
00:00:32.180 | One thing I've noticed throughout my lifetime is that it's generally considered to be quite
00:00:37.020 | hip to bash New Year's resolutions.
00:00:41.020 | I don't know why that is.
00:00:45.860 | I could come up with some reasons why I think that is, but I do not think that New Year's
00:00:52.180 | resolutions should be derided or mocked in any way.
00:00:56.220 | New Year's resolutions are fantastic.
00:00:59.220 | They are wonderful.
00:01:01.000 | The New Year is a fantastic time to sit down and consider your life and imagine the future.
00:01:06.800 | It's just such a beautiful marker in the sand for you to consider where you're going and
00:01:11.260 | how you want to get there.
00:01:12.700 | I genuinely believe that New Year's resolutions and New Year goal setting is awesome.
00:01:18.840 | And I am convinced that the only people who will ever criticize you for setting goals
00:01:23.900 | or for making New Year's resolutions are losers.
00:01:28.900 | Losers are the only people who criticize you for trying to better yourself because losers
00:01:34.680 | and leeches around you want to pull you down.
00:01:38.640 | And if you are going to embark upon a program of self-improvement, of lifestyle enhancement,
00:01:43.700 | of going after a bigger and better life, you better get used to the fact that most people
00:01:48.620 | around you don't actually want to see you succeed because most people live in a world
00:01:53.560 | filled with envy and greed and they want what other people have and they're not willing
00:01:59.100 | to be happy for other people and then put in their own work.
00:02:01.880 | They want to take from other people.
00:02:03.860 | And unfortunately, it seems to me that we live in an era in which this envy is rewarded
00:02:08.700 | on many, many levels.
00:02:11.080 | So recognize that if you set out on a program of New Year's resolutions and self-improvement,
00:02:16.960 | get used to the idea of other people trying to tear you down.
00:02:21.100 | But the people who have what you want, the people who have accomplished what you want
00:02:27.380 | to accomplish, I don't think those people are ever going to pull you down.
00:02:32.180 | Winners will congratulate you.
00:02:34.500 | Winners will encourage you.
00:02:36.300 | And winners will share their strategies with you.
00:02:40.620 | For example, just imagine that you are a 10-year-old boy and you have a dream of someday playing
00:02:46.880 | in the NBA.
00:02:47.880 | A classic dream for a young 10-year-old boy.
00:02:51.660 | Well, if you go to the circle around you, which is probably not in any way filled with
00:02:57.980 | NBA players, and you share that dream with lots of people, they may indulge you, but
00:03:03.940 | they will very quickly start talking to you about practicality and setting practical goals.
00:03:09.660 | And some people will start to tear you down.
00:03:12.380 | But if you're sitting in a room full of NBA players and you start sharing your dream of
00:03:18.340 | someday playing in the NBA, you're not going to hear a negative word from any NBA player.
00:03:24.020 | You're not going to hear anybody say, "It can't be done."
00:03:27.260 | You're going to hear each and every one of them encourage you and then start to share
00:03:31.320 | with you strategies of what you can do now at the age of 10 so that at the age of 20
00:03:37.620 | you are potentially prepared to play in the NBA.
00:03:41.220 | A lot of life works like this.
00:03:43.300 | You want to be very careful who you share your goals with.
00:03:46.700 | You want to be very careful who you share your resolutions with.
00:03:50.340 | It's fine to share them with nobody at all.
00:03:54.500 | But if you do share your goals or if you do share your resolutions, recognize that the
00:03:59.720 | only people who are going to criticize you for establishing resolutions for yourself
00:04:05.820 | or goals for yourself are losers who want to pull you down.
00:04:10.840 | So if you are concerned about setting goals for the year or setting resolutions for the
00:04:16.700 | year, if you're thinking that, "Oh, maybe it's not hip for me to set goals for myself
00:04:20.900 | or maybe it's not hip for me to establish New Year's resolutions," abandon that thinking.
00:04:27.100 | Winners are going to congratulate you.
00:04:29.660 | They're going to encourage you.
00:04:31.300 | And then they're going to share the strategies that have been effective for them.
00:04:35.580 | They're going to share their fine-tuning strategies to help you.
00:04:39.540 | And that's my goal in today's podcast episode is to share some of the strategies that I
00:04:43.680 | think that have been effective for me and some ideas that I hope will help you.
00:04:48.660 | But this isn't a one-stop shop.
00:04:51.060 | Goal setting is a skill.
00:04:52.980 | It's a skill that has to be developed.
00:04:55.260 | And every step along that path, every experience that you have, every win and every loss, every
00:05:02.540 | positive experience, every negative experience, every success and every failure, this is all
00:05:10.500 | data that becomes part of skill development.
00:05:15.460 | There's not a person out there who has been successful from the start.
00:05:20.420 | There's not a person out there who has been able to keep every New Year's resolution that
00:05:23.420 | he's ever set.
00:05:24.420 | It doesn't exist.
00:05:25.740 | So in this episode, I'm going to share with you some detailed strategies and ideas to
00:05:30.180 | help you effectively set goals so that you can accomplish all of the things that you
00:05:35.660 | set out for yourself in this coming new year in 2023.
00:05:39.620 | I want your resolutions to be exciting and motivating, and I want you to exceed in them.
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00:06:18.220 | To begin with, I want to establish a metaphor.
00:06:21.060 | We're going to use a couple of metaphors in this discussion.
00:06:24.540 | And I believe that metaphors are very, very useful for us in a subject like this, because
00:06:30.020 | you're going to have to fill in all of the specifics of your personal goals.
00:06:35.020 | And to accomplish your personal goals, you're going to need quite a lot of specific knowledge.
00:06:40.220 | I can't talk generally about your specific goals, but what I can do is I can share the
00:06:46.120 | helpful metaphors that we can all relate to.
00:06:49.180 | And my favorite metaphor to use when talking about goal setting is to compare goal setting
00:06:55.940 | to travel.
00:06:58.980 | We can all understand the concept of travel.
00:07:02.980 | We have all traveled to some extent and we can understand it.
00:07:07.020 | And it's a perfect metaphor to use with goal setting.
00:07:09.700 | To begin with, setting a goal.
00:07:11.780 | What is a goal?
00:07:12.900 | I think of a goal as a dream destination, a place that you want to go.
00:07:19.420 | It's a destination.
00:07:20.420 | So let's say that we're going to imagine the places that you're going to travel this year.
00:07:26.440 | You start by thinking about your dream destinations.
00:07:30.900 | I want you to pause for a moment and think about this.
00:07:34.920 | If you were going to list three destinations that you would like to travel to this year,
00:07:41.620 | what would they be?
00:07:44.980 | Make a list of those destinations, three of them.
00:07:49.220 | What are your three dream destinations?
00:07:54.260 | Now, keep that list of three dream destinations in mind as I talk about some of the destinations
00:08:02.860 | that you could choose.
00:08:05.900 | The first thing to notice is that you will choose your dream destinations quite naturally.
00:08:11.980 | And your dream destinations will be different than mine.
00:08:16.600 | Some people have a dream destination that is quite close to home.
00:08:22.140 | Some people have a dream destination that's far away.
00:08:26.000 | Some people have a dream destination that has a certain feature to it.
00:08:30.780 | Ask a surfer what his dream destination is.
00:08:32.780 | He's going to list a specific wave that he wants to surf or a specific region of the
00:08:37.820 | world that he wants to surf.
00:08:39.900 | Ask a diver, a scuba diver, what his dream destination is.
00:08:43.860 | He might list a certain reef or a certain country that has features that he wants to
00:08:48.900 | surf.
00:08:50.320 | Ask a traveler what his dream destination is.
00:08:53.220 | And he might list a certain set of features.
00:08:56.280 | Ask somebody who has more normal life experience.
00:09:00.780 | And his dream destination might be closer to home.
00:09:04.660 | Notice that there is nothing inherently right or wrong about any of these dream destinations.
00:09:10.300 | If your dream destination is to go and take a hike through a beautiful national forest
00:09:14.940 | that's 100 miles away from your home, that's just as valid of a dream destination as the
00:09:21.440 | guy who says, "I want to fly across the world and see the ancient pyramids."
00:09:25.900 | It's just as valid to say, "I want to go to Indonesia and surf around Indonesia," as it
00:09:30.780 | is to say, "I want to go and see the Vatican City."
00:09:36.400 | It's just as valid to say, "My dream destination is to sit at home in this beautiful place
00:09:41.420 | where I live, but to tour every museum in my city."
00:09:44.380 | It's just as valid to say that as to say, "I want to go on some far-flung expensive
00:09:50.060 | destination."
00:09:51.860 | So you're going to choose and establish your dream destinations based upon your experience,
00:09:58.540 | your exposure, what you think is interesting to you.
00:10:01.980 | This is why we all wind up setting different goals.
00:10:05.300 | For some people, it's interesting to travel across the world.
00:10:09.140 | For other people, it's not.
00:10:10.840 | They don't want to deal with foreign languages, foreign cultures.
00:10:13.700 | It's interesting to them to travel around their home country.
00:10:16.500 | For some people, travel is not in any way interesting.
00:10:20.900 | So envision your destination and recognize that whatever destination you choose in life,
00:10:28.580 | that's fine.
00:10:29.860 | You don't have to choose other people's destinations.
00:10:33.460 | Now when you envision your destination, there are going to be certain features and attributes
00:10:41.660 | that come along fairly automatically with how to accomplish that destination.
00:10:47.540 | I'll give you an example.
00:10:50.020 | I'm born and raised in South Florida, on the coastline of South Florida.
00:10:55.380 | And so for me, beaches generally have had very little appeal because I've grown up all
00:11:01.060 | my life around beaches.
00:11:04.100 | Disney World has virtually no appeal.
00:11:07.060 | I've gone to Disney World a handful of times.
00:11:09.540 | I don't have any emotional connection to Disney characters or to the Disney world, meaning
00:11:15.620 | the world of their characters and whatnot.
00:11:17.900 | I've been to Disney enough times to know, "Eh, I don't enjoy it.
00:11:20.740 | It's not fun.
00:11:21.740 | I have no interest in going."
00:11:23.740 | So if you talk to me about dream destinations, I'm usually going to come up with things that
00:11:30.300 | are different than what I have experienced.
00:11:33.020 | So I'm going to list three destinations.
00:11:35.020 | First, I like mountains.
00:11:37.780 | And so I like to ride motorcycles and I like mountains.
00:11:42.100 | And one of the things that is fairly common is that motorcyclists often like riding through
00:11:47.060 | the mountains.
00:11:48.060 | There's a very famous road in Tennessee called Tail of the Dragon, where motorcyclists like
00:11:54.660 | to go and ride their motorcycles.
00:11:57.100 | It makes just a very windy road where people enjoy all the curves.
00:12:01.500 | That would be an example of a dream destination for someone like me.
00:12:05.260 | I enjoy the mountains because it's different than the flat beaches where I'm from.
00:12:09.020 | I enjoy the cool weather, et cetera.
00:12:10.700 | I like Tennessee.
00:12:11.700 | I like that region of the country.
00:12:14.260 | And if I like motorcycling and I want to set a destination, if I want to go and motorcycle
00:12:18.580 | to the Tail of the Dragon, I think it's Deagles Gap, Tennessee, then this is a great dream
00:12:26.340 | destination.
00:12:27.340 | There's a great trip involved with that.
00:12:28.340 | That would be one example.
00:12:30.700 | Another example for me of a dream destination is that I've always had a dream to take a
00:12:36.180 | year off and take my children all around the United States.
00:12:39.500 | When I was a young boy, I traveled a lot around the country.
00:12:43.900 | We always camped.
00:12:44.900 | We stayed in national parks and state parks.
00:12:48.100 | We learned a lot.
00:12:49.100 | I really enjoyed that time of family togetherness.
00:12:51.740 | I also really enjoy history.
00:12:53.700 | I feel that one of the valuable gifts that we can give to children is to expose our children
00:13:01.260 | to history and to experience, to a diverse array of experience and sites and cultures,
00:13:09.020 | et cetera, so that they can understand some of the options that they have to choose from
00:13:12.780 | in life.
00:13:13.780 | They have a sense of confidence in themselves to be able to choose, and they have a wider
00:13:18.220 | board of options.
00:13:20.100 | For me, a dream trip or a dream destination is that someday, when it's appropriate with
00:13:25.500 | my children's learning, I will take a year off and I will travel around the United States
00:13:31.060 | in an RV so that we can really enjoy being in those places that I like to be.
00:13:37.100 | A third dream destination for me is to take my family to mainland China.
00:13:44.300 | I'm fascinated with Chinese culture, and I'd like to take my children.
00:13:48.140 | I'd like to show them the Great Wall of China.
00:13:50.340 | I'd like to take them to the Forbidden Palace.
00:13:52.180 | I've seen these things.
00:13:53.260 | I've been there.
00:13:54.260 | I've done it, but I would like them to get an idea of this great world power and some
00:13:59.100 | of the features and attributes that it holds.
00:14:02.020 | Those are three that are for me.
00:14:04.100 | I'll list one more just as an example, but this one's not appropriate to me.
00:14:08.820 | Some people might have the idea.
00:14:09.940 | Let's say you're from Denver, Colorado or Chicago, Illinois, and you've always dreamed
00:14:13.940 | of the beaches.
00:14:15.380 | You've seen the videos and the pictures of all these beautiful beaches around the world,
00:14:23.020 | and you dream of sailing around the Pacific Islands with your family and with your children.
00:14:28.700 | If we describe these three simple goals, goal number one would be take a motorcycle trip
00:14:32.940 | to Deals Gap, Tennessee.
00:14:34.980 | Goal number two is take a year off and travel with my children around the United States.
00:14:40.940 | Goal number three, take my family to mainland China and explore some of the famous Chinese
00:14:48.500 | heritage things, the Forbidden Palace, the Great Wall of China, and many of the other
00:14:52.860 | national heritage sites that are there, the UNESCO World Heritage Sites that are located
00:14:57.740 | in China.
00:14:58.740 | By the way, did you know that I think China and Italy are the two countries with the most
00:15:02.380 | world heritage sites now?
00:15:04.460 | China's been working hard at improving their numbers.
00:15:06.660 | So lots of historical and interesting things to see there.
00:15:10.060 | Now, when you envision your trip or envision your destination, it will basically set most
00:15:16.300 | things in order for you to accomplish it.
00:15:21.660 | If you envision a goal, you can see that some goals could be accomplished in the short term,
00:15:27.700 | some goals could be accomplished in the longer term, some goals will require more planning
00:15:32.780 | and more preparation.
00:15:35.660 | And once you envision the goal, most of your work is done.
00:15:41.100 | Now it's just a matter of taking the steps.
00:15:43.580 | If we compare the motorcyclist's dream of taking a trip to Tale of the Dragon to ride
00:15:48.180 | this famous stretch of road in Tennessee, now we know some certain things, right?
00:15:53.300 | I don't have a motorcycle.
00:15:55.620 | I don't...
00:15:56.620 | Do I want to go alone?
00:15:57.620 | I'm going to need a motorcycle, right?
00:15:58.620 | That's the first thing.
00:15:59.620 | The second thing is, am I going to go alone or am I going to go with buddies?
00:16:02.420 | Most motorcyclists have friends that ride motorcycles and a lot of motorcyclists enjoy
00:16:05.840 | being together.
00:16:06.980 | So I need to get some buddies to get their motorcycles and kind of pick out a time.
00:16:10.820 | But the accomplishment of that goal is fairly simple and straightforward.
00:16:13.820 | If I don't have a motorcycle, I'm either going to need to buy one or rent one.
00:16:17.500 | I'm going to need to make a date.
00:16:18.740 | I'm going to need to save the necessary money to get there and I'm going to put it on the
00:16:21.980 | calendar and go and accomplish it.
00:16:24.380 | And many important goals are just like this.
00:16:26.980 | They can be achieved very, very quickly.
00:16:29.300 | They might require a little bit of money, a little bit of forethought, a little bit
00:16:32.620 | of planning, but they don't take much.
00:16:37.200 | These goals are perfectly valid.
00:16:39.420 | There's no reason to have all of your goals be huge and monstrous things.
00:16:43.840 | They can just be simple things that you want to accomplish, feelings you want to have,
00:16:48.420 | etc.
00:16:49.420 | They can also be larger.
00:16:51.060 | So the biggest of the goals that I described is the goal of traveling around the United
00:16:55.660 | States.
00:16:56.660 | Like I said, take a year off.
00:16:58.100 | That's a much more substantial goal.
00:17:01.460 | It requires a lot more planning.
00:17:03.140 | I have to think about my money.
00:17:04.420 | I have to be able to not earn money for a year or have to have some form of income that's
00:17:08.620 | going to come in while I'm traveling.
00:17:10.460 | I need a lot more infrastructure.
00:17:12.340 | I might need an RV if I'm going to RV.
00:17:14.500 | What kind of RV?
00:17:15.500 | There's going to be a whole lot of planning involved with that.
00:17:17.520 | How am I going to make this work with my children and their school schedules and all of these
00:17:20.840 | other things?
00:17:21.840 | Where are we going to go?
00:17:22.840 | What's our trip going to be like?
00:17:24.180 | The United States is a huge place to see the whole country in a year is not possible in
00:17:28.900 | any reasonable way.
00:17:29.980 | So what's going to be the organizing principle of our trip?
00:17:32.580 | Are we going to travel to all 50 states so we can check the box and say we did that?
00:17:37.420 | Are we going to travel to all the national parks so we can check the box and say we did
00:17:41.780 | that?
00:17:42.780 | Are we going to focus on historical areas?
00:17:44.700 | We could go to many regions of the United States and spend months there.
00:17:47.740 | Are we going to focus on natural beauty, on environmental changes, or geography, or cultural
00:17:53.060 | distinctions?
00:17:54.240 | So we're going to have to envision more details and there's going to be a lot more planning
00:17:58.580 | involved.
00:17:59.580 | But there's a different set of planning than going to China.
00:18:02.940 | Going to China means I'm not going to take an RV.
00:18:05.620 | I'm not even going to take a car.
00:18:06.620 | I can't overland in China.
00:18:09.440 | It's very hard for individual travelers, even if they have their own vehicle, to come into
00:18:13.020 | China and bring their own vehicle into China.
00:18:16.580 | And so if I go into China, it's naturally going to involve airplanes, maybe train travel
00:18:20.860 | on the ground there, although I could train travel.
00:18:23.060 | Let's say I wanted to start in London and take the trains to China, I can do that.
00:18:27.780 | It's going to take me some weeks to do that, especially difficult right now because all
00:18:31.860 | the Russian border crossing for trains are basically closed.
00:18:35.860 | But in normal times, then I would be able to take the trains.
00:18:38.820 | That would be a cool adventure.
00:18:39.900 | Or am I going to fly directly into Beijing?
00:18:42.100 | What am I going to do?
00:18:43.260 | And so my point in describing these is that when you envision a destination, then you
00:18:48.820 | start to think about what you're going to do with that destination, what you're going
00:18:51.580 | to mean at that destination.
00:18:52.740 | That destination kind of sets in place the requirements.
00:18:56.860 | And then now you've got to say, do I want to actually do this?
00:19:01.000 | Because there's a cost involved with all of these things.
00:19:04.180 | Goal setting is not free.
00:19:06.640 | And so you have to understand the cost that you're going to pay to accomplish a goal.
00:19:11.380 | And as you think about that, think about, do I really want to do this?
00:19:15.940 | Should I really take a year off, spend $100,000 traveling around the United States, not save
00:19:21.620 | money for my retirement?
00:19:22.860 | Is that really something I'm going to do?
00:19:25.260 | Well, for me, yes.
00:19:26.900 | For you, maybe no.
00:19:29.140 | You might have a totally different perspective on this thing.
00:19:31.820 | You just have a different goal.
00:19:33.380 | So recognize that once you've envisioned the goal, and once the goal is fully formed, fully
00:19:43.220 | envisioned, it will guide you in and of itself.
00:19:52.500 | That's the reason we set goals.
00:19:53.860 | Goals keep us on track while we're on our way to their achievement.
00:19:56.780 | They guide us kind of like a GPS does.
00:19:59.700 | The classic example is this.
00:20:00.980 | If you set out from Miami, Florida, and you program in your destination that you're going
00:20:06.140 | to drive to Manhattan, then as you go, you're going to have directions.
00:20:13.420 | And along the way, you're going to meet stumbling blocks, you're going to meet road closures,
00:20:16.860 | you're going to meet all kinds of issues.
00:20:18.620 | But the GPS has programmed in it that we're going to go to Manhattan.
00:20:22.340 | And whether it takes you 19 hours to drive there, or 17 hours to drive there, or 27 hours
00:20:27.500 | to drive there, whether you do it in one day going straight through, or whether you do
00:20:32.180 | it in 10 days going along the way slowly, or whether you get stopped along the way,
00:20:38.660 | whether your car breaks down, et cetera, all of these things are going to happen.
00:20:41.620 | But at the end of the day, if that GPS is programmed that I'm going to Manhattan, it's
00:20:45.340 | going to guide you at every turn.
00:20:47.300 | If the car breaks down, we fix the car and we press on.
00:20:50.860 | If we want to stop along the way, that's fine.
00:20:53.460 | We stop along the way, but we can't press on.
00:20:55.660 | If the road is closed, we take a different turn.
00:20:58.660 | And that's what goals are.
00:20:59.660 | The goal keeps us on track and it orders our life decisions.
00:21:02.820 | We know we want to accomplish this thing.
00:21:05.300 | We want to have this result.
00:21:07.700 | And every obstacle we face is just a normal part of the trip.
00:21:13.300 | There's going to be obstacles.
00:21:15.020 | That's how life is.
00:21:16.980 | Setbacks are normal.
00:21:18.860 | Don't let them detour you.
00:21:20.600 | Don't let them stop you.
00:21:22.660 | Recognize this is normal.
00:21:24.940 | Just like on a trip, you have problems, setbacks, et cetera, it's normal.
00:21:28.780 | The goals keep you on track.
00:21:30.540 | That's why we set them.
00:21:31.860 | So we can make sure that over time, we'll be able to look back and appreciate our progress.
00:21:37.340 | More on that in a little bit.
00:21:38.940 | Your goals should always be exciting to you.
00:21:43.300 | Whatever they are, they should be things that are important to you.
00:21:46.980 | Exciting sometimes is too strong of a word.
00:21:48.780 | Some people connect really strongly with emotion.
00:21:51.020 | Some people don't.
00:21:52.020 | I myself am more emotional.
00:21:53.420 | So I tend to think in terms of excitement and passion and enthusiasm, et cetera.
00:21:57.740 | Some people are not.
00:21:59.300 | Many people have much more calm, sanguine personalities.
00:22:02.700 | Totally fine.
00:22:03.820 | Just choose things that you care about, things that are important to you.
00:22:08.220 | Your life is very short.
00:22:09.740 | Why should you spend it working on things that aren't important to you?
00:22:13.460 | Spend it focusing on things that are important to you.
00:22:17.820 | Back to New Year's resolutions.
00:22:20.140 | One of the common jokes that people make about New Year's resolutions is about how the majority
00:22:24.900 | of New Year's resolutions are not kept.
00:22:30.740 | And people don't like to be failures.
00:22:33.780 | One significant reason people don't set goals is because they're afraid of failure.
00:22:39.220 | There are other reasons, but I want to talk about this.
00:22:44.300 | Failure in reaching goals is no big deal.
00:22:51.660 | In fact, it's more than that.
00:22:53.340 | It's expected.
00:22:54.340 | It's inevitable.
00:22:55.940 | Failure is inevitable.
00:22:57.620 | It's no big deal.
00:23:00.140 | Now let's start with some basic ground rules.
00:23:03.100 | To begin with, I am convinced that if your mind can conceive and believe a goal, it can
00:23:11.300 | achieve it.
00:23:13.060 | If you can conceive and believe a goal, I believe you can achieve it.
00:23:20.860 | The restriction here is not on what's possible for everyone in the world.
00:23:27.620 | The restriction here is on what you believe is possible for you, on what you conceive
00:23:33.340 | and what you believe.
00:23:34.860 | Let me give you the best examples I can come up with.
00:23:41.060 | It is impossible for me to be the world's greatest horse jockey.
00:23:47.340 | It is impossible.
00:23:49.860 | I am far too large, far too heavy, and have zero experience riding horses.
00:23:56.540 | For me, at my age, to set a goal of being a horse jockey would be to set a goal of something
00:24:04.300 | that's completely impossible.
00:24:07.700 | But the good thing is I have zero interest in being a winning horse jockey.
00:24:13.820 | My mind has never conceived and believed of that as being a goal that I want.
00:24:19.420 | Have no interest in it.
00:24:21.900 | Now if there were something else related to horses, certainly I could achieve that.
00:24:25.700 | If I wanted to own a horse, I could achieve that.
00:24:28.460 | If I wanted to be a skilled horseman, I could achieve that.
00:24:32.300 | All of those distinctions about me, my age, I could take lessons.
00:24:38.000 | No reason I couldn't learn to ride.
00:24:39.260 | Lots of people learn to ride.
00:24:40.260 | My size, I'll buy a Clydesdale and have that for a saddle horse.
00:24:44.940 | Many people have done it.
00:24:45.980 | No big deal.
00:24:46.980 | So I can solve for anything that my mind can conceive and believe.
00:24:51.020 | I've never conceived and believed being a horse jockey.
00:24:54.260 | So if you're worried about your ability to conceive and believe a goal and you say, "Well,
00:24:58.660 | not everybody can achieve everything."
00:25:00.140 | Of course not everybody can achieve everything, but you can achieve any goal that you conceive
00:25:05.060 | of and believe in.
00:25:08.200 | Your brain is not going to feed you a goal that is beyond your capacity to reach it.
00:25:14.180 | Your brain is automatically going to filter your personal goals and ambitions by your
00:25:20.380 | experience, your exposure, your resources, et cetera.
00:25:26.420 | And you're not going to be bothered in the least by the things that you can't achieve
00:25:31.860 | if you're focused on the things you're excited to achieve.
00:25:39.580 | Goal setting is a skill.
00:25:41.620 | As you conceive of and believe the goals that you can set now, and as your skill of accomplishing
00:25:49.380 | those goals increases, then the size of the goals that you can conceive of and believe
00:25:56.980 | will be bigger and you'll be able to move towards those things.
00:26:03.220 | So if you can conceive of and if you can believe in a goal that you want to set for yourself,
00:26:10.280 | I'm convinced you can achieve it.
00:26:13.740 | Now on that basis, if you can conceive and believe a goal, there are no unrealistic goals,
00:26:20.940 | but there are unrealistic timelines.
00:26:24.660 | And I think this is the key factor that derails most goal setting.
00:26:28.900 | There are no unrealistic goals, but there are unrealistic timelines.
00:26:35.120 | As human beings, we tend to think so short term that we ignore the progress we can make
00:26:43.440 | if we add just a little bit more time.
00:26:47.440 | Conceive and believe in your goals.
00:26:50.420 | Put them on a timeline, and if you don't reach it, don't give up on the goal.
00:26:55.100 | Just ask yourself, "Did I set a realistic timeline?"
00:26:59.300 | This has been my biggest failure throughout life in reaching my goals.
00:27:03.740 | I've often been good at conceiving and believing goals.
00:27:09.220 | Goals that were right for me.
00:27:10.500 | Goals that I chose.
00:27:12.100 | Goals that I truly was capable of accomplishing.
00:27:15.540 | I just seem to never hit them on time.
00:27:19.100 | I'm always a little bit after the goal setting.
00:27:21.980 | And then I would get frustrated, or a little bit after the deadline that I set.
00:27:25.260 | Then I get frustrated and annoyed and I say, "But I set this goal and I really wanted to
00:27:28.660 | accomplish it."
00:27:29.660 | And I wake up a few months later or a few years later, and I did accomplish it.
00:27:33.780 | I just didn't accomplish it by the hyper-aggressive deadline that I had set for myself.
00:27:42.420 | This is why you need to always make sure that you're looking forward to the process of achieving
00:27:47.660 | the goal.
00:27:50.220 | One of the lessons I have learned that I'm sharing to help you is that when I was younger
00:27:56.140 | I thought that the reason to set goals was to accomplish the goals.
00:28:02.220 | But then I accomplished the goals that I set and I realized that the high, the emotional
00:28:09.220 | high was a very temporary phenomenon.
00:28:16.540 | Think about your own life.
00:28:18.820 | Every goal that you've set was a temporary phenomenon, meaning the emotional experience.
00:28:27.980 | The best almost universal example I would give is something like high school graduation.
00:28:33.180 | You spend 12 years in the US system, 12 years looking forward to this thing called high
00:28:39.740 | school graduation.
00:28:41.920 | You're told that if you don't graduate from high school you're guaranteed to be a loser
00:28:45.500 | in life.
00:28:46.860 | You're told it's a big deal.
00:28:48.700 | You spend all your time thinking about your grades and keeping your grades up and going
00:28:52.260 | through this pre-planned curriculum that someone has laid out for you.
00:28:57.620 | Along the way somebody tells you that the reason you're graduating high school is so
00:29:00.580 | you can go to college, but you still understand that this is a big deal.
00:29:03.940 | I got to graduate high school.
00:29:07.160 | And then for most of us, we did it.
00:29:10.140 | We graduated high school.
00:29:11.740 | I can remember that euphoria of finishing classes.
00:29:15.900 | My senior year I went on a senior class trip.
00:29:17.460 | So we got to finish classes several weeks earlier than we went on a big senior class
00:29:20.960 | trip.
00:29:21.960 | Finished up our senior class trip, came back, had all of our senior week excitement and
00:29:26.860 | joy and then the graduation ceremony and you have all these parties and you're going to
00:29:30.700 | your friend's parties, et cetera.
00:29:32.860 | You accomplish it.
00:29:36.940 | And then what?
00:29:37.940 | A couple of weeks later you're on to the next thing.
00:29:43.140 | The emotional high fades away and you realize that the graduation was in some ways totally
00:29:50.100 | meaningless.
00:29:52.540 | How was it meaningless?
00:29:53.540 | Well, for most of us, that graduation was just necessary to tick the box to go on to
00:29:58.740 | what our real goal was going to be, to get a college degree, right?
00:30:01.620 | Because now you're going to be a loser if you don't get a college degree.
00:30:03.660 | That's why I went to college, my opinion at that time.
00:30:08.220 | Only losers didn't go to college.
00:30:09.300 | I wasn't a loser so I was going to go to college.
00:30:11.020 | Of course, it was just an automatic thing.
00:30:15.220 | Question was not if I went to college or not.
00:30:17.540 | The question was simply where to go to college and what to study.
00:30:20.560 | So you realize, oh, that goal was just necessary to get me on to the next goal.
00:30:25.340 | What's interesting is you look back in hindsight, not a single time have I ever given any evidence
00:30:33.100 | of any kind of my having a high school diploma.
00:30:36.740 | Not once.
00:30:37.740 | No job interview has ever come up.
00:30:40.340 | No, I've never submitted my high school diploma.
00:30:43.460 | I've never gone and gotten my high school transcript in any way.
00:30:48.860 | I guess in theory maybe I must have gotten it for my college admission.
00:30:52.540 | So maybe that was wrong.
00:30:53.540 | I must have submitted that.
00:30:54.540 | But since then, the point, like what I mean is in the real world, quote unquote, the job
00:30:58.580 | world, et cetera, I think it's just always been assumed that I had a high school diploma.
00:31:03.900 | And so it really has not, other than getting into college, which didn't, the high school
00:31:08.580 | diploma wasn't necessary.
00:31:09.580 | It's just never been that big of a factor.
00:31:11.140 | So you can look at your goals, accomplishment, you say that was such a big deal.
00:31:13.940 | Now it's not a big deal.
00:31:15.700 | But you're going to flip it on the other side and you say, well, it was a step on the way.
00:31:18.980 | So the next one is we go on and get to college.
00:31:21.580 | Okay, got to get to college.
00:31:23.980 | Get into college.
00:31:24.980 | I get my SATs up.
00:31:26.260 | Got to make sure I get my college acceptance, you know, my accepted into the college I want.
00:31:29.940 | Then you get into college.
00:31:30.940 | Got to make sure I study what I want.
00:31:32.340 | Got to graduate college.
00:31:33.340 | And again, the same kind of thing.
00:31:34.980 | Going on to this goal accomplishment.
00:31:38.940 | And then you get to graduation.
00:31:40.220 | You get your diploma.
00:31:41.220 | Boom, I did it.
00:31:42.220 | I went to college.
00:31:43.220 | But then there's another goal.
00:31:44.700 | And you have that euphoria and then that loss of euphoria.
00:31:48.700 | Doesn't have to be a negative thing, but you have euphoria and then loss of euphoria.
00:31:54.380 | This happens with everything.
00:31:56.200 | After college, it's getting a job.
00:31:58.060 | Once you get one job, you got to get another job.
00:32:00.660 | Once you get a job, want to get married or you want to buy a house or you want to get
00:32:03.660 | a dog or you want to get out of debt or you want to make $100,000 or you want to make
00:32:07.700 | a million dollars or you want to save $100,000 or you want to save a million dollars or you
00:32:11.100 | want to save $10 million.
00:32:12.860 | At every single stage, the goals have a momentary high of achievement followed by the elimination
00:32:22.280 | of that high very, very quickly.
00:32:27.300 | So once you go through this for a while, you got to recognize that the accomplishment,
00:32:33.820 | the certification of accomplishment cannot be the goal.
00:32:43.180 | The journey and the process has to be the goal.
00:32:51.900 | With that insight, the way that I frame goal setting for myself and my children is not
00:32:57.640 | in accomplishing a certain thing, but in becoming a certain kind of person.
00:33:05.460 | Why do we do school?
00:33:06.460 | Why do we study?
00:33:07.460 | Well, I need to transform my children into learners, into students, into effective learners
00:33:15.500 | and students.
00:33:17.180 | I need to give them the basic skills that they need to teach themselves the things that
00:33:22.980 | they need to know in life.
00:33:25.260 | That's the purpose of school.
00:33:28.540 | Then why do I need those tools?
00:33:30.860 | Because with those tools, any dream that they want to accomplish, they will be able to teach
00:33:36.780 | themselves the necessary things in order to accomplish their goals and their dreams.
00:33:42.820 | And we use certifications along the way as markers that indicate that we're making progress
00:33:49.540 | on this pathway.
00:33:54.100 | Why is the goal of getting out of debt important?
00:33:56.940 | Well, if someone is in debt, very frequently they're in debt because of financial mismanagement.
00:34:04.580 | And so the process of getting out of debt is necessary in order for someone to go from
00:34:12.180 | someone who manages money poorly to someone who manages money effectively.
00:34:18.620 | And if you can accomplish that transformation of someone who manages money, going from someone
00:34:23.980 | who manages money poorly to someone who manages money effectively, then in the fullness of
00:34:29.420 | time, that skill set will allow you to reach the very heights of wealth.
00:34:35.780 | And by the way, this thinking applies to basically everything.
00:34:39.620 | What if somebody is not in debt because of poor financial mismanagement, but because
00:34:43.220 | of poor earnings?
00:34:44.220 | It happens a lot.
00:34:45.900 | Someone goes into debt because I just don't earn enough money.
00:34:48.460 | Well, setting the goal of getting out of debt will necessarily require you to build a skill
00:34:54.980 | of earning higher money in order to accomplish the goal of getting out of debt.
00:35:00.900 | And so the certification is useful and is important because the certification is what
00:35:04.460 | we can envision.
00:35:06.320 | The certification is how we know we've done it, but we need to look forward to the process
00:35:12.020 | of becoming the person.
00:35:13.660 | And then the best goals are those in which the journey itself is exciting.
00:35:22.600 | The journey is the important part of the goal.
00:35:26.900 | Let me share my biggest area of failure and what I've learned from it.
00:35:31.860 | My biggest area of failure has always been being fat.
00:35:37.280 | And it's plagued me since I was in middle school.
00:35:40.200 | I was fat then.
00:35:41.300 | I've been more fat.
00:35:42.520 | I've been less fat.
00:35:43.600 | I've been very fat.
00:35:45.040 | I've been skinny fat.
00:35:46.520 | I've been various ranges of fat along the way.
00:35:50.600 | I've gained and lost weight about a bazillion times in many different ways, et cetera.
00:35:56.640 | But the failure, the single biggest failure for me in goal setting about not being fat
00:36:04.360 | has been not understanding how to enjoy the journey and setting end destinations that
00:36:11.320 | weren't truly my end destinations.
00:36:15.960 | And I think this is common to most fat people.
00:36:21.320 | One of the big distinctions between fat people and non-fat people, I guess there are probably
00:36:28.360 | a few that are common, but the couple that are the most important revolve around food
00:36:34.360 | and exercise or movement.
00:36:38.280 | Fat people often view food as a reward.
00:36:45.120 | Non-fat people have a lesser or a different connection to food.
00:36:51.080 | They don't all, right?
00:36:53.960 | You'll see lots of people who are very fit who will say, "Well, I work out so I can eat
00:36:58.920 | brownies."
00:36:59.920 | Okay, maybe it's true.
00:37:00.960 | But somewhere along the way, fit people have figured out how to use food as fuel or not
00:37:06.960 | to see it as the ultimate reward.
00:37:09.520 | Whereas fat people often see food as the reward.
00:37:12.640 | A lot of times we're conditioned that way.
00:37:15.940 | We see, "Hey, you did a great job.
00:37:17.960 | Here's a cookie.
00:37:18.960 | Here's a cake," et cetera.
00:37:20.680 | My biggest fear in life is having fat children.
00:37:24.640 | This is going to be an extravagant statement, but I mean it, but it's hyperbole.
00:37:30.480 | Hyperbole alert, right?
00:37:31.480 | I should add a tone to that.
00:37:37.680 | I am persuaded that having fat children is a form of child abuse.
00:37:48.960 | Maybe a mild form of child abuse.
00:37:50.840 | Obviously I'm being hyperbolic, but I am persuaded that that's how it should be thought of.
00:37:55.280 | Having fat children is a form of child abuse.
00:38:00.960 | Because I was a fat kid, I understand that firsthand and I have watched it and observed
00:38:05.520 | it firsthand, secondhand my entire life.
00:38:08.680 | My biggest fear as a parent is having fat children.
00:38:11.520 | I think a lot about this question.
00:38:13.800 | How do I avoid having fat children?
00:38:15.600 | One way is change your relationship with food.
00:38:18.480 | Food is not a reward.
00:38:19.480 | I'm not going to give every food as a reward.
00:38:21.600 | It's just food.
00:38:23.760 | The other aspect is movement.
00:38:28.120 | There's skill development here.
00:38:29.840 | Fit people generally find movement to be a rewarding thing, whereas fat people don't
00:38:36.800 | find movement to be a rewarding thing.
00:38:40.120 | For fat people, movement is a chore.
00:38:44.200 | It's a hard thing.
00:38:45.200 | It's a difficult thing.
00:38:46.400 | It's not something that they like.
00:38:48.240 | There's no aspect of what they like.
00:38:52.600 | Because they don't like it, they don't build skill around movement.
00:38:56.680 | Because they don't have skill around movement, they don't like it because they're not good
00:39:00.400 | at it.
00:39:02.080 | Whereas fit people, because they have skill around movement, they're good at it and it
00:39:08.040 | feels good when they move and they do active things.
00:39:12.480 | It feels good.
00:39:13.480 | They do more of it, et cetera.
00:39:14.480 | They get in this positive feedback loop.
00:39:17.960 | If you think about this issue that fat people face, you have to basically figure out strategies
00:39:24.200 | to where they look forward to the journey.
00:39:27.720 | You have to figure out how do I change the relationship with food and how do I change
00:39:33.000 | the relationship with movement so that I can become a different person.
00:39:38.520 | When I've reflected on years of failure in this area, I've realized that these are the
00:39:46.000 | essentials.
00:39:47.840 | I now think if working with fat people and you're trying to help fat people become less
00:39:54.160 | fat, then the first thing you have to do is not take away food but to add food.
00:40:00.800 | I think you have to focus primarily on adding food, on adding good food, on adding rich
00:40:07.200 | food, on adding delicious food.
00:40:10.840 | If you start with that, you can develop an appropriate pleasure center.
00:40:16.920 | For example, I personally think that it's probably the case that a calorie is a calorie.
00:40:24.200 | All the best academic research I can find is basically, even though people fight about
00:40:30.120 | it, I'm personally mostly convinced that a calorie is a calorie.
00:40:34.480 | If you want to lose weight, it's calories in, calories out.
00:40:37.720 | The problem is that all calories in are not created equal.
00:40:41.680 | Diets that have people eating luxurious foods as a lifestyle are diets that have a higher
00:40:50.680 | kind of stickiness for fat people.
00:40:54.000 | If I'm coaching me or I'm coaching someone else on weight loss, what I want to focus
00:40:58.960 | on is how can we add really high quality nutrition that's very satiating.
00:41:04.080 | This is where steaks, high fat foods, high protein foods, luxurious foods, steak, butter,
00:41:10.400 | eggs, things that are satiating, I think are really effective, maybe not for all people
00:41:16.160 | but for many people because you're focusing on what you can add in.
00:41:19.640 | Then you start to add in nutrition, higher foods with more nutrition, starts to solve
00:41:25.480 | deficiencies, et cetera.
00:41:27.280 | Don't worry about calorie excess for a while.
00:41:29.700 | Calorie excess can be solved down the road when you have a focus on what I can eat rather
00:41:35.280 | than what I can't eat.
00:41:37.200 | When you tell a fat person, "Here's what you can't do, you can't avoid these foods," that
00:41:42.080 | fat person has gotten dopamine hit from those foods forever.
00:41:46.640 | You've got to retrain the dopamine system and get a person focused on what they can
00:41:50.800 | eat and have them looking forward to eating and cause the change over time.
00:41:55.240 | I didn't mean to go into this so deep but of course, New Year's resolution for a lot
00:41:58.560 | of people is lose weight.
00:42:00.760 | I believe it's important to focus on the journey.
00:42:04.200 | What I'm intending to emphasize is that having a journey that seems pleasurable to you is
00:42:12.200 | the most important part of the goal.
00:42:13.640 | Let me finish it out with movement and then we'll go back to a couple of other examples.
00:42:16.840 | Same thing with movement.
00:42:19.600 | Fat people are unskilled with movement.
00:42:22.480 | They don't like to move.
00:42:25.000 | Walking is not pleasurable.
00:42:27.240 | Running hurts.
00:42:29.280 | Weightlifting makes them feel uncomfortable, etc.
00:42:34.920 | One of the keys is, can I find a movement that is appealing to a fat person?
00:42:41.440 | Sometimes you can.
00:42:42.440 | Some people might want to go walk on the beach.
00:42:45.920 | Walking for me is motivating.
00:42:47.340 | I like to walk.
00:42:49.640 | I'm a competent walker and I like the things that I can get with walk.
00:42:53.640 | I like how I can bring walking into socialization.
00:42:56.400 | I like how I can walk and listen to audio.
00:42:59.360 | I like how I can walk and think.
00:43:02.160 | Walking is good for me.
00:43:04.280 | Sometimes people can't walk effectively.
00:43:07.120 | Sometimes people can't work out.
00:43:09.120 | Then you just have to say, "What can you bear?
00:43:12.680 | What can you deal with?"
00:43:14.280 | And find the minimum effective dose of what you can deal with.
00:43:17.440 | And then over time, skill will build and you can build pleasure over time.
00:43:20.680 | But you got to find things where the journey is not so onerous that you're not going to
00:43:25.400 | want to do it.
00:43:26.400 | And the best goals, the goals that you're almost certain to hit, are the goals where
00:43:31.320 | you're excited about accomplishing the thing and where you're excited about the process
00:43:37.240 | of it.
00:43:38.240 | Let me go back to college for a second.
00:43:41.080 | I believe that the people who should go to college are those who are academically capable.
00:43:46.960 | And one of the greatest problems of college statistics is that many people who are not
00:43:51.480 | academically capable have been conditioned to think that they need to go to college in
00:43:56.640 | order to succeed.
00:43:58.000 | And they go and they try and they try and they try and then they quit.
00:44:01.120 | The people who do well in college are people who enjoy studying because they're skilled
00:44:04.840 | at it.
00:44:05.840 | I study for fun.
00:44:06.840 | I enjoy it.
00:44:08.440 | I enjoy the process of making my brain work.
00:44:11.800 | And that's an effective thing.
00:44:14.760 | Athletes enjoy the process of making their bodies work.
00:44:18.600 | So you've got to focus on setting goals where the journey is exciting to you.
00:44:22.280 | You talk to travelers.
00:44:24.120 | Travelers enjoy people who go to every country in the world or travel just constantly.
00:44:28.060 | They enjoy the process of travel.
00:44:29.680 | I'll speak as a traveler.
00:44:31.360 | I love being on airplanes.
00:44:34.000 | I enjoy it.
00:44:35.000 | It's not to say that there's no stress involved.
00:44:37.000 | Certainly you get to the end of a 15-hour flight, you're ready to get off the plane.
00:44:40.200 | But every time I drive past an airport, every time I see airplanes on the tarmac, I wish
00:44:44.400 | I were on them.
00:44:45.680 | When I see a train, I wish I was on it.
00:44:48.280 | When I see a car, I think about how many countries I could take that car to.
00:44:51.960 | I'm drawn to the journey, not the destination.
00:44:55.880 | The destination is just an excuse.
00:44:58.080 | I'm drawn to the journey.
00:45:00.080 | And you'll find that the goals that you'll accomplish the most easily are those in which
00:45:05.460 | you're drawn to the journey of their accomplishment.
00:45:10.160 | And if you're setting a goal that's not a natural fit for you, you've got to re-engineer
00:45:16.820 | and come back and say, "Am I excited about the journey, about the process of accomplishing
00:45:23.000 | it?"
00:45:24.000 | This is one of the reasons I'm so opposed to early retirement in the current iteration
00:45:30.200 | that was super popular.
00:45:31.200 | I've noticed its popularity waning a little bit, and I've noticed a little bit of my message
00:45:35.060 | that has been a bit countercultural to the FIRE community for the last 10 years.
00:45:39.040 | I've noticed that my message seems to be a little bit more mainstream now.
00:45:42.520 | So I'm glad about it.
00:45:43.860 | But when I got excited about the FIRE movement myself, it was because I didn't like my job.
00:45:49.520 | And I thought, "Oh, I'll just go and I'll work a job I don't—I'll work this job I
00:45:52.440 | don't like, I'll live like a miser, I'll make a lot of money, and I'll be financially independent
00:45:56.220 | in no time.
00:45:57.220 | Then I'll accomplish my goal."
00:46:00.840 | That's what I got excited about.
00:46:03.520 | But I failed at that.
00:46:06.560 | Because I realized it was a stupid way to approach it.
00:46:10.000 | The people who achieve financial independence are generally people who enjoy working.
00:46:16.280 | They enjoy making money.
00:46:18.140 | They enjoy their life.
00:46:19.980 | And financial independence is not the end result.
00:46:23.020 | It's just a natural thing that happens because of having those things.
00:46:25.840 | And I realized that the goal of finding a job you enjoy is much more achievable than
00:46:32.240 | the goal of working a job you hate, living a lifestyle you hate for five years or 10
00:46:36.920 | years or something just muscling through so that you can accomplish a certain thing.
00:46:48.280 | Don't commit yourself to a goal whose journey of accomplishment is not exciting to you in
00:46:56.840 | and of itself.
00:46:59.160 | I think that's a sign that either this goal is not for me, this goal is not for me now,
00:47:05.640 | or this goal is for me and is for me now, I just need to spend more time being careful
00:47:10.440 | and intelligent about how I accomplish it.
00:47:14.120 | Because accomplishing the goal is not the end result.
00:47:16.400 | The goal is to become a different person.
00:47:18.840 | And if you can become a different person, then the achievement of the goal will just
00:47:22.520 | feel like one more step along the process.
00:47:27.000 | And you'll already be excited about moving on to the next bigger goals.
00:47:30.400 | Now, if you fail at achieving your goal, so what?
00:47:36.960 | So what?
00:47:39.480 | Why can I, in front of tens of thousands of people, so easily admit that I have failed
00:47:45.980 | at unfatting myself?
00:47:47.480 | Well, it doesn't make me proud.
00:47:52.280 | But so what?
00:47:55.640 | So what?
00:47:58.200 | It's fine to assess your progress towards your end goal, but it's more important to
00:48:01.960 | assess your progress from where you began.
00:48:05.440 | And if I had never set the goal of not being fat, I would never have accomplished all that
00:48:12.520 | I have accomplished.
00:48:15.040 | Let's give an example.
00:48:16.120 | Let's say that you set a New Year's resolution to go to the gym in the next year.
00:48:19.560 | You sign up for classes, you make a schedule, you go to the gym 15 times in January, you
00:48:25.040 | go to the gym 15 times in February, then you quit.
00:48:30.880 | This is common in gyms, right?
00:48:31.880 | This is how gyms make their money.
00:48:34.480 | Is that failure?
00:48:36.640 | I don't think so.
00:48:37.640 | I think you redefine it.
00:48:39.520 | You got in 30 workouts.
00:48:43.080 | I don't think that's a failure.
00:48:44.080 | You worked out 30 times.
00:48:45.800 | You learned some new skills.
00:48:48.040 | You collected data about what works for you and what doesn't work for you.
00:48:52.520 | You exercised your mental muscles to move you in the direction of your goals.
00:48:56.440 | You exercised courage to believe that you could be the kind of person who could go to
00:49:00.040 | a gym and do work while you're there.
00:49:03.200 | You're better off than you were before.
00:49:05.680 | And so when I look back at where I started from, I know loads more today about health
00:49:12.240 | and nutrition.
00:49:13.240 | I know loads more about exercise.
00:49:15.640 | I've put in thousands of miles.
00:49:18.000 | I've put in hundreds and hundreds of workouts.
00:49:21.200 | I've lifted thousands of pounds.
00:49:22.600 | I've built skills in many ways.
00:49:25.640 | Just because I haven't achieved my ultimate goal doesn't mean that I haven't been improved
00:49:30.080 | by the process of working towards it.
00:49:33.520 | I just didn't yet develop all the skills necessary to accomplish that ultimate goal.
00:49:39.080 | But I'm still in the game.
00:49:42.600 | And the only way that you fail is if you quit.
00:49:46.920 | The only way it's possible to fail at reaching your goals is when you quit.
00:49:54.800 | And for me, I don't quit.
00:49:56.960 | So I'd rather talk about my failures and learn from them than deal with the idea of being
00:50:03.560 | a quitter.
00:50:06.200 | Because my success in life is not tied to the number of pounds reflected on the scale
00:50:10.240 | or the size of my love handles.
00:50:13.520 | These are reflective of other things.
00:50:15.560 | I just haven't yet built the skills, the routines necessary to accomplish it.
00:50:21.240 | By the way, if you're worried about it, I'm making great progress.
00:50:24.520 | I've got a coach.
00:50:25.520 | I'm making great progress.
00:50:26.520 | I've got great streaks going.
00:50:29.080 | Every indicator is in the right direction.
00:50:31.680 | But I have had to learn over the years from all of these failures.
00:50:35.000 | And you try something, learn from it.
00:50:37.760 | Try, learn.
00:50:38.760 | Try, learn.
00:50:39.760 | Try, learn.
00:50:42.200 | No matter what, any goal that you set and you work towards, that's success.
00:50:51.840 | Because you're exercising the muscle.
00:50:56.160 | Accomplishing the goal is not the only acceptable outcome.
00:51:00.480 | There are many other acceptable outcomes.
00:51:03.600 | Working towards a goal is a perfectly acceptable outcome.
00:51:07.040 | Let's say that you set a lifetime goal that's very large and you're working towards it systematically.
00:51:12.080 | Let's say that you're a golfer and you say, "I'm going to golf the top 100 golf courses
00:51:16.320 | in the world."
00:51:17.320 | You print out the list from your golf magazine.
00:51:19.320 | You staple it to your wall.
00:51:20.760 | You start checking them off.
00:51:21.760 | You say, "I'm going to do two a year."
00:51:23.760 | That's a great goal for a golfer.
00:51:25.800 | You do two a year.
00:51:27.360 | It gives you an organizing principle to your life.
00:51:29.640 | This is going to organize my vacations.
00:51:31.680 | I'm going to go to two golf courses a year.
00:51:34.320 | It's probably a very enjoyable thing.
00:51:36.280 | You want to play well.
00:51:37.280 | So now you've got a focus to your practice.
00:51:38.920 | You're improving your technique.
00:51:40.400 | It's a wonderful social goal.
00:51:41.800 | You probably have some buddies that you're working towards.
00:51:43.560 | A great organizing financial goal.
00:51:45.520 | You're going to need to save for this.
00:51:46.680 | If you become a saver and you're working towards these golf vacations, that's going to help
00:51:50.040 | you transform your finances.
00:51:51.040 | You're going to earn more money so you can afford the more expensive fees.
00:51:53.840 | You're going to meet fancier people if you need to get into a certain private club or
00:51:56.880 | get an invitation somewhere, etc.
00:51:58.560 | This is a great goal.
00:51:59.800 | Let's say that you set that lifetime goal that's very large and you're working towards
00:52:03.360 | it systematically.
00:52:04.360 | Then all of a sudden you up and die at 50 and half your list is unaccomplished.
00:52:13.240 | Imagine what all those people are going to say at your funeral.
00:52:18.440 | They're going to come to your funeral.
00:52:20.200 | They're going to stand up at the microphone and they're going to say, "What a sucker Joe
00:52:24.120 | was.
00:52:25.120 | Joe set a goal of going to 100 golf courses and that loser only got to 50 and then he
00:52:30.960 | up and died.
00:52:31.960 | What a sucker that dude was.
00:52:36.240 | Loser Joe.
00:52:37.240 | Oh man."
00:52:38.240 | Of course not.
00:52:42.760 | Of course not.
00:52:45.840 | Every single one of your friends is going to talk about the good times.
00:52:48.920 | They're going to tell the story of when you golfed at Pebble Beach or you were at, I don't
00:52:52.520 | even know all the famous golf clubs, not my deal.
00:52:54.760 | But they're going to tell the stories of where you went.
00:52:58.240 | They're going to tell how you fell in the water when you hit the ball wrong.
00:53:02.600 | They're going to tell of when you ran from the alligator in South Florida.
00:53:05.520 | They're going to tell of when you froze golfing in Scotland.
00:53:08.400 | They're going to laugh about how you drank too many beers at the 19th hole and you had
00:53:12.000 | to sleep at the clubhouse.
00:53:13.760 | They're just going to tell all the stories about your life and enjoy talking about it.
00:53:18.960 | They're going to admire you that you were working on this list of 100 goals or 100 courses.
00:53:25.480 | It's the same for every kind of goal.
00:53:30.520 | Life is not a binary yes or no, win or lose kind of thing.
00:53:36.040 | It's a journey.
00:53:37.720 | Big goals that are exciting to you, that transform you, so you don't reach them.
00:53:43.720 | You're better off just working towards them.
00:53:48.000 | Let's pretend that I never have a six pack.
00:53:52.120 | I never grace the cover of a men's magazine.
00:53:55.640 | It's very unlikely, but am I not better off for being out there exercising?
00:54:03.440 | Am I not better off for the hundreds and thousands of miles walked with my wife and the time
00:54:08.880 | that we spend together?
00:54:10.360 | Am I not better off for the time with my children out hiking in the woods?
00:54:14.080 | Am I not better off for going to the beach and playing in the sunshine?
00:54:17.440 | Am I not better off for going to the gym and working it out?
00:54:20.600 | Am I not better off for the time spent with my coaches?
00:54:23.400 | Am I not better off for improving my diet and maximizing everything that I can, even
00:54:27.560 | if I never have a six pack?
00:54:32.040 | Am I not better off for learning from my issues with food, from when I was a fat kid and ate
00:54:37.120 | all the junky food and then helping my children to avoid that and sharing the lessons with
00:54:41.600 | them?
00:54:42.600 | Am I not better off for talking to you and to the many fat people in my audience who
00:54:46.560 | want to lose weight and saying and sharing some of the things that I've learned?
00:54:50.160 | Am I not better off for the compassion that I've gained along the way for the things that
00:54:53.920 | don't come easily to me?
00:54:56.600 | Imagine if I just had everything great, right?
00:54:58.320 | My brain works pretty well.
00:55:00.140 | Never struggled with anything involving intelligence.
00:55:03.680 | I have a lot of abilities, but what if I didn't have an area where I wasn't great?
00:55:09.720 | Imagine the ego and the pride.
00:55:11.360 | Imagine how hard that would make it for me to relate to.
00:55:14.940 | But I've always had sympathy on fat people and ugly people, on handicapped people, et
00:55:19.980 | cetera, because of my life experience.
00:55:24.580 | So don't judge it and say to yourself, "I'm not going to have the courage to press forward."
00:55:28.480 | Recognize that if you set a goal of reaching 100 and you get to 20 and then you're done.
00:55:40.020 | The people at your funeral are not going to laugh at you.
00:55:45.660 | They're going to be proud of you because you set out an ambitious goal and you work towards
00:55:50.980 | it.
00:55:54.180 | What are some other ways of not achieving a goal?
00:55:56.740 | Well, what if you change your goals?
00:55:59.340 | It's one of the best things that can happen to you.
00:56:05.300 | You set a goal, you start working towards it.
00:56:09.620 | Then you realize, "I don't want this goal."
00:56:13.140 | I'll give you a couple of examples from my life, little and big.
00:56:16.980 | When I was younger and I first started setting goals, one of the goals I had was I wanted
00:56:20.740 | a black Harley Davidson.
00:56:22.820 | I wrote it out every day.
00:56:23.820 | I forget the model now, but I printed it out, had it on my vision board, wrote it out every
00:56:27.140 | day.
00:56:28.140 | I'm going to have this Harley Davidson, this Harley Davidson, this Harley Davidson.
00:56:32.540 | As part of the process, one weekend I went and I rented one.
00:56:36.580 | I enjoyed it.
00:56:37.580 | I loved it.
00:56:38.580 | I had a great time.
00:56:41.020 | Came away from renting that, a buddy of mine went and rode all weekend together.
00:56:44.140 | I said, "I don't care anymore.
00:56:46.780 | I don't want a Harley Davidson.
00:56:48.300 | I'm not going to ride it enough for it to matter.
00:56:50.300 | I don't want to ride it on a daily basis.
00:56:52.020 | Not going to enjoy it.
00:56:53.020 | It was fun to ride it on a rental bike, but I don't enjoy it."
00:56:56.580 | I crossed it off my list and I went on with my life.
00:57:00.420 | It was not a materialistic goal that was important to me anymore.
00:57:04.340 | Did I fail at achieving that goal?
00:57:08.220 | Not in any way.
00:57:10.420 | I just realized it wasn't that important to me.
00:57:14.460 | Another one was when years ago I first got involved with financial independence.
00:57:18.700 | I would write down every day my number.
00:57:22.900 | Here was my number, 4% rule number.
00:57:25.080 | This is my net worth.
00:57:26.080 | This is my net worth.
00:57:27.080 | This is my net worth.
00:57:28.080 | This is my net worth.
00:57:29.080 | I would write that number down every day and I would imagine it.
00:57:30.660 | I would plan how am I going to accomplish it.
00:57:33.100 | After about 8 months or a year, I realized there is no plan between here and that number
00:57:40.420 | that is exciting to me in the moment.
00:57:43.740 | I don't really care about this goal.
00:57:45.620 | What I want to do is not be financially independent.
00:57:48.820 | What I want to do is I want to live a life that I enjoy.
00:57:51.940 | The simplest and easiest way to get there is to build more freedom into my life and
00:57:55.100 | that's what I did.
00:57:56.820 | Now I'll eventually be financially independent but I don't even write it down regularly.
00:58:03.180 | I still have a number but it's not a major goal for me because it's not really material
00:58:08.100 | to my life.
00:58:09.100 | I'm not going to change anything different when I achieve it or not.
00:58:11.420 | It's just a sign of the progress that I'm on.
00:58:13.860 | I'm more interested in spending more money now than I am down the road.
00:58:17.860 | I'm not that frugal.
00:58:20.100 | I'm frugal on things that don't matter to me and I'm not frugal on things that do matter
00:58:24.420 | to me.
00:58:25.420 | So, changing your goals is fine.
00:58:30.660 | It's normal.
00:58:31.660 | It's expected.
00:58:32.900 | You don't have to set out a goal and say I'm going to go to all 50 states and then go and
00:58:36.580 | accomplish it.
00:58:37.900 | You can go to 15 states and have all that you need.
00:58:42.300 | I think in terms of travel terms.
00:58:44.720 | If you are a traveler, there is no possible way that you can travel to everywhere in the
00:58:48.980 | world.
00:58:49.980 | It's not possible.
00:58:51.060 | You can travel to your list but you can't travel to every possible list in the world.
00:58:55.380 | You can't travel to every country in the world and every TCC country in the world and every
00:59:00.540 | no man mania region in the world and every top hotel in the world and every top beach
00:59:06.340 | in the world and every world heritage site and every state and every world's...
00:59:10.140 | I mean I'm making things up in the world of travel but you can't do it.
00:59:15.860 | So at some point in time you got to realize there's a limit and you don't have to accomplish
00:59:20.620 | everything that's out there to accomplish.
00:59:24.300 | So it's fine to change your goals and adjust them.
00:59:28.540 | So what I hope I've accomplished by now is to share with you some ideas that if you will
00:59:35.500 | pursue your goals, have courage and set them out, they will order your life in a way that
00:59:41.340 | you can enjoy.
00:59:42.340 | And if you'll just make sure that you enjoy the journey and that you're not just arbitrarily
00:59:46.240 | picking things, then this year can be an exciting year.
00:59:55.260 | There was a...
00:59:56.260 | I think it was W Clement Stone, although it may have been Oz Guinness, there's this famous
00:59:59.020 | quote that I don't even know who to cite it to, I could look it up, but it's the quote
01:00:03.300 | that I find so helpful.
01:00:05.460 | "Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal."
01:00:11.380 | Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
01:00:14.820 | And I think that that is such a powerful statement.
01:00:18.220 | That achieving goals, meaning actually accomplishing them, finishing them, ticking the box, is
01:00:25.340 | not going to bring you happiness.
01:00:28.180 | But the process of working toward goals that matter to you and then systematically making
01:00:33.620 | progress is the key.
01:00:36.540 | So how do you achieve happiness while you're working towards goals?
01:00:41.860 | The most important way is not to gauge your level of success by your distance from the
01:00:47.660 | goal, but to gauge your level of success by your distance from where you began.
01:00:56.420 | Goals are like a mirage.
01:00:59.100 | It's something out there that you want, but as you get closer to it, it's going to just
01:01:02.780 | move down the road.
01:01:04.020 | You're pressing towards it, you're pressing towards it, you're pressing towards it, it's
01:01:06.740 | just going to move.
01:01:08.480 | And I promise you, every goal that you have is just going to move.
01:01:12.100 | The biggest goal you set, "I'm going to have $5 million."
01:01:14.660 | You're going to get to $5 million, you're going to say, "Oh, that's probably not enough.
01:01:17.980 | I need more."
01:01:18.980 | You get to $20 million.
01:01:19.980 | "Okay, I got $20 million.
01:01:20.980 | Ah, maybe it's not enough."
01:01:23.940 | And even if it is enough, you realize, "Ah, it was never about the money."
01:01:28.300 | And you got to set something else.
01:01:31.060 | You go and say, "I'm going to run an Ironman triathlon."
01:01:34.540 | Or you're going to accomplish it.
01:01:36.500 | Then you're going to say, "Yeah, but I could have done it faster.
01:01:38.600 | So let me do another one."
01:01:39.600 | And then you're going to want to say, "Well, I want to be the first one to do one."
01:01:42.860 | On every continent, right?
01:01:45.100 | You start going bigger and bigger.
01:01:47.520 | So you have to recognize that goals are always going to be pushed out.
01:01:54.560 | And so if you measure your happiness or your success, or if you use as a metric the distance
01:02:00.720 | from your goal as a measure of your happiness, you're destined for a life of misery as an
01:02:08.000 | overachiever who's never happy and never satisfied.
01:02:12.320 | Rather, turn around.
01:02:16.480 | Look forward at your goal as something exciting that's pulling you forward, and then turn
01:02:20.240 | around and reflect on how far you've come.
01:02:25.000 | Take pleasure in every single step that you have made.
01:02:29.100 | Celebrate yourself.
01:02:31.000 | Rejoice over the progress that you've made.
01:02:34.680 | Be excited about how far you've come.
01:02:38.560 | And every goal has that.
01:02:41.320 | Enjoy the person that you are because of this.
01:02:44.820 | Even in your greatest failures—that's why I try to share about failures, probably too
01:02:48.040 | much sometimes—but even in your greatest failures, you can celebrate yourself as the
01:02:53.240 | kind of person who had the courage to set goals, who had the courage to try.
01:03:03.800 | Always assess your progress from where you began, and then take your sense of satisfaction
01:03:10.100 | and happiness from that distance, not from how far away you are from your end destination.
01:03:21.200 | The only way it's possible for you to fail at reaching your goals is to quit.
01:03:25.780 | Set goals that matter to you.
01:03:28.500 | Think carefully about the process and make sure you're excited about the journey.
01:03:32.560 | If you've had a string of failures, wonderful!
01:03:36.140 | Learn from those failures about how to set smarter goals.
01:03:41.820 | I haven't given tons of examples of this, but if you will, let's use exercise for a
01:03:47.620 | moment.
01:03:48.620 | I said a number of years ago that one of the great reasons I was failing with exercise
01:03:55.100 | is that I hadn't discovered a form of movement that I enjoyed, that worked for me, that was
01:04:01.860 | something that I could deal with.
01:04:04.820 | And so I set a different goal.
01:04:06.920 | The goal is, how can I discover a form of regular movement, something that's good for
01:04:12.500 | me, keeps my heart healthy, keeps my body strong, etc., that I enjoy?
01:04:16.380 | And that became my goal.
01:04:17.940 | Well now, trying things and quitting them is just part of the journey of discovering
01:04:23.300 | it.
01:04:24.300 | And you can go through your list.
01:04:25.300 | Imagine that you set that goal.
01:04:26.380 | You might try tennis.
01:04:27.380 | No, that wasn't for me.
01:04:29.020 | You might try surfing.
01:04:30.020 | No, not so much.
01:04:31.020 | You might try hiking in the mountains.
01:04:32.020 | Yeah, that's a winner.
01:04:33.020 | Oh, no, that's not a winner.
01:04:34.740 | What about walking on a treadmill?
01:04:36.500 | Well, maybe that's a winner.
01:04:38.340 | No, what about riding a bike?
01:04:40.420 | There's any number of things.
01:04:41.500 | The world of movement is huge.
01:04:44.060 | There's tons of things that can be done.
01:04:45.740 | And your goal now is just to discover a form of movement that you enjoy, that fits your
01:04:49.060 | body's strengths, etc.
01:04:51.660 | And so I think I've said enough.
01:04:53.860 | I hope that these ideas help you.
01:04:56.140 | I hope that they encourage you and they give you some ideas.
01:05:00.700 | But this next year, today is all you got.
01:05:08.880 | For all you and I know, this time next year, you're dead.
01:05:14.500 | I'm dead.
01:05:16.820 | One of us is dead.
01:05:17.820 | Millions of people are going to die this year.
01:05:21.420 | So don't be stupid about your goal setting.
01:05:26.460 | Learn from your mistakes, from your experiences, from your wins and your successes.
01:05:31.460 | Analyze those things.
01:05:33.060 | Choose goals that are important to you for your own reasons.
01:05:36.640 | Not other people's goals for your life, your goals.
01:05:39.700 | Lay them out.
01:05:40.700 | Write them down.
01:05:42.300 | Imagine the journey and the steps necessary to accomplish them.
01:05:46.260 | Work towards them.
01:05:47.900 | Those goals will be like a GPS.
01:05:50.260 | They'll pull you towards them as long as you keep going.
01:05:54.300 | The only way you're going to fail is if you quit.
01:05:57.300 | So resolve not to quit and make sure you enjoy the process.
01:06:02.060 | Happy New Year.
01:06:03.260 | With Kroger brand products from Ralphs, you can make all your favorite things this holiday
01:06:07.420 | season because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.
01:06:13.100 | And with a money back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.
01:06:21.260 | Whether you shop delivery, pickup or in store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things.
01:06:27.860 | Ralphs, fresh for everyone.
01:06:29.940 | (dramatic music)