Benjamin P. Hardy's Blog

A little backstory on a new framework that’s changing business.Myself and Tony at his Florida home: 4/15/2025

The exact words of Tony Robbins from the Forward of my new book, The Science of Scaling: Grow Your Business Bigger and Faster than You Think Possible:

It’s rare that a book marks a paradigm shift and remodeling of an entire field of thought. This book redefines business strategy and scaling. It’s rare that I read something and think, “I wish I had written this.” But this is one of those rare books… If you’re looking for the clearest, most actionable blue- print I’ve seen for creating exponential impact… Then don’t just read this book — study it. Digest it. Apply it Because this isn’t a book about scaling. It’s a book about becoming the kind of person — and building the kind of organization — that can’t help but scale.

Although Tony’s words may be intriguing, let me just state a few key things:

William Thackeray said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.” (often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln).Either you’re playing the game or creating the game.If you think holistically and look for patterns, you’ll see that the majority of industries, including fields of knowledge — could be innovated, even completely disrupted.

For the majority of this short post, I’ll briefly breakdown The Scaling Framework from my new book, which we help companies implement at my training company, Scaling.com.

FrameFloorFocus

Your frame is what you see, and is based on your goals.

Your floor is what you filter out, defining what you don’t do.

Your focus is what you filter for, defining the paths and partners you develop to realize your goal.

Within those three above statements rests nearly the whole of both cutting-edge psychology and competitive strategy. Let me briefly explain:

As human beings, our perceptual filter (what we see and the meaning we give what we see) is primarily impacted by how frame or contextualize our own past and future. Yet, what research is increasingly showing is that a person’s future is the primary driver. I’d say the future is 10x more powerful than the past in terms of it’s impact on our present — both what we see and what we do.

In the simplest terms, human beings are driven by their goals. Our goals shape what we see. They shape what we perceive to be “signal” (relevance) and what we perceive to be “noise” (or irrelevance).

Two psychological concepts come to mind here:

Selective attention: The ability to enhance relevant signals and manage distraction. Essentially, our mental filtering tool for finding what’s relevant and ignoring all else.Pathways thinking: One’s resourcefulness and flexibility in finding or creating workable routes or paths to a desired goal.

People are driven by their goals. Their present experience comes down to filtering and selecting the pathways they deem as viable or effective for accomplishing those goals.

The problem with most people is that they are really bad at goals.

What do I mean by this?

I’ve already explained that human perception is driven by goals (what we see and don’t see). But also, human systems are also driven by goals.

Dr. Donella Meadows, wrote in her classic text, Thinking in Systems:

One of the most powerful ways to influence the behavior of a system is through its purpose or goal. That’s because the goal is the direction-setter of the system. . . Systems, like the three wishes in the traditional fairy tale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce . . . If the goals are defined inaccurately or incompletely, the system may obediently work to produce a result that is not really intended or wanted . . . Be especially careful not to confuse effort with result or you will end up with a system that is producing effort, not result.

If you want to make rapid progress whether personally or in your business, you can’t have a complex system going in many different directions.

Steve Jobs was right. You need to go from complex to simple, which isn’t easy. It takes real thinking and it also requires important decisions.

If you want to scale your company — say 10–100x in a short period of time — you need a simple and focused system.

The only way to get there is by defining the goal of that system very clearly and powerfully. By clear, I mean highly specific. For example, $100 million in revenue. by powerful, I mean both extreme in scale and timeline. For example, $100 million in revenue within 3 years or less.

Elon Musk said two things that are very important here:

“If a timeline is long, it’s wrong.”“The most common mistake of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing which should not exist.”

If everything you’re doing is to reverse-engineer a goal, then you probably should frame your goal in a way that forces-out all bad thinking and all bad pathways. Said another way, you want a goal that stops you from “optimizing [things] which should not exist.”

Research shows that most businesses are spending 10% of their time (or less) on things that actually matter.

Most businesses are optimizing things that shouldn’t exist.

I call this being “below the floor.” Anything below the floor is stuff you’re saying “yes” to that shouldn’t exist. That’s stopping you from scaling.

You can absolutely achieve 10–100x growth in your business within 3 years or less. But you’d need to actually set that as the goal, and then you’d need to be really honest with yourself about everything you’re currently doing.

Almost nothing you’re currently doing would scale at that level.

But, if you do commit to that true scale goal (even if it seems impossible), then your selective attention and pathways thinking will kick-in and quickly you’ll begin generating pathways to get there.

I’ve done this, and I’ve helped thousands of companies do this.

If you want to learn more- go to Scaling.com and watch a 10-minute video to see if you’re ready for this level of scaling. Most people aren’t.

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Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall — gapingvoid.comThese 5 Journal Questions Will Radically Transform Your Mind“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

Writing in your journal every single day will change your life.

Writing in your journal every day is the difference between being transformed and being confused.

Writing in your journal every day is the difference between being proactive and seizing life in your own hands, or being a mere observer to life’s possibilities.

Writing in your journal every day is the difference between starting your day collected and strategic instead of frenzied and rushed.

Writing in your journal is the fastest way to completely control your mind.

In The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg teaches the principle of a “keystone” habit, or a habit that automatically takes care of many other things.

Journaling is such a keystone habit.

In this article, I’ll give you 5 questions to journal about that can will cause huge pivots for you.

First, let’s learn why you need them.

Why Journaling?

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Josh Waitzkin talked about how important it is to visualize, understand, connect with, strategize for, optimize, and understand your future self.

He shares that his ultimate mentor is himself 20 years in the future.

This isn’t new.

Josh isn’t the only one who teaches this.

I’m not the only one who teaches this.

Napoleon Hill even talked about this concept in Think and Grow Rich nearly 100 years ago.

The principle is simple: think about your future self as often as you can, and it will bring your body and mind in alignment to act towards that future.

Your journal is the tool through which you do this.

Journaling is how you persuade yourself of your own desires (more on that later).

Dan Sullivan wrote every day in his journal for 25 years exactly what he wanted. He persuaded himself to believe that he could have it.

Now, he’s the #1 entrepreneurial coach in the world.

He wanted to coach entrepreneurs, and he got it.

Scott Adams, founder of the Dilbert cartoon series, wrote affirmations for years in his journal saying, “I’m going to be a syndicated cartoonist.”

He was persuading his subconscious to accept what he wanted, and he got it.

You can use your journal to persuade yourself.

You can use your journal to commit yourself to doing what you want to do.

You can use your journal to desire and have the future you want.

You can journal about anything, but these 5 questions are how you “set the stage” before writing anything else, so you can have optimal results.

Question 1

“Where am I right now?”

Answer this in bullet points describing your situation.

What time of year it is. Who the people you’re trying to build better relationships with. What your workout routine looks like. What you ate that day. What your current income is. What your current challenges and problems are. What your current day-to-day schedule looks like.

Question 2

“What are my wins from the last 90 days?”

Be bold and unashamed about this.

In our book The Gap and the Gain, Dan Sullivan and I teach that you always want to be measuring yourself against your former self, because that allows you to recognize the progress you’re making.

What the 5–10 biggest wins of things personally and professionally that you’ve accomplished recently?

If you really take the time to do this, you’re going to appreciate and recognize far more from the last 90 days than you usually give yourself credit for.

Writing your wins allows you to appreciate your past and use your past as a springboard for a bigger and better future, whereas most people don’t take the time to appreciate all that they’re accomplishing.

Question 3

“What are the wins I want for the next 90 days?”

Three to five bullets.

What are you trying to accomplish?

What would you like to see happen in your world?

Be specific, strategic, and bold. Anything goes.

Question 4

“Where do you want to be one year from now?”

It’s a year from today. You’re waking up one year older.

That person is contingent upon how you present self interacts with and understands them.

What do you want to be doing?

Make a list.

Question 5

“Where do you want to be in three years from now?”

Dream big here. Nothing is impossible.

When Should You Ask These 5 Questions?

Dr. Robert Cialdini researched that to be per-suaded, you first have to be pre-suaded. This is the core concept behind his book Pre-suasion.

Pre-suasion means the mindset you have in the first place determines whether or not you’re going to be able to be persuaded.

Your journal is a pre-suasion tool. Use it during your morning and night.

When you’re sleeping, your mind isn’t resting. It’s doing amazing processing. It’s mapping new connections, ideas, memories, and places.

What do you want your mind to work on during the night?

Write those things down.

As Thomas Edison said, “never go to bed without a request to your subconscious.”

You also want to journal in the morning. The first thing you do in the morning really has an impact on the direction your day goes.

Rather than looking at his phone and scattering his brain with emails, text messages, and social media, Josh Waitzkin writes in the morning.

He goes to a quiet place and he writes.

He outputs.

He empties out all of the things that his subconscious mind were processing during the day.

When you first wake up, write your goals.

Write the problems you’re trying to solve.

Write what you’re trying to accomplish.

Where Should You Post These 5 Questions?

Record all 5 of these questions in the front page of your journal.

It’s powerful and it’s accountable.

They’ll become a trigger and a prompt every time you open your journal.

You can see where you’re at.

You can see your wins from the last 90 days.

You can see what you’re trying to accomplish, in both the long and short-term.

Every time you open your journal, you can look at your questions for 10–20 seconds and be reminded of your future.

This gives you tremendous confidence.

You write from the perspective of faith and confidence that you’re going to actually accomplish what you want.

Humble Yourself

As I shared here, I rarely re-read my journals. They’re for creation, not consumption.

There is one area I love to read, however.

I love going back to a journal from 3–5 years in the past and seeing what my wins were from that time period.

I love seeing what I was trying to accomplish and what my goals were.

It’s fun to see that.

It’s humbling.

It sometimes brings you to tears.

It builds your gratitude.

It transforms you.

I remember an experience at the beginning of one year, I looked at all of my journals from the previous year and read my 12-month goals.

It was amazing.

All of them had happened except for one.

At the time, I thought I was going sell a million copies of Personality Isn’t Permanent, and, at least back then, I did not accomplish that. My strategy at the time was not effective.

But all the rest of the goals came to pass.

My wife and I have been blessed with 6 and now 7 amazing children.

I wrote down that we would have kids before we got them.

There’s a great quote from Stephen R. Covey that “Mental creation always precedes physical creation.”

If you’ve looked at these 5 questions BEFORE journaling anything else, you’re going to ultimately pull a lot more powerful nuggets from your subconscious while you’re journaling.

You’re going to be able to write from a more elevated state.

You’ll have better ideas brought to your mind while you’re journaling, which is ultimately going to allow you to have more inspiration, more flow, and more excitement.

ConclusionWhere are you right now?What were your wins from the last 90 days?What are the wins you want to have in the next 90 days?Where do you want to be 1 year from now?Where do you want to be 3 years from now?Ready To Upgrade?

This FREE morning checklist will enable you to eliminate distraction, make bold decisions, and live in a peak state daily.

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Photo by Oleksii S on Unsplash“What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become.” — Neal Maxwell#1 — “And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.” — Rumi

You have the capacity to choose.

In fact, spiritually and religiously, I believe that’s one of the core reasons we come to this earth.

So, which decisions are you going to make?

Your power of choice already exists. The goals you set simply awaken that power and activate it in a certain direction.

#2 — “The discipline of desire is the background of character.” — John Locke

Your character is your floor, or your minimum standard.

Your minimum standard is what you’re willing to let into your life.

Discipline can be about willing yourself to do something, but usually, it’s about having the discipline to say “no” to the things that don’t ultimate serve you.

Saying no is such a struggle for some people that author Greg McKeown devoted an entire chapter in his bestselling book Essentialism to teaching you how and when to say no.

“The discipline of desire” is really the battle of when you say no.

#3 — “To be a man is to desire. The slothful man, however, is a dead man, an arid waste. His desire itself has dried up.” — William R. May

Henry David Thoreau once said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

The song is still there, it just wasn’t expressed.

You fulfill your potential through expression. Movement, activity, action, and performance are what make us alive.

#4 — “Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.” — Dan Brown

Psychologically, studies have shown we fear loss far more than we appreciate gains.

When we avoid loss, we over-inflate the downside. We imagine it to be far worse than it really will be, which stifles our courage.

Courage is the difference between being “approach-based” to your life vs. “avoid-based.”

Being avoidance-based comes from avoiding (whether real or imagined) pitfalls.

Being approach-based means the ball’s in your court. You’re actively seeking as opposed to avoiding.

What are you avoiding?

In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer teaches a principle the analogy of someone with a thorn in their side.

Rather than healing the wound, the person simply wraps layers and layers of bandages on top of the thorn, leaving it there.

In fact, they have to re-arrange their entire life around this thorn. What used to be easy and comfortable becomes increasingly difficult as they have to arrange all circumstances around avoiding putting pressure on the thorn.

What are you avoiding to the extent that you’re re-arranging your entire life about what to avoid?

Remove the thorn.

Or as Susan Jeffers wrote, Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway!

#5 — “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” — Epicurus

This principle is so important that entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan created an entire framework around it which we later expanded into a major published book, The Gap and the Gain.

“The Gap” is measuring where you are right now in comparison to where you want to someday be. It’s an endless horizon that can never be realized.

“The Gain” is measuring where you are now compared to where you used to be.

Epicurus is teaching us not to get into the “Gap.”

In that book, we record audio commentary after every chapter.

After one of the chapters, Dan reflected on who it is that struggles with the “Gap,” or measuring ourselves compared to where we want to be, the most.

He said it’s not the student that gets C’s or D’s. It’s the student with perfect A’s. It’s the student with a 1600 SAT. After spending their whole lives at the top, they assume there must be nowhere else to go.

No.

Do not ruin what you already have. Wherever you’ve come, there are more good things ahead. You’ve never reached the “limit” of your happiness.

#6 — “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” — William Blake

Could you start that business if your life depended on it?

Could you make that phone call if your life depended on it?

Could you finish that workout if your life depended on it?

Could you earn a million dollars, if your life depended on it?

The classic example of “if your life depended on it,” is commonly used in self-help because it so clearly illustrates the difference between ability and desire.

In each of these hypothetical scenarios, your innate ability didn’t actually change, only the stakes for performance.

In short, your desire changes when you raise the stakes.

You can achieve some totally unthinkable things. Just think about what you could truly do if you, or the life of someone you know, depended on it.

If someone else raised the stakes, you already know you would rise to the occasion.

Don’t wait for someone else. Raise the stakes yourself.

#7 — “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” — Napoleon Hill

“Pulsating” means DAILY.

You haven’t raised the stakes if you’re not chasing your goals daily.

If it’s not something you do daily, it’s not a priority.

If your desire is to transcend everything, it needs to be daily.

Waking up early? Exercise? The book/play/app you want to write/create? Are you doing those things every day?

Daily activity is how you spend your time. How you spend your time reflects everything else.

As Richie Norton says, the ultimate test of character is how you spend your time. He uses the example that most people say “family first” and then proceed to put work first.

Their priority is reflected in how they spend their time.

Your priorities are reflected by how you spend your time.

If you haven’t made something daily, it’s not a priority.

This is why Brian Tracy says to Eat the Frog every day. Do the biggest, most important task, first thing in the morning.

#8 — “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” — George Bernard Shaw

Or as Stephen Covey taught, all things are created mentally and spiritually before they’re created physically.

If you don’t like your current physical circumstances, examine the spiritual and mental causes behind what caused them.

Then pivot.

#9 — “Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” — Zig Ziglar

What do you consume on a daily basis?

Your input is measured by the things you eat, watch, read, and listen to, but also in the thinking patterns you allow into your life.

Your mindset determines your outlook.

What mindset do you want to have?

You can control your own mindset. Yes, you can adopt a growth mindset about growth mindsets.

Or as Zig Ziglar would also say, “It’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.”

#10 — “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” — Robert Kiyosaki

The bigger your dream, the more people you attract.

Those people will be a sounding board. You can go back and forth and actively ratchet upward. Your desire increases, grows, and changes in beautiful ways when there are other people depending on you.

Those people are your biggest advocates when you do inevitably face disappointments.

Create an ecosystem to attract people to your goals. Former NFL player Bo Eason shares an example of this in his book There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game, where he shares the goal his son Axel has to play in both the NFL and the NBA, something that has almost never been done.

Because he has this seemingly impossible goal, all sorts of doctors, nutritionists, athletes, and other people want to (and do) help Axel. When he tells the right people about his goal, they get excited about it.

Incredible things start to happen when you start to ask for help, in a genuine and selfless way.

#11 — “Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful.” — Paul Arden

In an interview with the New York Times, Laszlo Bock, who at the time was the Senior VP over People Operations at Google, said GPAs and standardized test scores are meaningless metrics when it comes to finding and hiring good candidates.

Instead, he says, they look for qualities such as the ability to learn on the fly, the ability to lead and follow independent of official hierarchy, and the ability to learn from mistakes. He even shares that an increasingly larger percentage of Google’s workforce has no college degree at all.

The candidates Google hire really, really, really want it.

There’s no substitute for really wanting to work at Google.

And not just wanting it enough to wish for it, but wanting it enough to reverse-engineer and figure out how to truly do it.

What do you want?

What you want determines what you will get.

You don’t need to justify your wants to anyone. As Dan Sullivan has said, “you want something because you want it.”

#12 — “The first principle of success is desire — knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.” — Robert Collier

As the Chinese proverb goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

You already have desires.

Give them room to grow.

#13 — “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” — Ayn Rand

Competing with others is a very narrow game to play.

When you compete with others, you allow them to set the standard and the benchmark. Paradoxically, you dramatically limit your progress when you do this. This is because suddenly, your entire life revolves around being only marginally or slightly better than the people you surround yourself with. As an example, if you’re a runner, you’re only focused on how you can become 1 second faster than the current record-holder.

What a terrible way to live.

In addition to burning and ruining the relationships you have with those people, you’re not even playing your own game. Your performance is focused on and revolves around their ability rather than your own.

Contrast that with Michael Jordan, who did not select anybody else as the benchmark except for himself.

He wanted to be the greatest of all time. Period.

He didn’t care when he already was, that he had surpassed other people’s “benchmarks,” because he hadn’t yet surpassed his own.

This is the difference between what Simon Sinek calls the “finite” game vs. the “infinite” game.

The finite game is finite because it ends.

Don’t let your game end. Comparison is not only the thief of joy, but also the thief of continued progress.

Set your own benchmark.

#14 — “Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.” — Daniel Pink

All goals that don’t have true mastery as the ultimate motive will in one way or another stunt your learning and growth.

They’ll be a shallow shell of the experiences you could have had, and you won’t be able to apply or “count” the energy you expended in a meaningful way if your goal isn’t mastery.

A an example, when I launched Personality Isn’t Permanent, my second major published book, I wanted it to sell a million copies or more.

At least at the time, it didn’t.

If my goal was to sell a million copies in and of itself, it largely would have been a waste of a launch.

I was disappointed, but to say that that launch was a waste would be completely missing the point.

I learned incredible things from launching that book.

I learned where my strategy was ineffective and where my performance was falling short.

I’ve published 4 books since Personality Isn’t Permanent, and I’m working on my next. I applied the lessons I learned to all the future books I wrote.

For example, my more recent book Be Your Future Self Now is the #6 book in all of Korea at the time of this writing.

Far from being a waste of time, launching each of my books was a powerful learning experience. This is because my true goal in writing books isn’t only to sell millions of copies, but to learn in the process how to write timeless books that are “So good they can’t be ignored.”

Any ups and downs you experience along the way can be applied and used if mastery is your objective.

There’s a strategy for buying real estate called the “1031 Exchange,” where you roll all the money tax-free from one property into a bigger property each time you buy/sell real estate that Robert Kiyosaki teaches in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Mastery is like doing this, but emotionally instead of financially.

You get better and better with every experience, regardless of what any individual step in the journey may look like.

#15 — “If you desire ease, forsake learning.” — Nagarjuna

When Josh Waitzkin was learning Tai Chi, he would intentionally work with people far better than him. This allowed him to learn far faster than the average student. Although this approach was far more difficult, he also reaped far greater benefits.

As part of this, he constantly was receiving critical feedback of where he could improve. In martial arts, un-learning an incorrect form is just as important as learning the correct way.

Learning and un-learning are literally the re-mapping and re-wiring of how your brain works.

Your brain can literally change completely when you apply yourself to learning and un-learning.

As an example, when I was a teenager, I played War of Warcraft for 15 hours a day. I barely graduated High School. The prospect of going to college at all, let alone getting a PhD, would have seemed nearly impossible if you had seen me at the time. In 2019, I graduated from Clemson with a PhD in Organizational Psychology.

In between High School and 2019, I un-learned the habit of playing World of Warcraft. I shifted my daily activities to reflect my future self instead.

You can learn or un-learn anything. The world has never had more information so easily accessible to so many people simultaneously.

#16 — “Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.” — Jim Rohn

Richie Norton is a bestselling author and world-renowned executive coach.

In his book The Power of Starting Something Stupid, he shares that his brother-in-law Gavin unexpectedly passed away in his sleep. Shortly thereafter, he also lost his newborn son Gavin, whom he named after his uncle.

While grieving from these experiences, a mentor and friend asked Richie and his wife Natalie what they had learned.

After giving this question some thought, this is what he said:

“The more I thought about it, the more my life took on a very real sense of urgency. I became acutely aware of my time limit. I found myself face to face with the realization that circumstance was completely outside my realm of control. Not only this particular set of circumstances, but circumstance in general.

…I realized that if we sit around waiting for our circumstances to change, for a time when we can finally live life the way we really want to live, chances are very good that we will stay stuck waiting forever.”

From this experience, Richie created a new motto:

“Live to start. Start to live.”

He calls this motto “Gavin’s law,” after his brother-in-law and his son.

That motto has led Richie and his family to travelling around the world, starting multiple businesses, all living from their dreams.

Live your dreams now.

Mortality is real. Live the life you want today. Allow the urgency of living your best life to propel you forward.

As Richie says, “Life is short. That’s not a cliche.”

#17 — “When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.” — Viktor E. Frankl

In a recent coaching call I was in, someone asked me about the best way to design their future self.

I explained that unless your future self is well-connected spiritually, it won’t be very meaningful.

I don’t know Viktor Frankl personally, but I can’t help but wonder and think that perhaps, the reason that he was able to hold on, is because he knew spiritually he had a mission to accomplish and that God wanted him to write that manuscript.

After he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps he wrote that manuscript, which later became Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books ever. Millions of people have been personally, profoundly, and deeply impacted because Viktor Frankl wrote that book.

He was spiritually connected to his deepest desire.

What is it that you have a spiritual mission to do?

What were you called to accomplish?

Your deepest, truest, desires will guide you through.

#18 — “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” — Napoleon Hill

Journaling is priceless.

Journaling gives you access to a ‘mental photograph’ of whatever you were thinking about on the day you wrote it down.

This mental photograph is literally impossible to access in any other way.

If you rely on memory alone to remember your goals, your goals and memories will drift. As Dr. Brent Slife taught, our memories are not objective entities stored somewhere like a computer file. Rather, they change and shift in the present to reflect the circumstance and context through and under which they’re considered, much like Pixar’s Inside Out.

When you write down your goals, you make them non-negotiable.

You can’t argue with the written words on a page when you go back to them. Ink is permanent.

Your goals aren’t real until they’re written down.

Writing down your goals forges a point of no return, from which forms an inflection point of growth and change.

Write it down. Watch it happen.

#19 — “No desire is meaningless or inconsequential. If it pulls you, even a little bit, it will take everyone higher. Desire is where the Divine lives, inside the inspiration of your desire. Every desire is of profound importance with huge consequences, and deserves your attention.” — Mama Gena

All behavior is goal-driven.

Everything you do has an outcome.

For example, you opened this article because you were interested in reading the rest of it after you saw the headline.

But reading an article online wasn’t what you were really after: you wanted personal transformation in your life.

It’s the thing behind the thing that counts.

Clayton Christensen, former Harvard Business School professor, created one of the most famous theories in business, the “Jobs To Be Done” theory.

In this theory, he states that what customers want is not the product, but rather what the product can do for them.

He famously uses the example that people don’t buy drills, they buy the holes that those drills can create for them.

What you want probably isn’t the million dollars, it’s what you can do with the million dollars.

Operate from the goal behind your goals.

That’s your real goal.

#20 — “The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.” — Khalil Gibran

Matthew McConaughey was once asked by someone who his hero was.

After giving this some thought, he replied that his hero was himself 10 years into the future.

In his Oscar speech, he said:

“You see, every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life my hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero; I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.”

Similarly, in an interview with Tim Ferriss, Josh Waitzkin said “…myself 20 years from now is my teacher.”

Your present is determined by your future self.

Who is your future self?

What do you long to attain?

#21 — “If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.” — William James

Tim Grover was the performance coach for Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Charles Barkley, and many other elite athletes.

He once said, “You don’t have to love the hard work. You just have to crave the end result so intensely that the work becomes irrelevant.”

The goal determines the process.

When driving, your destination determines the roads you will take. Unless you’re driving for the specific purpose of looking at the scenery, you don’t really care which roads you take as long as it gets you the result you want.

In fact, sometimes the GPS will suggest different routes depending on the time of day, to give you the best result possible.

The goal determines the process, which determines your result.

#22 — “It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.” — Henry Fielding

When Elon Musk was a young child, he read lots of sci-fi books, among them the space epic The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, many of which influence his view of the world today as well as his present goals.

Nobody told Elon Musk that he should go to Mars.

Nobody told Elon Musk that he should build electric cars.

Rather, he trained himself to desire those things by the things he read. He wasn’t born desiring them already.

The same is true of you.

You can choose what you want your desires to be.

What will you train your desires to be?

#23 — “A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.” –William Hazlitt

The more specific your desire, the more specific the means will be.

As an example, when I first started writing, I set a goal to get a book deal.

But not just any-size book deal. I wanted a six-figure book deal.

And not with any publisher. I wanted a deal with one of the “Big 5” publishers headquartered in New York.

In 2018, Willpower Doesn’t Work was published with Hachette, one of the big 5 publishing houses. My advance was over 6-figures.

Before that, I had a conversation with Jeff Goins, who told me that if I wanted a six-figure or greater book deal, I should wait. At the time, I had tens of thousands of followers and email subscribers, and I could have gotten a book deal. Perhaps even a really good book deal. But it wouldn’t have been the deal that I wanted.

To get a six-figure book deal with one of the big 5 publishers, I learned that I needed 100,000 email subscribers, or more.

The goal of 100,000 email subscribers became the means.

If I had wanted any book deal, I wouldn’t have needed 100,000. But I had a specific goal.

Specific goals engineer specific means.

#24 — “When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

“Appear” is the key word here.

You’re not the only one who desires wealth, health, incredible relationships, great spirituality, and social validation/fame.

Other people want those things too. Unfortunately, most people allow lesser desires to crowd out the things they really want.

Like weeds in a garden, fluffy or unimportant desires often choke out the deepest and most important.

This problem usually happens when people have too many desires. They want conflicting things. As a result, the garden becomes cluttered and messy.

As Jim Collins said, “If you have more than 3 priorities, you have none.”

When your desires become stronger, it’s because you’ve weeded the garden of any conflicting desires that were in the way.

#25 — “Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” –Michelangelo

Daniel Lapin, author of the book Thou Shall Prosper, outlines 10 principles for wealthy and prosperous living. One of them is “never retire.”

Interestingly, Harvard Business Review discovered that people who retire later live longer.

The cause for this is simple. simple. Many people do not fill their lives with meaning when they stop working. They quite literally and very sadly no longer have a purpose in life.

Going back Viktor Frankl, he was able to survive the most hellish of circumstances, because he had a reason to.

He knew exactly what he was going to do as soon as he got out of that concentration camp. His hope in the future literally kept him physically alive despite being in the worst of circumstances.

Always having more to accomplish than ability to accomplish it ensures you’ll continue pressing forward.

#26 — “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” –Socrates

In another article I wrote years ago titled 35 Hard Truths You Should Know Before Becoming Successful, I opened by explaining that it’s never as good, nor as bad, as you think.

Regardless of your accomplishments, life will go on.

Regardless of your setbacks, life will go on.

Don’t be scared of successes. You will adapt far faster than you think you will, and you’ll simply expect your new life as the normal and as the standard.

It’s uncomfortable to leave your comfort zone, but you’ll bring that zone with you when you do.

You’ll become increasingly used to bigger and better things.

#27 — “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” — Mark Twain

Clarity is one of the hardest things to master.

I’ve sat in rooms with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs who at times still struggle to find out what they want.

I myself changed trajectory on the entire book I was writing last year. I began and ended 2023 with a totally different topic and focus.

Clarity requires honesty.

It requires you to continue to strip away layers of the onion.

It requires you to be fully transparent with yourself and others.

When you know what you really want, it impacts everyone around you. You start acting from your core desire, which is oftentimes totally scary. You expose yourself.

It’s also totally worth it.

#28 — “Desire will in due time externalize itself as concrete fact.” — Thomas Troward

In the beginning of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells the famous story of Edwin C. Barnes, the man who “thought” his way into a business partnership with Napoleon Hill.

He intensely desired this so much that he hitched trains to get to Edison’s factory and began working for him as an entry-level employee.

In the back of his mind, his dream never went away.

Eventually, Edison’s company released a product with the famous slogan “Made by Edison and installed by Barnes.”

The energy from your desires can’t be ignored forever. It will come to pass.

While in federal prison, Andre Norman desired to change and improve his life. He began to desire to go to Harvard.

Eventually, he became a Harvard fellow. He’s now an internationally renowned speaker who helps people around the globe take responsibility for their life and their decisions.

Your desires will lead to very interesting and powerful places if you allow them to.

#29 — “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” — Henry David Thoreau

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey explains the difference between our circle of concern and our circle of influence.

Our circle of concern is everything that may affect us, or that we may become “concerned” with.

Our circle of influence is much smaller. Our circle of influence is limited to the scope of events that we are directly responsible for and capable of shifting.

Most people are running in circles around their own circle of concern, without spending quality time in their circle of influence. They’re worried about things they can’t control and people they don’t know.

You don’t need to do that.

Focus on your circle of influence, and let the rest alone.

#30 — “The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.” –Socrates

Having fewer wants comes from a) already having attained your wants and b) being more selective about those wants.

On having what you want already, Florence Shinn said “Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.”

How much faith do you have in your future self?

On being selective about what you want, you’ve probably done quite a bit of thinking about what you want if you’ve gotten this far.

How selective will you be?

#31 — To again quote Neal Maxwell:

“What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become.”

Who do you want to become?

What will you do about it?

Ready To Upgrade?

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Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” — Thomas Berger

Your progress in life is directly tied to the depth of the questions you’re willing to ask yourself, and the honesty with which you answer those questions.

As Tony Robbins said in Awaken the Giant Within, “Quality questions create a quality life.”

Pull out your journal. Write notes, ideas and impressions. Really think through these questions.

You’ll amaze and inspire even yourself.

Part 1 — Reflect & Ponder

1. What are the key GAINS you’ve made so far this month?

2. From the last 10 days, what are the most tangible evidences of your own progress?

3. Where did you make intangible, internal progress?

4. What power moves did you make?

5. What “deep work” did you do? (a phrase coined by Cal Newport)

6. Where have you made very important connections?

7. Where have you created nonlinear and surprising transformations you weren’t expecting?

8. How have you made progress in your morning routine?

9. How are you a different person than yourself last month?

10. How are you a different person than yourself last year?

11. How are you different in capability and lifestyle than you were even last month?

12. What are your values now, compared to back then?

13. What the “average experiences” you’re pursuing now, compared to back then?

14. How are you different?

15. How is your situation different?

16. How is your confidence different?

17. How is your identity different?

18. How is your “Definiteness of Purpose” different? (a phrase coined by Napoleon Hill)

19. What can you do now that wasn’t possible for you to do last month, considering the progress you’ve made?

Part 2 — Dream & Create

20. Are your days increasingly playing out exactly how you want them to be?

21. Are you waking up when you want to wake up?

22. Are you rushed, or relaxed? Why or why not?

23. Are you free? (for more on this topic, read the book Already Free)

24. Are you dedicating your days, your weeks, and your months to things you totally want to be doing?

25. Or, are you spending huge amounts of time on things you thought you needed, but don’t ultimately want?

26. Does your life look the way you want it to on a daily basis?

27. Or, if you had a choice, would you be doing something else?

28. What is that something else?

29. To what extent can you renegotiate with reality?

Part 3 — Weed Out The Un-Important:

30. Where can you readjust your reality and your schedule to better reflect your desired life?

31. Where are the things in your life that are the “80%?” What is your 80%?

(This is a reference to the 80/20 rule, that dictates that 80% of your efforts are only causing 20% of your results. By eliminating the 80%, you free yourself up to focus only on the 20% of things that bring nearly all of your results. For details on this transformative process, read 10x Is Easier Than 2x.)

32. Are there situations, jobs, or relationships that you’re holding on to but don’t really want?

33. Why do you think you need them? Are you afraid of the consequences? Are you approaching them out of fear or courage?

34. Where can you let things go of, or redesign things?

35. Where can you reset your schedule so it increasingly looks exactly how you want to?

36. Is your life a reflection of your future self?

Part 4 — Go Big.

“How can you achieve your ten year plan in six months?” — Peter Thiel

37. Do you want to live like this?

38. Or, do you want to renegotiate some of this stuff and let some of this stuff go that might pass off that was important?

39. Do you need to re-emphasize something you didn’t realize was so important until it got neglected?

40. What is the #1 result you’re definite and committed to in this year?

41. Are you excited about your result?

42. How would your life change if you got that result?

43. How could you live a year’s worth of life this month?

44. What would that actually look like?

45. How could you have the greatest recovery ever of your life this month?

46. How could you have the highest performance and power moves ever this month?

47. Could you actually achieve your 10-year plan in six months?

48. Are you letting your goals shape the process, and not vice versa?

49. What would you not be able to do if you were bold, direct, courageous, and innovative?

50. Why not you?

Your Call To Action:

If you enjoyed these questions, this morning cheat-sheet will help you design your future at a far more powerful level. Click here to get it for free.

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50 Questions Happy And Confident People Ask Themselves Regularly was originally published in Better Advice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

You’re willing to work hard, but you’re frustrated.

You wish someone could show you what to do instead of wondering.

You’re willing to set big goals, but you’re afraid. You’re worried you’ll spend the next few years chasing a goal only to discover that it didn’t bring you the “success” you thought.

You’re excited by the possibilities but overwhelmed by all of them at the same time.

You feel caught between competing priorities, like you’re between two rock faces closing in with no clear way out.

Your life is burdened by too many conflicting priorities.

You’re desperate to find crystal-clear clarity on your goals.

To find the few things that will really move the needle.

This type of clarity is extremely difficult, even for the world’s most successful people. Why do you think Bill Gates would spend a week every year just thinking during his famous “think weeks”?

This article will help you get that clarity.

Specifically, this article will help you:

Connect deeply and powerfully with your future selfUnderstand practically which goals will actually move the needleFind out what to discard, organize, keep, simplify, and amplify in your life

You will be totally blown away by your own accomplishments 12 months from now if you apply this.

Read this with an open journal in front of you. Take notes. Get inspired.

Where Did You Come From?

Reflect on 2023.

What did you accomplish?

What did you create?

How did your family grow and change?

How much money did you make?

What happened in your health?

What happened in your career?

What successes did you have?

What failures did you learn from?

Because 2023 is now over, we can see it with different eyes. Our memories change each time they’re observed.

In Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out, Riley has several happy memories of her hometown in Minnesota. After she moves away, those same memories become sad when remembered in the present. Because of her new context, they remind her how much she misses home and she bursts into tears just thinking about them.

After her parents comfort her and express their love for her, she then reconstructs those same memories a third time in a bittersweet way, remembering both the deep lessons that she learned and the love and joy she felt from her parents. She appreciates from and learns from her experiences and memories.

The exact same historical facts caused three totally different meanings for Riley when re-examined in the present.

Although this story is fictional, the scientific lesson is correct. Psychologist Dr. Brent Slife taught that our memories are not objective entities stored in a vacuum. They are reconstructed in the present every time we observe them.

“We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present…Our memories are not “stored” and “objective” entities but living parts of ourselves in the present. This is the reason our present moods and future goals so affect our memories.” — Dr. Brent Slife

You can view 2023 through a much more useful lens in the present, or you can de-value those experiences. How you re-construct your memories is entirely up to you.

Your memories are a choice. The way you view them actually changes the memory itself, not just your perception of it.

Reflect on what was most useful in 2023, in order to get clarity on your goals in 2024.

Create The Best Year Ever

The 80/20 rule, popularized by economist Vilfredo Pareto, dictates that 80% of efforts generate only 20% of your results, and vice versa.

Only 20% of your results are coming from almost everything you do.

As you examine and change your memories from 2023, answer the following:

What were the things that moved the needle BIG in 2023?How much of my attention and energy was focused on what I now know is my “80%” in 2023?What shifts would enable me to go all-in on my 20% in 2024?

Give yourself permission to go for the limitless.

In 10x Is Easier Than 2x, Dan Sullivan and I explain that through leveraging your 20% and eliminating your 80%, you create a “10X” result and exponentially pivot into a better life.

A “10X jump” comes from focusing all-in on your 20% of essential activities, while “2X” comes from simply doing more of the 80% that “got you here.”

What would a “10X” future look like for you in 2024?

Be completely literal with this.

What would a qualitatively and quantitatively 10X better life mean for you?

What would your health be like?

Your finances?

Your relationships?

Your spirituality?

Your knowledge and wisdom?

Your business?

You can literally become 10X better in 2024. Not just in theory but in actual reality.

Give yourself permission to reach for the impossible and start defining what that would look like.

What are the targets so high you genuinely don’t know what to do with them?

What are the goals so overwhelmingly big that you don’t want to even think about them?

What makes you say “I don’t know how to get there?”

What is bamboozling your brain?

Write those things down.

It doesn’t matter if you have no current pathway to reach those goals. We’re simply focusing on what would transform your life, your desire, and your intentions for now.

I myself made several MASSIVE pivots and leaps even in the last few weeks of 2023.

I passed off my PLATINUM coaching program to my own mentor and coach Chad Willardson.

I let go of my YouTube channel as a branding and marketing strategy.

I let go of several book projects I was previously pursuing to focus all-in on my next book Rapid Transformation.

It’s okay to let go. Letting go of your 80% is key.

Writing down all of your goals, big and small, and then evaluating the line in-between the 80% and the 20% gives you the courage to let go of your 80%.

Be Emotionally & Spiritually Connected

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You should eliminate 80% to go big, but which 80%?

You “could” accomplish any goal, but how do you know if it’s the right goal?

Stephen R. Covey likened this situation to climbing the “ladder of success” only to discover and find out that your “ladder up against the wrong wall.”

Here’s the difference between goals that you should chase and goals that you shouldn’t chase: your goals should be rooted in your character and identity.

Your future self will be far less powerful if it’s not connected to who you want to be and who God wants you to be.

Mathematically, you can subtract 80% of your life, go all-in on your 20%, making tactical and strategic leaps. But any 80–20 approach that’s not intimately and deeply connected emotionally will be un-grounded. It won’t last. It will be a shallow and negative experience.

When you’re not emotionally and spiritually connected to your future self, stripping away the 80% is more like a dart-board than a clear path.

It’s a weird process of elimination rather than a powerful process of transformation.

Your future self is a choice.

You identity is a choice.

Your character is a choice.

Your goals are a choice.

Expectancy theory states that we first need to believe in our own agency and ability to make choices before we will be motivated.

Your future self by the end of 2024 is a choice. Your future self by 2030 is a choice.

Your identity and your character matter more than anything. This is why most of the conversation in business in and self-development is so lacking.

Before you decide what you should master skill and ability-wise, develop your connection to your identity and your future self.

Get very real. Whatever your religious inclination, really stop and ask.

“Who does God want me to be?”

“Who do I want to be?”

This is a continuous process, rather than a one-time event.

Your choices determine character and destiny. The choices you make are the dividing line between what is 80% and 20%.

With character, you’ll ensure that it’s the RIGHT 80%.

Otherwise, it will feel forced.

Dr. David Hawkins discovered that there are are two approaches to life, depending on your energy level. If your energy level is below courage on the “map of consciousness,” you’re approaching your life with force. If your energy is at courage or higher, you approach your life with power.

People with low energy approach decisions with force. They try to force things to happen, even if it’s not working out.

People with high energy approach decisions with power. They know that their actions will lead to the results they want, and they have enough certainty that they’re not worried about the results. Or as Florence Shinn said, “Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.”

Their energy is at a higher vibration and level.

Your highest value set has to be aligned with your future self in order for this to work.

Whatever your highest values are, you have to view your future self as acting in alignment and in accordance with those values or you won’t make much progress. If you have conflicting energies, you’re like a car with 2 wheels pulling forward and 2 wheels pulling backward at the same time.

Your future self is powerful. Far more powerful than your present self.

Make decisions from power.

Simplify Your Future Self Dramatically

Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two. — William Ockham

Someone recently asked me about my workout routines/diet/personal training/other health practices.

I answered:

“I’m going to give you a principle rather than giving you the specific methods I’m using.”

I then shared the principle of Occam’s Razor.

Occam’s Razor, a powerful law in science, states that the development should be as simple as possible. In business, this is known as a “minimum viable product,” or a prototype just good enough to communicate the message without being too expensive or complicated.

Health is so simple. If you do these things in 2024, you’ll radically change your health in 90 days (or less):

Stay hydratedAvoid sugarAvoid white flourGet adequate sleepGet regular fitness

You already knew things, which is why this isn’t an article about health.

Health is not nearly as complex as many bio-hackers make it out to be.

Most people make their goals as complicated as possible rather than as simple as possible.

You can do AMAZING things on very simple (but challenging and difficult!) processes.

You only need a couple, coupled with knowledge and strategy.

If you’re unsure on knowledge or strategy, adopt what Tim Ferris calls “mini-experiments.” Throw stuff against the wall and see what works and what doesn’t. With enough data points, you’ll become clear on what your 80% is and what your 20% is soon enough.

And because you did the spiritual and emotional work, you’ll know which 80% you should discard.

Unleash Your Raw And Maximum Energy

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” — John Wooden

Your future self is entirely between you and you.

Period.

Even people you highly respect may not understand your future self. They may question your motives and your intentions.

That’s okay.

They don’t know where you’re going.

I don’t know what your 80% is. That’s up to you to determine.

Maybe it’s certain foods.

Maybe it’s your job.

Maybe it’s media and entertainment.

What I do know is this: the amount of raw energy you receive from cutting off the 80% is truly astounding.

Your brain and body are in constant need of balance. Thus, when you free-up energy from focusing on your 80%, you’ll instantly look for places to start investing that same energy elsewhere.

You suddenly have TONS of energy to invest into mastery.

Mastery puts you into your own plane. When you truly become “so good you can’t be ignored” as Cal Newport would say (I’d read that book, by the way), your skillset and accomplishments become totally unique and irreplaceable.

Nobody else can be you. That’s why your future self can only be understood by you.

When you pursue mastery, you stop reacting. Your future isn’t a reaction to ignorance, attachment, or other people. It’s a proactive and independent decision.

Don’t be harsh to your former self. You want to increasingly have a better relationship with your past. Simply be willing to let things go on a spiritual and emotional level. No longer worry about most things.

There are so many things I thought mattered last year that I no longer think matter.

Your 80% can be beautiful and a benefit to your past.

At one point, it was probably your 20% or you wouldn’t have started it.

I’m not talking about bad things when I say 80%. I’m talking about things that were genuinely good ideas (like my YouTube channel) but that are simply no longer relevant.

My collaboration with Dan Sullivan directly led to incredible things. It created incredible ideas and helped thousands of entrepreneurs.

We also dramatically expanded Strategic Coach’s business by tens of millions of dollars and I’m much more influential as an author than I was several years ago.

We finished our last book together in 2023. That’s not a bad thing. We’re both simply moving onward and upward to our next biggest projects that we each individually have to pursue. We’re both moving into our new 20%.

Your future self is what you really want.

Your 80% is what you don’t want or no longer want.

You can train your brain what to want and not want. Your wants are a choice.

And when you let go of what you don’t want, your 80%, you have limitless potential. You have raw untapped power that is INSANE. You’ll go far.

The Secrets Of How Jeff Bezos Sets Goals

“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible, or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions.

But most decisions aren’t like that — they are changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a sub-optimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.” — Jeff Bezos

Most people think of decisions as a 1-way street. If I make this decision, I can’t go back.

Actually, you can.

Jeff Bezos explains that nearly all decisions are what he calls “type 2” decisions, where you can pivot back if you really need to.

As an example, when I stopped doing YouTube as a branding strategy, that was a 2-way decision.

If, at some point or for whatever reason, I needed to return to doing YouTube as a strategy, I could. In fact, I’m even better positioned now to return back to that than I would be if I had never learned how to do that strategy in the first place.

I was recently on a coaching call with a woman who realized that her 80% was her current job and her 20% was her business that wasn’t growing at the rate she wanted because her job was tying down so much of her time.

She felt like she needed to go all in, but was hesitant about the leap.

As we talked, I explained that as Jeff Bezos pointed out, most decisions actually go both ways. I said:

“You’re making something that is actually a two-way door in your mind into a one-way door. You actually can always go back to getting a job, if you needed to.”

What we psychologically view as a 1-way street is really often a 2-way street because we’re so loss-averse. Study after study has proven that we hate risk and downside more than we appreciate the upside. We have a tendency to make the downsides far worse than they really are.

Instead of inflating the downside, adapt quickly and rip the band-aid. Once you’ve gone through the entire process in this article, make your new decision as quickly as possible.

In his interview with Lex Friedman, Jeff Bezos explained the importance of making decisions faster.

When you become aware of your 80%, make decisions faster.

When you have internal conflict, make decisions faster.

When you make incredible progress, make decisions faster.

Conclusion

When you find out what your 80% is, you’ll courageously let it go.

You’ll be unstoppable.

You’ll build beautiful things.

You’ll draw closer to God.

You’ll change your life.

Your Call To Action

I’ve built a Future Self Toolbox to enable you to achieve the unthinkable. Click here to get it for FREE.

(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 bestselling book in all of Korea.)

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This Simple Goal-Setting Method Will Give You Courage, Power, and Clarity was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Photo by Jason Hogan on Unsplash“Success is what you attract by the person you become.” — Jim Rohn1. EMBRACE THE TRUTH

“…The truth shall make you free.” — John 8:32

David Goggins today is a world-class author, ultramarathon runner, and retired highly successful Navy SEAL.

He wasn’t always that way.

In his book Can’t Hurt Me, he shares how he went through a painful, traumatizing, and abusive childhood.

At one particular low point he was failing every class in school, and he was miserable and depressed about his life.

He says:

“[One] night, after taking a shower, I wiped the steam away from our corroded bathroom mirror and took a good look. I didn’t like who I saw staring back. I was a low-budget thug with no purpose and no future. I felt so disgusted I wanted to punch that idiot in the face and shatter glass.”

But rather than doing that, he decided to embrace the truth.

“Instead, I lectured him. It was time to get real.”

What did “getting real” look like?

Every day, Goggins would do three things:

Stare in the mirrorBe completely honest with himselfMake post-it notes of all of his goals and put them on the mirror.

He calls this practice his “accountability mirror.”

The mirror of truth.

What does your “getting real” look like?

When you look in the mirror, who do you see?

Do you see your future self?

Do you have a future self?

What are you justifying because of outside obstacles rather than taking complete ownership?

Look in the mirror and be honest.

If you’re massively overweight, be honest.

If your finances are out of order, be honest.

If you’re putting the dream on hold, be honest.

If you aren’t prioritizing key relationships, be honest.

Honesty is the starting point of all change. When you’re honest, there’s nothing to hide. There’s only things you can work with.

What are you saying “no” to receiving because you’re too attached to things that aren’t honest?

David Goggins could have created hundreds of excuses for his failures in school, but he didn’t. Instead, he made his post-it notes and acted on them.

Eventually, he passed the rigorous intellectual test required to become a Navy SEAL and is now a multiple bestselling author and renowned keynote speaker.

He was honest with himself, and then he gave himself permission to change. To believe and understand that his personality wasn’t permanent.

The sticky-notes are your passport to personal change.

To become who you want to be, you need constant reminders everywhere you go reminding you of that person.

This is my own culture wall, designed by Gaping Void:

Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall (GapingVoid)

This wall is filled with many of my favorite beliefs and values, and it’s how I’ve engineered my environment so that I can have the life I want. Every day, these pictures trigger reminders of the values and goals I have.

Likewise, you need an environment that triggers imagination of your future self in a tangible and real way.

Most people have an environment that reminds them of their former self.

They’re around old traumas, failures, addictions, people, and mindsets, and so they’re thrown back into their former self when they go throughout their day.

No.

The only way to change your trajectory, like Goggins, is to cut off the trigger and to create a new one — a transformational trigger that reminds you of your future self.

2. BE STRATEGICALLY IGNORANT

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.” — Steve Jobs

You don’t need to be aware of everything that’s going on in the world. Or as author Barry Schwartz shares in the book The Paradox of Choice, oftentimes increased options actually lead to lower-quality decisions.

If you have too much media flowing in, you’re sending your brain in a thousand different directions at once. You’re limiting your ability to be in a flow state, heightening your stress, and washing your energy. You’re also putting your view of the future into the hands of somebody else.

Most media is intended to make you feel that the future is going to be worse than the present — it’s created at a low-level out of fear, pessimism, scarcity, and victimhood.

In psychology, prospection states that your view of the future shapes your attitudes and behaviors in the present. If you believe the future is worse than the present, your chances of acting powerfully in the present are slim to none.

High achievers aren’t aware of most things out there.

They don’t consume the mainstream news or media.

As former NFL player Bo Eason has said, pro athletes don’t watch sports on TV. They’re focused on playing the game, not entertaining themselves.

This doesn’t mean you should be randomly ignorant or uninformed. It simply means you’re strategically ignorant of things that aren’t helpful.

Instead, high achievers consume media that relates to their goals. For example, if they’re trying to build financial wealth, they focus only on media and information that helps them build their wealth.

High achievers consume media that makes them realize their future is bigger than their past.

They study information that helps them think better, focus better, and tangibly know how to achieve their goals.

To level-up, cut off most of the options.

Don’t watch mainstream news.

Don’t watch mainstream media.

Focus on and consume information and media that ultimately helps you.

3. CREATE FORCING FUNCTIONS

“I think the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.” — Will Durant

You’re always either rising or falling to the demands of your situation. If your situation isn’t demanding you to rise up, then you probably won’t.

Your situation will rarely exact lasting and radical changes out of you on its own. It’s likely to be a continuation of your present circumstance without active intervention.

You can make that intervention through a forcing function. A forcing function is any situational factor that forces you to produce an outcome.

You can engineer situations that force you to change.

When you create a situation that forces you to rise up, you’ll rise up.

If you’re publicly committed, people know it’s coming.

You’ve outsourced your motivation to a situation, which is far more powerful than leaving it up to chance.

Apple runs a famous keynote every year. Aside from being a great PR and marketing opportunity, this is really a forcing function for the business more than anything.

Every year, every employee knows when the next keynote is. It’s on the calendar. It’s public. It’s committed. It can’t be changed, altered, or moved.

The products must be finished by the keynote.

Procrastination is not an option when deadlines are made public.

You can do this, too. Outsource your willpower to a situation. Let your forcing functions guide you to action. Don’t rely on your own energy, which will always eventually burn out.

You create your own “Apple keynote” in 3 ways:

A. Time Function

Short deadlines really do work.

If you give yourself a month to do something, it will take a month.

If you give yourself a week, it will take a week.

If you give yourself three days, it will take three days.

Try fully blocking-out 3 days for you to do the thing you wanted to do for the entirety of next month. You’ll surprise yourself with what you can do.

B. Social Function

Said Johann Hari said in his famous Ted talk, “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is human connection.”

Human connection is the opposite of failure. You need social support to succeed.

If you have a workout partner waiting for you at the gym, you are FAR more likely to go than if you simply go to the gym alone. You’ll almost always let yourself down before letting others down.

Build relationships where you’re expected to be more. This is called the Pygmalion effect, which states that we’re either rising or falling to the demands or expectations of those around us.

When you have someone who can hear you and help you reconstruct the meaning of your experiences, you’ll fly.

Create social accountability and forcing functions by involving other people in your goals.

When you have someone who can…

hear youempathize with youunderstand yoube there for you

Everything changes.

This is what trauma expert Peter Levine calls an “empathetic witness.” With a witness, you’re limitless.

C. Increased Load

When David Goggins had a daughter, he realized his performance not only affected him; it actually impacted his family. That gave him more incentive to get down to work.

“Now it wasn’t just about me and my dreams of becoming a SEAL. I had a family to think about, which raised the stakes that much higher. If I failed this time, it wouldn’t mean that I was just going back to ground zero, emotionally and financially, but I would be bringing my new family there with me.”

When things get more difficult, you’ll actually progress quicker.

In a TED Talk I gave years ago, I shared a story from David Bednar of a truck that got stuck on a snowy road. It was only until the load was added to the truck that it received enough traction to move forward.

Our lives are the same way.

When I was doing my PhD, my wife and I became foster parents of three kids. A lot of people think having three kids would be detrimental to my performance and productivity, but the opposite was (and is) true. All of a sudden, I had this new weight of responsibility forced upon me. I begun to act.

I needed to rise up. I needed to get things done.

Find coaches. Mentorships. Accountability partners. People who are so involved in your goals that your performance not only affects your outcomes but also impacts their outcomes.

There’s a lot of research that shows that the more invested you are, the more committed you become.

When you invest money, time, and relationships into a goal, you’re going to be a lot more committed to your future self.

When you hire someone, it gets real.

When you put money down, it gets real.

When you block out the time, it gets real.

You start to identify with the goal more and more.

Whatever your goal is, invest heavily into it.

4. LEARN QUICKLY

High achievers have high accountability. They’re constantly studying information that helps them achieve, and avoid (or are strategically ignorant) of information that tries to destroy their hope and confidence in the future.

Low achievers don’t want to learn new methods or ways of achieving their goals.

Deep down, they want to be stuck.

They want to keep trying the same things over and over while expecting a different result.

They’re unwilling to learn new methods and means. They’re stuck in one way.

You need a clear vision; you need the belief that you can achieve it, but you also need to find a deliberate and tactical pathway to getting there.

This is why high achievers consume less but BETTER media. So they can learn better strategies, mindsets, and behaviors that allow them new and unique ways of achieving their goals.

Your chances of success at a given goal can usually be traced back to how flexible you are in learning how to get there.

5. RAISE THE STAKES

“Pressure can burst a pipe, or pressure can make a diamond.” — Attributed to Robert Horry

I started blogging online around the exact same time that my wife and I got 3 foster kids in 2015.

Writing is something I had literally procrastinated doing for years.

It wasn’t until I had that new responsibility heaved upon me that I finally had the courage to act.

Things get very real when there are mouths to feed.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” from Spider-Man’s uncle Ben is famous and well-known, but is actually the reverse order of the truth:

With great responsibility comes great power.

With great responsibility for the outcomes you create, great power flows into your life. Or as Jocko Willink and Leif Babin would say, you’ve got to take on extreme ownership.

Extreme ownership means you’ve implemented the forcing functions in your life — short deadlines, social accountability, high investment.

It means you have high consequences for failure.

Researchers on “flow” have discovered that when the consequences for failure are HIGH, it’s actually easier to tap into flow state.

For example, extreme athletes like snowboarders hitting huge jumps— could face injury or even death as a consequence for failing.

So they ensure success.

So they lock into an extreme flow state and channel their deepest performance.

That’s what you want to do too.

When you engineer situations that force your deepest commitment, you generate healthy stress, or “eustress.” This is otherwise known as the “zone of proximal development,” or the zone where you become stronger and more deeply committed.

Healthy pressure is eustress. It’s the kind of stress that makes you stronger.

Here’s why most people don’t succeed: they are too afraid to create an environment that would force them to.

6. SHARE YOUR GOALS OFTEN

“The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger.” — Dan Sullivan

Most people are too afraid to say out loud who their future self is.

They’re too afraid to admit what they want.

They’re scared of what they want.

They’re too complacent to remove the negative inputs from their life.

They’re scared to design an environment that keeps them strategically and constantly aware of their future self.

They’re scared to look in the mirror.

They’re scared to put up the post-it notes.

They’re scared to apply forcing functions.

When people ask what your goals are, do you tell them what you really want?

Or do you tell them the watered-down version of what you really want?

Do you know what you really want?

Do you tell them?

7. CONTROL YOUR ENVIRONMENT

“If you do not create and control your environment, your environment creates and controls you.” — Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

“Your input determines your outlook, your outlook determines your output, your output determines your future.” — Zig Ziglar

Research has found that your peer group determines:

Your income levelYour religious or spiritual inclinationsWhether or not you’re an alcoholicWhether or not you’re an entrepreneurWhether or not you succeed in school

And much more.

Your environment is king. Your inputs are king. The inputs you get from other people affect nearly everything in your life.

Anything that comes in — information, food, experiences, or knowledge — literally becomes part of you, both in your physical body and your mental body.

Whatever you let in is who you become.

“I find that almost every thought I have is downstream from what I consume. If you have better inputs, you naturally get better outputs.” – James Clear

If you are letting in garbage, then your mind is becoming a garden filled with weeds and garbage.

If you are letting in powerful things, your mind is becoming a beautiful landscape.

Either way, your environment shapes you. Your environment shapes your thoughts, goals, and even identity.

To change your life, change your environment.

8. Conclusion: Your New Standard

“Change before you have to.” — Jack Welch

You are so much more adaptive than you think.

You are so much more powerful than you think.

You are so much more creative than you think.

You have to make the leap and trust in your ability to adapt.

When you surround yourself with new people, you’re going to have new thoughts.

When you have forcing functions, you’ll find yourself in a new environment.

Success is like jumping into a cold swimming pool.

It’s cold and uncomfortable at first.

It’s stressful.

The anticipation of doing it is far more scary than the act itself.

And then, you find out that it’s not so bad.

You quickly adapt.

You see new things.

You shift your situation.

Your goals, identity, and character will all match the new environment you create.

Go create it.

Your Call To Action

This FREE morning check-list will enable you to eliminate distraction, make bold decisions, and live in a peak state daily.

Click here to get it right now!

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If you’re Not Reaching your Goals: These 8 Things Will Attract Success was originally published in Better Advice on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash

The most cited academic paper in all of academics is the discovery of “prospect theory.”

Prospect theory, pioneered by famed economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman is the discovery that that as humans we fear loss far more than we appreciate gains.

We’re so afraid of losing what we have that we don’t chase bigger and better things.

We’re like kids in a scavenger hunt who sit on their treasure in fear of it getting stolen.

Fear is what keeps us stuck.

If you:

Want to give a public speechWant to start a new businessWant to ask that girl on a date

This article is for you.

Adverse Anticipation

Psychologically, the anticipation of an event is always more powerful than the event itself.

Dan Sullivan calls this “dread time.”

This is why we spend time dreading events even though they’re not nearly as bad as we make them out to be.

This is why we create worst-case scenarios in our heads.

This is why we delay things that we REALLY want to do, for weeks at a time.

We’re always creating mental anticipation.

The same also works in reverse. Anticipation of a positive event is always more positive than the event in and of itself.

After the event (good or bad) happens, we adapt much quicker than we think we will.

You may have wanted that car or that job or that house or a relationship with that person for years.

What do you do once you finally get it? You adapt.

You may have gotten cut off in traffic or you were passed over for a promotion or received terrible news about the health of someone you know.

What do you do? You adapt.

Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation points to a “baseline” happiness we all have that we don’t deviate from for very long because we want to be comfortable.

Psychologists have validated this theory on extreme cases of positive and negative life events ranging from winning the lottery to losing a limb. (see more here and here).

Regardless of severity, we adapt to either positive or negative events in our lives a lot faster than we think we will.

Banish Fear With Consistent Wins

“Expect everything and attach to nothing.”

— Carrie Campbell, mindset coach

Here is one simple tool you can you to banish-fear immediately:

Get consistent at doing something over and over again.

Fear won’t leave completely, but you’ll realize you used to be inflating the potential risks way too much.

There are almost always no downsides in the long run to trying big things. There are no downsides to accomplishing small things.

When I first started blogging, I was terrified of throwing out blog posts. I was afraid of what people would think of me.

I started with 1 post.

As you do something small, you raise your courage and get a small win.

Courage is the willingness to try something that might not work.

Courage is the willingness to fail.

Courage is the willingness to face uncertainty.

When you make small wins and courageous decisions, you’ll realize it wasn’t actually that bad.

You get used to what reality feels like.

Ask your boss for that raise.

Whether he says yes or not, you’ll find out that it really wasn’t that bad.

Make Wins Early

The longer you extend anticipation, the more you dread it.

Procrastination is the creation of a false reality while denying the real one.

Shorten your anticipation cycle.

Wake up early.

Get out of bed.

Make your bed.

Crush your Monday and your Tuesday.

What could you really do before 10am every day if you applied yourself?

Make Wins Daily

“Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals and then work toward them every day will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor.”

— Brian Tracy

As you act, you adapt. You don’t start adapting until you act.

Get used to creating small wins on a daily basis, so that it feels normal and natural.

Make the right, few, actions, every morning.

Brian Tracy calls this “eating the frog.” Basically, it’s the idea that you do the worst first.

You just get used to doing that first thing that you used to procrastinate, because you realize that anticipated downside isn’t serving you.

Make wins DAILY, aside from compounding into something beautiful, opens you up to incredible amounts of feedback.

The faster you can get feedback, the faster you can move forward with more knowledge. Additional knowledge banishes fear. Fear stems from the unknown.

More wins means more adaptation.

More adaptation means more feedback.

More feedback means more knowledge.

More knowledge means more confidence and no fear.

Stop Hiding Your Goals

“You are as sick as your secrets.”

— Alcoholics Anonymous

In the Bible, a master gives 3 of his servants 5, 2, and 1, talents, respectively. A “talent” was an enormously large sum of money equal to 9 years wages at the time.

The 1st servant invested his funds for a 100% return. The 2nd servant did likewise.

The 3rd servant was afraid, and buried his money in the earth.

When the master comes back, he is clearly upset.

“Thou wicked and slothful servant…For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (Matthew 25:26, 30)

You do nobody any good by living beneath your potential.

Or, said Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

If you hide your goals, you’re sick and unhealthy. You’re suppressing what you really want.

Psychologically, we all think other people think less of us than they do. The truth is, other people think much higher of you than you do yourself in almost all cases.

Get comfortable learning to ask for help.

Get comfortable receiving with humility.

Get comfortable getting support.

Get comfortable getting aid.

Get comfortable asking for feedback, and getting it.

When you share your work and start getting feedback, you’ll realize your work is much worse in your head than what other people actually think of it.

Feedback creates better perspectives.

If you can only see 2 steps ahead, you can see 4 steps total after taking those 2 steps.

Take those two steps by getting immediate feedback.

As you get feedback, you become more familiar with the situation. You become no longer afraid.

Do you want to write a book?

Write one page. Share that page with someone. Ask for their feedback.

Move To An Infinite Game

In one of the longest science experiments ever conducted, Harvard found through their 75-year study that social support is the #1 indicator and predictor of happiness. You need it to be successful.

The faster you can create a group of supporters around you, the faster everything else takes off.

You won’t be competing against anyone else. You’ll stop comparing yourself to others or to an impossible ideal, because you’re not competing against them.

You’re competing against yourself.

You measure your current self against where you were before. That’s the only logical thing you can measure yourself against.

The finite game is where you’re competing against others. The infinite game is with yourself. You starting running your own race.

You’ll be moving forward faster and faster.

You’ll know that it’s not a big deal.

You’ll know that you’re inflating the downsides in your head.

You’ll know that as soon as you take action, you’ll know something you didn’t know before.

You’ll replace fear with knowledge and confidence.

You’ll get small wins and build insane momentum.

You’ll ultimately be in your own life and in your own world.

You’ll take more action and stop dwelling in anticipation and procrastination.

You’ll get into flow and won’t be concerned with what other people think.

You’ll compare only yourself to yourself.

You’ll reach this paradox: a combination of having both the right social support around you, while at the same time not being overly worried about what they think.

Your coaches, mentors, friends, and family, all provide accountability, but these are ultimately the people who are cheering you on anyways.

And anyone outside of that core group, you really just don’t care what they think. You’re certainly not worried about the people out there positioned as trolls to try and take you down.

You can reframe fear as excitement. You know you’re feeling that when you want to go fast regardless of the pain, like an endurance athlete.

When most people feel pain, they stop.

As soon as endurance athletes start feeling pain, they dig deeper into it.

Conclusion: Resistance Is A Signal

“The more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

— Steven Pressfield, bestselling author

As soon as you feel resistance, treat it as a signal. It means you’re going in the right direction.

Lean into it.

Resistance comes because starting is hard.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said he could have written a book on deliberate practice, but ultimately he chose the word habits because it is a much more marketable topic.

Atomic Habits has nothing to do with habits.

It’s about getting into the deep work, and starting it. Just start.

The problem of starting the deep work required to practice deliberately is so hard that James blessed us with an entire book about how to start.

Use it.

Start every day.

Measure yourself against the only thing that’s logical to measure yourself with: yourself.

Run your own race.

At the end of the day, what people think of you is none of your business.

You think they’re thinking about you far more than they actually are.

Recognize the gains and growth you’ve had.

Share this article with a creator in your life.

Ready to upgrade?

I’ve built a Future Self Toolbox to enable you to achieve the unthinkable. Click here to get it for FREE.

(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 bestselling book in all of Korea.)

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Michael Jordan. Source: wallpapercave.com

You can get what you want very fast.

Much faster than you think.

It could be millions of dollars.

It could be being top of your class or field.

It could be becoming a professional, an entrepreneur, an author, or whatever else you desire.

It’s closer than you think.

The reason most people take forever to get what they want is that they’re repeating mistakes.

There’s a famous saying that “lessons are repeated until they’re learned.”

Sadly, most people repeat lessons that should have been learned a long time ago. They’re not learning from their experiences.

They’re not aggressively seeking feedback and constantly adapting their strategy. Instead, they’re doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result. (Albert Einstein defined insanity this way.)

They’re not willing to change their path, their strategy, or their “normal” way of doing things. They’re psychologically stuck.

When you get unstuck, you become world-class.

This article will help you get unstuck.

Decide What You Really Want

“You don’t have to love the hard work. You just have to crave the end result so intensely that the work becomes irrelevant.” — Tim Grover

Kobe Bryant once said that once he decided what he wanted, the whole world became his classroom.

He could easily get what he wanted once he decided what he wanted.

What you want is a choice.

That choice will lead to what you get.

What you want also comes from your values. It’s up to you to refine and define those values.

As Viktor Frankl said, “What man needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”

Your “freely chosen task” is the thing you really want. Your biggest goal.

You’re the one who chooses your goals.

You don’t discover your passion or discover your personality. You create them.

You make a decision about who your future self is going to be, and then you act how that person would act.

Invest In Loss

“Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process. It is the key to breaking through plateaus, to making quantum leaps in skill level, and to keeping the learning curve as steep as possible.” — Josh Waitzkin

I was able to become a professional writer while still in my PhD program because I understood one principle: investment in loss.

Investment in loss means you embrace failure as a way to learn and improve.

You don’t avoid challenges, you seek them out.

You don’t fear mistakes, you welcome them.

You don’t get discouraged by setbacks, you use them as feedback.

You don’t let your ego get in the way, you let your curiosity guide you.

You don’t cling to your comfort zone, you expand it.

You don’t settle for good enough, you strive for excellence.

You don’t give up, you keep going.

This is how you get what you want very fast.

This is how you achieve your goals.

This is how you live your dreams.

Josh Waitzkin teaches how he used this principle to scale and master multiple fields in his book The Art of Learning. Josh became an international grandmaster of chess at age 16 before later becoming a world-class martial artist. In his tai chi classes, he noticed that the when the teacher gave students time to practice and spar with each other, most of the students would choose partners at the same level or slightly worse than them.

They were making themselves comfortable and confident.

When their teacher, Shen, gave them feedback, they would try to justify themselves instead of listening and learning. They were obsessed with being right.

Josh would instead always choose someone who was much better than him, and]he would get beaten up. His training was very hard, but he learned a lot from his losses. He lived by the saying from Norman Schwazkopf:“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.”

Waitzkin realized from this experience that people who are afraid to lose in the short-term never win in the long run.

They’re too busy protecting their ego and trying to be right.

They’re not willing to invest in loss.

They’re stuck to their old habits and unwilling to make mistakes.

If you’re willing to invest in loss, you’re adaptable.

If you’re willing to invest in loss, you’re learning.

If you’re willing to invest in loss, you outgrow your weaknesses and win, over time.

In short, you’re psychologically flexible and adaptable.

Don’t Repeat Mistakes

“You should always make your learning greater than your experience.” — Dan Sullivan

Most people have more experience than learning, rather than learning from their experiences.

They’re continuing in technical mistakes which are then compounded by psychological mistakes.

Technical mistakes are about how you do something, and psychological mistakes are about how you feel about it, or your mindset.

Josh Waitzkin said that if a student of any discipline could avoid repeating the same mistake twice, both technical and psychological, they would skyrocket to the top of their field.

How true.

If you avoid repeating the same mistakes, you learn faster and achieve more simultaneously. You literally shorten your learning curve if you’re psychologically flexible.

To do this, look at yourself objectively and admit that you are not who you need to be.

Your current self is ignorant compared to your future self.

Your future self isn’t defined by your present circumstances, however.

People with a fixed mindset, as defined by psychologist Carol Dweck, believe that who they are in the present is who they will always be. They think that their skills and abilities are fixed and cannot be improved.

They’re trapped in the “tyranny of now.”

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t focus too much on their current skills and abilities. They are excited by failure, because they see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. They have a vision of their future self that is beyond their current limitations.

They have a growth mindset, which means they believe they can develop their skills and abilities through effort and learning.

They’re not trapped in “the tyranny of now.”

For example, Elon Musk has a growth mindset. He wants to die on Mars, which is his image of his future self.

He knows that he has to overcome many challenges and learn many things to achieve that goal.

He is driven by his future vision, not by his present situation.

Are you?

Put In The Practice

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of the 10,000-hour rule, which states that you need roughly 10,000 hours of practice to become world-class at something.

That’s not true.

You need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, not naive practice.

Deliberate practice means that you have a specific goal, skill, or area you want to improve. It’s different from naive practice, which is just doing something over and over again without improving.

Deliberate practice is designed practice. Your practice is created for the sole purpose of achieving a goal, not as an end in and of itself.

Deliberate practice is iterative. You get feedback on your performance and you adjust your strategy accordingly.

Deliberate practice is hard. You challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone and to reach higher levels of competence.

Nothing about deliberate practice is easy or fun, but it’s the most effective way to learn and grow.

Deliberate practice is fueled by humility.

Be humble and curious, and adopt a student mindset.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help or guidance.

Don’t try to prove your intelligence, but rather your willingness to learn.

If you have a clear goal, find the people who have already achieved it, and learn from them.

As Darren Hardy (no relation) said, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.”

When you find someone you do want to trade places with, ask them questions.

Listen to their answers.

Apply their principles.

You can learn from books, videos, podcasts, or mentors.

Use whatever you can.

Remember what Kobe Bryant said: “Once I decided what I wanted, the whole world became my classroom.”

Conclusion

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”―Ernest Hemingway

Most people in the world are going to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

They’re going to gain experience, but not learning.

They’re going to practice naively, but not deliberately.

What do you want to do?

You can avoid repeating the same mistakes.

You can seek and apply the advice of those who have already achieved what you want.

You can stop doing what your current self would do.

You can make progress towards goals above your capabilities. You can become extremely confident.

It’s up to you.

Ready To Upgrade?

I’ve built a Future Self Toolbox to enable you to achieve the unthinkable. Click here to get it for FREE.

(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 bestselling book in all of Korea.)

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Photo by Semina Psichogiopoulou on Unsplash1. Define success yourself

“All progress starts by telling the truth.” — Alcoholics Anonymous

Success is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation comes from seeking a reward, praise, or validation. It withers when there is no external source to provide those things.

Intrinsic motivation is the only path to ridiculous success, because ridiculously successful people literally do things nobody has done before. They also do them without anyone telling them when, where, how, or why to do it.

They just act.

Success has to be defined completely by you. No one else can define success for you.

Success is an “inside” game. Intrinsic motivation means you’re doing what you most believe in, what you most value, what you most want to do.

It takes massive amounts of self-honesty, self-awareness, and commitment to decide what you really want.

You’ll be unstoppable when you do.

2. Ignore outside expectations

“We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” — Robert Brault

The pygmalion effect in psychology states that we rise and fall to the expectations of those around us. Why?

Because typically as people we let outside forces dictate who we are.

It’s true that we end up becoming the product of the five people we spend the most time with, but too often we don’t even choose those five people.

There are many outside forces, voices, and pressure in the world to succumb to the “well-beaten” path. There’s so much pressure to essentially become a chameleon of what everyone else is doing.

To be successful, you have to have the courage to hear your own voice. To maybe even hear the voice of God, and to start to follow that voice.

Do what you most want to do, and what you most believe in.

Do what you literally think is your life’s purpose. Start to define that purpose for yourself.

It takes courage to block out the noises and opinions of other people, even well-intending people, and carve your own path.

When you choose your five people, you’re doing what you most value, what you most believe in, and you’re doing it your way. Sometimes this means having to let go of certain, even close relationships.

You’re also acting despite the fear of failure. People with a fixed mindset are trapped by a fear of failure and a fear of other people’s opinions.

3. Stop needing and start wanting

In our newest book 10x is Easier than 2x, Dan Sullivan makes the distinction between wanting and needing.

If you’re operating out of need, then you’re doing what you think you need, what other people think you need, or what you think you “should” be doing.

When you’re operating from want, you don’t feel the need to justify your goals. Get to the point the point where you’re operating out of want.

What you most want, not what you think you “need,” will be the most deeply resonant with your soul.

4. Transcend freedoms

There are two types of freedom philosophically: freedom from and freedom to.

“Freedom from” is a liberation from external factors:

IgnorancePovertyTyranny

These freedoms can be bought for others with sacrifice.

“Freedom to” is something that no one can give you. You can be living in a great environment with great choices available, but you have to be the one to make that choice.

Freedom to go for what you most believe in.

Freedom to do what you most value.

Freedom to do what you most want.

No one can “to” somewhere for you. Freedom to is something you create yourself.

If you have “freedom to,” you can blow past pretty much any obstacle.

When the “why” is strong enough, you will find the “how,” and you will find the “who’s” to make it happen.

When you become committed, the universe will conspire to make it happen.

But you have to choose.

5. Believe in our own agency

Do you really believe in choice? Or do you believe in chance?

At the end of the day, if you want to be successful, you believe in choice.

You believe that you have choices, that those choices matter, and that they have an impact, not only on you, but other people.

You can choose your life.

In psychology, this is an internal locus of control. It’s the opposite of having an external locus of control, where you believe that outside forces determine who you are and what you have. Internal gives you freedom to choose. External makes you a victim.

Do you believe you can choose your life?

This belief is a necessary pre-requisite to any major accomplishment.

6. Plant “thinking trees” more often

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

If you go deep into the study of success, a lot of it comes down to your mind.

Your mind is a garden, and you’re always planting seeds. Whatever seeds you plant are going to grow into the fruit of your life.

To be successful, think about your own thinking. Design and improve upon your thinking and learning processes.

In psychology, this is called selective attention. What you focus on expands.

Albert Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Learn how to think about the things that you want to create more of. Elevated thinking produces elevates results.

7. Create mentally before spiritually

“Mental creation precedes physical creation.” — Stephen R. Covey

Emotional development travels from seeing to feeling to knowing.

Seeing is imagination. Seeing is thinking about the life you want, and not limiting what’s possible. Then, develop the knowledge within yourself that you can create new thoughts.

When you realize you have this power, you’ll go to feeling and knowing.

If you want to build a house, start with the blueprint, and create that. Then, feel what it would be like to build it. Knowing comes when you’re so confident in the blueprint that the house is guaranteed to work.

If you want to write a book, create it in your mind first. After you create the outline, you start to see things in your mind and then you create them in living reality.

Thoughts do become things.

What you think about is what you’re going to become.

8. Courage is the catalyst

“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are…or, as we are conditioned to see it.” — Stephen R. Covey

You don’t see the outside world, you only see your own reaction to it.

Dr. David Hawkins did an enormous amount of research in the realm of emotional intelligence. He created “the map of consciousness,” which shows where you are in your emotional development.

This map goes from 20 (shame), all the way up to 1,000 (enlightenment).

Anything below 200 on this map is a negative emotion, or what Dr. Hawkins would call a “force” emotion. When you’re operating from force, you’re trying to force things rather than knowing they’re already coming to you. You’re continually generating more negative results.

The transition between positive and negative energy, Hawkins argues, is courage. Courage is the starting point of all transformation. Courage is the difference between operating out of fear and avoidance of what you don’t want, to the proactive attainment of that which you do want.

From studying hundreds of thousands of people, Hawkins found that 80% of the population operate between fear and anger (120–150). He also found that typically, the average person only goes up by five points on this scale throughout their entire life.

That means most people, throughout their entire lives, are driven by anger, fear, or even lower things like shame and grief. They’re not spending a lot of time being courageous. They’re not going to the higher levels of acceptance, peace, love, and enlightenment.

How incredibly sad.

The reason for this is that most people don’t learn from their experiences. Most people are repeating the same experiences over and over. Lessons are repeated until they’re learned.

To get out of repeating the same mistakes, act courageously.

9. Heal faster

In psychology, the amount of time it takes to heal from a negative emotional reaction or state, is called a refractory period.

Sometimes, when we go through a hard experience, the refractory period extends for weeks, months, or even years to decades.

When we have a refractory period this long, we are caught up in the same story.

You can know if you are caught in a refractory period when something bad happens, and you continue to blame your present circumstances on that past thing, whatever it is.

Successful people shrink this period far more than most.

10. Become antifragile

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” — Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

If you want to do any form of deep work, you have to become “antifragile.”

If you want to overcome obstacles, you have to become antifragile.

If you want to become successful, you have to become antifragile.

Antifragility is learning how to respond rather than react. This is also very similar to “psychological flexibility.”

Becoming psychologically flexible means that you can handle difficult emotions without being destroyed by them.

This applies across your entire life. Emotional development = spiritual development.

Instead, you’re like an elastic. You can be stretched, handle difficult emotions, handle difficult situations, move forward thoughtfully asnd powerfully.

You observe yourself rather than becoming reactive.

11. See time opposite from the norm

It’s not your past that determines your present. It’s always your present that determines the meaning of your past.

Our memories are not a retrieval mechanism, they’re a reconstruction. During the present, you shape and proactively determine the meaning of the past.

The more you take agency of your own life, the more you frame your past in a way that empowers you rather than disables you.

When going through something challenging, you’ll approach it, and proactively shape the meaning of it in such a way that you’re more grateful for it.

When you do this, you’re turning your past into an asset rather than a liability.

Your future determines the meaning of the present and your present determines the meaning of your past.

12. Change the words you tell yourself

“Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, it becomes your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” — Unknown

Language is huge. Language is the level after thoughts and emotions.

Mastering your language is learning how to speak success into existence.

You can get very powerful at using words.

Speak in such a way that your words create the success you want.

You can use your language to create positive emotions.

You can use your language to create great experiences.

Your words are powerful, so use them in a powerful way.

When you catch yourself speaking in a low, negative way, change it. It’s your words that are actually shaping largely your experience.

Your words shape your experience and your perception. Use words to create the life you want and use words to create the day you want.

13. Journal every single day

Journaling is written language and written words.

Journaling is actively writing your thoughts down on paper and expressing your emotions.

Journaling is crucial to mental development, emotional development, creativity, imagination and more.

Successful people journal.

14. Re-write your ‘default’ future

“Once we learn language, we can never again see the world without its influence.” — Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, The Three Laws of Performance

In the book The Three Laws of Performance, the authors make the case that our language is actually what shapes our view of our future.

They call it the “default future.”

If you really listen to the language of most people, you’ll learn something fascinating. Most people’s language is very complaining, and you can see in their thoughts, feelings, and what they’re focused on. You can see that their language is disabling them, rather than enabling them.

Your language is what shapes your life, your views, your story, your energy, and your emotions.

One of my favorite psychologists, BJ Fogg, wrote a great book called Tiny Habits. In the book, he shares a daily habit that he calls the Maui habit.

When he gets out of bed, every time he puts his feet on the floor, he says, “It’s going to be a great day.” He does this every single day. He’s combined these two habits of feet hitting the floor and saying, “It’s going to be a great day,” so that it’s automatic.

By doing so, he’s priming himself and prepping himself for his day to be framed in a positive way. Your language shapes your selective attention. When BJ hits the floor and says, “It’s going to be a great day,” his mind begins looking for evidence of that, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can use language to create a great day, positive success, positive environments, and to fix problems. You re-write your default future by using words to shape it.

15. Say “thank you,” “I love you,” and “I’m sorry” often

The most powerful words in life are “I’m sorry,” “I love you,” and “thank you.” Use these as much as possible.

We all make mistakes. Say you’re sorry. You don’t have to have pride or ego.

Say “I love you” and ultimately say “thank you.” Thank you goes a really long way.

16. Change your story

Your identity is the story that you’re living out as a person. This is one of the most fundamental truths about life, success, and psychology.

As people, we are all living out a story.

There’s a broad story we all have about the meaning of life as a whole, but there’s also a more specific story as to whether we and each of the people we know are heroes or villains. We have stories about other people, whether they’re in our life now or people from the past.

You have a story about reality and the very meaning of life itself.

I have a story. I believe in God. I believe we lived with God before we came here. We chose to come here. This life is essentially education, and we get to continue after this life.

You also live through the story of your identity. Your identity is how you frame yourself. It’s the story you have for yourself. It’s the narrative.

There’s an entire field of psychology on this called the theory of narrative identity. This fits with language, thoughts, emotions, and language. You have a story for your past, a story for your present, and a story for your future.

To evolve your identity, change the story. Change the frame and operate from your future self.

There’s a great quote on this that says that lessons are repeated until they’re learned.

There are no mistakes in life, only lessons, but lessons are repeated until they’re learned.

Most people would rather cling to their current view, story, and identity, rather than have that story shattered.

Changing your story means newness. Change. Openness to new ideas. Wisdom. Knowledge. Perspective.

Most people would rather hold onto the safety net, the security blanket, the comfort zone of their current story, their current ideas, and their current identity.

17. Raise your standards

Your standard is that which you say yes and no to, and the filter through which you live. You can know what your standards are by what you say yes to. We all have a standard, and that standard is your current life.

To change your life, change the standard. Your standard starts with commitment, fueled by courage. Courage comes after commitment.

It can be pretty intense to commit to a new standard, especially if it’s above anything you’ve ever done before. It means you’ve got to start saying no to things that are below your standard.

You’ve got to start saying no to things your past self said yes to, and start operating from your future self.

Let your future self be the standard.

18. Do the impossible, because nothing is

“You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.” — Deepak Chopra

Nothing is impossible. People who become successful have done it again and again.

In his book Unreasonable Success, Richard Koch details the lives of people who are not only successful, but unreasonably successful. These are people who have literally changed the course of the entire world.

Koch teaches that every one of these people had what he calls a “breakout success.”

This is something that opened up massive doors, something that was a seemingly impossible achievement.

You need your own breakthrough success. You need a breakthrough result in your life. You can’t just have it in your mind. Determine to achieve the impossible.

What seems impossible for you may be different than what seems impossible for someone else.

Growing up, I had a tough situation. I barely graduated from high school. For me, just getting to college, let alone graduating from a really good college and then getting into a Ph.D. program, would have been viewed as “impossible” if you had seen me in high school.

Accomplishing the impossible again and again comes from vision and faith. When your “why” is strong enough, you will find the “how.”

When you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

19. Find deep meaning in worthy goals

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” — Viktor Frankl

In the book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl teaches that a worthwhile goal gives life meaning.

It gives your life hope.

It gives you purpose.

It gives you resilience.

It gives you a reason to move forward.

20. Become comfortable being an outlier

“We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world.” — Mother Teresa

You must accomplish stuff that makes you an outlier.

You can’t just put it on paper. It can’t just be in your head. You actually have to start creating unreasonable success.

Create impossible achievements, whatever that means to you. Realize that you will be very different from most people because of this.

It’s going to be relative to you, but over time, you will become an outlier, and you can achieve the impossible again and again.

I can attest to that. I’ve done it many times.

21. Strive to hit huge goals every 90-days

Even as a psychologist, I don’t believe in SMART goals. Yes, I believe goals should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. But I don’t think that they should be reasonable or realistic.

I think that anyone who is wildly successful understands this, and they don’t go for what is reasonable. Instead, they want to test their outer boundaries.

Every 90 days, I pursue impossible goals. A 90-day time frame is such a powerful amount of time to transform your life. You can go for goals that you think are impossible.

One of the benefits of going for something you think is impossible is that you don’t know how to do it. If you don’t know how to do it, you’re no longer operating from your past assumptions.

You also simplify the pathway to get there. If you’re going for linear progress, there are a thousand pathways there. For example, there’s a thousand ways to grow your income by 10%. There’s maybe one or two ways to grow your income by 10X.

Going for impossible goals forces you to be a lot more honest. It forces you to use the future as the filter, rather than letting the present dictate the future.

Conclusion: Good is the enemy of great

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” — Jim Collins

There will be a million reasons, internal and external, not to go for what you most deeply want.

You can be “good” at a thousand things, but to be GREAT, you have to fully commit to that which you most want.

When you commit to greatness, you commit to a constant cycle of this.

You choose to create impossible, unreasonable results. What’s more, you choose to do it again and again and again.

You can’t just do it once and stop. Oftentimes, people will succeed once, and then that success, as Greg McKeown has taught, becomes the catalyst for future failures. This is because they become overconfident and complacent. They stop using the future as a tool.

Success is about being constantly true to your future self, your beliefs, and the purpose inside your heart.

It’s about aligning your thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and ultimately reaching a place of knowing.

This is something to continuously work on. You can do something significant, and important. It’s a beautiful thing.

Go be successful.

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Click here to get access to the FREE “Future Self Toolbox,” which will enable you to rewire your mindset to achieve the unthinkable.

(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 book in Korea.)

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