Guaranteed Goal Achievement

Hey, the Citroen Trivaz, I welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to show you a very tactical method on how you can guarantee achieving your goals. Imagine that. Imagine you set yourself a goal. What if I told you that I can guarantee that you will achieve that goal? Will it give you more confidence? Will it give you more swag? Will it give you more of the ability to go do more? Be more, give more, achieve more. We've all been taught this goal setting process on how to set the goal. But no one has actually given us a framework, a guaranteed framework on how to achieve these goals. The reason I'm sharing this with you is once you figure out this innate ability to achieve any goal that you set for yourself, it creates this domino effect of momentum in your life because you start to believe that you can achieve anything that you set your mind to because you get to stack the proof in your favor that you can achieve any goal guaranteed. I'm going to walk you through the two most important things that are required to achieve any goal for the rest of your life. And I'm going to give you my five part framework on what I use to ensure that I get the best possible chance of a guarantee to achieve my goals and I break it all down for you starting right now. One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology and the exact how to, how to go your business. How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Trivata and welcome to Business School. All right, there's a good chance that you're going to have to listen to this episode twice. There's a good chance that you're going to want to share this with your friend, your team, your mastermind group because there's nothing more important than actually accomplishing what we set out to do. So the title of this episode, the promise is guaranteed goal achievement. So I want to actually take you through how you can achieve the goals that you have set for yourself in a guaranteed way. That's a big promise. And it's this is not like, hey, let me just, I want to jet in a yacht and a land. Well, that's not what I'm saying. That's what people actually set pretty good goals and they have these outcomes that they want. Maybe make more money, lose more weight, have better relationships, what have you, right? But we go from year to year, quarter to quarter, month to month, having set these goals and we don't achieve them. And I've been spending a lot of time kind of deconstructing why. And so that is the purpose of the episode. I'm going to give you a formula, a framework on how you can guarantee your goal achievement. So just imagine that, imagine whatever goal you can set for yourself, you are guaranteed to achieve. Like, that's pretty powerful. If you know you can do that, what other goal would you set? That's pretty cool, right? But we have to stack some proof that no matter what goal we set for ourselves, we could achieve. Because if we don't, then we get into this trap of, oh gosh, I set myself a goal of wanting to lose 10 pounds three years ago. And I did not achieve that. I set myself the same goal the next year. I did not achieve that. So you've gotten three years setting the same goal and you did not achieve it. And so you're psyche knows that the next time you set a goal, maybe that or something else, the chances of you achieving it are limited are small and maybe irrelevant. And that's what we want to avoid. What we want to do is we want to create a sense of goal achievement guarantee, which is if you know that you can set a goal for yourself, your process, your system, your ethos, your biosphere will conspire to help you achieve it. And all it needs is for you to set this intention. If you can set the intention and you know you're going to achieve it, how amazing would that be? But for that, we have to stack proof. We have to stack evidence. We have to stack a track record of you being able to do that. And this episode is going to show you exactly how to do that. This is foundational. If I were to teach my children anything, this is what I would teach them. Because if I taught them this and they knew how they can achieve anything in their lives and they have a track record of proving to themselves that they can achieve anything they set their mind to, then I've unlocked something that is so magical that will probably take them in their entire lives or some people never to do this. So let's get into how you actually get guaranteed goal achievement. Now super simple. There's only two big components to this puzzle. And I'm going to give you the five steps on how to actually get there. Please, please, please pay attention. First, the two big pieces goal achievement has got to only do with two things. Managing where your attention goes and managing where your effort goes. That's it. That's it. So think about this for a second. Our job is to continuously reprioritize, reorganize and optimize those two things. Managing where our attention goes and managing where our effort goes. I say attention first because that's a mindset thing because if we are completely distracted, if you're like, hey, I'm just going to spend some time doing YouTube. I can't wait to like go talk to my friend at the cubicle. I want to go to a coffee shop and get, you know, two more refills of my Starbucks. Oh, it's, you know, kind of lunchtime. I should probably eat right now. Whatever it is, you and I both have ways in which we can distract ourselves. And the distraction does what? It takes us away from managing attention. All we need to do is to manage attention. If we can manage our attention and we can manage our effort, we can achieve anything in life. And whenever you're thinking about something, you should think about this, this. And I, the, what I'm, why I'm sharing this with you is not to give you the answer to do something. I'm sharing this with you so that you can have, you can build, you can create a self-diagnostic in your life. Most of the problems are not problems. Most of the problems are because we just don't know what to do. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem, right? So that's a great dance. Hold on. The issue that I want to share with you is whenever you are at a point where you're diagnosing what is wrong, ask yourself this question, is this a attention problem where I get distracted? I'm not paying attention. I'm not giving it focus. I am a deep deep prioritizing it, etc. Or is this an effort problem? Have I not figured out how to actually manage my effort to get what I want? Those are the two most important things. Everything else is secondary. So what I'm going to do for you right now is I'm going to give you a five step process on how you could actually manage your attention and manage your effort. You may need a piece of paper just to kind of think through this. In fact, if you actually even just go through one of these five steps, you will get significantly closer to your goal achievement. So let's break it down. The first step to managing attention and managing effort is to figure out what you do for the priority, right? So the first step, if this is all you took away, is the creation of the not to do list. The not to do list is a very intentional way of saying, hey, I am not going to think about this. I put my attention towards this. I'm not going to make my mind go here. You are making a very clear not to do list on attention. Then you're making a very clear not to do list on effort. So let me give you an example. About five, six years ago, I realized that I was spending a lot of time watching media, news, sports, fantasy football, all of that. I would wake up and I would look at ESPN scores. I would look at my fantasy football scores. I would I even did fantasy hockey. I did fantasy baseball. I was very attuned to the news. So I would have all the news alerts come to my phone. I realize over time that this was probably taking up a significant portion, not of my time, but my attention. So I just needed to cleanse my attention. So what I did was I made a not to do list and the top thing I wrote on my not to do list is no news. So I completely eliminated news. It took me like roughly six, seven months to eliminate all news from my life, meaning I didn't even watch any TV. Then I eliminated all sports. Well I have children and it's hard to eliminate all sports, but I eliminated everything that was related to media and me watching. So I did not watch sports on TV. I did not do fantasy football. I did not check sports scores. None of that, right? And I still like the out of hand. So I kind of watched that a little bit, but I was 98% there. And it took me roughly a year to eliminate this media for my life. And I will tell you this. I have never gone back. But one of the reasons that I'm able to do probably 10X more than most people in my position is this I can add more to my plate because I don't have the distractions that most people do that they've allowed in their lives. Now I'm not perfect, but I intentionally and consciously did that. So what I did is I have put the not to do list. I said no more media, no more sports, no more TV. When I did that, what I did is I managed my attention. Not to do list is the most important artifact, a set of decision making that you can make to manage your attention. Just managing your attention, like you, you know where your attention goes. So you may say, hey, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go to Starbucks every morning. I am not going to, you know, I'm not going to watch sports. I'm not going to watch a sitcom every night. I'm not going to watch porn. I'm not going to watch Netflix. I'm not going to like randomly say, oh, I'm going to go for a walk. I'm not going to randomly make myself believe it. I love what I'm tired. I'm just going to get a workout in and I know a lot of people that are ripped and broke. Like I actually have friends that are ripped and broke, which is terrible because they mismanaged their attention. So the first most important thing that I will tell you is if you don't have a notes app in your phone that essentially has the title not to do list, the not to do list is you drawing a line in the sand and saying no, I'm unwilling to do these things anymore. It's not even worrying about what you do. I just need to eliminate, just eliminate things that you don't, that you know that are not healthy for you in the achievement of your goals. that allows you to manage your attention, which is the most important thing. And because of that, you can manage your effort. Without those two things, you're never gonna get there. Because all my other four strategies are gonna be entirely useless because most of our lives are filled with junk. Their 80/20 rule is very prevalent in this, because the 20% of the time of your effort and 20% of your attention are what is driving most of your success. And if we can just maximize that, you will win big. So I would pause right now. I would open your notes app and I would create a not-to-do list. And I would put one thing on that list, just one thing, hey, I'm not going to do blank. I'm not gonna watch TV, I'm not gonna watch Netflix, I'm not going to sleep in, I'm not gonna hit snooze, whatever it might be. You get a chance to make a not-to-do list that is your own that you don't have to share with anybody else. So the most important thing and guaranteeing goal achievement is writing down a not-to-do list. Here's number two, which is what I call situational triggers. Situational triggers are really powerful if you engage them well. And what I mean by that is what we want to short-circuit attention and effort. So I'll give you a quick example. I don't like being on social media all the time, but I've created this thing where every day when I park my car in the morning, when I drive to my office and park my car in the morning, there is, I have like a 30-second walk from my parking spot to my office. And in that 30 seconds, I make one or two Instagram stories. So essentially, I get out of my car, I pull out my phone, I make one or two Instagram stories, and I'm done. So what I've done is I created a situational trigger, not to check email, not to check social media every single day when I park my car. And I'm about to walk into my office, I do one situational one Instagram story. Now the good part there is it keeps my stories active, which is really powerful. But I also know that every time I park my car, I kick in and I do that. Here's a crazy part. I don't go to our physical offices on the weekends, generally speaking. So most of the weekends, I don't post a lot of stories, where I'm more of my family. But that situational trigger is extremely helpful. The other situational trigger that I have is I've made a determination that if I am going to be in the car for 15 minutes or longer, I would play a podcast. And if I don't, if I'm not in the car for 15 minutes or longer, I'm going to stay quiet and meditate. So what this helps me do is like, I know very clearly what I'm going to do. I don't just get in and then just hit play on music. I don't know any of that. I look at him like, okay, I put the address in the GPS, if it's 15 minutes or under, I breathe and meditate. If it's 15 minutes or over, hit play on a podcast. Super simple. So that's a great situational trigger I've given myself. So it's extremely helpful. The same thing is like when you wake up in the morning, I remember doing this for a while, I stopped doing it now, I really should get back into it. Every time I alarm one off in the morning, I wake up at 4.45 every morning, every time I alarm one off, I would, I created this mechanism where I would roll out of bed, I would turn off my alarm and I would do 10 push-ups. And right after I was done that, I would chug this big glass of water that I left out my nightstand. Now I would do that over and over. Now I still chug this big bottle of water that I leave out my nightstand, but I stopped doing the push-up. But the situational trigger is easy to get in and get out of. So if you want to do something like, "Hey, as soon as I get to, as soon as I wake up in the morning, I write for 30 minutes." Maybe you're writing a book or whatever. It's a situational trigger. You wake up and you roll out of bed and you go start writing. You want as many situational triggers as possible that are predetermined and are premeditated. Because when you have a premeditated, pre-determined situational trigger and you do it once or twice, it automatically becomes a part of you and it's insanely powerful. So if you want the most important things in your life to work, you've got to find a situational trigger around it. It may be, so I'll give you an example, may be water, right? So a lot of times people say, "Well, I don't drink enough water. It's just really simple." Whenever I get on a Zoom call, I grab a water bottle. So know that. So now you're like, "Whenever I'm on a Zoom call, I grab a water bottle." Now you know situational trigger wise that you have a water bottle and you're always going to be in a place where you can create and stay hydrated, right? So super, super powerful overall. So that's number two situational triggers. Here's number three is planning. And I actually call it pre-planning, but it's planning. So look at what I mean by this. Our job is not to use willpower to do things that we want ourselves to do. Our job is to pre-plan those so that they are so easy and the decision has already been made. So I'll give you an example. I have a few health issues and so my health coach told me, "Hey, Sharon, instead of logging in the app, what's you ate?" I want you to do something different. I want you to log in the app for tomorrow what you're going to eat. Like think about the power of that. Normally what I would do is I would wake up and every time I eat something, every time I bought something, every time I drank something, every time I snacked on something, I would like log it in the app. But my health coach told me, he's like, "Hey, don't do that." Go ahead and look at it tomorrow and log in the app like you're planning what you're going to eat. So your job is not to fill out what you ate. Your job is to pre-plan what you're going to eat. Ever since I started doing that, it changed what I thought because I was thinking about tomorrow's lunch today. I was not super hungry so I don't like, I don't need to go get burgers and fries. So I pre-planed what I was going to do. So I knew what I was going to do. I already written it in my app. I'd already made a commitment. I was not going to go deleted and that changed dramatically, right? Pre-planning is really important. I do the same thing the night before and plan the next day where right before I go to bed, I visualize my next day and my calendar. I just think about going in the meeting, jumping a call, writing a blog post, sending an email, making a video. I just think about, I visualize myself going through the day and once I've done it and I go through it again, I felt like I've already role-plated once. Pre-planning your activities and pre-planning your attention is really important. What most people do is they don't pre-plan their activities or their attention. They try to use situational discipline to get them out of it. Now, if you've not slept well, if you're just irritated with what someone else did, if you have a lot on your mind, if you have like 300 emails, if you have like 14 things to work on, if your finances are not ordered, you don't feel healthy that day, you had a fight with your partner or spouse or your children, like it affects your ability to do things. Instead, if you pre-plan it, then you've already pre-committed to it and when you've pre-committed to it, you always pre-committed to exactly where your attention needs to go and exactly where your effort needs to go. That's why pre-planning is really important. That's number three. We're talking about three things, right? So far number one, to have the not to do list, number two, to have a situational trigger, and number three, to pre-plan. That way, it gets really powerful where you've already pre-committed to what you're gonna do so you don't have to use willpower in the moment to actually do it. Number four. This is, I call this the reference group and I found that more time I spend with the people that I want to be like or the people that I like how they think, the better I generally do. So if I go to lunch with a healthy person, I don't eat crap. Like just think about that, right? If I jump on a call with somebody that is caring and kind and intellectual, it benefits me and it benefits them. So don't take meetings, don't take calls, don't take gatherings with people that are not aligned with where you want your attention to go and where you want your effort to go. It's really simple. Just like it's a very hard choice, but just don't do it. You're making a reference group choice. If you want to make more money, spend time with people that want to talk about making more money, don't spend time with your broke friends a lot, do it because I do too. And that's okay because I love them. However, that's completely misaligned with what you want to achieve in your goals because this episode is called Guaranteed Gold Achievement. So you want to do what you want to do. You also want to stay in touch with them. That's cool. But if you want to be more healthy, spend time with healthier people. If you want to be more thoughtful, spend time with more thoughtful people. If you want to be more kind, spend time with more kind people. So someone asks me for a meeting. I think about my attention and my effort. And I only take the meeting if it's in line with my attention and my effort. If it's not in line with my attention and my effort, or somebody else I know that can do a better job, I recommend that. I don't, I'm not saying, oh, you're too good for an X meeting or Y meeting. At the end of the day, everyone else is prioritizing their lives based on what they want. The reason why someone wants to meet with you is they want something from you. We have to recognize that. So your accepting and appointment is you are on someone else's to-do list. Like think about that. You are a checkbox on someone else's to-do list. And so you're saying yes to someone else's to-do list. At some point, you have to say yes to your own to-do list. And so your own goals. And so you just have to make a choice on whether you want to be constantly accepting someone else's to-do list, or whether you're going to do something and take a stand and actually achieve your role. Right? So that's number four, the reference group. It is super easy to find why you're doing certain things because of your reference group. I'm very sorry to tell you this. The worst reference group that you can't get out of is the one at home. So if you don't have a great support system at home, you've got to find a way to short circuit yourself out of that. So if your entire family eats poorly and they are not willing to make a change, then and you want to, then you've got to find a way to not eat with your family every meal. If your family is not growth oriented, but you are, then you should find a way to, you spend time with people that are growth oriented and don't pull them into it. We're not in the business of trying to change people where the business of trying to put ourselves in reference group that are already on the slipstream of momentum so that we can do that and get to our goals much faster because we don't have a lot of time. You want to get guaranteed goal achievement not in 20 years right now. And that's it. That's why your reference group is way more important. And here's number five, and I call this like the skill diagnostic. A lot of times to achieve our goals, we need some skills. So let's say I want to play better golf, I need better skill. Let's say I want to learn how to write copy, I need more skill. Let's say I want to become a better presenter, I need better skill. Let's say I want to become a better realistic agent, I need better skill, even though most sales people will not accept that they need better skill. This is a number of problems, by the way. If you have been in your business for a while, it's like 10, 15 years, and you feel like you've done well, but now you're not hitting the next level of your goal. The problem is that your pride is in the way. That is the problem, your pride isn't the way. Your pride isn't the way because you said, you thinking, oh, wait, I've been doing this for the 10 plus years, I've been successful. I've just had a slow slump of a year, I'll get back in, I'm amazing. Like I just need a lucky break, I just need more leads, I just need, you know, I just need the market to turn. Like when you see all the other excuses, you need to realize whenever you're talking about other excuses and you're seeing a slump, it is a straight skill problem. When in doubt, up your skill, your skill is the, is the mother of all conversion, the higher you up your skill, the better your carmic value, the better your ability to deliver results, the better your ability to add value, the better your ability to control outcomes, and better everything. But the problem now is like, well, maybe you want to or don't want to affect your skill, so what a skill? Whenever I think about skill, I often think about whether I should hire the skill or whether I should acquire the skill. So for example, let's say I want a bunch of automation done. I can either learn Zapier and learn all the webhooks and automation, which I ought to do, which I'm a nerd, or I can hire an automation specialist. Now I have a choice. I have to make a decision on whether I need to hire the skill or acquire the skill. And most people flip flop between those decisions. Anytime you know that there's a skill involved, maybe you need to get better at selling, maybe you need to sell more stuff, well, you should always ask, do I have the skill to sell this to the hardest prospect? Not the easiest, the hardest prospect. And then you ask an next question, can I teach the skill and put a guarantee around it? Think about this from, can I teach the skill and put a guarantee around it? I have this thing called the E, a Dealed Week. A Dealed Week system is, you know, I've tested this for the last 10 years, it works. I've built the skill around it. I, you know, I write over a million emails a month so I understand this. And I can stand by it because if I could teach somebody how to do a Dealed Week, I can guarantee results. That's how I know that I have mastery on that skill. Most people that I talk to may have some, may have decent skill, but they have no mastery. So if you can't teach it with a guarantee, you don't have mastery. See it again, if you cannot teach a skill and overlay a guarantee to who you talk to, you don't have mastery, which means you need to up your skill. And the problem with successful people who have hit a slump is that they will not accept. The pride will get in the way and they will not accept that their skill is a teeny bit outdated and they need to up their game. That is a significant problem. And unless you can induce some humility to do that, you will not win. Think about this for a second. Imagine you're going up against me and imagine, well, say I was the competition. Maybe you were selling real estate, maybe you were selling mortgages, maybe you were selling coaching, maybe you were selling your company, maybe whatever. Imagine you were going up against me. Could you beat me? Know that, hey, you know, you're listening to the podcast, you know, I have mediocre skill in some most areas. Could you beat me? If you can't beat me, then you have to work on your skill because you're not good enough. Additionally, unless you can teach your skill and provide a guarantee to the person that you taught it to, that if they didn't write, they will win. You don't have mastery. Otherwise, you have skill problem. Those are the five ways in which you guarantee success. Number one, is the not to do list. Unless you establish a not to the list, you will always do things that you're not supposed to do. Number two, situational triggers. Can you add certain situational triggers in your life? Or when you wake up, when you're in the car, when you talk to a client, when you get angry and start losing your temper, what are the situational triggers that you couldn't put in place to upgrade your life? Number three, planning and pre-planning. It's not the question of just planning and doing that. It's the question of free planning and saying that you don't have to use willpower to make those decisions. Number four, almost always you have a reference group problem who you spend your time around. It's like, I'm not sure about the whole, you're the average of your five-iblet, you must spend your most time with. That's interesting to me. What's more important to me is how do you intentionally spend your time and can you find the rest of reference groups that you need to actually catapult your life? That's what's cool. And number five, it's a skill problem. If you think you need skill, do you hire the skill or do you acquire the skill and make a decision around that? I call this the guaranteed goal achievement diagnostic. I look at my life and say, I want to lose 10 pounds. Okay, is this a not-to-do list problem? Yeah, probably. I need a not-to-do list. Okay, let me get that cool. Is there a situational trigger problem? Oh yeah, whenever I get stressed, I eat. Okay, I need to fix that. Hey, whenever I get stressed, I drink water. Cool, I fix a situational trigger. Third, planning or plea planning. Cool. A lot of times I eat when I go long time when I eat without eating, so whenever I'm hungry, I just kinda like, "Gorged food, cool." I need to fix that. So let me pre-plan my meals. Let me get meal prep, whatever. At least I know I pre-plan this. That's number three. Reference group. Hey, when I go out by myself, I eat grudjunk, but when I go out with other healthy people, I order healthy stuff. Okay, I'm only gonna go out to eat with other healthy people. Otherwise, I am gonna go home. That's a reference group. Skill. Hey, do I understand how my metabolism works? Do I need to learn something cool? Maybe I just need a personal trainer or a nutritionist. Now I can acquire the skill to manage my blood glucose. Awesome. Now it's significantly easier. Now you have the ability to manage your attention and manage your effort. Most people don't achieve their goals because they can't manage their attention and manage their effort. The way to solve all problems and achieve goals in a guaranteed way is to manage your attention and manage your effort. And we gotta do everything possible to do that. So those are the five strategies on how you can get guaranteed goal achievement. Hey, by the way, I'm not asking you to like or subscribe or do anything like that to this. Number one, if you think this was helpful, can you please share it with where you think is valuable. Number two, I don't know if this is helpful to you. So the only way I know is like if you can screenshot this episode and like tag me that way, I'm like, all right, somebody like this, I'll make more like this for you. So please know that for you to give me some feedback, all you have to do is take a screenshot, tag me, say a one or two words that way I know I can make make more like this for you. Remember how you slice it, greatness is a choice and I'll catch you on the next one. (upbeat music) Hey, Tyron, I have a cool gift for you. Since you like this podcast, I actually have an ultra super secret, private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. It's called 10K wisdom because I tried to wrap $10,000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes. That's why it's called 10K wisdom. It's raw, it's real, it's got no intro or outro or anything like that, it's just straight to the point and to the insights. Since you like this podcast, I think you will like that. So for the first time, I'm making it available to you. Just go to 10kwisdom.com, the number 10kwisdom.com and my team will activate it for you as my gift. Go to 10kwisdom.com, I'll see you there. (upbeat music)