The Nick Bare Podcast - 183: The Truth About Why You Need To Set Goals That Scare You

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

I'm sharing five facts about goal setting I've learned across 14 years of building BPN including the military's aim-shoot-move framework to BHAGs, OKRs, why your goal has to excite you, why high achievers don't actually want rest, and the dangerous we-have-arrived syndrome that plants the seeds of decline.CHAPTERS:00:00 Intro01:55 Valley To Next Peak04:24 Aim Shoot Move08:01 Dog Lesson11:06 Goals Must Excite15:50 Commitment And Control21:33 Avoid Shiny Distractions26:56 BHAGs30:29 OKRs And Milestones36:02 Serve More Judge Less39:54 Continuous Goal SettingORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionIG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitnessThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

These are five facts about goal setting that I have learned over my personal and professional life so far. And a few years ago, I was sitting down with my good friend Louis House. He was on my podcast. And we were having a conversation about one of his newer books that he was publishing and releasing. And something he told me, I will always remember. and it's about being on mission. Now mission and goals are very aligned. And he said,

a man without a meaningful mission is a dangerous, dangerous man. Someone who does not have a meaningful mission they are pursuing is dangerous not only to themselves, but to other people around them. And that leads into my first fact. The first fact is that goals provide us targets and prevent us from wondering aimlessly,

wondering aimlessly. As much as I love the way that sounds, that describes what it looks like and feels like to live life without a mission, without a goal, I hate it just as much because of how dangerous it can be, to wonder aimlessly. I was sitting in church a few weeks ago and we go to Celebration Church here in Georgetown, Texas.

Pastors Joe and Lori Champion lead that church. And something Pastor Joe was saying in one of his sermons, he was encouraging us not to set up camp when we are in the valley. And being in the valley can be darkness, it can be a low, it can be a really challenging hard time of our life. And what happens to a lot of people is you get to the valley, you get to the hard part of life, and you want to set up camp. You just want to stay there.

because climbing out of it is intimidating, it is scary, it is the unknown. So people set up camp in the valley. And as soon as you set up camp, you're telling yourself and everyone around you, I'm here to stay. I'm here for the long haul. And what we need to do when we find ourselves in a valley, and a valley doesn't necessarily have to be a really low part of your life. It doesn't have to be a challenging hardship moment. It can be the lull between two highs, two successes, two wins, two accomplishments.

If you look at someone who plays professional sports, if they win the Super Bowl, which is a high, a professional football player wins the Super Bowl, the highest of high they can experience in that professional path. After winning that Super Bowl, there was probably a lull until the next big win or championship. That lull itself might be the valley. What we have to do when we find ourselves in the valley is to throw in our rucksack and climb out towards the other side

to the next goal, to the next win. If you find yourself in a valley, Valley, wondering aimlessly. You have to set a goal. You have to set a target. Like, where am I going next? In the valley, I identify the next mountaintop. I identify the next goal.

I identify the next mission. That's where I'm climbing to. I'm not setting up camp. Because as soon as you set up camp, you're staying there. Wondering, aimlessly. Now, one of the things they tell us in the military, was to aim, shoot, and move. As soon as you stop moving, you're a target yourself.

And that's the way that I approach life and moving through life. I'm going to aim at my next target, my next objective, my next goal. I'm going to shoot. I'm going to execute. And I'm going to move. I'm going to bound. towards that goal, towards that objective, towards that challenge, that enemy, if you will, aim, shoot, and move.

I have found myself, I won't say many times before, but I found myself in certain chapters, in seasons, in intersections of my life, wondering aimlessly. And it's typically after a win or an, a, success or an accomplishment. I have recognized that I do not thrive in the absence of goals and targets. And I doubt you do either. Because what happens when we don't have goals, when we don't have targets that we're working towards that are challenging us,

we are wondering, aimlessly. We can't aim, which means we have nothing to shoot towards, which means we have no reason to move, aim, shoot, and move. If I don't have something to aim towards, if I don't have a target, if I don't have a goal, I am wondering aimlessly. And like Lewis Howe says, without a meaningful mission,

when you are wondering aimlessly, you are a dangerous, dangerous individual, not just to yourself, but to the people around you as well, to society. I've called myself saying before, after I accomplish X, Y, and Z, after I finish this race, after my business hits a certain revenue target, after I hire this one individual, I'm going to chill. And when I finally accomplished that thing, I finished that race, the business hits that milestone, now I'm ready to chill. I'm chilling for five minutes, and I realize I don't want this.

I don't want the chill. I don't want the wondering aimlessly. I want the next target. I want the next goal. So I set it. I aim towards it. I shoot and I move. I set it.

I aim towards it. I shoot and I move. A lot of people will say they want to chill eventually. They want to retire. They want to rest. But when high performing, high achieving people finally get the opportunity to rest, If you're anything like me, you don't want it. You don't want it because you rise and have learned and know how fulfilling it feels to set goals and then chase them down.

And then what happens to you in the absence of having those targets? As I was planning this episode, it reminded me of a chapter and section of my book titled Go One More. chapter eight is titled legacy can't be bought, it must be built. And there's a section there called purpose and direction that I'm going to read from. It's a story that I share from a conversation I had with my friend Badros Kulian, extremely successful entrepreneur. I've had him on the podcast before a few times and I've loved every conversation with Badros, and this section says, I love the story.

Badros Kulian shared with me about the need for purpose in our lives. While he was on my podcast, he told a great story about a dog named Cookie. They got when his kids were younger. Cookie was part Mastiff, part German Shepherd. And even though she was only eight months old when they got her, she was a big dog. Shortly after bringing Cookie home, she began digging whole. all over the yard and destroying their entire property. So Bezos decided to bring a trainer in to help them.

After spending several weeks with Cookie, the dog trainer told him that he needed to give this type of dog a clear purpose, direction, and mission. These dogs are highly active animals, and in the absence of purpose and direction from their owners, they will create their own, their own purpose and direction. and because Cookie was not given a clear purpose and direction from the beginning, she'd created her own. That was digging holes all over Bejaro's yard.

Bejurus continued to tell me, that's humans. All of us, he told me. Every single one of us, myself included, in the absence of service, routine, structure, and purpose, I will dig holes in my life. Without a mission. without goals, without purpose,

I will dig holes in my life. I will self-destruct. That illustration reinforced a belief of mine that if I ever start self-destructing or self-sabotaging my life, it's because I'm not clear on my meaningful mission at that period of time. I have to be proactive,

take a step back, and make intentional decisions that reinforce what it is that I'm meant to be working on. Goals provide us, targets, to aim, to shoot, to move.

Those targets are meaningful missions. It's purpose. And if we don't have goals, if we don't have targets, something we're aiming towards, we will wonder aimlessly. The second fact is that your goals, they need to excite you.

They need to light you on fire. Now, from the time you set a goal, and then you pursue that goal to success, achievement, accomplishment, it could be a few days, it could be a few months, it could be multiple years. I am on a 14-year journey at this point in my life of building BPN, which was a goal that I set in 2012 in my small college apartment. 14 years later, I'm still jacked up about building BPN. That goal still excites me. I'm still lit on fire daily. There have been seasons where that fire is burning hot and it's roaring and there have been seasons where it's pretty dimly lit and it's just ashes.

I'll be honest. It's not always this roaring fire. But if you set goals that you don't actually care about, they don't excite you, you're pursuing a goal because it excites your family, it's something they want for you, it excites the people that know you or follow you, social media, friends, acquaintances. If it excites them, but it doesn't excite you, doesn't like that. fire inside of you, you're going to have a really hard time staying committed to that goal. I have set goals before that don't really excite me, but I felt like it was a goal that I was

supposed to pursue. And that fire was dimmed from the beginning and it burned out pretty quickly. So I abandoned that goal because I didn't actually care about it. You used to care about the goal for it to excite you. That's the truth. You have to really care about it. Now, some goals are more serious than others. You know, building BPN and their responsibilities come with that. Those are some weighty goals. They don't just affect me, but they affect other people in my life, employees, their families. some of these fitness goals, these races, these competitions that I pursue, they're serious, but at the end of the day, they don't really affect many people other than myself. It's a more personal goal.

There's goals that I set with my family that, again, the responsibility, the heaviness is very weighty because it affects more people than just me. it affects the people I love the most, there's not too much more to say about this fact because it's pretty straightened to the point. If you're serious about your goals, and the goals themselves are serious, the impact, the upside,

the transformation that those goals may bring you and the people around you, it has to excite you. It has to light you on fire. and if it does, it increases your probability of adherence and success. And it makes the journey fun. It's really easy to take, now I share this from a personal lens, it's really easy to take life too serious,

where everything is just so serious all the time. Work, family, food, fitness, I do this myself. I make everything so serious all the time. It doesn't have to be. Sometimes we make it so serious. We lose the joy and the fun and the spontaneous action of chasing down and pursuing the goal. Your goal has to excite you.

It has to light you on fire. Fact number three about goals and goal setting is that goals require commitment. On my run this morning, I had a nice easy six-mile run to kick off the morning. It's part of my morning routine that I love very much. I think about that run as I'm laying in bed at night falling asleep. I love the first two hours of my day. Silence, solitude, fitness, heavy sweating. When I wrap up those first two hours the morning, it's typically my family is starting to wake up.

And I've had two hours to dedicate to myself. And one of the things I was thinking about on my morning around this morning that I shared on social media was a question. What would happen if you pressed on the gas and never let up? What do I mean by that? In 2012, I made a choice. That was a step on the gas. That's when I launched BPN out of my college department in the West. Pennsylvania with a $20,000 loan from the Military Associated Bank, USAA. I've shared that story

many times before. But in the summer of 2012, I got in that car, that metaphorical car, I pressed on the gas. And over these last 14 years since then, I have never taken my foot off the gas. Now there have been seasons where I've been able to throttle that gas to go faster. And there have been seasons where I've had to back off that gas and go a little slower. When I was in my 20s and I wasn't married yet, I wasn't even dating staff, I didn't have kids. I was able to press that gas to the floor and go dangerously fast. And then once I met Steph and we got married and we had kids, our life changed a little bit. There have been seasons now where I have to throttle back a little bit, go a little bit slower.

But I can confidently say in these last 14 years, I have not ever taken my foot off that gas pedal. That consistency, that commitment has paid off in a meaningful. away. What started with a $20,000 loan in 2012, and for context, in 2012, revenue-wise, we did $20,000 in revenue. 2013, we did $20,000 in revenue. In 2014, we did $20,000 in revenue. In 2017, we crossed the seven-figure revenue mark, $1.7 million in revenue. Today, we are valued at over $100 million. And we've only accomplished that because

I pressed on that gas pedal in 2012 and I have never let off. That's what commitment feels like. That's what commitment looks like. That is the result of commitment. 14 years this summer. It's been meaningful.

It's been extremely impactful. It's been very hard, but it's been very rewarding. You need self-control to accomplish your goals. If I use that same storyline and example, this 14-year journey of building BPN, but I can also apply the lessons I've learned in some of these fitness preps working towards Iron Man Triathlons and taking my marathon time from four hours, 15 minutes at two hours, 39 minutes, running 100 miles through the Rocky Mountains of Leadville, Colorado, whatever it may be, through all of those goals that I've set, it is required commitment and it has required an insane amount of self-control to accomplish those goals.

because what happens within any goal you ever set that I have ever set is that temptation sinks in. Temptation to go a little bit easier, to quit, to stop, to pursue a new goal. You know, what typically happens when you commit to a goal, there's opportunity costs. that means when I commit time, energy resources to one goal, it means I have to say no to all of these other goals. That's what commitment looks like. There is avoiding temptation to go pursue other opportunities because you're committed to this one goal.

What I've seen a lot of people do is they commit to a goal. And as soon as they commit to that goal, there's this temptation of this new and flashy and sexy opportunity that looks better than the goal they're pursuing. So they abandon their current goal and go pursue the new goal, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be the right decision. But then that same individual who left goal one to go after goal two now gets hit with opportunity of goal three, which is more enticing, sexier, flashier.

so they abandon goal two to go after goal three. And eventually they abandon goal three to go after goal four and four to go after goal five and five to go after goal six. There is the inability to commit. There is a lack of self-control because they are tempted for and by the next opportunity. I was thinking about this, as I was planning this podcast and this conversation, conversation. Goals require commitment. And in order to commit, you need self-control, the ability to avoid temptation. Show me a man or woman. Show me a man who can't resist the cookie jar. And I'll show you a man who doesn't achieve his goals elsewhere. Now, there will be

an argument to this. There always is. But I have this one friend. who can't resist the cookie jar, but in all other areas of their life, they are successful. Well, yeah, that is the exception to the role. There are always exceptions to the role. And I could say that someone who cheats on their spouse

can't be trusted in any other area of their life. Let's just say I made that claim. And someone's argument could be, well, I know someone who cheated on their spouse and has integrity, in honor, and honesty in every other area of their life. Maybe, but they are an exception to the rule.

The way someone does one thing is the way they do everything. Show me someone who can't resist the cookie jar and I'll show you someone who can't achieve their goals elsewhere. The lesson I'm trying to get across there is you need to harness self-control in learning how to avoid temptation. And if you don't, you are going to have a hard time committing to a meaningful mission,

to a goal, to a target. You don't want to be the person who always has to recommit. I've seen a lot of people that I've worked with, that I'm friends with, that I'm family with. They're the person who is always recommitting

to a goal. In January, they make this huge New Year's resolution. They're going to lose weight. They're going to start training. They're going to improve their, diet, they're going to make all these lifestyle changes. They commit their own track the first 30 days. The next 30 days, they become looser with their guidelines and their strictness. And by 90

days, they're back to their old ways. And then next January comes and they recommit. I'm changing my life this time. I'm going to start training. I'm going to start working out. I'm going to improve my diet. I'm going to make these life. lifestyle changes. Again, within the first 90 days, they fall off the bandwagon. Then next January comes and they recommit over and over and over again. That's not stepping on the gas and never letting up. That's starting the car, pressing on the gas for a mile, turning it off, getting out, walking away. Later coming back, getting in the car, turning on, pressing the gas, driving a little bit, you're never going to make significant meaningful progress that way.

These are the yo-yoers. These are the people who recommit over and over and over again, but never make meaningful progress towards their targets or their goals. Because they're not on the move. They don't aim, shoot, and move. What would happen if you pressed on the gas and never let up? That is commitment. The fourth fact about goals is that goals need to be big.

There is an amazing author by the name of Jim Collins. He has multiple books. One of his books is called Built to Last, which I highly recommend. Built to Last is a good one. Good to Great is another exceptional book by Jim Collins. And he has this concept in Built to Last. called B-Hags. That stands for big, hairy, audacious goals.

Jim Collins says, to set goals that are so big, so hairy, they make you gulp. When you're about to fall asleep, your B-Hag, your big, hairy, audacious goal,

is there by your bed, all hairy with glowing eyes. When you wake up, it's there. Good morning. I am your B-Hag. I own. your life.

The concept of a B-Hag as Jim Collins describes it is this, you know, in his context, it's for an organization for a business, but you can apply it to your life. It is this, this mission, this vision, this goal that is so big, it probably takes 10 plus years to accomplish. It's not something quick. It's not something easy. It is challenging. It is intimidating. It is scary. It is the aim towards the target. And along the way,

there's these micro goals you have to set, which we're about to get into, that lead you towards accomplishing that big, hairy, audacious goal. But your goals have to be big. In 2012, when I started BPN, building the organization into what it is today, that was a really big goal. It was scary. It was intimidating. And you oftentimes know that you have a B-Hag, a goal that is so big and scary and intimidating because it's more scary to people outside of your internal family or team or organization than it is to you. I have often found that when I have this B-Hag, this huge, big goal when I share it with other people, they oftentimes laugh at me. or they snicker and they look to the person

they're left or right saying there's no way this dude's going to accomplish that. That's a joke. He's wasting his time. Dude's crazy. That's the response you oftentimes won. Because to you, it's not crazy. It's going to be really hard.

But for people who have never committed to a really big, hairy, audacious, intimidating, challenging, goal, they don't get it. They don't get what happens when you commit to something and you pursue and you aim and you shoot and you move over and over and over again. Doubt is only dangerous when you start doubting yourself. If you believe you can accomplish that goal, who cares what anyone else says about whether or not you're going to succeed towards that goal? There's a goal setting framework. So there's B hags,

Barry, big, hairy, audacious goals, and then there's OKRs. So an OKR stands for objectives and key results. So B hags, like we've talked about, provide you a larger, longer term, 10 plus year, vision, a goal to work towards. But to sustain that journey in that pursuit,

you have to break it up into actionable, measurable steps. So OKRs, objectives and key results, they have two parts. One is objectives. The second is key results. The objective is what we will accomplish, what you will accomplish. And the key results is how you'll know you've achieved the objective. So OKRs add in performance benchmarks that guide short-term decisions.

about priorities and actions. So OKRs keep you in pursuit on progress towards your B-Hag, and it's something that you can measure. You know when you're on track. If it is this huge running PR that you want to accomplish, and say your current marathon time is four hours, and you have a goal, you have a be hag of two hours, 30 minutes.

It's a big, hairy, audacious goal. You don't just get there by hoping and wishing and running. You get there through a lot of racing, a lot of training, a lot of hurt, probably some injuries, a lot of really hard sessions. And along the way, you have to set up OKRs, objectives, and key results. You probably have to have some races and some milestones in between a four-hour marathon and a 230 marathon that say you're on track. You got to run a 330 marathon. And you have to run a sub-three-hour marathon.

And then you've got to run a sub-245 marathon. And then a sub-240 marathon, you got to work your way towards the 230. the OKRs guide that big vision and that BHag along the way. But why do your goals need to be big? Because they stimulate progress. If your goals are too small, too achievable, you're leaving a lot on the table. They'll stimulate some progress,

but not the progress that is life-changing, that is transformational. True B-Hags, true big goals, stimulate life-changing, transformational progress in your life. Fact number five about goal setting is that goals will raise your standards over time. That's part of making progress. It's part of growing. It's part of development. There is setting the goal and then going after it and you're going to fail at many points along the way.

You learn from those failures and then you re-attack and you get better over time. And every time you fail and pivot and readjust and get better, you grow. And your standards rise. You raise your standards along the way. My standards for my personal and professional life 10 years ago compared to you today. Ten years ago, my standards were much lower than they are today. I hold myself to a higher standard in terms of the way I show up for my fitness, my diet,

my business as a leader, my character, my family. My standard is raised over time. And in 10 years from now, and then 20 years from now, and then 30 years from now, I expect my standards to be higher than they are today. When we set goals, our goals must be aligned with our values and our priorities. That is part of the standard. Our personal values and priorities are extremely important. They set the standard for how we live our lives, who we allow into our lives, how we serve other people.

We are responsible and accountable for what we do and what we do not do, what we achieve and what we fail to achieve. True ownership. We have to have true ownership. Something I was thinking about on last week's run that I also shared and it connected with a lot of people. Serve more and judge less. Serve more and judge less. Now, the lesson in church this past week was all about serving. Servanthood.

That is the purpose of why we should live our lives to serve other people. truly. Servanthood is the foundation of everything we should be pursuing and what guides our future. But it's really easy to find ourselves, and I do this even today. And it's something I'm trying to get better at. But as we raise our standards over time, we judge others based off our new standards. And the example I gave in this post I made that I ended up posting on Instagram was, you know, say we decide we're going to stop drinking alcohol. We now judge everyone else who drinks alcohol.

We lose weight and we get fit. We now judge everyone else who is overweight and unfit. We have children and start a family. And your life changes. significantly when you get married and have children and start a family. And it's really easy to judge other people who don't have those same levels of responsibility. A partner, children, a family. They have more flexibility and options and their daily lives.

It's just the reality of it for many people. But what happens to many of us, again, myself included, I am not excused from what I'm sharing now is we raise our standards and then we judge everyone else based off our new standard of living, our behaviors, our actions.

And I share that to say it is not our responsibility, it's not our calling to judge others based off our own standards for ourselves. but a better opportunity is to serve people who might want the help or need the help to raise their own standards, to stop drinking alcohol if they have a problem, to lose weight if they are overweight, to learn how to be a better husband, father, wife, mother, family-driven individual.

We are called to serve others and judge less. But as we raise our standards, because that's one of the facts that happens as we set goals, when we are on mission, we set targets that we're going to chase down and pursue, and we aim and we shoot and we move, and our standards rise naturally through that progression and that process, it's really easy to look around us and say, I'm living of a higher standard. I'm now going to judge everyone else. that's not it. That's not the appropriate byproduct of setting goals and pursuing goals and accomplishing goals. It's not. Goal setting is not a one-time event. It is continuous. I previously mentioned Jim Collins.

And one of the things that Jim Collins also talks about in some of his books is this syndrome called We Have Arrived Syndrome. It's after setting a goal and achieving it, many fail to recognize that goal's success and don't follow through and set a new bigger goal. The We Have Arrived syndrome shifts from a hungry pursuit to complacent ignorance and arrogance, ultimately creating the seeds of their decline. goal setting and the pursuit of these goals should raise our standards over a lifetime. But what you have to be cautious of is that we have a Rive syndrome.

Or you set a goal, you accomplish that goal, you recognize it and you start chilling and you're in that lull, you find yourself back in that valley, and you don't set a new target, a new goal to go after. and you experience complacent arrogance. And you don't just maintain at that point. You now decline. You have planted your own seeds of decline. Goal setting is not a one-time event.

It is continuous. Raising our standards is a lifetime pursuit. It's a lifetime goal. So it's our responsibility to set goals appropriately, responsibly, because in the absence of setting goals and working towards goals, you end up wondering aimlessly. And like I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, there's a very dangerous place to be operating from.

So those are just five facts about setting goals. And I share that because, like I mentioned previously, I have found myself before in the lull, in the valley between two accomplishments, two goals. And as much as I would love to say that I'd be able to and want to chill or relax or rest after accomplishing a goal, I know what kind of self-destruction and self-sabotage that does to me in the absence of not being on mission. So I would encourage you guys, set goals, find yourself a meaningful mission,

and work relentlessly to pursue it. Because the upside and the results are transformation.