Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - This Is How Top Athletes and Coaches Think About Their Fitness Goals

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

There are many different schools of thought on how to set goals. Some swear by the SMART goal-setting paradigm. Others rely on affirmations, meditation, or journaling. And others kibosh goal-setting altogether and simply focus on envisioning a better future, hoping their thoughts transmogrify into reality. If you’ve played with any of these approaches, though, you’ve probably noticed that they tend to go nowhere fast. You keep reviewing your SMART goals, telling yourself to think positive, filling page after page of your diary, or chipping away at a few choice habits, but after a few weeks or months, you lose heart. Many people chalk up their failure to a lack of discipline, determination, or motivation, and while these can be factors, their biggest mistake lies in putting their faith in faulty, facile goal-setting systems. Most of the goal-setting models I just described have merit, but they also tend to be incomplete or ineffective when put to the acid test. Like a map without a compass, they help you feel like you’re on the right track without providing all of the tools and information you need to reach your destination. I’ve spent many years reading about and testing various goal-setting strategies, and I’ve come to believe there’s no one winning formula that works for everyone under all circumstances. That said, there are some evidence-based goal-setting principles that you can apply in every situation that will increase your chances of success. And in this podcast, you’ll learn to look at goal setting in a new, more productive light. Be warned: This isn’t a rah-rah you-can-do-it approach. It won’t be comfortable. But it’ll work. Before we get into all of that, though, let’s first diagnose the problem with most approaches to goal setting. --- Timestamps: 5:56 - What are the problems with how people set goals? 9:28 - What are the characteristics, habits, and behaviors of entrepreneurs? 31:18 - How can I better achieve my fitness goals? Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: buylegion.com/mike --- Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello, I'm Mike Matthews. This is Must For Life. Welcome, welcome, and thank you for joining me today to learn a bit about goals. A better way to set goals and to use goals to drive performance and results than how many people go about it. Now, there are many different schools of thought on this, of course, on how to set goals and how to use goals properly. Some people swear by the SMART goal setting paradigm, for example, and that's an acronym, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. You've probably come across that before if you have read or listened to anything about setting goals. come across that before if you have read or listened to anything about setting goals. Other people don't subscribe to that philosophy, but they rely more on affirmations and mindfulness, maybe meditation, journaling, and others still kibosh goal setting altogether and just focus

on envisioning a better future and then hoping that somehow thinking the right thoughts will activate their big growth energy and enable them to own their power and manifest their abundance. And yeah, that tells you what I think about all of that. I'm a big believer in optimism and in positive thinking. For example, I liked the book, The Magic of Thinking Big, and I often recommend that book. If you haven't read it, I recommend that you do read it. I do agree with many of the ideas in it. But what I disagree with, simply because it doesn't work, is any philosophy that revolves around the idea that the primary component of success, the fulcrum, is thinking the right thoughts. No, that is not. Effort is.

Work is. Consistent effort. Consistent work. And often that means putting effort and work into things that you don't really want to do. But you make yourself do them because you know that you need to do them to reach your goal. Your purpose is stronger than your aversion to doing the work. And so beware any mindset or worldview or advice that tries to move you in the other direction, that tries to move you away from exerting effort and large amounts of effort consistently because it's a trap and it's going to fail you. And so anyway, getting back on track here, back to speaking about goals. If you have tried any of the approaches that I mentioned a few minutes ago, you've probably noticed that they don't work really well. You keep reviewing your

smart goals. You keep telling yourself to think positive. You keep filling page after page of your diary or chipping away at a few choice habits, but eventually you just lose heart because the results are not there. Now, many people chalk that failure up to a lack of discipline or determination or motivation. And while those certainly can be factors, often the biggest mistake lies in just putting their faith in faulty goal-setting systems. Because the models that I described earlier do have some merit, but when it comes to the crunch, they also tend to be ineffective or at least incomplete. And oftentimes when people do report success with them, they don't realize that they have made up for the deficiencies, that they did more than

just the smart goals or just the affirmations. They did some other key things that enabled them to succeed. And without those things, they would have failed. And I'm going to be talking about all of that in today's episode, including some evidence-based goal-setting principles that have served me well, and that I think you'll be able to apply to good effect in your life. And I don't think that there is a one-size-fits-all winning formula that's going to work for everyone under all circumstances. But if your goal-setting armamentarium is well-stocked, you'll be able to find the formula that works for you. You'll be able to find the ideas and the actions that ultimately allow you to get to where you want

to be. And that pragmatism is something that I like about this topic. And this episode hopefully will help you work that out. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example. And everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings

of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to buylegion.com slash Mike. or head over to buylegion.com slash Mike. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash Mike.

And just to show you how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. Okay, so let's start this discussion with some of the problems with how many people set goals. And let's start that with the SMART formula that I mentioned in the intro. And there are many derivatives of this as well, because it has been around for a while. Now, in case you didn't listen to the intro, SMART is an acronym for outlining goals that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Now, according to many productivity gurus, unless your goal meets those criteria, it's just a dream. But if you apply the SMART formula to it, then you can make your goal a reality. Now, if you have ever followed this system, you've probably found that it doesn't really pan out in practice as it does on paper. And the main reason for this is the SMART formula

works well for clarifying a goal you have already set, but it offers little guidance on how to choose a goal in the first place. What's more, it doesn't address prioritizing goals among many others, as well as obligations that are calling for your attention or identifying and executing the steps that you'll actually need to take to achieve the goal. I would say that the SMART formula is better at describing how people set goals than prescribing how to set them. In other words, most people don't have trouble setting a specific goal that is relative to something they want or they need and then giving it a deadline. That's pretty common. But the real bear, at least for most people, is determining what goals to pursue in

the first place and which ones to table, to put off for the future, and what the best course of action is for achieving the goals that are at the top of the list, and then how to build systems that put you on the road to success that if you just work consistently enough will produce the results that you want, will help you get to the goal. Now, that isn't to say that the smart formula or any of the many iterations of it is wrong or useless, but it's just not complete. And another problem with the smart formula is I think it often leads to what the author and computer science professor Cal Newport refers to as pseudo-striving. It gives you an evanescent boost of motivation and satisfaction, like you did something to get closer to your goal when you didn't really. The needle didn't actually move.

So what should we do instead? What's a better way to achieve our goals and specifically our fitness goals? That's going to be the focus of this discussion, given the theme of the podcast. But of course, what I'm going to be talking about applies to any goal, really. Now, the full answer to that question I just posed could fill several books, of course, but I want to share with you one approach in particular that has worked very well for athletes, for entrepreneurs, for high achievers in many different disciplines. Now, this different approach comes from the work of a woman named Saras Sarasvati. And in the late 90s, she was pondering a simple question, but a very difficult question to answer. And that is, what makes some

entrepreneurs so much more successful than others, than their peers? Why do some people continually produce big wins and others just limp along or fall flat? Or as she put it, what are the characteristics, habits, and behaviors of the species entrepreneur? Now, instead of just meditating on the question in an ivory tower or examining some well-known literature, scientific literature, business books, or going back over existing paradigms and paragons like Steve Jobs or Howard Schultz, Sam Walton, and so forth, Saris hit the road. She went to 17 different states. She met with 30 founders of companies with revenues ranging from $200 million per year to over $6 billion per year in a wide range of industries, from steel manufacturing to teddy bear sales and practices and principles and routines. She wanted to understand the thinking process behind their actions. She wanted to understand their operating system.

Why did they make this or that decision? Why did they pursue this goal over that one? Why did they invest time, money, and effort into this thing and not those things. And to that end, Saris had each person complete a writing exercise that involved solving 10 problems to create a successful business, all starting with the same product. She also had them talk through their thought processes and she recorded their answers as they answered the questions. And then she went through the recordings meticulously and she was looking for patterns and the way these people puzzled out these problems. And what she identified is that there were several similarities in their thinking. And the most striking one was working backward to figure out what resources, skills, advantages, and people that they would need to accomplish them, so that's referred to as causal thinking, these business people went in the other direction. They flipped the script. They took stock of what resources, skills, and advantages, and people they currently had, and then they set goals based on that information. So in other words,

instead of setting big, hairy, audacious goals in a vacuum that sound great, but have no clear path to realization, what these people did is they looked at their current circumstances first, and then they outlined a number of possible next steps given where they are at, and then started working out goals based on what they foresaw. Now, of course, those resources and skills and advantages in people can grow over time, and that is reflected in longer-term goals. That would be reflected in, okay, let's say what the first quarter goals for the business are, the first year, first three, first five. Of course, those goals can grow bigger and hairier and more audacious. But again, they would be based in the reality of resources, skills,

It would be based in the reality of resources, skills, advantages, and people, and conservative estimates of outputs, what can actually be produced. And while Saris's work was about the essence of entrepreneurship, that's what she was investigating, this unique way of approaching goals has tremendous utility for us fitness people as well. And really the one-liner is effectual thinkers are pragmatists. They take the stars out of their eyes. They size up their strengths and weaknesses before they start setting goals. And then they start looking at which mountain peaks they should try to climb and in what order and why. Now, that is the polar

opposite of how many people set fitness goals or really any goal for that matter. Instead, most people have been taught to shoot for the stars, hit your wagon to a star, and then you'll find the motivation to somehow get there and you'll change your behaviors naturally and you will adopt the right habits and you will find whatever you need to find to get there, shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars, right? And there is value in that, especially if we're talking about long-term, challenging, even unrealistic goals. And I'll talk more on that in a moment.

But more often than not, those goals just turn into willow the wisps. They're so distant, they're so daunting, they're so disconnected from the current reality that they just become excuses to not get started or to not keep going, to not keep building momentum and get that flywheel spinning faster and faster. So for example, let's say you want to lose weight. And like many people, you have tried and failed many times before. Is making your goal more specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, or time-bound really going to change it? This time we're applying that smart formula and saying that, okay, you want to lose 30 pounds in six months,

is that going to deliver the goods? No, of course not. An effectual thinker though, would take a different tack. Instead, what they would first look at is their current resources, their current limitations, their current advantages, and then they would plan their next steps. Again, based on what they realistically have to apply, to bring to bear, and what they can realistically do. So the appraisal of the weight loss situation might look something like this. Okay, I am 30 pounds overweight, and I have been this way for a while, and I've tried many diets and workout routines, and I haven't stuck with anything for more than maybe a month or two before giving up. I've lost some weight in the past, but never more than 10 pounds,

and I've never kept it off for more than six months. The real struggle for me is consistency, but what I do have going for me is I am willing to learn things. I am willing to work at things. I do excel in my work life, and in most areas of my life, I have things moving in the right direction. I just haven't been able to crack this body composition nut. I've also seen several of my friends lose weight and I know that if they can do it, I can do it too. I just need the formula that works for me. All right, that's a good starting place. Now, what actions can our friend consistently execute right away based on that assessment? Well, they could start educating themselves

on the real science, the grammar of fat loss, muscle gain, and habit change. They could buy a cookbook and use their free time to teach themselves how to cook healthy meals so they could eat out less and eat less fast food maybe. And maybe they could start going on walks a few times per week just to get into the habit of consistently exercising. Start with that tiny habit, right? In other words, even though this person hasn't set any smart goals or any deadlines, they can start taking effective actions right away that will get them closer to the desired outcome of 30 pounds lost. Now, at this point, you might be wondering, how are you supposed to decide on

your next actions if you don't know what your long-term goal is? Or put differently, if you only focus on these realistic, small, tiny, stepping stone, short-term goals based on what you have at hand, how are you going to on what you have at hand? How are you going to break out of your current circumstances? How are you going to break out of that rut and achieve big, meaningful things over the long haul? Well, the answer to that brings us back to another insight that Sarasvati gleaned from her study of entrepreneurs. None of them exclusively focused on effectual thinking. They just prioritized it over causal thinking. As she explained, quote, the same person can use both causal and effectual reasoning at different times depending on what the circumstances call for. In fact, the best entrepreneurs are capable of both and do use both modes well. In other words, the entrepreneurs had a general sense of what they wanted to achieve. There was a vision there for the future, even if it wasn't

perfectly crisp and delineated. But what they poured most of their time and energy into was quickly identifying and effectively executing the next actions to get there. And for whatever it's worth, this is always how I have been naturally oriented toward goal setting. When I start out in an activity, I've always just naturally taken stock of where I'm at, what I have to give to this activity in the way of time, money, effort, skill, and so forth. And what I think all of that is likely to produce over the first six to 12 months, maybe three months, depending on whatever we're talking about. But if it is a business thing, probably six to 12 months. And if I can realistically paint an even bigger picture,

if I can see a lot of potential, then I may also give a little bit of thought to what the three-year mark might look like, the five-year mark, if the six to 12-month test goes well. So for example, I might play around with the idea of if it goes well and if it has this potential to scale what that might look like, if I can put more resources into it, if I can put more time into it, more money into it, more effort into it. But even that is based on what I realistically think I can put into it. And whenever I'm going through one of these exercises, I'm always thinking with things being a lot harder in actuality than I anticipate, taking a lot more time, taking a lot more money, and falling a bit short in terms of my expected outcomes because I've learned too many times that I tend to be a little bit too optimistic in how quickly and inexpensively I think that I can

get certain things done and how well I think they're going to do. And so I found it just more practical, again, really try to be conservative in my estimates about what it's going to take in terms of resources to make something happen and how far I am likely to get if I do that. And so a couple of examples. One, let's take Legion, my sports nutrition company, legionathletics.com. Given our strategic plans for how we are going to make use of the people and the skills and the advantages and the capital that we have available to us right now and given our plans to increase the availability of those things over the course of this year, I think that the company can do $27 to $30 million in revenue. I think that is a good

conservative estimate that I backed into by looking at each element of the strategic plan and going through the process that I outlined. What is it going to take to do this? And what are the range of likely outcomes? If we think about it like a normal distribution, a bell curve, what would be an okay, a pretty good outcome, middle of the curve? What would that look like? And normal distributions being what they are, that range of outcomes would comprise the most likely range of outcomes, 60 to 70% likely to fall within that range. And then look at what extraordinarily good outcomes might look like, extraordinarily bad outcomes, even though they are less likely. And so doing that type of analysis, a weighted analysis, cost-benefit analysis of each point, then I can predict

with pretty good accuracy where we are going to end up by the end of the year. Now, let's say that I had a big, hairy, audacious goal of $50 million in revenue this year. Is that possible? Of course. Many things are possible. Not everything, but many, many things are possible. However, if I look at the resources we have and our plans for implementing them, for putting them to good use, I don't see it. I don't see how we get to $50 million in revenue this year. It would require extraordinary luck. I pin the probability at no more than 5%. It would require, for example, that our retail and our international programs that we are going to be putting into effect this year go extremely well. Again, like far right of the

distribution curve here. Or it would require that our paid acquisition campaigns, which we are going to be aggressively ramping up this year, go extremely well, like way better than I would anticipate. And can those things happen? Sure. And if they happen, great. Then you won't hear me complaining. But as far as setting goals, setting expectations, and then figuring out next actions, the $50 million number is just a non-starter for me because the only high probability play that I can think of that would allow me to get there would be finding the perfect strategic partner who's going to bring a lot of capital into the business and who is going to agree to a high valuation. Given the business's current financials and market share, I wouldn't be willing to sell

equity at a mediocre valuation just to try to goose the growth a bit. I would rather stick to my current plan, hit the high 20s to maybe low 30s without any outside money, and then maybe look at raising money to try to go to the next level. But anyway, if I were willing to go down that road now, then maybe I could get to $50 million. The reason why I am not pursuing that strategy is I just mentioned the valuation point and there may be issues there. And I also just don't see it as a very high probability play. I don't think there are many potential strategic partners out there that would really fit the bill. Again, they would need to have a lot of money and a lot of connections and a lot of expertise.

It would have to be kind of plug and play where they're going to go, all right, we're going to inject $20 million into your business. We're going to take this equity for that. And we're going to agree to this high valuation. And we have all of the connections for retail, for international, and we have all of this marketing and advertising expertise. We're just going to pull some levers and push some buttons and that's it, 50 million, 60 million in sales this year. If you are that person, I definitely want to hear from you, mikeatmostfullife.com. But based on the discussions I've had with quite a few smart and successful business people, some of them who work in private equity and mergers and acquisitions, it's just not likely to pan out. It's possible, but not likely. And I don't like that. I don't like investing a lot of resources into something that is low probability when I can invest those resources into something that is high probability

with 70% of the outcome. So anyway, that's why my strategic planning for Legion this year explicitly says this is intended to produce 27 to $30 million in sales. Another example of applying this mentality to goal setting is how I went about learning golf when I was living in Florida. So what I did is before I started anything, I looked at how much time I was going to be giving it per week. And I figured that I could give 10 to 15 hours per week to golf without getting much in the way of anything else. I was willing to do that. That meant a bit less time working, but there was something to be said for taking a little bit less time working, but there was something to be said for taking a little bit of time off of work. So I would go usually a little bit of time on

Saturday, and then I would put in most of my time on Sundays. And so, okay, with 10 to 15 hours per week, can I make progress? Is that enough to get good? Because I wasn't interested in getting into golf and sucking. I don't like doing things that I'm bad at. If I'm going to do something, I probably am going to have to get at least good at it, or I'm just going to stop doing it. And how good do I need to be to enjoy golf? Well, I concluded that I needed to be able to consistently shoot in at least the high 70s to low 80s to really feel like I was playing the game and to be able to maybe play in some local tournaments and some friendly matches and be able to put some money on it and make it fun. And so then the question was, okay, is 10 to 15 hours per week enough to go from where I was at in the beginning,

which was bad, I don't know, 100 plus average scoring, high 90s would have been like a good round. Two, that low 80s to high 70s. And in talking with some pros, not like professional golfers, but teaching pros, and reading some books on golf, I concluded that, yeah, that probably is doable. I wasn't sure, but it wasn't completely unreasonable. It wasn't like me saying that I wanted to play on a mini tour within a year of putting 10 or 15 hours a week into it. No. And so anyway, what I concluded based again on my own study and speaking with credible experts is that I should be able to do that. I should be able to go from where I was at to low 80s and high 70s within a year to maybe two years. So a year would be fast, two years would be kind of slow. Again, if we look at this on a bell curve, maybe a year and a half

on average. And if I pick it up quickly and I just have a knack for it, I might be there within a year. And if I don't pick it up quickly and don't have much of a knack for it, it might take two years. Now, next was the decision. Is this a goal worth pursuing 10 to 15 hours a week, a year to two years, assume a year and a half to get to a point where I'm consistently enjoying the game? And I figured, yeah, it was. That's not that much time. I did enjoy the process of learning the game and learning the swing and practicing. So there was enjoyment there. I was able to enjoy the playing of the game and learning the swing and practicing. So there was enjoyment there. I was able to enjoy the playing of the game to some degree sometimes when I hit good shots and

then when I hit bad shots, not so much. In the beginning, I was hitting, of course, a lot more bad shots than good shots, but that's okay. The good shots lessen the sting of the bad shot. And I also liked the long-term implications of getting good at golf because it's something that I could do for the rest of my life. And it's something that I can do anywhere in the world. And I had friends that were into it. And I'm assuming that if I started to look at the system that was going to be needed to get to my goal within one to two years, given the time constraints. And I don't want to ramble too much about this, so I'll just kind of end the anecdote there. But I created that system just by reading books and learning about what other people did to go from bad to good. And in the end, I came close. So within a year or so of a year and a couple of months of working at this, I had made really good progress.

My best round was an 81. And that was a 39 on the front and a 42 on the back. And that was real golf, of course. No mulligans, no fixing lies, no bullshit. And I was consistently now in the high eighties to low nineties. And I was knocking probably on average about two balls out of bounds per round. And so that was costing me four strokes right there. And those were almost always off of the tee. And so I was then working on improving my accuracy off the tee tee because if I just stopped knocking balls out of bounds, then I would be

very close to my original goal. Now, ultimately I ended up moving to Virginia and playing a lot less golf. So I didn't reach my goal, but I will pick it up at some point in the near future, probably within the next couple of years, I'll be willing to give it that time again. And because of all of the work that I did previously, I will be able to get back to where I was very quickly. I've already experienced this several times where I would get into playing a little bit of golf again and start hitting more good shots and start seeing that old game start to come back. But I don't like playing golf by myself. I learned that in Florida and I didn't really find anybody at the local club that I was playing at here in Virginia that I wanted to spend

afternoons with. And so that was a bit of a damper for me. However, it looks like I'm going to be moving back to Florida this year. And several of the guys who work with me are based in Florida and I'll be probably not right where they are, but I'll be close enough to where I can start playing with at least one of them, if not two of them. And that'll be fun. Then I'll be able to enjoy the game and enjoy the company. And you know, speaking of the muscle memory of golf, this was kind of funny. I was in Wyoming last summer. I hadn't swung a golf club in probably six months, like literally not one swing. And so I go to play with a buddy of mine and I use his clubs. I didn't care to bring my clubs because I just didn't really care. We're going to play like one round of golf and I hadn't played any golf in six months. Screw

it. I'll use his clubs and I'm six, two, he's probably five, 10. So his clubs are probably not optimal for me, but they were okay. They were good enough, right? So I'm on the range, warm up, first swings again in six plus months, start to get into a groove, start to feel pretty comfortable. And in that round, I had my first eagle. I hit a great drive and then I hit a great three wood off of the fairway and then made probably a 15 foot putt for eagle. putt for eagle. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Anyhow, let's get back on track. Let's start talking about goal setting in the context of fitness. How can you use everything that we just discussed to better set and achieve your fitness goals? Well, I have a simple three-step formula or strategy that's going to help. The

first is write down exactly where you stand in terms of your fitness, then write down what you want to achieve, then write down the habits that you'll need to of your fitness, then write down what you want to achieve, then write down the habits that you'll need to get there, and then start doing them immediately. So let's talk a little bit more about each of these steps. So this first one, write down exactly where you stand in terms of your fitness. So before you set any goals, you really need to take a clear-eyed look at your current circumstances. And if you're not sure where to start with that, just ask yourself a few questions. What are you doing well at right now? What are you good at?

What do you need to improve at? What bothers you the most about your health and fitness right now? What do you find yourself thinking about the most? What have you tried to achieve in the past? And how did it go? And this writing exercise serves two important purposes. The first one is it helps you better estimate how much time, effort, and attention you'll need to achieve your goals. That is, before you decide where you want to go, it's useful to understand what it's going to cost, how much time, how much discomfort, how much energy, what is it going to require in the way of sacrifice? And the other reason why this writing exercise is useful is as your thoughts simmer, your most important goals will naturally bubble to the surface. So for example, if your weight is just the thing that bothers you the most about your fitness right now, then losing weight is probably

going to be your most important fitness goal. It probably will make more sense to focus on losing fat on a cutting phase versus a lean bulking phase, for example. That's a question that many guys usually ask me, should I cut first or lean bulk first? And there is a personal preference that matters. So if a guy is more concerned with gaining muscle and strength, let's say he's kind of skinny fat and he doesn't like that he has a belly, let's say, but he really doesn't like that he has small muscles. So he has very small arms, his clothes don't fit him well, then it would probably make more sense for him to lean bulk first, get a good six months of muscle and strength gain under his belt before he cuts. On the other hand, if he's kind of skinny fat and he really doesn't like his gut and that

it sticks out and that he has to wear a belt and so forth, then it probably makes sense to cut first. Okay, let's get rid of the gut. Let's see some abs and then we can start lean bulking. Now, you don't have to write much for this, maybe five or 10 sentences. And as you write, try to avoid self-censoring, try to avoid dramatizing, exaggerating, moralizing. Don't be self-righteous with yourself. Just state the facts as you see them. Pretend like you are a scientist that is just analyzing data. Don't write, I suck at dieting. Write, I haven't consistently followed a diet for more than eight weeks in a row. Just data. Now, if you find that difficult, again, imagine that you have a scientist that you have paid to just give you a no-nonsense assessment of your life, or maybe a consultant,

a life coach. If your life coach is an actual life coach, you need a new life coach. But anyway, the idea is that you have a third party who is just giving you unfiltered feedback, no judgment, just the facts. And you may even have a trusted friend or family member who could help with that, but they need to make sure that they do not sugarcoat their responses. All right, step two is write down what you want to achieve. And this is where causal thinking can be helpful because now is the time to think more carefully about what you want to achieve, what outcome you desire. So based on your answers from the first step, then answer the question of what

do you want to achieve with your body? Now you can think in any timeframe that you like. You can think in months, years, decades, whatever, but you just want to write down everything that comes to mind, whether it's a matter of health, maybe it's a lower your cholesterol to a healthy range, or maybe it's vanity, get abs, get biceps, get a better butt, whatever, or maybe some sort of personal satisfaction like climbing a mountain. Now, once you have thought about those things, the hard part comes because now you need to organize your list of goals from the most important to the least important. And if you struggle with this, ask yourself two questions. What am I willing to give up to achieve this goal? And just know that the more

that you are willing to sacrifice, the more the goal is important to you. If you cannot really honestly say that you're willing to give something much time, effort, money, you just don't really want it that much. And that's okay. It is very important to be honest with yourself on the importance or lack of importance of these goals. because if the importance is not there, if the necessity is not there, if the willingness to sacrifice is not there, then you are almost certainly not going to achieve the goal. So who cares? Now, if you're thinking, well, aren't some goals just objectively important, like health goals, for example, if you are unhealthy and you have a health condition, isn't it objectively important to fix that? And if someone doesn't feel

the urge, like they know intellectually it's important, but emotionally they're just not invested in it. They just are not willing to give up the foods or give up the lifestyle. What does that mean? Well, it can mean different things, but often it means they haven't really clarified their whys. And if you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com and search for fitness why, and you'll find an article and a podcast based on the article called Finding Your Biggest Fitness Wise. Check that out. Okay, so back to prioritizing the goals. This sacrifice point is good for determining which goals are more important to you than others. And you can also think about if you could only achieve one of the goals on your

list, what would it be? Just keep asking yourself that until you've worked your way through the whole list. So initially you can eliminate several that are definitely not the one, and then look at the candidates for the one. And as you go over them, you'll probably eliminate a couple more and you just repeat that process until you've winnowed the one. And then the next part is harder, unfortunately, because you have to circle the top two goals on your list, and then you have to ignore the rest for now. You're going to focus on just the top two. And the importance of focus cannot be understated. You can only effectively pursue a limited number of goals at any one time.

You only have so much time and so much energy. And if you spread yourself too thin, if you dilute your efforts into too many different goals, you will ultimately overreach and you are not going to make enough progress on any of them to stay motivated and to get to where you want to be. And I've made this mistake plenty of times and I've had to discipline myself to not try to do too many things at once and to ensure that I know why I'm doing what I'm doing and ensure that I'm still clear on whatever I'm doing being the highest and best use of my time. One of the things that I find demotivating and just aggravating is losing that clarity, is working on a project that isn't clearly the thing I should be doing over all of the other things. And so I regularly audit what

I'm doing with my time and what projects I have on the docket, so to speak, and what are all of the other potential things I could be working on and just making sure that I still agree with my prioritization because sometimes I find that just revisiting the list of things that I could be doing, let's say after a few months of doing things, changes my perspective. Sometimes circumstances force a change. Other times it really is just me seeing things a bit differently and realizing actually this thing that's in the number one slot really should be in like the number four slot. And this thing that's in the number eight slot should probably be in the number

two slot and so forth. So anyway, back to fitness goals. I think a good rule of thumb is to just pick two goals. And I typically recommend focusing on a body composition or a physiological goal, like losing pounds of fat or gaining pounds of muscle, or maybe reducing blood pressure, as well as a performance-based goal. So again, two goals, one regarding body comp, because that is very motivating, and then another regarding performance, like maybe deadlifting twice your body weight or running a half marathon. And why the bifurcation there? Well, two reasons. One, fitness is only one part of your life and you probably have other personal and professional goals. Thus, you are probably pursuing several other goals at the same time. And if you set too

many goals in one area of your life, like fitness, for example, it will detract from other areas, primarily because it's just going to require more time. And it's also going to require more energy, more physical energy, of course, more mental energy. Now, the good news about fitness goals, and this is the second reason why I recommend setting two fitness goals, is they do tend to be complementary. So pursuing one goal often indirectly helps you achieve the other. So if, for example, your physiological goal is to lose 20 pounds, well, that is going to make it easier to deadlift twice your body weight because you're not going to have to lift as much weight. And if you're going to lose those 20

pounds in the way that I would recommend, you're going to be doing a lot of strength training, which of course is going to work directly toward the performance are really established. But others don't care for deadlines and find them unnecessary or even redundant once you implement the next step. As far as my goal setting goes, my emphasis on deadlines really depends on what we're talking about. So if it is something related to the business and let's say to hit the 27 million or the 30 million dollar revenue number, here are the main things that need to happen. And then here are the things that need to happen to make those things happen. And it's important that these things happen in a timely manner because this thing here, which we are projecting to make us $5 million this year will only make us $5 million if it gets done by June, let's say, and runs for the rest of the year. And so in scenarios like

those, it is important to have deadlines and to prioritize the deadline. And if you don't think you can hit the deadline, given your resources, really starting to figure out, all right, how do we hit this deadline? Unless the answer is actually we can't, in which case then the projections would change, right? If realistically we couldn't get that $5 million thing done until August or September, then we are going to make less money from it. Now, in other arenas of life, I'm not nearly as concerned with a deadline. In my golf example, I didn't have a deadline. I just figured one to two years is a reasonable timeframe. And I could have added a deadline, I guess. I could have said, okay, within the first six to eight months, I need to have broken 90 for the first

time. Now, is that true to achieve my bigger goal? No, probably not. So it just wouldn't have served any useful purpose. So instead, I was more interested in just tracking my progress and seeing if I am roughly on track to achieve the bigger goal. And so I was more interested in tracking the little things that add up to a good round. I was more interested inways. I was putting more balls than on the green and around the green. And I was putting better because as far as the score goes, anybody who plays golf knows that a good round can turn into a bad round really fast. You can have a couple of bad holes if you're playing real golf and that's it. What was going to be an 85 is now a 95 because of three bad holes. And so score alone can be a bit misleading. Of course, you want to see your average score going down, but there can be a lot of volatility even when you are markedly improving your game. It just takes a lot to get to a point of consistently good. Anyway, lest I turn this

episode into a golf instructional piece, let's talk about this third and final step, which is write down the habits you'll need to get to where you want to be and then start doing them immediately. Now, this of course is where the rubber meets the road. What do you need to do every day and every week and every month to reach your goal? And what do you need to not do to make sure that you get there? And you want to brainstorm this and you want to write down a list of possible ideas. So if you want to lose weight, maybe this list has things like eating the right number of calories every day. That's going to be important. And eating enough protein every day, very important. And lifting weights, doing some strength training several times per week and doing some cardio

several times per week. Maybe preparing meals ahead of time. That can help with sticking to your calories and your macros. And as far as not doing things, maybe it's not overeating too often and not overdoing it when you overeat and not staying up too late because then that means that you're more likely to miss workouts and overeat. And of course, it's just not good for your body. Also, maybe not overly restricting your food choices, because that just makes it harder to stick to your diet. Once you have your list, you then want to break those things down into more specific next actions. You want to make

those actions as easy as you can to just do them regularly. And yeah, sometimes you have to kick yourself in the buttocks to get things done, but that's life, right. And yeah, sometimes you have to kick yourself in the buttocks to get things done, but that's life, right? And of course, you don't have to be perfect with any of it. You just have to be good enough most of the time. And if you want to hear more of my thoughts on how to win at the inner game of getting fit, and if you are still listening to this podcast, I'm assuming you like at least something that I have said, check out my book, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. I think you'll like it. Now, I mentioned a couple of minutes ago that this final step can make deadlines redundant. Why is that? Well, when you cultivate the right habits and they just become second nature and

they become things that you do far more often than not or don't do far more often than you do, success really becomes an inevitability instead of just a possibility. By consistently just sticking to your habits, you will reach your goal. You do not need a deadline dangling over your head like the sword of Damocles. For example, if you were to follow the advice I just gave regarding weight loss, you could lose a pound a week, maybe two pounds per week, depending on where you are starting, like clockwork, without feeling excessive hunger or cravings or without suffering low energy levels and low mood and all of the other negative side effects associated with dieting.

All right. Well, this was a longer episode, but I hope you found it helpful. And if I were going to distill everything in this podcast down to just one line, it would probably be spend 10% of your time thinking about what you want and 90% of your time thinking about how you're going to get it and taking the next actions required. And I know that is very commonplace and it's unsexy and it's not very fun until you really get proficient at it. But fortunately, you can get proficient at it. You just have to practice and you have to work at it. And like anything else, there are ups and

downs and sometimes things go better and sometimes things go worse. But so long as your general trajectory is upward, you are making progress. And it's also one of those crucial things that people who consistently succeed do and people who consistently fail do not do. consistently fail do not do. All right, well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier,

and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help

you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.