[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hey there, Achieve Your Goals listeners. Welcome back to the show. And if you’re new here, I am so glad that you have joined us. I’m Hal Elrod, your host. And today we’re diving into one of my favorite but rarely discussed topics, and that is the science of goal achievement. Now, I know science might sound a little intimidating but stick with me because understanding the psychology and the neuroscience behind setting and achieving your goals can be an absolute game changer. It’s like understanding, “Oh, this is why I do what I do,” or, “Oh, this is why when things are working, these are the things that are going on in my brain or in my psychology that are making it work. So, if I just did that repeatedly, my life would be a lot easier and I’d achieve my goals a lot more often.” Because if you think about it, right, how often do we set goals with the best intentions only to lose steam halfway through? And what I’m telling you today is there are specific, proven strategies to rewire your brain for success and stay on track no matter what.

Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to take just a couple of minutes to tell you about two brand-new things that are offered by our two sponsors today. First and foremost, Organifi. Organifi makes, of course, the highest quality whole food supplements, and they have a brand new product that I’ve been taking every day. It’s creatine cherry gummies. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken creatine for a long time. Creatine monohydrate specifically is in the creatine gummies that Organifi makes. It’s the most studied and trusted form of creatine available today and we’ve included it, well, they’ve included it, the ideal dose to put you in control of your health. It supports muscle strength and growth, enhances endurance as well as focus cognition and overall performance.

That was recently where I started deep diving last year. And creatine was not just the physical benefits for strength and endurance, but now there’s all this new research in science that’s talking about the cognitive benefits for focus, etcetera, so that combination with a unique extract of Montmorency tart cherry, specifically formulated for athletic use. It’s rich in anthocyanin and other polyphenols with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties to help reduce muscle soreness and joint damage and support recovery between workouts. Highly recommend if you want to get fit this year. Creatine gummies are an easy way to make sure you’re taking creatine as well as the tart cherry every day to enhance your athletic performance. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal. That’s O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your order as a listener of the podcast.

Last but not least, the Miracle Morning App. We made a huge upgrade going into this year and that is now the Miracle Morning App Premium subscription is actually the Premium Plus subscription, so you now get to add someone to your Miracle Morning app subscription for free, which makes it easier for families to participate together, or accountability buddies or coworkers, colleagues, spouses, you name it, without any additional cost. And we also added live events for the first time ever in the app. The Miracle Morning app comes with a minimum of four live events this year that are all Miracle Year live events. So, there’s planning events, there’s quarterly events, there’s annual events, there’s biannual events. So, we’re going to enhance the virtual digital app experience with live online events where we’re all getting together. So, if you don’t have the Miracle Morning app or you have the free app but you want to try the Premium Plus subscription, you can try it free for seven days in the App Store or the Google Play store.

All right, goal achievers. Without further ado, by the end of today’s episode, you’ll not only know how your brain responds to goals, but you’ll walk away with actionable steps you can start using today to achieve anything you set your mind to. Ready? Let’s do this.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: Okay. I’m going to break today’s episode into four segments. The first segment is called The Psychology of Goals. And we’ll start with the basics. Why do we even set goals? What’s going on in our brains when we do this? Okay, here’s the deal, and this is fascinating. Your brain is wired for goals. Every time you set a goal and you take steps toward achieving it, your brain releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical. That’s why checking something off your to-do list feels so satisfying. It’s like giving your brain a little high five every time you do it. Now, here’s where it gets tricky, though. Not all goals are created equal. So, if a goal is vague or unrealistic such as, “I want to get healthier. I want to be happier. I want to be a better parent,” your brain doesn’t know how to process it. That’s why clarity is critical.

So, instead of saying, “I want to get healthier,” you’ve got to say, “I’ll exercise 20 minutes every morning at 8 a.m.” You see the difference? One gives your brain a clear roadmap to follow. The other is just a vague desire. Now, and then when it comes to motivation, which almost everyone says, “Gosh, I wish I had more motivation or I wish my motivation was more consistent,” motivation is actually a chemical reaction. Dopamine is what drives your desire to achieve your goal. So, the trick is to set up your goals in a way that triggers consistent dopamine releases. That starts with writing them down.

During the Miracle Year series that we did all through December, which finished last week, by the way, if you haven’t listened to that, you can go back and listen to that series. I think it’s good any time of year, but especially right now during the beginning of the year. And whether you start with episode one in that series or last week was Turning Your Resolutions Into Results. But either way, we talked about you’ve got to write your goals down. And then once you write them down, you can’t just set it and forget it like that old infomercial, right? “Set it and forget it.” I’ve done that with the goals before. I set the goals at the beginning of the year then I’m like, “That’s it.” I set the goal. I want to make X amount of dollars or whatever, and then I forget it. I closed my computer. I don’t look at it again.

So, write them down, break them into smaller milestones, and then look at them every day. And that enables you to make consistent progress that releases that dopamine and you celebrate. I’m encouraging you, celebrate every win along the way no matter how small it is. Again, that’s why we love checking things off the to-do list. So, if you’ve got these big goals and you’ve broken them into daily actions or daily recurring habits, then every time you check it off, you do the thing, you release the dopamine. Now, you feel good and you become addicted to achieving your goals. It’s all about keeping that momentum going.

All right. I’m going to give you an action step right now. So, your first action step, pause this and write down one specific measurable goal. Or if you’ve already done this, grab your goals, choose one of your goals. Again, pause the episode if you need to, either write down one specific measurable goal or pick one that you’ve already written down. And again, getting clarity is half the battle. Okay. So, pause if you need to and we’re going to move on to the second segment for today, which is the role of visualization and affirmations. So, now that you’ve got a clear, specific goal in mind, and again, you may have already set your goal. So, just go through this process with me, okay?

Take one of your goals. If you haven’t set a goal, obviously, you’re starting from scratch and that’s great but if you already have your goal in mind, pick the one that’s most important to you. So, now you have a clear, specific goal, let’s talk about how to supercharge it with visualization and affirmations. You probably heard me talk about this before in the Miracle Morning or the episode I did during that last series on achieving your goals on how to apply the Miracle Morning to your goals but here’s why it works. When you visualize your goal as if it’s already achieved, your brain starts to believe it’s possible. Neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity. Your brain rewires itself based on what you think about the most.

The simplest thing is if you think about all the things in your life that make you unhappy, your brain literally rewires itself and that becomes your default state of being. You just become unhappy. The same is true if you focus on what you’re grateful for every day and you focus on the things that make you happy, your brain rewires itself for that to be how you experience your life. And so, when you visualize the goal as if it’s already achieved, your brain again starts to believe that it’s possible. So, I remember when I, well, I’ll get to that in a second, but here’s how to do it effectively. So, first, close your eyes and imagine yourself achieving your goal. Okay. Feel it. See it. Hear it.

For example, if your goal is to run a marathon, picture yourself crossing the finish line. You might even hear the crowd cheering. I don’t know if the crowd will be cheering for you or not, but hey, this is your visualization. You get to make it up, right? But most importantly, feel what that’s going to feel like. Feel that sense of accomplishment. When I was training to run my first ever first and last ultra-marathon in 2000, I think it was 2009, that’s what I would do every day. I would just spend like 30 seconds, sometimes 60 seconds imagining. And actually, I printed, I was running the Atlantic City Marathon twice because it wasn’t an ultra-marathon. They only had a regular marathon.

So, we got there at three in the morning and we ran the course once. We ran 26 miles before the marathon started. Then we ran 26 miles again once the marathon started. It’s crazy but because I knew I was running the Atlantic City Marathon, to make my visualization as vivid as possible, I actually went to Google Images and I googled Atlantic City Marathon finish line. And what do you know? There was a picture of it and I printed it out and I had that every day. So, I look at it. Then I would close my eyes and I visualized myself crossing that finish line. Again, I would feel it. I would see it. I would hear the crowd cheering. And the most important part was that feeling I would generate of like, “Wow. How good will that feel based on how scared I am now?”

Like, think about that. This is part of the power of closing the gap between vision and reality between a dream and achieving it is when you see it over and over and over, day after day after day after day. What your brain is doing is it’s acclimating to that possibility as a real potential and day-by-day a more and more and more and more likely reality. That’s the power of visualizing the end result. Okay. Now, that’s the first part of visualization. There’s a second part, and the second part is the most important part. So, after you visualize that end result and you see it and you hear the crowd cheering and you feel what it’s going to feel like that sense of accomplishment, now you ask yourself, what do you need to do today to make progress towards your goal?

You can also just look at your to-do list if you’re like, “Oh, I know what I need,” or look at your schedule, right? That’s what I often do. I look at my schedule like, “All right. What have I got to do today? Oh, yeah, I’ve got to do that. I got that meeting. I’m nervous for that meeting that’s going… I got to give that virtual keynote.” Virtual keynotes, those stress me out more than in-person keynotes, interestingly enough. I like being on a stage versus behind a camera. But anyway, that’s making it about me now. Here’s the point. Look at what you need to do today, and then imagine yourself doing that thing, taking that action, and specifically see yourself doing it while putting yourself in an optimal, mental, and emotional state, what’s known as a peak state.

So, see yourself going for that run, having that difficult conversation, going into that job interview, whatever it is for you, with confidence, with joy, with enthusiasm, with clarity, whatever your optimal state would be. And you can ask yourself that too, like what would be the optimal mental and emotional state for me to be in to do the thing I need to do today? And so, this is what it looked like for me. I want to give you a real-life example, and even if you’ve heard me share this example before, I want you to think, how can you apply this to your goals? So, when I was training for that ultramarathon, I’d visualize going for the run like I just walked you through, right, crossing the finish line. It’s going to be great, crowd cheering, “Wow. I’m going to feel so good.” I want that.

That goal, think about this, part of the benefit of that is the goal is becoming more compelling. Every time you visualize the goal vividly, seeing, hearing, feeling the sense of accomplishment, that goal and achieving it is becoming more and more and more compelling day by day. You’re hard-wiring your nervous system with that future experience. And so, every time I visualize, I’m like, “I want that. I want to experience that feeling, that sense of accomplishment. I want to hear that crowd cheering,” even though the crowd was like my wife and a couple of my buddies, but whatever.

So, now you visualize yourself doing the thing. What I would do is see myself getting off the couch at 7 a.m. when my phone alarm went off because that’s when I set the timer for it to remind me to go for a run. I would then visualize myself. Again, you’re mentally rehearsing today’s action. I’d visualize myself going into my bedroom, getting dressed in my running clothes. I’d see it pretty vividly, like putting on my socks, putting on my shorts. This took me like probably 2 or 3 minutes. And then I visualize myself walking out of my bedroom. It’s almost like I’m filming myself in a movie, right? And then I’d visualize myself walking to the front door of my house. I would literally see my hand reach out, like in one of those first-person shooter games where you can see yourself like holding the gun or reaching out and opening doorknobs.

I would see in the visualization my hand reaching out to the doorknob, turning it, opening it like I can still see it to this day. It was my house on 2121 John Still Drive in Sacramento, California. And then I would see the driveway that was sloped down to the sidewalk. And then I would imagine myself, actually, before I stepped out the door, I would go through my affirmations. I’d go, “Okay. I’m committed to running 52 miles on October 29th, 2009, no matter what, there is no other option. I’m doing this to overcome my limiting belief that I am not a runner because once I accomplish this, then I can do anything that I set my mind to. In order to follow through, I will read the book, The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer, and I will follow it to a tee whether I feel like it or not.”

So, I would recite my affirmations one more time, bring them into the visualization, the mental rehearsal as I saw that sidewalk and then I would go, “Let’s go.” And I would go for that run in my mind. So, what would happen? So, let’s say that was at like, I don’t know, 6:25 in the morning during my Miracle Morning, right? And again, the alarm was set for 7 a.m. to go for the run. Here’s what would happen. Because I mentally rehearsed that, at 7 a.m. when the alarm went off, my human nature would have been, “Ah, I hate running like I don’t want to run. I’ve still got four more months until the marathon. I’ll just run tomorrow.” Can you relate to that? We all do that. We procrastinate because relief is an addictive emotion. It’s a very addictive emotion.

Think about that. Why do you procrastinate? Because it gives you a sense of relief. “I felt pressure to do that thing today at this time but you know what? I’m just going to do it tomorrow. Ah, that relief feels so good,” and we don’t realize that we’re addicted to that emotion. That’s what a habitual procrastinator, which we’ve all been at times and some of us are still working through that, just so you understand that’s why you procrastinate because you are addicted to the feeling of relief. And whether or not you’re addicted to it, maybe you don’t procrastinate often, but when you do procrastinate, what you’re doing is you’re indulging in the emotion that is relief.

So, that was my human nature but I didn’t mentally rehearse procrastinating. So, when the alarm went off at 7 a.m. on my phone, I did exactly what I rehearsed doing. I felt this compelling emotion. I turned off the alarm. I got up. I went to my bedroom, into my closet, got dressed in running clothes, went out through my living room to the front door, grabbed the handle, turned it, pulled it open, saw the sidewalk, boom. My affirmations ran through my mind on autopilot. I am committed to running 52 miles on October 29th no matter what, there’s no other option, da, da, da, da, da, went through all of it. And then I went for that run. I’m telling you, if I had not employed this visualization practice to program my subconscious mind to feel energized and excited and compelled to do the thing that I didn’t like doing initially, I hated running my entire life.

I used this form of visualization, this two-step process. Step one, visualizing the ideal outcome and what it would feel, sound, look like, right, that sense of accomplishment to get myself compelled to want to move toward it. And then I would visualize myself, I believe this is the most important part, they’re both important, they work together, but I’d visualize myself, mentally rehearse myself doing the thing I needed to do today. Today, the small baby steps, the action that I could easily justify putting off until tomorrow or not doing it. And that’s what happens. The year ends and we look back and it was those daily decisions of not following through that snowballed into us not achieving our goal.

This technique of visualization is how you can overcome your resistance and your fear to do the things that you need to do each day that will move you forward. So, again, mentally rehearse yourself doing what you need to do. Make sure you do it while you’re in a peak state so that you program your subconscious mind so that when it is time to actually take the necessary action, you are prepared. You are compelled. You’ve already created momentum in your mind and your body so that it’s far easier to get off that couch and go take that next step.

All right. And affirmations, they’re not just about positive thinking. I’m not going to do a deep dive into affirmations like I just did with visualization but I just want to touch on this here because affirmations are also about programming your subconscious mind to support your goals. So, instead of saying, “I want to be a marathon runner,” you say, “I’m committed to training consistently and becoming a marathon runner.” You see the difference? It’s about ownership. It’s about commitment to the action. All right. Let’s try this together. If you’re not driving, close your eyes. If you are driving, just stare at like a single spot on the road in front of you or the car in front of you.

Okay. Now, visualize yourself achieving your goal and repeat this affirmation, “I am capable.” Say it with me. “I am capable of achieving this goal because I am willing to put in the work. I am capable of achieving this goal because I am willing to put in the work.” And obviously, I made that generic but you can apply it to your goal. Like, for me, it was, “I am committed to running 52 consecutive miles,” and I went through the whole process of why that was a must for me and then what I was committed to doing to follow through. So, in terms of putting in the work, it was, “I was going to read the Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer,” it was a book, “And then apply it every day. Follow the training plan whether I felt like it or not.” And that last part, you might want to add that to your affirmations, “Whether I feel like it or not.”

Why? Because think about that. That’s often our excuse to not do the thing, “Ah, I just don’t feel like it. I don’t have the motivation.” Well, great but if every day you affirm that you’re committed to follow through, you’re committed to put in the work, whether you feel like it or not, whether you’re motivated or not, then that’s no longer an excuse that you get to use as a justification to not do the thing you need to do. Because if that’s not part of your affirmation, then you’re like, “I don’t feel like it.” And then you’re like, “Yeah, so I’ll do it tomorrow.” But if you’re like, “Whether I feel like it or not,” then when that excuse comes up, “I don’t feel like it. Yeah, but it doesn’t matter if I feel like it. I’ve already committed that I’m going to do it whether I feel like it or not.” So, it might seem subtle, but that’s a very important part.

All right. The third segment today and I’m trying to organize these – they help me organize better in my brain when I’m preparing these – the power of tiny wins. One of my favorite books on habits, there are two, it’s Atomic Habits with James Clear, of course, the all-time bestseller. And then BJ Fogg wrote the book, Tiny Habits, long before James Clear wrote his book. Tiny habits, tiny wins, these kind of go hand-in-hand. So, one of my favorite strategies is to focus on tiny wins. Now, here’s the thing. Big goals can be overwhelming, and that is why so many people give up. But when you break a goal into smaller bite-sized steps, as I alluded to earlier, you create what’s called behavioral momentum.

Remember, our brain, the dopamine gets released when we check something off the to-do list then when we take another step forward toward our goal. So, each small win gives your brain another hit of dopamine and that keeps you motivated. You’ve got to have these tiny wins and that can be simply your daily activity, your daily habit, doing one thing that moves you forward. I talked about this during the Miracle Year series, the paradigm shift that the purpose of a goal, the primary purpose is not to hit the goal. And that sounds counterintuitive like, “What do you mean? That’s why you set a goal so that you can hit it.” Not necessarily. And this is a philosophy that came from Jim Rohn.

And I don’t remember his exact quote, but this shifted. I learned this 23 years ago, 24 years ago. I was 21 years old when I learned this and it was a game-changer. It was that, “Oh, the purpose of a goal is to give you a target that fosters growth and achievement.” I’d give you an example. Because, by the way, before I give you the example, this is one of the main things that derails us from setting goals is we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid that either our own self-worth that, “I don’t want to fail. That means I’m not capable and I’ll feel bad about myself.” Or it’s a fear of judgment from other people. “People will view… My friends, family, colleagues like they’re going to view me as a failure so I don’t want to tell people my goals.” That’s when you’re based on this black-and-white thinking that if I hit the goal, I succeed. If I don’t hit it, I fail. That’s not true. It’s far more nuanced than that. And I’ll give you the example.

Let’s say you set a goal to make $100,000 in income. And let’s say your biggest year ever was 50,000 or 60,000. Pick any number short of a hundred, right? Let’s say last year you made 60,000 and you want to stretch yourself to make 100,000 this year. That’s the goal. Now, the black-and-white thinking, the fixed mindset thinking, by the way, there’s the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. The fixed mindset is if I don’t reach my goal, I fail. The fixed mindset would say, “Okay. Well, I fail if I don’t make a hundred thousand this year.” The growth mindset would say, “This is about fostering growth and achievement. So, 100,000 is my target. I’m going to give it everything I have until the last possible moment to reach $100,000 in income this year.”

And let’s say you do that and you give it your all because you’re shooting for this target, this goal of $100,000. And let’s say you fall short and you only make $88,000 for the year or $92,000, whatever. Did you fail? Or did you increase your income from $60,000 to $88,000? See, that’s where goals are invaluable is that it’s not about hitting them or not hitting them. It’s not a black-and-white paradigm, a succeed or fail paradigm. It’s, okay, I’m going to set goals that challenge me, that stretch me, that excite me, and knowing I might hit the goal, sometimes I might even exceed it but even if I fall short of all of my goals, but they stretch me and they challenge me and they give me a target for growth and achievement so that I grow and achieve more than I did last year, that is a success. That is the purpose of the goal.

And so, again, breaking them into small daily wins allows you to keep momentum, keep doing the thing. And I’ll share a quick example, a quick story. When I was writing The Miracle Morning and this started in 2008 or 2009 I think when I started writing it, I probably started making notes in 2008, like general Ideas, and then actually sat down in 2009 I think to write it. And my goal by the way was to write it in one year, just so you know. But I didn’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write a book.” That felt way too big. Instead, I set a goal to write one page a day. Some days I wrote more and some days I had total writer’s block and I was frustrated and I felt I beat myself up because I couldn’t think of a page where the page I wrote was terrible. And afterwards, I was like, “I can never publish that. That’s horrible, right?”

So, some days I wrote more, some days I wrote less but hitting that daily target is what kept me moving forward. And guess what? One page a day turned into an entire book. Now, it took me three years, by the way. That’s another thing about goals is sometimes you realize that your time frame is inaccurate, right? You set a goal to do something in a year, and at the end of this year you go, “Oh, man, I didn’t finish the book. I didn’t finish the thing, I didn’t get my business plan, whatever it is, right?” But guess what? You made progress. And now you might need to extend. Instead of a one-year goal, I mean, you think about it, we almost always set annual goals, but we’re not taught typically how to set 2, 3, 4, or 5, 10-year goals, right? And so, we often underestimate how long something is going to take.

All right. Here’s your action step. Identify one small step that you can take toward your goal today. Not tomorrow. Today. Now, if you’re listening to this at like 11:59 p.m. Okay. First thing tomorrow morning, right, like tomorrow but otherwise, today. Identify one small step you can take toward your goal today. And maybe it’s sending an email, maybe it’s going for a ten-minute walk or even just writing out your plan. If you haven’t set your goals yet for the year, maybe that’s it. What matters is taking either the first step or the next step and just keeping that momentum going.

All right. And the fourth and final segment, overcoming mental blocks. That’s the elephant in the room like we all have mental blocks. And I don’t know about you, but when I listen to a podcast or I go to an event, well, any time anyone is like talking to me about doing things that bring up fears for me or insecurities or self-doubt, which is anytime anybody is talking about achieving goals, doing things I haven’t done before like that’s almost inherent. It’s part of being a human. We all have mental blocks, whether it’s fear of failure or procrastination, which we talked about earlier. Remember, you procrastinate because you’re seeking that emotion of relief, which is the opposite of the emotion of pressure, the feeling of pressure or stress.

Procrastination gives you short-term relief, but long term, it only compounds the pressure and the stress. Anyway, so the mental blocks, whether it’s procrastination, failure, fear of failure, self-doubt, you name it, here’s the good news. These blocks are not permanent. They’re just stories that we tell ourselves. And we can rewrite those stories, right? One strategy that I love is called implementation intentions. And I know I learned this from someone else and I cannot remember who it was. So, if you’re listening, I apologize that I’m not quoting you right now, but implementation intentions. It’s simple. When you anticipate a challenge, create an if-then plan.

So, for example, if I feel like skipping my morning workout, then I’ll remind myself why I set this goal in the first place. Or like I said earlier, if your affirmation says I’m committed to do the thing whether I feel like it or not, that’s your daily affirmation. That’s almost like setting a perpetual implementation intention, right? Like, you’re cementing a permanent way of being, an if-then plan that if I don’t feel like it, I’m remembering that it doesn’t matter how I feel in the moment. I’m still going to utilize my self-discipline to do that thing that I don’t feel like doing. And you might remember I talked about something I learned from John Maxwell during the Miracle Year series.

I shared this, which is act your way into feeling, the idea that motivation does not just swoop you off the couch to do the things that you need to do, but when you get up off the couch, my favorite example is if you intended to go to the gym, but you don’t feel like it, you’re tired, or whatever, but if you just pack your gym bag and get in the car or ideally you have a gym bag already packed, maybe it’s in the trunk, you just get in the car and you set your GPS for the gym, that is easy. You don’t need motivation to get in the car with your gym bag and set your GPS to the gym. That takes very minimal effort or energy or motivation. However, you’re acting your way into feeling.

Now, you’re going to drive to the gym. Once you get there, hopefully, you have the windows down. You’re feeling more energized. Once you’re going there, the music’s blaring, you go into the gym, the energy is palpable. And now you’re like, “All right. Okay. I’m here. I guess I’m going to work out.” Then you work out and then you feel proud of yourself for doing the hard thing that you didn’t feel like doing. And now you’re, again, neuroplasticity, you’re rewiring your brain so that you’re like, “Oh, wow, if I don’t feel like doing something and I don’t have the motivation, I can still do it. And then when I do it, I feel really good and proud of myself.”

And then the next time, I want you to really take this to heart, the next time you’re like, “I don’t feel like it,” you now have a data point. You now go, “Oh, yeah, but I didn’t feel like it on Tuesday. And what did I do? I just acted my way into feeling. I got my gym bag. I jumped in the car, I set the GPS, and I had a great workout, and that was awesome. I’ll just do that again.” And now, that’s how you develop self-discipline. One tiny decision at a time, one implementation intention, right, where you create this if-then plan, “Even if I don’t feel like it, I’ll take a baby step.”

When I was in sales, it was picking up the phone. They always said the phone is so heavy, like a sales rep is like, “I don’t want to pick up the phone. Like, I don’t want to make calls. I don’t want to get rejected. I don’t want to whatever, whatever. I don’t feel like it. I’m not motivated.” So, when I had that, I would grab my referral book without mustering any motivation. I would just pick it up, all lazy. I would pick up the phone, all lazy. I would scroll down and see who the next person I needed to call was. No motivation, but I would act my way into feeling and then I would dial the numbers on that phone of that person, next to their name. I put the phone in my ear. It would start ringing and I’d go, “Okay.” Somebody is going to answer.

And then they answer, “Hey.” And then all of a sudden, I’d feel motivated to talk to that person but all I did was take the baby step. All I did was that small intention, that implementation intention. When I don’t feel like it, I’ll act my way into feeling. In fact, that’s the universal one. If you don’t feel like it, then you act your way into feeling. So, write down one if-then plan for a challenge that you anticipate. Okay. Write down one if-then plan and you can take some of the ones that we’ve given an example. If I don’t feel like it, I’ll act my way into feeling or I’m committed to take action whether I feel like it or not. You might have a specific one. If I don’t feel like going to the gym, I’ll get in the car with my gym bag and set the GPS. Think about how powerful that is and think about how few people do that.

Like, very few people do that, right? Very few people have a contingency plan where, “If I don’t feel like it, what’s a really simple baby step I could do that would move me in the direction that would act my way into feeling?” That’s a powerful strategy for you to implement. So, again, write down one if-then plan, one implementation intention, how you’re going to implement something that you don’t feel like implementing. So, it could be general like I gave you the example, or specific. And remember, you are stronger than your excuses. Up until now, even if you let yourself off the hook, if you don’t feel like it, great. You get to change. Like I said, these mental blocks are not concrete. They’re not permanent. They’re just stories we tell ourselves and we can rewrite those stories.

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: All right, my friends, let’s recap. Today, we covered the psychology of goals, the power of visualization and affirmations, the importance of tiny wins, and how to overcome mental blocks. These are not just theories. These are proven strategies that can help you achieve anything that you set your mind to. All right. Now, here’s your next step. I know I’ve given you some steps for each of these. Take action. Pick one of the strategies that we talked about today and implement it, if not all four, and implement it. If you need to go back and listen to the episode again, great, but start small, stay consistent, and watch your life transform.

And, hey, if you found this episode helpful, I’d love to hear from you. Share your biggest takeaway on social media, tag me @hal_elrod on Instagram or @hal_elrod on Facebook or leave a review for the podcast wherever you are listening. Your feedback means the world to me and it helps us, helps me to reach more people who are ready to achieve their goals. All right. Until next time, keep striving, keep growing, and keep achieving. You’ve got this. Let’s make this the best year of our lives because you, the people that you love, and the people that you lead deserve nothing less. I’ll talk to you next week.

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