Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: The Journey to Sustainable Change

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Unlock the secret to turning your aspirations into achievements with our latest episode of The Weekly Drop! We promise you'll gain insights into why New Year's resolutions often fizzle out and discover strategies that can transform your personal objectives into reality. Drawing from James Clear's transformative ideas in "Atomic Habits," we explore how to build robust systems rather than relying solely on fleeting motivation. Learn how setting SMART objectives—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—can provide a clear path toward your goals. We'll also discuss the value of tools like ChatGPT in crafting tailored plans that keep you on track for personal growth.   In this episode, we bring forward the power of diverse strategies to ensure success, inspired by Angela Duckworth's "Grit." Embrace the art of perseverance and the strength of a compelling vision to fuel your journey. We challenge the "all or nothing" mindset and advocate for gradual, sustainable change. With insights from Charles Duhigg's "The Power of Habit," discover how anchoring new habits to existing routines can lead to meaningful progress. Whether you're aiming to shed pounds with structured meal planning or launching a new venture, focusing on systems over mere outcomes paves the way for lasting achievement. Join us as we share methods to craft a supportive framework that maintains your momentum and propels you toward your dreams.   💬 Did you enjoy this weekly drop? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream the new Weekly Drop here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #weeklydrop #johngafford #newyearsresolutions #personalobjectives #jamesclear #atomichabits #smartobjectives #chatgpt #personalgrowth #angeladuckworth #grit #perseverance #compellingvision #allornothingmindset #incrementalimprovements #charlesduhigg #thepowerofhabit #sustainablepath #achievement #strategies #systems

From the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be escaping the drift. This is the weekly drop with John Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on. Make sure you like subscribe and comment. And now the drop and back again, back again for another episode of the drop man, which is my little solo pod brought to you by the same podcast that you listen to every week that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Today is going to be the first show of the new gear.

This will actually be coming out on Thursday. I'm streaming it for the first time live as we do this on Instagram, which is kind of cool. But today what we're going to talk about is the five reasons, the reason why most people don't accomplish their New Year's resolutions, man. Why people fall down when they make these resolutions and they don't get to what they're going to do. And I'm going to give you five things that you can do to have a lot of success in that with what you do. And we all know the story, man. January 1st, tomorrow, if you go to the gym, there's going to be nine million people sitting in the damn gym. It's going to be impossible to get to a machine, but by mid February, everybody's gonna be gone. And why is that? Why does it go so quick from February,

in February to nobody being there? Why does that happen so fast? And if you read this book, this is one of my favorite books, it's called Atomic Habits, I love this book. And then it James Clear talks about, motivation's not enough. Mot know, motivation is like a shower. It's something you require every single day. And if

you're just depending on motivation to get you through to where your habits need to be, you're gonna have a problem. What you have got to do is you've got to instead of relying on the motivation of I want to get better, you have to set up systems that will support that end goal. And one of the things I'm gonna give you when we're done today is if you're watching me on Instagram or you're listening to this or watching this on the gram

or you catch it later, if you go to the link in my bio, the very first thing you're gonna see is a free business planning course that I'm gonna give you. And it's not just about business planning. You can literally use that one page system, the system that I use to plan anything in life. You can use it to plan how to lose weight. You can lose it to start a new skill, to start a new business, to do whatever you want to get better at the job that you currently have. And it's free to get, you can go right in there and grab it, but you're going to see how a lot of the stuff that's in that one page business plan, that course that I'm giving you for free,

you're going to see how a lot of that stuff translates back into everyday use by building good systems and understanding what it is. And if you look at atomic habits, when it's talking about not having the right idea or having good enough systems, it's because you don't set your goals. Right. You know, I hate the word goal. I've always said that I hate the word goal. And the reason I hate it is because you know, look at football, right? We're coming to the playoffs right now. And at the beginning of the year,

every single one of those, those, those coaches for those football teams, those pro football teams, they asked them at the opening press conference, coach, what's your goal for the season? And they all said the same thing. My goal is to reach the Super Bowl They they knew at that opening press conference our quarterback sucks. They knew they don't have any good defensive player They just knew it but yet they still come out fire and saying my goals are in the Super Bowl So for me, I don't even call the things that I want to accomplish. I don't call them goals. I call them objectives Because that's something i'm going to achieve. I just make a decision a conscious decision to achieve this So when you're setting goals or objectives

They should be smart, which means they should be specific They should be measurable achievable relevant and time-bound How often? I think the last part of that is probably the most important thing. Give yourself a time frame because how often dude, do you do these things where you have, you know, you just, you just have a never-ending amount of time to get something done and it takes

every second of it. If you have teenagers, this is the way of the world. If I give my kids 30 minutes to clean their rooms, their rooms are clean in 30 minutes. If I give my teenagers all day to clean their rooms, their rooms are cleaned at 1159 p.m. One minute before the day goes in the next. So making sure that you have those measurable goals are so important. For example, if you have a goal, let's talk about getting healthy, because what everybody wants to do is lose some weight in the new year, right? Let's talk about that.

So if you set a goal as my goal is to get healthy, well, that's not measurable, because what is healthy? What does that mean? A smart goal would be, my goal is to lose, or my objective is I'm going to lose 10 pounds by this date. I'm going to weigh 10 pounds less than I am now. And then using that information, you can go into chat GBT or anywhere else,

and you can come up with an exact plan based on your BMI, your age, your caloric intake, how much output you put and all of those things. And you can come up with an exact system of what you need to do to get you there. Now I'm also a firm believer of coming up with multiple routes to get to the same place. And when you look at the, like I said, the one page business plan that I gave you in my link,

when you look at that, or if you're listening to us on a podcast, just go to the john gaffer.com and it's the first one. But when I do this, every single one of my objectives, which is, which my strategies to reach my objectives, each one of them individually, I always go with three, I come up with three different strategies to get to the objective I've want., each one of them individually, I always go with three, I come up with three different strategies to get to the objective I want. Now each one of them as a standalone idea could get you where you wanna be, each one of those things. But I figure if I do all three of them,

then now I can absolutely hit what I wanna hit. I'm kinda guaranteed to three exit. And if one of those things falls flat or one of those things goes awry, now I can absolutely get to where I want to be. So for example, if my goal or my objective was to lose weight, one of those would obviously be my diet. So rather than say I want to eat healthy, which is bullshit, I would say by this date, I'm going to research exactly the caloric intake I need, exactly the macros that I need. And you can get this anywhere online.

I would set a goal to every Sunday. I'm going to meal prep. There's nothing you can do to help you eat healthier than by preparing all of your meals for the weekend. One day, just make the sacrifice and make the commitment that on that Sunday, you're going to do that. So there's my health strategy. There's my eating strategy, right? Now obviously to lose weight, I also have to have some sort of physical exercise.

So then I would have my physical exercise where I would say, I'm going to work out Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays. I'm going to walk 10,000 steps a day every single day. And I'll have measurable things that record that correlate back to days that are going to get stuff done. Because again, things have got to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. You know, the next, the next mistake that I see a lot of people make and why they're not achieving

their goals is simply because they throw the towel in, man, they give up. Things are hard. Oh, it's hard. It's inconvenient, man. It's so much easier just to sit on the couch and do nothing Why would I want to work hard? Why would I want to do that? And if you struggle with perseverance if that's something that you have an issue with Then I highly recommend you check out the book grit by angela duckworth where it talks about having Perseverance and passion in what you're doing

Is super important and when I talk about, again, back to the one page business plan, I'm giving you guys, when I talk about that stuff, the very first thing that we talk about in that plan is your vision is understanding why you're trying to do this. If you say, I want to lose weight, the idea of you doing that is pretty slim. You know, unfortunately I've had several of my good friends pass away in the last month, give or take. I know that seems crazy, but it's true.

When you reach a certain age, that kind of shit just happens. And you know, for me being in the best health possible has nothing to do with vanity anymore. It has to do with the fact of being there for as long as I can for my family. So if I was writing a vision statement that was regarding an objective of losing weight, it would be based on on my daughter's 40th, you know, 32nd birthday, whatever it is, I'm walking her down the aisle at her wedding. When I'm 75 years old, I'm playing actively in the yard with my grandchildren because I want to project myself to a specific point in the future, out in time, a specific place out there. And I want to draw a picture that means something to me. It doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else, but I want to create a visual of my vision of why

I'm trying to get to where I am. Now this vision, what it's designed to do is to get your ass in the gym, is to make one more phone call. It's to do that one extra thing that's going to get you to persevere when things get tough. To have that conversation with yourself that I'm just going to get one win today. I just got to get one win. That's all I got to get. As long as I get one win, that's all I care about. Just give me the one win. If I can get that, I'm chalking it up as a win. You know, the next thing reason that people fall into a trap is because they go the all or nothing. Things are either working or they're not. In the power of habit by Charles Dung,

he highlights the need to anchor new habits to existing routines and focus on small manageable changes built at a time. For example, this is why I got to tell you I'm not a huge fan. I have a lot of friends that have done it, but I'm not a huge fan of 75 hard because I think there's so much failure in that. I think there's so much. It's such a shock to the system. People are like, no, it's good. It's mental strength. I look, I get it, get it dude i get it but don't set yourself up for failure maybe set yourself up for incremental improvement instead of all or nothing because if you're like i'm not going to eat any sugar at all if that's what you're if that's what

you're saying i'm eating no sugar well then the first time you eat an oreo you just blew everything you're doing now you're completely screwed and you've got two choices, which you can either start over and get back in the game or do what most people do and stop going to the gym in February. So having and focusing on systems and not outcomes. Again, that is the key to a lot of this stuff to avoid those last two things. Focus on the systems, not the outcomes. If you focus on, if you're trying to improve your business and your business is making contacts,

in real estate, I tell people this all the time, the number one thing I focus on when I coach people, when I train people in real estate, is you focus on appointments. Not deals, not escrows, not closings, not open house, focus on appointments. If you focus on nothing else other than that one thing, that metric will move the needle for you so much because there's nothing, there's no such thing as a bad one-on-one appointment with anybody.

It's just not. So find the metric that's going to move the needle for the most for whatever you're trying to achieve and focus on that. You know, the next thing I would say is people don't focus on incremental success. They just look for the big thing. I want to lose 45 pounds and they're not going to be happy until they hit 45 pounds. I want to make $250,000 and they're not going to see success until they do. pounds. I want to make $250,000 and they're not going to see success until they do. It is so important to measure those incremental things as you go along, those incremental moments of success in whatever objective you're trying to hit that you've got to take a second and understand those daily wins. Moving that boulder one inch a day will eventually get that thing

rolling down a hill, but you've got to be, you got to be willing to celebrateoulder one inch a day will eventually get that thing rolling down a hill. But you've got to be, you got to be willing to celebrate that one inch as much as the, as the end of the line. And the last thing I would say reasons why people fail to hit their stuff is definitely procrastination. I mean, this is probably in this day and age of, of instant gratification of everything's right now of I can just literally sit on the couch and watch the you know the wealth of entertainment that's ever been on planet Earth in the palm of my hand man it is

easy to put off what's hard and I had this conversation yesterday with my son you know we were talking about something that he's struggling with here at work that he's having a hard time with There is a lot of rejection in that there's a lot of rejection in what we were talking about And I said man the the great is in the heart. You got to embrace the suck You got to lean into the stuff that's hard and for that, you know, I would say again I've said it many times on my podcast for me, the greatest book. And the first thing anybody should ever read is the obstacles the way by Ryan

Holliday. I love that book. I think without being able to lean into what makes things hard is what makes them great. Nothing is going to be accomplished. So again, I hope you take that advice for the new year, man. I wish all of you guys, it's been a great year here for the podcast. We've had some unbelievable guests over the last year, got some unbelievable guests already booked for the new year. The guests just seem to be getting bigger and bigger

and bigger and more important. I can't believe some of the people that say yes to this thing. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you for listening to us And again if you're trying to plan anything jump in there and grab that planning course. I put it up there for you guys There's no charge. There's no there's no add-ons. There's no anything else. Just grab it. Just grab it and do it So as we head into the new year, just remember man, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, but you've got to set your mind in a direction that makes sense. We'll see you next time.

What's up everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show you can always go over to escaping the drift.com You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor if you wouldn't mind though up that five-star review Give us a share do something man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us

But anyway in the meantime, we will see you in the next episode