Goal Setting Hack!

We all have goals we struggle with, no matter who we are. Whether it's feeling like we're getting close but experiencing a setback, or simply finding ourselves unable to make meaningful progress, it can be incredibly frustrating. But what if there was a hack that could help you break free of your goal struggles? Recently, I was grappling with one of my own goals when a lightning bolt of insight struck me: a simple shift in your thinking might be all it takes to finally achieve the success you've been seeking. Tune in to discover this powerful goal-setting hack and learn how it can help you overcome your own challenges.

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Read Transcript Here:

Mike: [00:00:00] I don't know if you're like me at all, but I struggle with some of my goals. The thing that frustrates me the most is with most of my goals, I at least make progress. Even if it's minimal progress, I at least make progress towards them. And then there's some goals, no matter how much thought I put into it, I just don't make any progress.

I was thinking about that the other day and how much it frustrated me, because there's this one in particular that I'm going to share with you. And it hit me. It hit me like a lightning bolt what my challenge was. And I wanted to share that with you because I believe there are people out there who are just like me. You struggle with the exact same things. I want you to know that I think there's a solution. Normally I like to take more time on things like this to kind of go through them and see how they work. But it, it's so important to me that I thought, Hey, I want to share this with you because if you listen to this and you're like, that makes a lot of sense, you can take action on it now, and you don't have to wait six months for me to figure out if it works. And hey, you know what? It may not work for me anyway because [00:01:00] I'm stubborn, or whatever it is. But at least you can give this thing a try.

For me, the biggest challenge goal-wise that I have is losing weight. It's just always been a big thing. Going back to like the summer of '87. It was that time where I went from elementary school to middle school. It was the summer we got cable. It was, you know, just this cool summer where my friends weren't around. I was hanging out by myself, enjoying life, learning about all the different things you can watch on TV. Like that opened up a whole new world to me, you know. That was the summer where I kind of became a couch potato. Didn't do a lot. And for me, it all goes back to that. It made it easy for me to justify not doing things like exercising or whatever.

And then I went in the military several years later. Shed some of that extra weight. But I was never like the washboard abs guy. I was never there because I was like, man, I just love food too much. You know, I grew up in southwest Louisiana. I cook a lot of different Cajun foods and things. I like to [00:02:00] taste different foods. To me, you know, food is just a way of life when you come from down there. And so for me that was more important than having a certain weight or a certain body type or whatever it may be.

I was thinking about that the other day and I'm like, yeah, but I'm not happy with where I am. I'm not happy. I'm not so unhappy that it motivates me on a daily basis, and that's part of the problem. But the other challenge that I figured out was, I'm always focused on the goal. And the goal is a number. That's where I feel like I've gone off the rails with the weight loss thing. And I'm using the weight loss example as my example here today.

You can apply this to anything. You can apply it to revenue. You can apply it to any business goal you have. I'm just choosing to use the weight loss one here. As I focused more on the actual goal, what am I not focusing on? That was the question I asked. And it again, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was like, I'm not focusing on the [00:03:00] activities. I'm not focusing on the actions that get me to the goal. And that's where I'm going wrong. With everything else, whether it's revenue, number of clients, whatever else it is in the business, I'm always focused on some activities. I don't hit all of my goals, but I at least make progress towards them. Okay, that's a big deal. With this one, just looked at it and thought, I'm focused on the wrong thing. It's something that doesn't come naturally to me. It's something that I don't necessarily care to change, but I know I should change. I don't have enough driving me to do it, but I want to change. I want to change my focus on that one.

As I was thinking about it, I'm like, you know, I shouldn't be focused on a number. I should be focused on the need, and I'm going to use this word and I know this may not be the right word, I need to focus on the need to be addicted to working out and eating healthy. It needs to be that strong. I don't want to be in the gym six hours a day or anything like that. I don't want to do some [00:04:00] extreme eating, weird schedules or nothing along those lines. I need to actually focus on wanting to do the workouts, wanting to eat healthy. And so my goal switched from a number to the activities. And now my goal is, I want to work out this many times a week. That's my goal. My goal is, I want to eat these type of healthy meals. That's my goal.

Narrator: If you're struggling with your government contracting business, I want to encourage you today to go sign up for a free coaching session with me. You can go in the description of this podcast. There's a link to my calendar, and you can go pick a time where we can sit down for 30 minutes, talk about what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, what you should change. And then if coaching makes sense for you, I'll actually go over the options on how you can get started with coaching so we can take your business to the next level. Now, let's get back into this episode,

Mike: And I set that goal knowing that those are the activities that will [00:05:00] get me to the number. Because the number's an important part of things. And I know they say, Hey, you know, you shouldn't focus on too much about a number. It's more about your jean size or your shirt sizes or you know, things like that. But that number, I know it well enough because I was at that number for long enough that I know that's the number to get me in that size of jean that size of shirt. I know that number is, is a magical component of getting into that. The only way to get there is to do the exercising. You know, I need to exercise twice a day. I need to eat these types of meals.

Now that I have shifted my brain about what to focus on, I'm not annoyed by the goal anymore. And that was the biggest hurdle I guess that I had. It seems like this little goal setting hack allowed me to say, you know what, this takes a lot of pressure off. When you're going through and you're trying to do something that is long-term, like losing weight or long-term, like hitting a really big revenue number, it's very easy [00:06:00] to look at the things you're doing and feel like, Hey, I know this is important, but I'm still short. I'm still short of the number, and it's very easy to get discouraged.

Now I can look at it and say, Hey, if my goal exercising twice a day, well, how do I get there? I don't get there by starting twice a day, five days a week. I get there by doing once a day three times a week. And then after I've done that for a couple of weeks, then I go to once a day, five days a week. And then I go to adding twice a day a couple of times a week. Until I get to this point over the course of say the next month where now I'm exercising twice a day, five days a week. With healthy eating thing, I actually like to eat a lot of things that are fairly healthy. Not a lot of vegetables and things like that so I stay away from a lot of things that are green. But there are some things that are like, that are healthy. It's not that hard like you know, replacing side dishes with salads and things like that. I actually really do like salads. There's some really simple steps to take to get me closer to the eating healthy. Like not buying junk food. That's a simple one. Just [00:07:00] not buying it and focusing on the other stuff. As expensive as groceries are getting, it's probably a good thing to think through this and stop buying that stuff.

But anyway, the hack here is to focus on the activities. So if you're struggling with a goal, don't just look at the number. Don't just look at the end result. But look backwards and look at, I need to do A, B, and C in order to get this result. My goal right now is to implement A in my life. And then once I've implemented A in my life, it's to implement B in my life. And once that's there, then I'm going to add C. It's about developing a habit for the things that are recurring that need to happen in order to hit that goal.

Regardless of what you're doing, whether you are building a sales team, building a company, trying to lose weight, it's all about the daily, weekly habits that you develop that all stack up and create those results for you. The thing is, if you're doing the wrong things, it doesn't matter how much of the wrong thing you're doing. You're [00:08:00] never going to get the result you want. So if you're like, well, I'm eating healthy, which means now I only one soda a day, and I only have three bags of chips a week: those things may still be derailing you, so you've got to take them out.

Same thing again when it comes to sales is: when you're looking at the activities you're performing, are you doing the right things, the right amount of the right things? If you're only having one sales call a month, it's not enough activity. It's like saying, I'm going to go to the gym once a month and hopefully by the end of the year I'm going to have washboard abs. It doesn't work that way. You've got to be going every day, five days a week, maybe twice a day to get the result you're looking for if that's what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to achieve those washboard abs, it's going to take a lot more effort. So the bigger the goal, the more effort, the more consistency you need in those actions and activities.

I want you to think about that. If there's a goal you're struggling with, walk back through what's derailing you. Are you doing [00:09:00] enough of the activity? Are you doing the right activity? You know, are you talking to the right people? Are you chasing enough RFPs? That's one that I run into all the time where somebody will say, Hey Mike, we're just not hitting our numbers. How many RFPs do you do on average a month? And they look at me and they're like what? What are you talking about? We don't do any. How are you ever going to win a contract if you never fill out the paperwork to win it? In their mind, they're like, either one or two things happened. They either say, well, we were hoping to win Sole Source stuff and not have to do that. Or number two, they're like, oh. The light bulb goes off and they're like oh, we can't win if we don't take a swing. Exactly.

Are you doing the right activity? Are you doing enough of that activity? Are you focusing on that as a habit inside of your business? And look, here's a really cool thing. If you have employees and you start doing those actions, I don't know how in the world this works, people don't do what you say they do what you do. People will fall in line and start doing the activities you are doing hopefully by you leading by example. [00:10:00] And then they will start getting those same results you're doing.

Use this little hack, let me know what you think of it. I'm curious to see if people have trouble with just one goal that's just been eating at them that they couldn't figure out. No pun intended there. I'm just curious. If you are like that, where there's some goals you don't really have any trouble with but man, there's these one or two things that have always bugged you, always kept you down, and now this little hack is going to help you overcome that hump.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today. If you did, I would really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe to the podcast and screenshot it and tag me on LinkedIn or whatever social media you use. So thank you again for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.