Every year around this time people get motivated and jacked up about starting resolutions or changing for the better. While this is all well-intentioned we know from historical statistics that the majority of these fail. If you need any concrete proof to see this play out in real life just join a planet fitness today and compete with the many sheep who want to change something about their look or health this year once and for all. Compete with them for equipment and watch the post-work 5 pm crowd jam the hell out of a terrible gym for the next six weeks. About mid-February you’ll have all the space and equipment you’ll need because the majority of those people who once started with a change my life attitude failed to maintain a few core principles of any goal-setting / resolution regime – there has to be a why behind it and there has to be a road map guiding your desires. You cannot just throw out random items you thought would be cool to accomplish and hope.
There’s a ton of shit out there that would be great. Everyone out there can attest it would be great to win the lottery, never work again, travel the world and explore the land unknown but before you get all Peter Pan on your resolutions, I’ve compiled a list – (yes it’s extensive because having a great year is hard work) of the things you really need to do in order to have a smashing start to the new decade.
1. Set goals and make them realistic but stretch goals. What’s a stretch goal you ask? Well if you have a goal written down you think you can reasonably accomplish then it’s not a goal. It’s a task that with concentrated effort could get done if you prioritized well. That doesn’t stretch you as a human being. It just makes you get something done so you feel good about yourself. We want to advance the fucking chains.
A stretch goal is something that seemingly starts out as impossible but if dissected enough and boiled down could be possible with a lot of focused efforts and discipline.
So what are two examples of stretch goals? Let’s start by using the same fitness hypothetical from above.
Let’s say you’re 30 pounds overweight. If you were to set a resolution or goal to lose 30 Pounds and walk away you’d probably finish the year overweight by 35 pounds to start 2021.
That’s because the goal has nothing attached to it. No weight, no roadmap and no why for the goals itself WRITTEN DOWN.
So let’s say you think losing 30 pounds in a year is attainable, the stretch goal equivalent might be something like this:
A. Lose 30 pounds of excess body weight in six months.
Why – I’d like to be able to have more stamina to keep up with my kids and lower my blood pressure so I don’t die early and leave them before they graduate college.
Why’s that important– it’s important because the bond I have with my children is beyond rewarding and fulfilling and I feel a calling to teach them all the good things I know that could help them have a better life than I did.
How will you achieve this goal?
1. Sign up at the gym for an unlimited membership so I can go anytime I need to.
2. Set a benchmark for 3 training sessions a week.
3. Follow the workout routines from those who’ve achieved this level of weight loss and test them to my abilities.
4. Check-in every evening and score myself on how I’ve contributed to my goal. 0-3 is failure 4-6 is caution and 7-10 is passing for the day.
5. At the end of the week I’ll add up my total and it must be over 7. If it’s not, reevaluate where I went wrong and course correct for the following week.
6. Understand losing 30 pounds in six months is very challenging so constant evaluation is needed to make changes to nutrition and exercise routines accordingly.
7. If I can afford it see counseling once a week to keep me on track.
You can see from the above notes that’s how you should approach 1 goal or resolution. You need to spend the time and dig deep. Make sure it is important to you and the goal why adds value to your life.
B. TRIM THE FAT.
Look around you and take notice of the things that are important to you (hint – material possessions are not important).
Take a day or two to soak this in. If you chase materials you’ll be chasing forever. Yes, nice things are nice. But at the root of it all, you really are only seeking comfort. You want to be comfortable and without worry.
When I say to trim the fat, I mean materials and responsibilities that don’t enrich your life or people who you don’t genuinely want to be around. Understand that by trimming the fat you make more room for things to enter your life that have the possibilities of helping you execute on your goals, whatever those may be. We all carry around things that don’t serve us and we all spend way too much time amusing someone who doesn’t add value to our lives.
Examine them all, cut and move on. If you come to something or someone and hesitate the answer is – cut it. If it helps to use the burning building analogy then use it – i.e. you’re in a house that is burning down, you only have two minutes to grab your shit and bounce safely before smoke begins to take over your lungs and you die, what are you going to take? In this example, we safely assume all of our loved ones are already out.
C. FOCUS – now that you’ve examined what is important to you and set stretch goals it’s time to focus. Understand the limitations of one human being and do what’s needed to accomplish what you want. If that means deploying other resources than by all means do so if you can but use this outline to understand that you need to focus wisely – There are 24 hours in a day. Approximately 7-8 of those are spent sleeping and that means about 16 of those you’ll spend awake and conscious which means you must focus on how those will be spent.
If it’s not a weekend, the majority of us will have to work around 7-8 hours out of those 16. That leaves around 7-8 hours of time that is dedicated to things outside of work. Focus on what you can do during that time to leverage your way further towards those stretch goals from above. During this time it’s really important to understand what’s important to you. Time is NOT an infinite resource so spend some TIME thinking about that. We both get the same 168 hours this week.
D. DO MORE BY DOING LESS – Seems counterintuitive right. Since time is not an infinite resource you need to focus when you’re in deep work but you also need to choose the time you spend doing nothing. It’s called human beings for a reason, not human doings. Utilize the time to work wisely by limiting the amount of time you work and you’ll get more done. Don’t let the day drift by you simply because you have a time slot you’re “supposed” to be working. Work on yourself and spend time working on learning new things and then when you have work that actually needs to get done you’ll have a condensed window to do it in and the work will get done because it’s a concentrated effort. I’ve spent hours listening to books or watching videos learning things at dead-end jobs when I had to find a way to utilize the dead time. There are two types of time – dead time and alive time. Your job is to make sure all your time is alive time.
E. MEDITATION – of some sort. Alive time, as noted above, does not need to be a busy time doing things. You can be being. But you can easily regenerate yourself and lighten your stress through some type of meditation. It can be simple breathing exercises done for five minutes a day or a quiet walk. Meditation isn’t a one routine fits all. It could also be a quiet time trying to find what the Japanese call “no mind” or empty space. This further enhances the doing less part and accelerates the impact you have when you go back to crushing whatever it is you need to.
F. ASK YOURSELF MAGICAL QUESTIONS – When thinking about how you want to improve day after day understand that it’s the questions that are most important to your growth. The more impactful questions you ask yourself on a daily basis, the more your actions will influence your daily outcomes. What do magical questions look like? Well, if you’re trying to improve on your health you could ask yourself a simple question every time you pick up a food or drink – Will I feel good after eating this? OR You could amplify this with a magical question like – Will my life be extended or reduced and my overall well being enhanced or declined by eating or drinking this??? Another magical question to ask yourself is – why am I doing this right now? Will this add happiness to my life? My personal favorite is some variation of the following – If I were to leave this earth right now would I be making this same decision?
G. HAVE A MORBID OUTLOOK & A POSITIVE ATTITUDE. We love planning. As human beings, most of us would plan everything if we could. Fortunately for us, there is some type of higher power that interjects whenever it sees fit and changes our plans. Having an understanding that you could leave this earth at any moment really effects your decisions of the micro and the macro. Will I care about this tomorrow? Am I wasting my time on this meaningless task when I know I won’t be able to get back these minutes?
H. RAISE YOUR SKILL GAME – You cannot experience growth if you continually stick to the same things and do not explore other things outside of your comfort zone. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the same field go deeper, explore other things and let your curiosity develop the ability to run wild. Explore the opposite side of your beliefs, try to prove yourself wrong, whatever you do invest time in the improvement of new skills. We are nothing without learning and if we are not expanding the 10% capacity in-between our ears then we’re not exploiting the god-given gifts we were granted.
There are a few tried and true easy ways to expand your knowledge/skill set, read a book, take a class, go to a seminar and invest in a self-paced course, but in today’s day, you can literally do almost everything for FREE just by searching the internet. It’s crazy stupid how much knowledge is out there. Be selective, cut and move fast when something is not working for you and you will continue to progress. Just don’t spread yourself too thin as this is very easy to do when the internet can be like drinking from a firehouse. One other thing to expand yourself is to write something every day. When we write we are forced to expand, even if it’s a small piece, a note anything you have to think about will help you expand.
Finally – keep things SIMPLE. How do we eat an Elephant? One bite at a time. It’s very simple to look at the list above and get super overwhelmed if you’re new to challenging yourself. It’s also very easy to be completely scattered and accomplish nothing if you’re the type that tries to do everything at once. Start with one, but the most important thing is you start. A 1% change in course direction will have you in a completely different destination a year from now. Good luck – go crush.