All It Takes Is A Goal

ATG 31: The 4 best steps to take before you start a new goal

July 26, 2021 Jon Acuff Season 1 Episode 31
All It Takes Is A Goal
ATG 31: The 4 best steps to take before you start a new goal
Show Notes Transcript

Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you’re working on a goal, you’re just not making any progress?

When the scale doesn’t budge, the income doesn’t increase, or the pages don’t get written, it can be discouraging. Not seeing progress come quickly enough is one of the biggest reasons people give up on their goals. Here’s the issue though - progress is found not received, and the only way to see it is to know exactly where you started. The best map in the world is useless if you don’t know where you are when you open it. That’s why this episode is all about drawing a massive “You Are Here” X so that you can build a base that will launch your success and help you track your progress.

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Jon Acuff:

Hey, it's Jon Acuff, and welcome to the All It Takes Is A Goal podcast, the best place in the entire world, including all of Canada to learn how to build new thoughts, new actions and new results. I'm your host, Jon Acuff and today I'm going to teach you how to build a base for your goal. Why? Well, the best map in the world is useless if you don't know where you are when you first open it. So today, we're going to draw a massive you are here x in our lives, so that we can build a base that you can launch into success from without a starting line. We'll never find the finish line. But first, today's episode is sponsored by Medi-Share. Have you guys ever had buyer's remorse? You know that feeling of intense regret because the thing you thought you just had to have was only something used once or twice? For me it was the time I bought a really expensive road bike because I thought I was going to get into cycling. I proceeded to hang it on the wall in my garage and feel ashamed for six months. Well, I know some of you are experiencing buyer's remorse right now for something much more frustrating. You know what I'm talking about. It's the healthcare you rushed to get during open enrollment last December. Well, I have some good news for you. You've probably heard me talking about our main sponsor for this podcast, Medi-Share. And these guys have the answer to healthcare buyer's remorse. Check this out, members of Medi-Share save up to 50% or more per month on their health care costs. They say the typical family saves up to $500 per month. And here's the best part, you can become a member at any time. So that means it isn't too late to ditch your buyer's remorse and switch to a more affordable health care that will save you money and help you sleep better at night. If this is your first time you're hearing about Medi-Share, it is the best alternative to health insurance that allows you to share the burden of medical bills, offers access to 900,000 plus health care providers, and has a proven 25 year track record. Plus in addition to saving hundreds per month, as a member of Medi-Share, you will also have access to free telehealth and free telecounseling. You won't find that with any traditional health insurance provider. Guys, it only takes two minutes to see how much you could save. Go investigate that for yourself and your family at Medi-Share.com/Jon. That's Medi-Share.com/Jon. Remember Jon doesn't have an H in it. So it's a M-E-D-I, that's Medi, share, S-H-A-R-E dot com slash J-O-N. Alright, let's talk about base. One of the biggest reasons that people tend to quit their goals is that they don't see enough progress. The results don't come in the way they want it. The pounds don't drop. The income doesn't go up. The pages don't get written. Regardless of the goal, the progress just doesn't show up. Have you ever felt that way? I definitely have. I used to do kind of a joke in speeches where I'd say, "Would you like to know how long your goal is going to take? I actually know what you'd like to know how long it's going to take? Longer than you want." I've never met somebody said, "Yeah, whole thing took like 14 seconds. It was a lot faster than I thought. It was challenging." But we've all had that moment when the results don't show up. Do you know why that happens, though, why progress doesn't show up? Because progress never shows up. Progress is found, not received. Let me say that again because that's your first soundtrack of the day. Remember, I wrote a book called Soundtracks about a repetitive thought. These things we think over and over again. If they're positive, they push you forward. If they're negative, they hold you back. And you get to choose them. Your thoughts come by choice or chance. But that's the soundtrack, progress is found, not received. We have to actively, deliberately look for progress. And few things in the world will motivate you like when you find it. A month from now, I want you to be so proud of how far you've come. I want you to laugh with joy at the great list of things that you were able to accomplish. The problem is that you'll never know how far you've come, if you don't know where you started from. Most people are so excited on the first day of a goal that they sprint right by a seemingly boring activity, like figuring out the base of where they are starting from they're like, "You know what? No, no, no. I heard an Eminem song. I heard Coming in Hot from Andy Mineo. Like I'm going! I'm doing it! I'm doing it today!" And they run and they run and they run and they think,"Eh, a base? Figuring out where I am feels too clinical or sterile. It's boring." So instead, people run ahead. They binge write a book or over-exercise and weeks into the goal, when the hype has worn off, they feel stuck because their emotions won't honestly tell them how far they've come. Your emotions are never able to give you an accurate picture of how far you've come. So without the context of a starting point, or as I like to call it a base, the progress is impossible to even detect. It reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld. Actually, I think most of life reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld. In one episode, Kramer adopts a pet rooster. As he is wont to do, he gets involved in a crazy scheme. He decides to raise it to fight. Now in this one scene, Jerry is really excited, because he's been helping Kramer train the rooster. He says to George,"Hey, George, the rooster ran down the hall so fast! He ran down the hall in 11 seconds!" and George asks him, "Is that, is that time good?" And Jerry honestly says, "I don't know." Without knowing how fast a rooster should run down a hall or how fast it usually runs, Jerry didn't have any context for that accomplishment. He didn't have a base. So the new time didn't tell him anything about the progress. So that's why today, we're going to take a few measurements. All I want you to do is create an honest picture of where you are right now, with any goal you're even thinking about. There are four things that we're going to do in order to build a base. I don't know if you've picked up on this yet. If you've listened this podcast at all, but I like lists. I like tangible, actionable things you can do to accomplish your goal. I love a good list. So if you're going to build a base, all you have to do is four things. Number one, find a number to measure. Number two, measure it. Number three, ignore any negative feelings. And number four, make it as visible as possible. Let's jump right into step one. Find a number to measure. Let's say you were doing a health goal. In order to get a sense of where you are right now you could measure your number one, current weight, number two, your current clothing sizes, number three, your inch measurements of relevant body parts, number four, the meals you ate in the last three days, number five, number of times you exercised last week, number six, the distance you ran, walked, or cycled last week, number seven, the amount of time you exercise last week, number eight, body fat percentages. You can get this measured in several ways. Some doctors do it or you could order calipers online. Number nine, you can measure how much water you're drinking. People are constantly drinking water. Now, those are nine fairly quick measurements. And if the scale is your nemesis, and just hearing the words "current weight", made you sad, cool, screw the scale. You get to decide what you measure. Never add a miserable goal to your life thinking it'll end up making you happy someday. It won't. Measure what you want to measure as long as you're measuring something. Now let's say your goal is to build your business. You could write down"Number one, I'm going to measure time I invested in the business last week. I'm going to look back in a week and go ok, I spent X amount hours, spent X amount of days." You can measure number two, gross profit your business earned in the last month or number three, last month's expenses. Okay, I want to really drill down and figure out my expenses. Number four, net profit you earn. Okay. Not just gross, what was our net profit? Number five, total number of products sold. Maybe you have a physical product and you can say "Okay, here's how many units we sold." Number six, number of new email subscribers you got last month. Number seven, number of new followers for some social media platform. Number eight, number of cold calls you did to prospective clients. It's easy to find things you can measure. Well, what about if your goal is to write a book? Because there's a lot of people that are listening to this right now. They're like,"Whoa, I want to write a book. Like how, how do I write a book, Jon? You've written some books. What what are things that I could measure?" Okay, number one, pages you wrote last month. Number two, word count from last month. Every form of software tells you the word count so easily. Number three, total amount of time you spent writing last month or last week. You figure out the time frame. Number four, number of new ideas you gathered in your idea collection system. Every writer needs one of these. I need to do a whole episode on my idea collection system. Number five, total amount of time you spent researching your book last week. The measurements are going to vary depending on the goal. But that's okay. The point of this exercise is to get an accurate, honest picture of where you are right now, so that you can fully appreciate where you want to end up. Now you need a number to measure. That's step one. And then here's the crazy step two, you measure it. That's all you do in step two. You actually write it down in a notebook. You put it on a whiteboard. You record it in Evernote or some other app on your phone. You take the time to sit down and say "Okay, what did I actually do? When I look at my week, when I look at my calendar, what did actually accomplish?" You mea ure it. The third thing you do, step three, you ignore any negative feelings. The first time you measure your weight, you might hear this broken soundtrack inside that says, "I can't believe I allowed myself to gain this much weight." The first time you measure how much you wrote on your book last week, and you realize the number might be zero hours, you might hear this broken soundtrack that says, "You call yourself a writer? You don't even write. You haven't even written in a month, maybe even six months, maybe a year, you're not a writer." Regardless of what your goal is, you're going to hear some broken soundtracks. I mean, the first time you see how many boxes of papers you need to sort through in order to get your attic back in order, you might hear a broken soundtrack that says, "There's too many. There's way too many. It's too late. Step four, make the base as visible as possible. You've got It's a mountain don't even bother starting." Regardless of to be able to see it. You need to be reminded of it. Put it on what your goal is. It's wicked common, and remember, I use the a post it note by your laptop. Write it with a dry erase marker word "wicked" as the word"very", because I grew up in on your mirror. Make a small sign that you hang up in your Massachusetts, and that is what we do, it's wicked common to office. You don't have to put your weight on a billboard. have some negative feelings when you measure where you are right Doesn't that sound like the worst? But in your notebook, the now. That's okay. Everybody feels that way. Ignore it and one that only you see, in big bold letters, write it down. I move on to step four. started on July 26, at 300 pounds. I started on July 26, with 200 words written from my book. I started on July 26, with an attic I couldn't even open the door into there were so many boxes. I don't beg every episode, but this is one of those episodes that I'm begging you to complete this activity. You've got to build your base. Why? So that a month from now, when you're still working on your goal, and you feel like you haven't made any progress, which is a feeling everyone who ever does a goal has, I want you to be able to look back at your base and see how far you've really come. That's what Corinne Crabtree talked about in last week's episode. Did you hear that one? Go back and listen, if you didn't. She's really deliberate about how she uses her time. I love asking high performing people about how they use their time. She said that every Sunday afternoon, she spends an hour or so mapping out her week. She gets really specific with each activity, and each hour of her upcoming week. So she doesn't put down "Okay, write promo copy." She writes,"Write three new blog posts for October sales push from 9am to 10am on Tuesday." Then throughout the week, she stays as honest as she can to that schedule. She even puts her fun stuff on there, like "getting my nails done at that spot and Grasslin Market from 11am to 12pm on Thursday." So when she was describing that, I asked her a question. I said, "Okay, okay, what's your score at the end of the week? How close was your actual, to your plan?" I think that's always interesting. That's an interesting thing to think about is how big is the gap between what you planned and what actually happened? I think often goals are optimistic lies. We come up with a goal that we have no possibility of ever achieving. And the problem with that is that a goal is never just a goal. A goal is a promise. Goal is a promise you make to yourself, to your family, to your coworkers, to your team. And every time you make one and you don't accomplish it, you you break that promise and it gets harder to make it again. And it gets harder to believe the next time. I see this all the time in companies. I get to speak to about 50 companies a year. And I love getting to connect with companies. And one of the things that I see leaders struggle with is that they want to be strong, brave, and bold leaders. So they make these amazingly crazy, big goals and they go "We're gonna do this this year!" And there's no reality to that. There's no chance that will actually happen. And they think "I'm being a competent leader. I'm gonna show the team I can lead." But then when they don't meet it, and they keep making these big claims and their words don't match their actions and match their results, it gets harder for the team to believe them next time. That that happens all the time. So I asked Corrine, I said "Okay, hey, how close was your actual to your planned? And she said 80 to 90%. And that was encouraging to me because it felt honest. I don't trust when motivational gurus say that they score 100% on their calendars. I don't think that's true. Life has too many surprises for that. But what was interesting, is that she said when she started this approach, kind of mapping out her week and being deliberate about her hours, her score was about 30%. Meaning that on Sunday, she made her week plan and then only stuck to it with about 30% success. I love that she shared that, because she was sharing her base. At the start of the goal. She was only capable of 30% success. But that's not discouraging, because that's just the base. One of the soundtracks I say a lot is "be brave enough to be bad at something new." You should! You should be brave enough to be bad at something new. When it's new, you should be bad in it. You're just getting a base started. Here's why that's powerful. Let's say Corrine does that approach for 90 days. Three months in, she's mapping out her calendar. She's being deliberate on Sunday to plan her whole week. She's crushing it. Let's say three months, and she looks up and she's only at 60% success. Her calendar, her plan versus her actual, is only about 60%. That's a D-. It is that could definitely be discouraging. But it's not. Why? Because she has a base to compare it to. She doubled her success rates at the beginning, from 30% to 60%. And that is a massive win. If I could help you double what you're working on right now, that would be amazing! You would 100% write a review and be like, "This is the best podcast ever!" If fear tries to tell you that progress isn't coming fast enough, like imagine Corrine, if fear tries to tell Corrine "Hey, progress isn't coming fast enough. It's just not. You're failing." She can say "Whoa, no, that's not true. I've actually made incredible progress. I can see it right here. I went from 30% to 60%. I'm killing it." If you take a few minutes today, with whatever goal you're working on, you're going to be kind to your future self. If you take a few minutes with whatever goal you're working on today and come up with a base, you're being so kind to your future self. I need to do a whole episode on that concept. Here's what I believe you should do in life. I think you should forgive your former self, enjoy your current self, and be kind to your future self. Let me say that again. Because sometimes I talk quickly. Forgive your former self, enjoy your current self, be kind to your future self. What does it mean to be kind to your future self, to prepare your future self? It's like changing your sheets in the morning versus waiting until that night. Have you ever done that? You strip your bed sheets before you go to work or anything. "I'll put these on later tonight. I'll change these sheets later tonight." You do all the work. It's just your mattress pad or whatever. And then you forget, because life gets busy. The day gets busy. And right before you jump into bed you go up to your bedroom and you see the fresh sheets waiting to be put on and you think, "Dang it! The morning me did not do the night me any favors." Same thing happens at night if you think "I'll get gas tomorrow before work. I don't want to. I'm tired tonight. I don't want to do it tonight. I'll just get it before work tomorrow. "You were just unkind to your future self. When you build a base, and you understand where you are right now, you're giving your future self an incredible tool to use later. When your future self runs into frustrations during the goal, and it will, it will be able to say, "Hold on a second. Hold on. Let me check my base and see where I really am with this progress." That's a huge gift to give yourself in the future. So build a base. How? Four simple steps. Find a number to measure. Step one, find a number. Step two, measure it. Step three, ignore any negative feelings. They're going to happen. That's okay, you can ignore them. Number four, make the base as visible as possible. The best way to know you've made progress tomorrow is to build a base today. Now if you liked this episode, even a smidge, you're going to love my new book Soundtracks. It's a hilarious, helpful guide to turning overthinking from a super problem into a superpower. It's all about helping you figure out how to choose the mindset you really want and then put it into place and then actually get to enjoy it. You want to talk about something people overthink? Their base, they overthink their base. You can buy a copy anywhere books are sold. I read the audio and there's bonus content in it. And if right now you're thinking "I don't know a whole book? Barely know this guy. A whole book?" Cool, cool, cool. Visit SoundtracksBook.com and you read the first chapter for free. See if it's for you. That's all for this week. Thank you again for all the reviews you've been leaving. They're really encouraging to me. If you've got 90 seconds and are feeling a tiny bit generous, please leave one and make sure you subscribe or follow or tag or whatever it is the kids are saying these days about podcasts. Please, please do that so that you don't miss the next episode. I'll see you next week and remember, all it takes is a goal. This episode of the podcast was brought to you by Medi-Share. ext JON, J-O-N to 474747 for ore information. Huge thank y u to Medi-Share for sponsoring t. J-O-N to 474747.

Producer:

Thanks for listening. To learn more about the All It Takes Is A Goal podcast and to get access to today's show notes, transcript, and exclusive content from Jon Acuff, visit Acuff.me/podcast. Thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the All It Takes Is A Goal podcast.