TTM #17 WHY SETTING GOALS

TTM#17 WHY SETTING GOALS

Watch the intro to the episode HERE.

A great life is determined by the amazing goals you commit to, not necessarily achieve. What? 

When we set a goal and go after it with a willingness to fail, we will gain enormous wisdom, experience, understanding, and self-knowledge.
These are the strategic byproducts that are often more valuable than the attainment of the initial vision.
It’s not what you get from achieving the goal, it’s who you become in the process.

In this episode I discuss why setting goals is a spiritual practice, and what is the goal of setting goals if they will not make us happy anyway?


TTM#17 WHY SETTING GOALS - SELF ENQUIRY

Do you dream? Do you think about the future? Do you plan on what you want to create?

Pick one goal. Constrain. Get specific. Talk about your goal in the present tense.

Who will you need to become to achieve this goal?

How will you be different from who you are now? What skills would you need to develop?

How hard are you believing in yourself?

What are your obstacles and strategies for overcoming those obstacles?

What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?

Every action that you do in your day, ask yourself this question, “Does this get me long-term success or short-term pleasure? And how do I want to define my life? Do I want to define it on short-term pleasure or long-term success?”

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

Ep. 8 DREAM WITH DISCIPLINE
Ep. 9 BELIEVING ON PURPOSE
Ep. 13 HOW TO FEEL BETTER
Ep. 14 HOW TO FEEL BAD
Ep. 16 DISCOMFORT ON PURPOSE

Share your thoughts, suggestions, and comments HERE.

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Transcript

TTM #17 WHY SETTING GOALS

You are listening to me talking to myself. Welcome to the podcast, where I share useful tools to create more space, more freedom, inner peace, connection, and life on purpose.

A great life is determined by the amazing goals you commit to, not necessarily achieve. What? our imagination, our potential, and our anticipation are what determine how amazing we feel about our life. Our belief in what is great already and our belief in what we can create and in what the future holds is what makes our present moment exciting. It's what makes us anticipate the greatness of our life. So many of us think what makes our life amazing is the circumstances of our life. It's what's happening. It's our relationships. It's how much money we have, our accomplishments, but really what makes our life amazing is what we think about. And when we think about an amazing future, when we think about our life becoming and being even better than it is now from a place of abundance, not from a place of scarcity, we get to create that experience right now. And so do not wait until you achieve your goals to experience the effect of them. The effect of your goals is experienced when you set them, not when you achieve them. When you commit to them, when you believe in them. That's when the magic starts to happen.

Some people might say setting goals is not a spiritual practice, because we focus on the result, not on the process, because we focus on the future, not on the present. And I don't think it's true. It depends on how and why you set your goals. Setting goals is a very spiritual practice because it is about growth. It is about evolving and becoming the best version of yourself, and goals are great tools for that. Setting goals does not mean that we are not in the present moment. It does not mean we live in the future. It doesn't mean we don't connect to ourselves and listen to how and what we feel. We can be in the present moment and allow ourselves to dream and set goals from a place of abundance. So often we want something in our life because of something we are lacking or do not have. If we don't feel happy, then we want to get something to make us happy. That is the problem. And this is not a very useful way of setting goals. achieving that goal will not solve any internal problems or make us happy. Go back to Episode 13 On what creates our happiness.

All of our feelings including happiness come from our thoughts. So there is no happiness that we are going to find in our future that we don't already have now. If happiness is created in our mind with our thoughts, then achieving something or getting a future goal at some future moment is not going to increase our capacity for happiness.

So why setting goals if there is not better than here?

The point of having goals is not so we can achieve them and be happier than we are today. The reason to have goals is because our purpose on this planet is to evolve and to grow and explore what is possible for us and that best version of ourselves, what we can create, how we can contribute and how much value we can bring into the world. And the way to do that is to constantly be asking ourselves to bloom in a bigger way. And goals are a great way for us to do that.

When you think about a goal or you think about a dream or something that you want to achieve, it may seem unachievable, and impossible, something way beyond our current abilities. That process of dreaming and thinking about that in this present moment is what brings all of the stuff up that is preventing us from already being that version we want to be.

Setting goals and believing in them enough to achieve them will bring up a lot of obstacles, will bring up the things blocking us from what is possible for us. And this is what goals are about learning to overcome those obstacles on the way, the limitations we set ourselves, insecurities, lack of confidence, gaining new skills, showing up in a different way, creating the relationship with ourselves, being present with all the negative emotions that will come up on the way towards that goal.

Another reason for setting goals is they give our brain direction. They create a deliberate focus for our brain. If we are focusing on a goal, focusing on something that we want, having our attention and our deliberate concentration on that, it tells the brain what to do. It provides it with structure and supervision. Where our focus goes energy flows. You can predict where you're going to be in your life by what you're telling your brain to think about. Your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions which ultimately give you your results. This is going to happen either way. You're going to always be creating your results. Results do not just happen to you. And goals are a way of deciding what you want those results to be.

So one of the things that is so amazing about setting goals is not necessarily what we achieve when you achieve a goal but the strategic byproducts along the way. As you're going through the process of achieving your goal. You're overcoming your doubts, your fears, you're taking actions, you're putting yourself out there. You're going to have things happen that wouldn't happen otherwise, you're going to meet people you wouldn't have met. You're going to have experiences you wouldn't have experienced had you not had this goal.

If you set a body goal, you will learn how to connect to your feelings, how to process negative emotions like restlessness, irritation, emptiness, boredom, how to welcome urges and not react to them. You will learn how to watch your brain tell you ‘you will die’. You will learn how to do hard things. You will get to know your body in the process, how it reacts to you moving, training, resting, sleeping, eating, you will learn how to take care of it.

If you have a money goal, money is an exchange of value, who do you need to become to be able to provide this value? You will need to learn how to reach more people. You would need to learn how to create more value. You would need to work on yourself so you can provide more knowledge and skill and results and offer a better product and service.

Yoga practice is a great tool to set goals. Not because achieving that goal and being able to arm balance or handstand will make you a better person, more worthy or happier. But because you practice consistency, discipline showing up for yourself, not giving up, failing, falling, feeling discomfort, feeling negative emotions, observing your attachments, you practice patience and determination. You build strength and flexibility of your body and mind. And all those tools you can take with you into your daily life and implement for any other goal you have.

So how do I set goals? The first thing that you need to think about is do you even dream? Do you even allow yourself to want? do you think about the future? Do you plan on what you want to create? Some of us are so busy reacting to everything that's going on in their life that they don't have a plan of what they want to create. They haven't allowed themselves to dream and think about things they want to achieve and have, not from the place of scarcity but from the place of abundance. Just because you want to is a good enough reason.

I want to have a life where I have a lot of freedom to make my own decisions about what I do with my day and what I do with my time and what I do with my life. I do have that and I have done and am constantly doing work on that.

So first, constraint. Pick one goal and stick to it until you get the results you want. One at a time. Pick one and go for it. Honestly, it does not matter which goal you pick, something that excites you and something that maybe scares you a bit. A goal that might affect all your other goals. Every goal that sounds uncomfortable and challenging and scary, will have many strategic byproducts and it will give you a lot of skills and tools for any other goal you set.

Second, get specific, the more specific you can get the better. timeframes, dates, amounts numbers, the more specific you can be the better. Talk about your goal in the present tense. 

My example: My goal is to record 100 episodes and I'm publishing one episode a week.

So the only thing that you do not include at this stage is the How. You might not know the how yet and this is what makes the goal exciting - figuring out the how. And maybe the How does not exist yet and you might be also the first one who creates the How.

At this point, our brain might start to panic because brains like certainty and do same familiar things all day every day. And this is another reason for setting goals and figuring out the How, learning how to manage our brain and the process of how to be with uncertainty, how to be with discomfort and uncomfortable emotions, how to see and believe something that does not exist yet, and how to show up for ourselves and be our own biggest fan.

What will happen, especially if you've stretched yourself with that goal, what will come up is fear, doubt, shame, insecurity. This does not mean anything has gone wrong. This is part of the process. If negative emotion doesn't come up, it probably means that you're not challenging yourself and that you're not pushing yourself beyond your current comfort zone. Your brain likes to stay comfortable. That is what it is designed to do. Your brain will look for what you tell it to look for. As soon as you start introducing new things and stretching it and asking it to go outside of its comfort zone, those negative emotions are going to come up because you're going to have thoughts that you haven't had before. Those new thoughts are uncomfortable for the brain. That's the point of having a goal. Thoughts like ‘do I know what to talk about for 100 episodes? What if nobody will listen? What if I lose interest? What if I don't feel well? What if something happens to my mic? What if I want to be able to prepare it on time?’ and other fun stuff. The worst thing that can happen for me from all those things is a negative emotion. I might feel maybe some disappointment, rejection, embarrassment. And this is part of my process to learn how to deal with my brain's suggestions and find solutions to all the obstacles, and also trust myself that I will find a way. It's just what brains do. And sometimes we need to talk to our brain. ‘Of course brain, Don't you worry, I have so many things I want to share with the world. 100 episodes will not be enough. Everything is figureoutable.’

Next Step. Take massive action. Instead of wondering how to do something, start doing something. If you want to find out how to do it, start doing it. You will know whether it's working or not if you take action. Massive action does not mean sacrificing your life, friends, integrity, values, sleep food and being busy working 24/7. No, massive action means taking strategic action until you get the results you want. Try many things. You can change the strategy but not the goal. Keep trying and taking massive action until you get the results you want. When you take massive action you're always going to produce a result. What is the result your action created? Not what was the action you took? Did it create the results you want? If it didn't you need to take different massive action. If it created the results you want then you keep taking that action and keep creating that result. So focus on the results you're creating from your massive action not on the activity that you're doing. Activity, being busy is not useful.

Fail a lot. What is failure? We are either winning or learning. Every failure shows us how to adjust our strategy. Every failure is a teacher. Every No brings us closer to the Yes. When we set a goal and go after it with a willingness to fail will gain enormous wisdom, experience, understanding and self-knowledge. These are the strategic byproducts that are often more valuable than the attainment of the initial vision.

We don't want to fail on purpose in order to escape discomfort. That's an escape fail and doesn't provide us with much value. Escape fails include for example, not following through on commitments, not taking action, changing our minds about the goal, staying confused, staying in indecision, giving up, lowering our standards, making excuses, justifying inaction, using external substances, drinking, eating to feel better. All the strategies that might sound like good explanations not to take action towards the goal and stay comfortable. This is not failing. This type of failing is failing ahead of time. It doesn't create any strategic byproduct. Escape failure is failing ahead of time, which really means avoiding the worthy failures that keep us evolving.

If we limit ourselves to what we already do well, our world becomes small. When we open ourselves up to doing the impossible and failing, our life becomes so much bigger.

And the last step - completion. Complete a goal and the steps towards it. It will change your relationship with yourself. Your ability to trust yourself, honour your commitments to yourself. You will build up so much integrity and respect for yourself that that momentum will carry you into way bigger accomplishments that maybe you can't even imagine now.

You don't have to know the exact How, you just have to start taking action. Make a plan and follow through on your action. Do not change your goal to make it easier so your thoughts will change. Change your thoughts, so you can do the harder thing, to become stronger, to do the thing that will make you grow, to do the thing that will make you accomplish something new and maybe impossible.

It's not what you get from achieving that goal. It's who you become. You come up against your fear and your doubt and your disbelief and your shame. And that's part of it. As you process through that, this is where you learn. You learn how to process through negative emotions, you also learn how to pay attention to your mind and become aware of your thoughts as we go through goal setting. As you set your goal and you start noticing the negative emotion, you will also notice the negative thinking because emotions are created by thoughts. A lot of times the thinking will sound like this: ‘I don't know. I'm not sure, I'm confused. Maybe this isn't the right thing. Maybe it's not the right time. Maybe I should wait. Maybe I should change my mind. Who cares anyway.’ Those thoughts will block you from pursuing your dreams. ‘I don't know’ is one of the biggest dream stealers. ‘I just don't know. I don't know how, I don't know if this is what I want. I don't know if I can.’

Those thoughts will appear and with them will come fear, disbelief, doubt, shame. That's all part of the process.

It doesn't mean anything has gone wrong.

It's helpful to write down your thoughts so you detach yourself from them and you can have a look at them outside of you.

You don't have to believe those thoughts. The brain just wants to protect you from any discomfort including negative emotions. Acknowledge it, become curious, process it, take it with you and keep going.

Ask yourself, what would I do if I knew I wouldn't fail? If you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do? Think about that. Go to your future self that has already accomplished this goal. And listen.

Meditation is a very useful tool to be still, to be with yourself, to ask questions, to ask for guidance and to listen. Without expecting to receive the answers straight away. Trust the process.

The one thing that separates successful people from not successful people or people who aren't as successful as they want to be is the ability to delay pleasure.

To review. Instant gratification is a habit where you forget short-term pain and instead indulge in fleeting pleasures that ultimately result in long-term pain. You find reasons - excuses - not to do something because of the pain it creates in the moment even though you know that this action is necessary to help you attain your long-term goal.

Delayed gratification is a habit where you give up short-term pleasure, comfort in the moment, in order to gain significant long-term rewards in the future. You stay away from short-term temptations that might distract you from your long-term goal and instead focus on what you need to do to achieve your desired long-term outcome.

Getting into the habit of delaying gratification gives us more control over our life, decisions and actions.

Everything you do, ask yourself this question. Every action that you do in your day ask yourself, Does this get me a long-term success or short-term pleasure?

And how do I want to define my life? Do I want to define it on short-term pleasure or long-term success?

Delay discounting is a similar concept. Delay discounting is when you discount something if you have to wait for it. So it becomes less valuable the longer you have to wait.

The preference is for a smaller, immediate reward rather than a larger delayed reward.

You have probably heard of the marshmallow experiment. In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time.

The researcher told the child that he was going to leave the room and that if the child did not eat the marshmallow while he was away, then they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

However, if the child decided to eat the first one before the researcher came back, then they will not get a second one.

So the choice was simple: one treat right now or two treats later.

The researchers conducted follow-up studies and tracked each child's progress in a number of areas. What they found was that children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up showing lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.

Another example: if someone would ask you, Would you rather receive 50 pounds now or 60 in a week, you would probably wait a week as it's not a big delay. But if someone offered you 50 now or 60 in a year, you would probably take 50 now because you've discounted it because you have to wait for it for a year.

So what is it about instant gratification and delayed discounting?

Most of us put much more value on a gratification that we can get right now versus that gratification we can get long-term.

Check out the book ‘the molecule of more’ by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long on dopamine and how it drives our actions, desires and makes us do things against our own will. Doing something we genuinely do not even want to be doing.

We discount the benefits that will take longer even though the benefits are bigger. What is it about the impatience we have around receiving pleasure, the dopamine hit and receiving that gratification?

So how do you train your brain to not delay discount and to delay gratification?

We have the primitive brain that is all about immediate gratification. It's responsible for survival and drive and instinct. And we have the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for planning, thinking about the future, thinking strategically and logically. We need them both. It's just to know how to use them to our advantage. Think of these two brains as muscles. The more time and energy we spend training that part - thinking from the prefrontal cortex, the stronger it will become. So if you get very good at delaying gratification, and you get good at disciplining yourself, and you get really good at visualising your future and becoming someone who can delay the dopamine hit for that ultimate success, and someone that can allow an urge, allow an emotion and not react to them and not discount something that you have to delay but actually make it much more important to you, you will develop the skill of delayed gratification and actually achieve your goals. So developing the skill of delaying gratification is one of the byproducts of setting goals.

One of my goals has been to do intermittent fasting every day for 20 hours. So the process of building this habit required of course discipline but also it was a great practice of delaying gratification every day and not just go for that instant pleasure in the moment. If I had that urge to eat at 9pm and I would think about my future self who would need to wait on the next day till 5pm to be able to eat, I did not want to do it to myself. The instant gratification was not worth it. Even if my brain was telling me things like ‘Eat now, otherwise you will die.’

So think about what it is for you. And what could be your goal to practice delaying gratification, so we can set bigger goals and make them more valuable than that instant gratification?

When you set goals and you think of the future, how far ahead do you think? It's interesting to know because your ability to plan ahead for future success, for bigger goals and your future is very important. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Bill Gates.

When you think about the future, how far ahead do you want to be thinking? When you develop the skill of using your prefrontal cortex that is responsible for strategic planning and future thinking and is responsible for delaying gratification, you will be able to make a lot of decisions ahead of time. You will be able to plan, to follow your plan knowing that you can trust yourself in doing what you said she will do. Therefore, you will be able to create way bigger things and achieve way bigger goals. You will be able to approach a goal without knowing the how because you've given yourself some space and time to achieve that goal strategically and not immediately.

A great example is losing weight, quick diets - quick results. So many of us are so in a rush to get somewhere. 30 days. But what if it takes you two years? or five years? But in the process, you actually learn how to sustain it, how to take care of yourself and your body, how to listen to it, and how to be with it. The 30-day diet will not give you any of those byproducts. So slow down to go further.

And sometimes what happens is we might not see the results we expected for some time. So we do not get those dopamine hits straight away. And it's hard to not discount that future goal that's way out there because we are not feeling any of the benefits of all the hard work that we are doing right now. And that's why it's important to remind yourself that it is not about the goal. And of course, it also is, but remind yourself of all the strategic byproducts and who you become in the process. And the goal is a cherry on top.

Back to my podcast example and recording 100 episodes. One of the reasons why I started this podcast is my desire to connect to like-minded people and deepen the connections I already have. I love having discussions with people who are genuinely interested in doing the work, exploring, being uncomfortable, being vulnerable, being curious and questioning things. For me, it is about quality, not quantity. I want people to listen, to listen again, to check out show notes, to get involved, to do the work. I'm not interested in how many followers and listens I have in terms of number of clicks.

I'm putting out information today, I learn a lot in the process, I study, I researched all the topics I talk about first and I also have done or am doing that work myself. And if people might listen in 10 years and benefit from that - great. And people will listen whenever they are ready.

Of course I would like you to share if you think it would benefit someone and if you listen you probably know other people who should listen too. So please share. And I would love to build that community. And I know that deep connections do not happen quickly.

I'm very patient in terms of needing to have people follow me or needing to have people like me or needing to have people listen to me. I do not need that instant hit of likes or gratification. That is not something that's important to me because I know that it's just what my brain is looking for. And it's not something I am actually interested in. And I also know that this content is not for everyone. So whoever is ready and ready to be uncomfortable, you're welcome.

And because of that I'm really enjoying the process. I'm enjoying preparing the podcast, researching, thinking and reflecting, getting my own insights, and implementing the tools I share here in my own life. I enjoy recording and editing and prepping show notes and questions to reflect on. I enjoy listening to feedback and people's insights and reflections and the things they share with me. It brings me a lot of joy. And I also genuinely know and believe that there will be a million people listening one day, maybe in a year, maybe in five, or in 10 years. I think it’s the best podcast, obviously.

But I'm not discounting what's going to be happening in the future. I think it will be just as amazing in 10 years to have a million listeners as it is now. I'm not in a hurry. I don't make a future accomplishment less valuable than a present-day accomplishment.

What is the need to rush things? Never sacrifice your integrity for the goal. Once again, the goal will not make you happy. If you don't enjoy the process of growth, what is the point of getting to that goal? Losing friends and health and sleep and values? What for? And maybe you have an answer for that and you might need to learn your lessons first, but from my experience, it's not worth it.

The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.

Before setting a goal think about if you're actually willing to put in the work. Do you really love walking? So many people want to learn how to handstand and they ask me questions like ‘If I go to a handstand workshop will I be able to handstand by the end of the workshop?’ Prove me wrong. But no. if it would be easy, everybody could do it. It is hard on purpose.

If you really want to learn handstands, are you willing to practice handstands every day? Maybe every day for five years? Think about it. And what is the alternative?

So how can we learn to enjoy the process and the journey towards something?

We want that instant gratification even though that instant gratification may prevent us from having that long-term benefit. You can learn the skill of prefrontal planning, you can learn the skill of processing your emotions, you can learn how to manage your own discipline and your desire for dopamine and not do things against your own will. And then the process becomes so much fun.

And this is what this podcast is about. I'm teaching and sharing all those tools. Go back to episode eight for discipline. Go back to episode nine on the power of our thoughts and beliefs. Go back to Episodes 13 and 14 on emotions and processing negative emotions. Go back to Episode 16 on why growing and being uncomfortable matters.

So can you be in the presence of working hard, of allowing emotions, of allowing urges, of delaying gratification and appreciating those future results enough that you can make extraordinary things happen in your life? Stop discounting the future and start delaying your gratification and your future self will thank you.

What you believe is what makes something possible. Not what you want to believe but what you truly believe. When you believe something you feel and act in a completely different way than when you don't believe it. Believing changes what you see and how you feel and ultimately what you do to create results.

This is a skill that is unique to humans. This is a skill that is the privilege of the prefrontal cortex that allows us to mentally rehearse a reality that does not exist yet.

The more we believe in the destination, the less proof we need in the moment that it will happen.

The more we believe in the outcome we are creating the less unpleasant the journey is to get there. We don't let setbacks or discomfort mean we won't get there. They're actually part of the process of arriving. The more we keep our minds on who we will be and what we'll experience at the destination the more committed we are to moving through the process.

It is not our job to dictate the timeline for when we achieve the goal. Our job is to believe that it is possible, generate the feeling that would fuel our action, take the next best possible step with the tools we have right now, and keep going.

Who will you need to become to achieve this goal? How will you be different than you are now? How can you move towards that version today? And what is the first step you can take?

Dream, be really specific, and write it down. Allow the fear shame and doubt to come up. Write down the thoughts that come up that are obstacles in your way of achieving a goal. Go to the place where the goal is already achieved and excess the wisdom of your future self and how you are able to achieve it and then break it down into an action plan. Take massive action until you achieve the desired result. In that process, whether you achieve that goal ultimately or not, you will become a stronger, more disciplined, more capable, evolved version of yourself because you will have to go through the process of challenging yourself and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Who are you becoming in the process of getting to that goal? How does your brain change? What are your strategies for overcoming those obstacles? What are your learnings from your failures? What are your takeaways from the process? What do you think about yourself? How hard are you believing in yourself?

What you practice is what you get better at. Practice failing, not quitting, practice discipline and showing up, and do not sacrifice your integrity for any goal.

Destination will always feel how the journey did. Make sure you like your fuel.

Thank you for being curious. If you enjoyed listening - rate, review, subscribe, share and join the conversation. Do not miss out on yourself, your power, and what is possible for you!