This Simple Goal-Setting Method Will Give You Courage, Power, and Clarity
You’re willing to work hard, but you’re frustrated.
You wish someone could show you what to do instead of wondering.
You’re willing to set big goals, but you’re afraid. You’re worried you’ll spend the next few years chasing a goal only to discover that it didn’t bring you the “success” you thought.
You’re excited by the possibilities but overwhelmed by all of them at the same time.
You feel caught between competing priorities, like you’re between two rock faces closing in with no clear way out.
Your life is burdened by too many conflicting priorities.
You’re desperate to find crystal-clear clarity on your goals.
To find the few things that will really move the needle.
This type of clarity is extremely difficult, even for the world’s most successful people. Why do you think Bill Gates would spend a week every year just thinking during his famous “think weeks”?
This article will help you get that clarity.
Specifically, this article will help you:
- Connect deeply and powerfully with your future self
- Understand practically which goals will actually move the needle
- Find out what to discard, organize, keep, simplify, and amplify in your life
You will be totally blown away by your own accomplishments 12 months from now if you apply this.
Read this with an open journal in front of you. Take notes. Get inspired.
Where Did You Come From?
Reflect on 2023.
What did you accomplish?
What did you create?
How did your family grow and change?
How much money did you make?
What happened in your health?
What happened in your career?
What successes did you have?
What failures did you learn from?
Because 2023 is now over, we can see it with different eyes. Our memories change each time they’re observed.
In Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out, Riley has several happy memories of her hometown in Minnesota. After she moves away, those same memories become sad when remembered in the present. Because of her new context, they remind her how much she misses home and she bursts into tears just thinking about them.
After her parents comfort her and express their love for her, she then reconstructs those same memories a third time in a bittersweet way, remembering both the deep lessons that she learned and the love and joy she felt from her parents. She appreciates from and learns from her experiences and memories.
The exact same historical facts caused three totally different meanings for Riley when re-examined in the present.
Although this story is fictional, the scientific lesson is correct. Psychologist Dr. Brent Slife taught that our memories are not objective entities stored in a vacuum. They are reconstructed in the present every time we observe them.
“We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present…Our memories are not “stored” and “objective” entities but living parts of ourselves in the present. This is the reason our present moods and future goals so affect our memories.” — Dr. Brent Slife
You can view 2023 through a much more useful lens in the present, or you can de-value those experiences. How you re-construct your memories is entirely up to you.
Your memories are a choice. The way you view them actually changes the memory itself, not just your perception of it.
Reflect on what was most useful in 2023, in order to get clarity on your goals in 2024.
Create The Best Year Ever
Only 20% of your results are coming from almost everything you do.
As you examine and change your memories from 2023, answer the following:
- What were the things that moved the needle BIG in 2023?
- How much of my attention and energy was focused on what I now know is my “80%” in 2023?
- What shifts would enable me to go all-in on my 20% in 2024?
Give yourself permission to go for the limitless.
In 10x Is Easier Than 2x, Dan Sullivan and I explain that through leveraging your 20% and eliminating your 80%, you create a “10X” result and exponentially pivot into a better life.
A “10X jump” comes from focusing all-in on your 20% of essential activities, while “2X” comes from simply doing more of the 80% that “got you here.”
What would a “10X” future look like for you in 2024?
Be completely literal with this.
What would a qualitatively and quantitatively 10X better life mean for you?
What would your health be like?
Your finances?
Your relationships?
Your spirituality?
Your knowledge and wisdom?
Your business?
You can literally become 10X better in 2024. Not just in theory but in actual reality.
Give yourself permission to reach for the impossible and start defining what that would look like.
What are the targets so high you genuinely don’t know what to do with them?
What are the goals so overwhelmingly big that you don’t want to even think about them?
What makes you say “I don’t know how to get there?”
What is bamboozling your brain?
Write those things down.
It doesn’t matter if you have no current pathway to reach those goals. We’re simply focusing on what would transform your life, your desire, and your intentions for now.
I myself made several MASSIVE pivots and leaps even in the last few weeks of 2023.
I passed off my PLATINUM coaching program to my own mentor and coach Chad Willardson.
I let go of my YouTube channel as a branding and marketing strategy.
I let go of several book projects I was previously pursuing to focus all-in on my next book Rapid Transformation.
It’s okay to let go. Letting go of your 80% is key.
Writing down all of your goals, big and small, and then evaluating the line in-between the 80% and the 20% gives you the courage to let go of your 80%.
Be Emotionally & Spiritually Connected
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
You should eliminate 80% to go big, but which 80%?
You “could” accomplish any goal, but how do you know if it’s the right goal?
Here’s the difference between goals that you should chase and goals that you shouldn’t chase: your goals should be rooted in your character and identity.
Your future self will be far less powerful if it’s not connected to who you want to be and who God wants you to be.
Mathematically, you can subtract 80% of your life, go all-in on your 20%, making tactical and strategic leaps. But any 80–20 approach that’s not intimately and deeply connected emotionally will be un-grounded. It won’t last. It will be a shallow and negative experience.
When you’re not emotionally and spiritually connected to your future self, stripping away the 80% is more like a dart-board than a clear path.
It’s a weird process of elimination rather than a powerful process of transformation.
Your future self is a choice.
You identity is a choice.
Your character is a choice.
Your goals are a choice.
Your future self by the end of 2024 is a choice. Your future self by 2030 is a choice.
Your identity and your character matter more than anything. This is why most of the conversation in business in and self-development is so lacking.
Before you decide what you should master skill and ability-wise, develop your connection to your identity and your future self.
Get very real. Whatever your religious inclination, really stop and ask.
“Who does God want me to be?”
“Who do I want to be?”
This is a continuous process, rather than a one-time event.
Your choices determine character and destiny. The choices you make are the dividing line between what is 80% and 20%.
With character, you’ll ensure that it’s the RIGHT 80%.
Otherwise, it will feel forced.
Dr. David Hawkins discovered that there are are two approaches to life, depending on your energy level. If your energy level is below courage on the “map of consciousness,” you’re approaching your life with force. If your energy is at courage or higher, you approach your life with power.
People with low energy approach decisions with force. They try to force things to happen, even if it’s not working out.
People with high energy approach decisions with power. They know that their actions will lead to the results they want, and they have enough certainty that they’re not worried about the results. Or as Florence Shinn said, “Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.”
Their energy is at a higher vibration and level.
Your highest value set has to be aligned with your future self in order for this to work.
Whatever your highest values are, you have to view your future self as acting in alignment and in accordance with those values or you won’t make much progress. If you have conflicting energies, you’re like a car with 2 wheels pulling forward and 2 wheels pulling backward at the same time.
Your future self is powerful. Far more powerful than your present self.
Make decisions from power.
Simplify Your Future Self Dramatically
Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two. — William Ockham
Someone recently asked me about my workout routines/diet/personal training/other health practices.
I answered:
“I’m going to give you a principle rather than giving you the specific methods I’m using.”
I then shared the principle of Occam’s Razor.
Occam’s Razor, a powerful law in science, states that the development should be as simple as possible. In business, this is known as a “minimum viable product,” or a prototype just good enough to communicate the message without being too expensive or complicated.
Health is so simple. If you do these things in 2024, you’ll radically change your health in 90 days (or less):
- Stay hydrated
- Avoid sugar
- Avoid white flour
- Get adequate sleep
- Get regular fitness
You already knew things, which is why this isn’t an article about health.
Health is not nearly as complex as many bio-hackers make it out to be.
Most people make their goals as complicated as possible rather than as simple as possible.
You can do AMAZING things on very simple (but challenging and difficult!) processes.
You only need a couple, coupled with knowledge and strategy.
If you’re unsure on knowledge or strategy, adopt what Tim Ferriss calls “mini-experiments.” Throw stuff against the wall and see what works and what doesn’t. With enough data points, you’ll become clear on what your 80% is and what your 20% is soon enough.
And because you did the spiritual and emotional work, you’ll know which 80% you should discard.
Unleash Your Raw And Maximum Energy
“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” — John Wooden
Your future self is entirely between you and you.
Period.
Even people you highly respect may not understand your future self. They may question your motives and your intentions.
That’s okay.
They don’t know where you’re going.
I don’t know what your 80% is. That’s up to you to determine.
Maybe it’s certain foods.
Maybe it’s your job.
Maybe it’s media and entertainment.
What I do know is this: the amount of raw energy you receive from cutting off the 80% is truly astounding.
Your brain and body are in constant need of balance. Thus, when you free-up energy from focusing on your 80%, you’ll instantly look for places to start investing that same energy elsewhere.
You suddenly have TONS of energy to invest into mastery.
Mastery puts you into your own plane. When you truly become “so good you can’t be ignored” as Cal Newport would say (I’d read that book, by the way), your skillset and accomplishments become totally unique and irreplaceable.
Nobody else can be you. That’s why your future self can only be understood by you.
When you pursue mastery, you stop reacting. Your future isn’t a reaction to ignorance, attachment, or other people. It’s a proactive and independent decision.
Don’t be harsh to your former self. You want to increasingly have a better relationship with your past. Simply be willing to let things go on a spiritual and emotional level. No longer worry about most things.
There are so many things I thought mattered last year that I no longer think matter.
Your 80% can be beautiful and a benefit to your past.
At one point, it was probably your 20% or you wouldn’t have started it.
I’m not talking about bad things when I say 80%. I’m talking about things that were genuinely good ideas (like my YouTube channel) but that are simply no longer relevant.
My collaboration with Dan Sullivan directly led to incredible things. It created incredible ideas and helped thousands of entrepreneurs.
We also dramatically expanded Strategic Coach’s business by tens of millions of dollars and I’m much more influential as an author than I was several years ago.
We finished our last book together in 2023. That’s not a bad thing. We’re both simply moving onward and upward to our next biggest projects that we each individually have to pursue. We’re both moving into our new 20%.
Your future self is what you really want.
Your 80% is what you don’t want or no longer want.
You can train your brain what to want and not want. Your wants are a choice.
And when you let go of what you don’t want, your 80%, you have limitless potential. You have raw untapped power that is INSANE. You’ll go far.
The Secrets Of How Jeff Bezos Sets Goals
“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible, or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions.
But most decisions aren’t like that — they are changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a sub-optimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.” — Jeff Bezos
Most people think of decisions as a 1-way street. If I make this decision, I can’t go back.
Actually, you can.
As an example, when I stopped doing YouTube as a branding strategy, that was a 2-way decision.
If, at some point or for whatever reason, I needed to return to doing YouTube as a strategy, I could. In fact, I’m even better positioned now to return back to that than I would be if I had never learned how to do that strategy in the first place.
I was recently on a coaching call with a woman who realized that her 80% was her current job and her 20% was her business that wasn’t growing at the rate she wanted because her job was tying down so much of her time.
She felt like she needed to go all in, but was hesitant about the leap.
As we talked, I explained that as Jeff Bezos pointed out, most decisions actually go both ways. I said:
“You’re making something that is actually a two-way door in your mind into a one-way door. You actually can always go back to getting a job, if you needed to.”
What we psychologically view as a 1-way street is really often a 2-way street because we’re so loss-averse. Study after study has proven that we hate risk and downside more than we appreciate the upside. We have a tendency to make the downsides far worse than they really are.
Instead of inflating the downside, adapt quickly and rip the band-aid. Once you’ve gone through the entire process in this article, make your new decision as quickly as possible.
In his interview with Lex Friedman, Jeff Bezos explained the importance of making decisions faster.
When you become aware of your 80%, make decisions faster.
When you have internal conflict, make decisions faster.
When you make incredible progress, make decisions faster.
Conclusion
When you find out what your 80% is, you’ll courageously let it go.
You’ll be unstoppable.
You’ll build beautiful things.
You’ll draw closer to God.
You’ll change your life.
Your Call To Action
(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 bestselling book in all of Korea.)
