How to set goals so audacious that it turns you on

You don't need more time to fulfill this fucking goal. Your goal needs to be more dangerous. Your goal needs to challenge you so much that it forces you to become a completely different fucking person in order to achieve it. You're wasting time and you know it. [Music] You don't need more time to achieve your goals. Your goal just needs to be more fucking dangerous. Your goal needs to be so expansive that it's almost like this little kink you have that like you're like, "Oh my gonna do it. Can I really do that? Can I really achieve this in three months?" And I want you to actually half the time that you have set yourself for this goal. "Oh it's gonna take me five years to become a millionaire." No, six months. Six months. It's gonna take me two years to build a social media following three months. [Laughter] You don't need more fucking time. Your goals just have to become more dangerous. They need to frighten you a little bit. Because when you can push yourself into that arena of being challenged like edging yourself out of your comfort zone, you literally have to become a different person. In order to get it done, to hit your follow account on social media, to grow a business, to write a book, to quit your job, to work out and look away that you want to. Whatever it is that you have set for yourself, it will take as long as you say it well. We think that things have to take a certain amount of time, but actually you can collapse the amount of time that something takes by deciding now to embody and behave as the version of yourself that already has it. I have a very big creative goal right now. And everyone has always been very impressed with how quickly I write my books. Always. My first book, "Women Don't Are You Pretty", it broke a world record. And I wrote that book in five months. Five months. I didn't just write that book, I illustrated it. At 20 years old. I wrote and illustrated "Women Don't Are You Pretty" in five months. Now that has never been impressive to me. Until I started sharing it with other people. Other women I knew were getting book deals and they were asking me and seeking me out for advice. You know I've written and published three books, they were like, "Floss, how long did it take you?" And I would say, "Five months." And they would look at me like I was a crazy person. But the thing is, when I was 20 and I wrote "Women Don't Are You Pretty" almost out of the sheer fucking naivety of not knowing how any of it works because they didn't have any other author friends, they didn't have any other friends who were writers. I wrote the thing in five fucking months. I wrote the book in the five months that I was given to write it. And I illustrated it. I collapsed time. And I wrote and published a globally bestselling book in five months from sheer and pure joy and expression and being so obsessed that it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning. I would go to little cafes on brick lane where I was living. I went to Lisbon, that's where I started writing it. And I just began writing. I just started romanticising the process. I actually wrote an essay all about this called "Write Like A Girl" on Substack. I just romanticised the process of writing so much. And because I was given five months to do it, I wrote "Women Don't Are You Pretty In Five Months." Just essays, you know, there was no narrative thread really. It was just all of my essays. And so I could treat them as these individual containers. These chapters were their own containers. And so I would just go and write. And I write how I talk. So it's just all coming out of me. It was everything that I was saying on social media. It was everything that I wrote about in my private diary. And I put it together. I illustrated the entire book. And I did it in five months. And then I wrote my second book, "Gal Crash," which was a novel. And I was given nine months to write this novel. And so it took me nine months to write it. And then I wrote "Women Living Deliciously," my third published book, that published two years ago now, almost. And that took me about, I want to say nine months again. But I actually think I could have written both of those books, my novel and "Women Living Deliciously," my two latest books. I think I actually could have written those books in five months, too. But the only reason they took nine months is because that was the time I was given to write them. And so what I want to talk about is how you can collapse the timeline that you've given yourself something, right? I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 40. I want to be retired by the time I'm this. I want to be in a relationship by then. I want to have the body of my dreams by this time. Whatever fucking timeline you've given yourself to get rich or whatever is essentially just the timeline you are giving yourself to fully live your life, it's the timeline that you are giving yourself to complete something. And actually, if you were really fucking honest with yourself and you made it your one mission for this time period, you could do it a heck of a lot earlier. In fact, this goal that you've sent for yourself, you know the one, the one that you tell yourself, you always can't live your life until you've completed this thing. Right? That thing, the book you're writing, the project you're working on, the business you're starting, you want to make 30K more every year. I want to make 100K more every year. Fuck that. Make 30K every month. Literally make your goals so insane and so impossible that it stretches you and expands you and forces you, breaks new molds in your fucking brain into achieving the impossible, into achieving a goal that you previously thought was impossible. Because I have done the impossible. I've written and illustrated a book in five months and it didn't feel hard because that was just the time I was given to write it and I thought that that's just how long it takes. And so I got to work, had no distractions, reveled in the whole fucking process and loved every minute of it. And now when I'm starting a writing project, if I'm given like a year to write a book, I will take the whole year. And there is this amazing quote, I don't know who said it. It's something like work expands to fill the time it is given. So if you give yourself a year to write the book, if you give yourself a year to make 100K, if you give yourself this chunk of time, guess what? That is how long it's going to take. And you will fill out the time. You will waste time. You will spend hours a day scrolling because, oh, I've got a year to do this thing. It doesn't matter. I've got a year, I've got a whole year to write this book. I can't just daily, dally. I can do this. I can't do that. Meanwhile, if you give yourself the impossible goal of writing the book or doing the project within impossible goal of three months, you develop these superhuman abilities. I promise you superhuman abilities. Last year, before I moved to LA, I was in London and I had this big calling inside of me. And I was like, I'm done hiding myself on social media 'cause I've always loved posting on social media. But I was like, no, no, I know I can be going harder. And I was like, do you know what? I'm gonna reach a million followers by August. I said that to myself. And I think I had about 600,000 followers. And I just posted once a day, I posted once a day on Instagram. And I gained a million followers in three months. I gained a million followers on Instagram. And it was when I'd arrived in LA, like the timelines just, they just synced up so beautifully. I'd arrived in LA, maybe like a few days afterwards. And I was walking up Beachwood Canyon for the first time. And it's the street that directly lines up with the Hollywood sign. And I woke up that morning and I was like, I think I'm gonna reach a million today. And I don't go on my phone in the morning. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna time it. I'm going to open my phone when I'm looking at the Hollywood sign. And I know, I just know it's gonna be a million. I just know it. I went for this walk, walked up through Beachwood Drive, looked at the Hollywood sign and I was like, fuck it, now's the time to check my phone. And I had a million. And it felt amazing, but it just felt like, duh, I predicted this. I knew this would happen. And it just felt so right. And I've always sought to myself in my head that my work and the exposure that I know my work deserves, my message, 'cause all I wanna do is make people feel good. And my fucking God, do we need more people in the world? But tune other people's vibration up so high that they feel fucking amazing. That's what I wanna do. I know that's why I was born to do. And I know that I need and deserve an enormous fucking audience to do that. But there's always been this voice in my head, like who are you to want millions of followers? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's so vain. That's so that it's just a metric. But I know that my work, if it's gonna have any power in the world, it needs people listening to it, it needs people listening to me. And so I had this idea in my head that it would take me years to reach a million followers on Instagram. Until I decided it'll take me three months. It will take me three months. And I am going to be cooperative with that goal by just posting what today. You can collapse time. That thing that you know you have in your head, the thing that you think is gonna take you fucking ages. It's gonna take fucking ages, if you believe it's gonna take fucking ages, okay? I want you, all of us here right now, I want you to set an impossible goal for yourself that you think is going to take you years to achieve. And I want you to collapse the time you think it's gonna take in half. Maybe even short and even more, okay? You think it's gonna take you three years to write a book. You think it's gonna take you five years to grow a social media following to a hundred thousand followers so that you can spread your message and create your product. So whatever it is that you want to do, half that shit, cut it in half, half the time that you think something will take, create an impossible fucking goal, create a goal for yourself that you think is just absolutely impossible. And you will develop the superhuman ability to hone and focus in on that thing. And you will see what you're fucking capable of. Oh my God, that's what I wanted to do. Last year I was just like, do you know what I want to see what I'm capable of? What are my capable of when I'm done fucking around? What am I capable of doing when I lock the fuck in? But I don't like that phrase lock in. It sounds like so like I'm punishing. But what am I capable of when I'm done with my excuses? What am I capable of when I act from this realm in my head where time doesn't exist actually and I am her? I am her, I am the version of me that gets this thing now. And you just see that every fucking excuse you had just dissolves and melts away. And in your daily life you can see the things that you are doing that are taking you away from this goal, right? Because if there is a fast track to you achieving the thing that you want, whether it's money or a partner or a job or just something in your life that you're trying to manifest and create for yourself, right? Because all manifestation is just deciding that you fucking want something and aligning every fiber of your being into the timeline where you get this fucking thing. So you want to be so aware of all of your thoughts, the way you speak, the way you hold yourself in the world. And that version of you that embodies it like she's fucking got it, she's got it. She's got it. And because reality is just a delayed mirror, reality catches up to your embodiment, okay? So how would she move? What would she be doing? She'd be running for hours every day with her phone in a drawer. Yeah, she wouldn't be scrolling on social media. In fact, she probably wouldn't know what's going on in the world for about four days. Nothing. Why would she? Because she's just so in her zone. She texts her phone in the evening. She texts her phone on the weekend. She schedules in her rest so that she doesn't burn out so she can keep going and keep running and keep creating sustainably. This version of yourself doesn't tolerate certain things that you are tolerating right now. There's things in your life, people, connections, habits, things that you do that the version of yourself that you are trying to become, she doesn't tolerate that shit. The version of you that you want to step into, she doesn't tolerate certain things. She doesn't tolerate that friend making those remarks. She doesn't tolerate certain food going in her body that she knows makes her feel like shit. She doesn't tolerate groggy mornings because she spent three hours scrolling on social media the night before. She doesn't tolerate certain things for herself. She has standards for herself for her body, how she feels, right? And you can be her literally right now by collapsing the time. Because when you say something is going to take you years, the work expands to fill the time it is given. It will take years. But if you just say, I'm going to fuck around and I'm going to get a book deal in three months period, it's happening. Okay, what does that version of me do? So she writes the proposal, she gets that done, she sends it out, she does this, she does that. She's ruthless with promoting it, ruthless with pitching it. Whatever your thing is, I'm using the book deal example because I was writing something last year and a neighbour of mine saw that I was writing something. And she said to me, she was like, wait, are you an author? And I was like, yeah, and she was like, oh my god, if you can do it, I can do it. And I was mildly sort of insulted by ex. I was like, what does she mean? Has she explained she was like, well, you're just so lively and alive and enthusiastic. And I had this idea in my head of like, I needed to wait to write a book, I needed to wait. I don't know, for someone to tell me I should or for all to be a bit older or whatever. And she was like, if you can do it, I can fucking do it. And so she texted me the other day, three months later and said, Florence, I just got the best possible fucking book deal that I could have ever, ever fathomed for myself. And it's all because you made me believe that I could. She saw me writing in the lobby of my building, just late at night on my laptop, did she do it saying hello to my neighbours when they walked in because that's just the kind of girl I am. All right, I love people, I love saying hello to people. And she saw me in the lobby writing. And she was like, yeah, I'm gonna fucking do that. And she did it. Do you know how many people get inspired and don't do shit with the inspiration? And she did it. She saw me, she saw as permission. She collapsed at the time. She previously thought it would take to be an author. And she's published in three fucking months. There are goals and versions of yourself that just they just get things done because they're not hesitating. Yeah, you don't need more time. You don't need more time. I'm so passionate about this. As someone who wrote a book at 20, do you know how many people hated me for that? Just because I gave permission to myself to do it, I didn't wait for anyone. I didn't wait. I used to think that being an author was something that I had to like wait to do until I was at least 40 years old. Once I'd earned the right, fuck that. Write the book now. Be the version of you now. Stop hesitating. If you just focus for three months, and I mean it, the goal has to be so impossible that it goes beyond you and your human efforts and you sort of call in. This greater resource of like magic and universal energy and God and you just pull in all of this stuff This energy and this these these abilities To do it now Just do it now Give yourself an impossibly fucking sexy deadline three months one year Impost I mean impossible If you've got some savings invest it into your business right now turn it into a hundred K by the end of this year So you can quit your job and then invest the rest of that hundred K like you don't need to wait years I mean it you don't need to wait years and even if you're listening to me right now go must be nice must be easy blah blah blah, I'm pretty sure I don't have people like that listening to the Forrest Given show We don't do victim mindset on this show, okay? And there's a difference between being a victim and having a victim mindset victim mindset is a way of being that just keeps you so stuck in your behavior Because your excuses become addictive Syrup you juicy gourd gorgeous and addictive because then you never have to change that's a victim mindset We don't do victim mindset around here. We do inspiration. We do motivation. We do radical self responsibility and radical self accountability Because that's the hottest fucking thing ever and it's the biggest act of self love It's to be so fucking for real with yourself and say what's the thing I'm dilly dallying on What am I dilly dallying on? I say I want to be a writer. I say I keep saying writer just because that's my thing But I say I want to start a podcast right? I say I want to start a podcast, but I've bought my equipment and it just sits in the corner of my room Oh, well, I want to talk about the things that all the other podcasts talk about so like What's the fucking point? What's the point in doing us? What's the point in doing that and it's just all excuses? Get the mic out record on episode upload it Create some shitty podcast art and just get the ball rolling and fall in love with the process Bam you have launched a podcast in a week Collapse to time You have collapsed time. It doesn't need to take you a whole fucking song of dance to do the thing Execute it get it done now When we set realistic goals for ourselves they take a long time because Realistic goals allow for distraction Realistic goals allow for Feeling your life with a bunch of bullshit That is not in service with the goal if I tell myself that I have two years to write my next best seller I'm gonna take the whole fucking two years and I might spend my evening scrolling on social media because well I've got two years right but if I tell myself do you know what fuck it? I'm gonna write the first draft in two months Then suddenly I'm not scrolling on social media Suddenly the work gets done because it expands to fill the time it's given two months for a shitty first draft What is your version of a shitty first draft? What can you do? How can you collapse time? Fuck being realistic Do not be realistic you are not born to be realistic you were born to expand yourself into these uncomfortable fucking realms Where you see what you're capable of don't you want to see what you are fucking capable of? And so this week I want you to set an impossible goal for yourself something that feels so beyond What you are capable of and you might not meet the goal But you will become someone that moves faster that chops away the excess fucking fat That we fill our lives with Scrolling getting distracted doing a little bit of this doing a little bit of that sort of tinkering around with all these things You can chop away all the excess fat and have a very lean Week that is so productive without exhausting you just by the awareness of This shortened timeline There's that saying pressure creates diamonds and I'm not a fan of false urgency, all right I hate a fucking cortisol spike. I hate false false urgency. I hate perfectionism. I hate all of that shit But a lot of the time I speak for myself when something is stressing me out It's because I'm avoiding doing the real work and so then the work becomes urgent because I've left it all fucking last minute But if you can create a timeline and a goal for yourself this week an impossible goal. Well, it's one It literally think about it right now that thing that you want to do That impossible goal. How can you do it this week? I want you to write it down Pray about it say some affirmations about it. I don't know if you pray. I pray and I talk to the sky and Just receive The energy ask for it ask for the energy To complete this thing and consider it done and then act as her every minute in your life when you're doing something when it gets to 8 p.m The version of you that gets it done she puts her phone in the drawer So she can have a bath and wind down for sleep to go to bed at 10 p.m. Like she promised herself and then wake up at 6 a.m The next morning to get in two hours of writing before she's got to go to work Whatever the thing is live as that version of yourself this week And you know what I love to do. Okay, this is a little bit of like toxic motivation But I don't give a fuck because it gets the job done When I'm struggling to motivate myself to do the hardship. I just tell myself oh I don't want to do this, but I have to be better than everyone else. Oh I have to be better than everyone else. I have to wake up at 6 a.m. Because I just have to be better than everyone else It's like an ego hit Like a motivator to just get you to do the hard things because there is no reward in the moment for doing hard things There is no reward. It's horrible It's horrible to sit down and train your attention span to focus on one task instead of scroll on social media Social media is instant dopamine And so you almost have to give yourself a little dopamine here a little help joy For doing hard things by being like I've got to be better than everyone else Okay, what's your one impossible goal that you're saying for yourself this week? And how can you embrace Intentionally embrace the sheer naivety that I had at 20 years old writing a book in five months Just because that was the time I was given to write it. I didn't even know How hard it was I made it look easy And I made a lot of people say who the fuck does she think she is? You know, I think I was writing a book at 20 years old in five months. Oh I say it all the time but that version of myself is honestly like a big inspiration to me because I Was so unhardened to the bullshit and the shaming that happens when you when you become visible I Love that version of myself so much. I'm tapping into her all the time By just being as audacious as possible Let's call this An impossibly audacious goal. What's your one possible impossibly audacious goal that you can achieve this week By just deciding that you're done fucking around You're done No more daily daliying No more fucking scrolling This is your life What can you get done if you decide you only have one week to do it? And you might not get it done, but you will become a completely different person. You will be forced to make different choices By shawening the time span that you think this thing needs to take you Okay, I'm done. I Love you so much and I'll see you next week for another episode of the Florence Given Show. Love you. Bye (upbeat rock music) (upbeat music)