
“An inverted goal is essentially the goal that leads to the final predetermined outcome that you want to accomplish.”
Hal Elrod
Today, we continue with part 3 of our 4-part series on making 2022 your best year ever. If you haven’t heard Part 1 or Part 2, I definitely recommend that you go back and listen.
In today’s episode, I introduce you to what I call “inverted goals.” Unlike a traditional goal which focuses on a predetermined outcome (e.g., I want to lose 10lbs), an inverted goal focuses on a predetermined process (e.g., exercise 5 days per week).
Which predetermined processes (activities, habits, rituals, and routines) will you commit to this year that will move you toward the outcomes you want to achieve?
Essentially, inverted goals are the goals that lead you to the outcome that you want to accomplish. Today, you’ll learn exactly when and how I use this approach to goal setting, so you can incorporate it in your approach to make 2022 your best year yet!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How inverted goals help you focus on habits, rituals, and routines rather than obsessing over the results.
- How to clarify your mission and enjoy every moment—and why this isn’t about being happy, excited, or positive all the time.
- Why inverted goals allow you to experience joy no matter what’s going on in your life.
- How inverted goals lead you to bigger results and allow you to succeed every single day.
THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Organifi makes the highest quality nutritional products, which are made from whole food ingredients (not synthetic vitamins) that I enjoy nearly every day, and have for many years. Visit Organifi.com/Hal, and use the code HAL at checkout to get 20% off of your entire order. I hope you find something there that you love! :^)
Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate that you have taken the time to listen and hopefully take notes on today’s episode because this is Part 3 of a four-part series on how to have your best year ever in 2022. I shared with you before we used to do a live event called Best Year Ever Blueprint for six consecutive years. Our last year of that was 2019. And so, this is kind of the next best thing as I’m trying to serve our community and share with you the best advice that I have on how to set yourself up for a great year in 2022 and beyond. You can use this every year.
And so, I’m doing a four-part series, Part 3 of 4, and I do encourage you to listen to all four parts. Part 1 is Episode 407, so you can go back to HalElrod.com/407, listen to all four parts, and each one is an hour, give or take. Today, I think can be a little shorter, kind of a simpler episode. But the point is, I encourage you to do it and take notes and really use the next couple of weeks to set yourself up for 2022. It’s not something that you do in one day. I mean, if you do a full day, you can do like a one-day all-day planning session. You can even listen to all four of these episodes in one day and take notes and create your goals and your plans. So, yes, you can do it one day, but I personally like to take weeks.
So, I’ve already started this process myself, where I spend really most of December, but at least the last two weeks of December preparing for the new year because as I’m sitting down and setting goals and making plans and studying inverted goals, which is what we’re doing today, how to set inverted goals, but as I’m doing this process that I’m teaching over these four episodes, it evolves. So, I’ll set a goal one day and I’ll have an idea, though, the next day in the shower on how to apply that goal or the plan to achieve that goal. So, I personally don’t do this all in one day. I like to spread it out over a couple of weeks to let my mind really get wrapped around the goals I’m setting, the plans I’m making, the actions I’m going to take, and the mindset that I need to maximize the new year. So, again, today is Part 3 of 4, and we’re talking about setting inverted goals for 2022. And if you’re wondering, what’s an inverted goal? Keep listening, and I will tell you that very shortly.
Before we dive in, I want to take just a couple of minutes to number one, thank our sponsor, and number two, share a free resource with you, which I’ve shared the last couple of episodes as well, first and foremost, our sponsor, Organifi. Organifi is a company that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve been using their products for five years. And I want to ask you a question, do you want an easy way to boost your immune system? I’d imagine the answer is yes, I know that I personally do. So, if you’d like a healthy, natural, convenient way to enhance your immune system, to keep you healthy, to keep you protected, I invite you to check out Organifi, whose products are all natural, and I don’t just mean all natural, they are food-based organic supplements. And personally, the two that really focus on the immune system, all of their products enhance your immune system because they enhance your health, but specifically, their Immunity, which is a really delicious orange powder that goes into a cup of water, and I will down it in the morning, especially during my cold and flu season. And it’s got beta-glucan, it’s got vitamin C. And I can’t think of all, I’m not looking at it right now, but it’s got great things to enhance your immune system. And they have another capsule form, which is called Critical Immune. In fact, this morning, I ordered more Immunity and more of my Critical Immune because I just ran out the other day, so getting over being sick today, actually. I think that’s it. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal, that is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and check out Immunity, check out Critical Immune. Anything else that Organifi makes, I highly recommend all of it, and use the code HAL, H-A-L, at checkout to get 20% off your entire order. I told you guys, I’m getting over being sick, so my head’s not all there.
And last but not least, Optimize. You may have seen me post about this and mention it. I had Brian Johnson on Episode 405, a couple of episodes ago. Brian Johnson is someone I have learned a tremendous amount from. He is the founder of Philosophers Notes, the founder of Optimize, now the CEO and founder of Heroic, but specifically, Philosophers Notes, which is the company Optimize, they make what I believe are some of, if not the best book summaries on the planet. And I feel that book summaries can help you not only finish a book in a fraction of the time, but they give you the big ideas that you can immediately implement to see results in your life. So, do I read full books? Absolutely. But I read book summaries on a daily basis to get really condensed value, its concentrated value, right? It takes you maybe three weeks to read a book and get all the strategies, while in 20 minutes with Optimize, you can read one of their Philosophers Notes book summaries and get all the strategies that you can immediately implement into your life. It’s free, completely 100% free, no credit card, none of that. You can go over to Optimize.me/Hal, that is Optimize, O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E, Optimize.me/Hal, and you can get a free membership. Again, no strings attached, it’s completely free to Optimize and get over 600 Philosopher Notes book summaries, as well as their entire video library, which is also pretty incredible. Alright, I made it through the introduction. Holy cow! Alright, here we go, Part 3 of 4 on how to make 2022 your best year ever. Let’s talk about setting inverted goals.
[INTERVIEW]
Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, what’s going on? It’s good to be with you today. It’s the holiday season. We’re headed into the new year. I’m excited. And today’s Part 3 of this four-part series we’ve been doing on how to have your best year ever in 2022. And last week’s episode, Part 2 of the series was about getting your mind right or more formally optimizing your mindset for 2022. And we talked about that that precedes everything else. Getting in the right mindset precedes everything else, it precedes your goal setting and making your plans for the new year. If you don’t have a strong mindset, if you’re experiencing a perpetual state of stress or fear or anxiety or depression, or if you’re lacking self-confidence or you’re feeling hopeless, it’s going to hinder your ability to effectively set and achieve your goals.
So, last week, we dove into that rut. I gave you five steps to optimize your mindset for 2022. By the way, I am a little bit under the weather right now, so I’m having trouble breathing, talking, but I’m feeling a little bit better than I was yesterday, so hopefully, I’m on the mend. But anyway, just because I might sound a little off today as I try to communicate through the sickness. Anyway, remember also from last week that I recommended that you create a single document, something along the lines of your best year ever goals and affirmations. You can call it what you want, but that will be your guide for 2022. And I do encourage you to listen to this whole four-part series. So, if you’re just coming in today on Part 3, you can listen to Part 3 and then go back. But I really would encourage you to listen to the four-part series. Part 1, it was actually a replay from last year. It was an all-encompassing single episode that was all about an unconventional approach to making this your best year ever. Then the last week, as I mentioned, it was about optimizing your mindset.
And then today is about setting inverted goals for 2022. Now, what is inverted goals? I’ll tell you that in a second. But again, you want to have a document, whatever your notes, basically, that’s kind of how I addressed it last week is whatever you’re taking notes on and whatever you’re writing down the five steps from last week and then whatever notes you took from the week before, I hope you’re taking notes. That is something that I really encouraged you to do. I said this series is not a podcast series where you just listen to it in the car or on the fly, on a run, this is really designed for you to, it’s like a training, where you take notes, you follow the exercises, you follow the steps, you set your goals, you create your process, like you really, really dig in and go deep. Don’t just listen to it in the car. It’s not going to do anything for you if you do that. So, I encourage you to listen to the series all the way through, take notes. And this can really, I’m hoping that this is enough, like this is a comprehensive training, these four episodes, to really set you up for success in 2022.
And this is kind of, imagine going to like a seminar, right? And if you remember, I said that I ran the best year ever blueprint seminar with my buddy Jon Berghoff for six consecutive years. We’re not doing that this year. So, this is the next best thing. I’m going to give you my best advice on how to make 2022 your best year ever in a four-part series. So, anyway, hopefully, I’ve convinced you, take notes, and listen to all four episodes. And next week, by the way, just to give you a little preview, next week’s going to be on making success simple in 2022. So, that’ll be the final, the fourth episode of the four-part series. Alright. Where are we at here?
So, what we’re going to do today, again, picking up where we left off. Last week was all about mindset. How do you get in the optimum mindset to not just set your goals, make your plans, but to enter into the year with a newfound sense of optimism and confidence and belief in yourself and dedication and focus where it really, really matters? Now, today’s episode, as I said, it’s about goals and specifically what I call inverted goals. Now, to be clear, this is a new term. Literally, this just came to me as I was prepping for this series, but an inverted goal is simply a predetermined process as opposed to a typical goal, which is a predetermined outcome, right? So, you see that, right? Normally, a goal would be this is the outcome I want to accomplish this year. Those are important. We’re going to talk about that today. I’m not saying, only set inverted goals, I’m saying that an inverted goal is essentially the goal that leads to the final predetermined outcome that you want to accomplish. This will all make sense. If it’s confusing now, it’ll make sense here in a second.
So, for example, a lot of people have weight loss goals, right? That’s a predetermined outcome. I want to lose 10 pounds this year. That’s a typical goal. Personally, I used to have a goal of the opposite. I’ve always been thin, so it was to put on 10 pounds of muscle. That was my goal back in 2005, I think. And now, my inverted goal is to simply exercise five days a week. That’s my process, that’s in my control. So, that makes sense, right? So, very simple. So, the outcome of I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle versus I’m committed to working out five days a week, and if for me, inverted goals in a lot of ways are enough, meaning as long as I work out five days a week, I feel great. And if I only put on two pounds of muscle, okay. Now, if it was really crucial life or death, I’ve got to have those 10 pounds of muscle on, then it would matter a little more. But for the most part, I just want to be healthy and in shape and active and strong. My inverted goal is about the process that I am committed to. So, that’s what today’s about. This is getting clear on what are the daily, maybe not daily, some things you might do one day a week or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or five days a week. But what are the activities? What are the processes that you will commit to this year that will move you in the direction of your overall goals, your predetermined outcomes that you want to accomplish? What are the habits, the rituals, the routines? I called that the process. What’s your predetermined process that will lead to your desired results? That’s an inverted goal. It’s defining that process.
Now, in Part 1 of the series, I talked about setting goals in eight different areas of your life, right? We talked about health and finances and your career or your business. We talked about relationships. We talked about contribution. We talked about setting goals in personal growth and development. We talked about fun and relaxation. And then we talked about spirituality or religion. So, we talked about eight different areas of your life to set goals in. And again, go back and listen to that, I’m not going to repeat that in today’s episode. But that was more about setting the predetermined-type goals or the outcomes you want to accomplish in each of those eight areas. And you don’t have to set goals in all eight areas. You might go, look, my spirituality is good, right? I’m good. My relationships, we’re harmonious. We are wonderful. But there are some areas that I really need some measurable outcomes that I need to set goals in because I really do need to improve my finances. I do need to make X amount of dollars this year in order to make my house payment, right? So, that’s where, yes, normal old school, standard smart goals are important.
I also talked about in that episode, by the way, clarifying your mission. Your mission is your number one goal, and that for me has been really valuable. I think it was back in 2004 or 2005 that I first did that, where I went, okay, I’ve got like eight different goals or 10 different goals that I want to accomplish. What is the single most important goal here? What’s the goal that if I commit to that one above all others, meaning I’m not allowed to even put any time into achieving my other goals until I followed through with my predetermined process for my mission? What’s that goal? And by committing to that, that goal, my mission, my number one most important goal above all others, by committing to my mission, I will develop the mindset, the habits, the skills to achieve all of my goals. And so, that’s the purpose of a mission. And again, I’m not going to go too much further in-depth than that because you can go back and listen to Part 1 of this series. And in fact, let me even go, I want to see which episode that was, so you’re not hunting for it. You can actually go find it. I have no internet. I’m working off my phone hotspot. Guys, you want to feel sorry for me for a second. We haven’t had internet for a month and a half. Could you imagine? I have not had an internet for a month and a half, and my phone hotspot works at like AOL dial-up speed. It’s so slow. Like I click to go to the podcast page on my website, and it’s still loading. I still can’t see anything. Anyway, so if you want to feel sorry for me, First World problems.
So, Episode 407 was my best advice to make 2022 your best year yet. That was Part 1 of this four-part series, and that was a very in-depth episode. And then, the other three parts are simplifying, fine-tuning, focusing on different aspects of that first holistic episode. So, that’s Episode 407, you can find it at HalElrod.com/407. So, where was I? Mission, right? So, your mission, what’s your number one goal for the year? In fact, here, I’ll share with you mine. So, my number one goal this year, my mission this year is to, it’s very simple, enjoy every moment. That’s it. Enjoy every moment, in other words, to experience inner freedom that we talk so much about in 2020, experience inner freedom. My ability to choose inner freedom is our ability to choose how we experience any given moment of our lives. How do we feel? What are we thinking? What are we focusing on? What’s our state of mind, our mindset in any given moment, no matter what’s happening around us, no matter what our circumstances are, no matter what someone else says or does or doesn’t do? Inner freedom is our ability to choose how we experience every moment of our lives.
And I personally prefer to enjoy every moment, to be genuinely happy, grateful, joyful, loving, positive, and at peace, no matter what’s going on in my life. When I do that, when I’m consciously doing that, I’m choosing that, my emotional well-being isn’t determined by what’s happening outside of me because I’m enjoying life exactly as it is. You might even consider this for 2022 if you believe, as I do, that optimizing how you feel is the ultimate goal, you might consider it for yourself. But thankfully, it’s the one thing each of us has control over. In fact, I’m going to share on this a little bit more. It will go a little deeper on this particular goal because I do believe there’s a reason it’s my number one goal. And so, I’m going to project on to you why this is so important. So, consider that mastering your inner world, mastering how you feel in any moment by consciously choosing how you will experience each moment of your life, regardless of circumstances, that may be the single most important commitment that you can make.
And that to be clear, to enjoy every moment doesn’t mean that you don’t feel pain or that you suppress emotions like sadness or anger, it means that you feel all of your emotions, but that you’re actually able to enjoy feeling every single one because they’re all part of the human experience. This is going to be a paradigm shift probably for most people. Think of this, like, so I have days when I feel depressed, but I embrace it. I didn’t always do this, but when I feel down or I feel, fill in the blank, right? I feel upset, I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel scared, I don’t resist it anymore. I used to resist it and fight and go, I don’t like feeling this way. Why do I feel this way? Well, that just perpetuates the painful emotion. And now, you feel bad that you feel bad. You follow?
Imagine if you felt depressed and you’re like, no, God, I don’t want to feel this way versus interesting, I feel depressed right now, not my favorite feeling in the world, and again, when I say depressed, I understand, this is a delicate topic because there is clinical depression. Last year, what are we at? Yeah, last year, you may remember I slept for two to four hours a night for about four or five months and I went into a deep, deep, deep depression where I was suicidal every day, I did not want to live. I did not want to live. So, I have been there before. So, understand that what I am saying is not to be insensitive. It’s also easier said than done, I realized that. I was at a place where I don’t think the advice I’m giving, I couldn’t figure it out myself.
But here’s the point, that when you feel a painful emotion, you can either resist it and wish you weren’t feeling it which doesn’t make it go away, it just perpetuates the painful emotion and makes it worse that amplifies it. Or you can completely accept it exactly as it is and go, I feel depressed today, I feel down today, and that’s okay. I’m not going to resist it. As you’ve probably heard, what you resist persists, I’m not going to resist it. I’m going to feel it fully. I’m just going to allow it to be. In fact, you can go as far as to decide I’m going to choose it because I’m experiencing it. So, I’m going to choose it, I’m going to embrace it, I’m going to allow it. And in doing so, it loses the power to hurt me. Consider that. If you resist a painful emotion, you’re telling it, I can’t handle you, leave me alone. And if it doesn’t leave you alone, you’re distraught, you’re emotionally distraught. It’s often our resistance to the emotion, the pain that we’re feeling, it’s often the resistance that’s worse than the pain itself. But when you stop resisting it and you just allow it, you just accept it exactly as it is, you create space for it, and you go, you know what? I’ve felt this before. It’s not going to last forever. My last few months, I don’t know, but each day, I’m going to take it one day at a time, and I’m going to allow whatever I’m feeling to just be, I’m going to be at peace with it. And in doing so, in choosing it, choosing to allow whatever emotion comes up for you, it loses its power to hurt you.
So, I just wanted to clarify that because when I say enjoy every moment, I’m not saying that you have to be happy, excited, super positive in every moment. I understand there, I don’t believe that you should be that. I believe that you should feel the full range of human emotions that we have been gifted with. You should experience all of them. But the power is in allowing the emotions, enjoying the emotions. I’ll give you an example. When I had my battle with cancer, I was in the hospital for most of eight months. I’d be in the hospital for, well, I guess, I’d be in there for five days and then for about a week, then I’d go home for a couple of weeks, I’d come back for a week, go home for a week. So, I was in and out of the hospital all the time. And it was the most painful, physically painful time in my life, which made it the most emotionally painful because it was like, why am I going through this? I’m in so much pain, this sucks. But having the awareness that I just shared with you of never resisting my reality. That was a conscious choice I made 22 years ago after my car accident was, I will no longer resist my reality, I will accept my reality exactly as it is and I will be at peace with it.
And being at peace with your reality, being at peace with feeling depressed, being at peace with pain doesn’t mean you’re happy about it. See, there’s a difference. Happiness is an emotion, right? If you hold your hands up, I’m holding my hands up right now, and my right hand represents all the positive emotions. I’m like waving it in kind of like a circle. That’s my positive feel-good emotions. And then my left hand represents all the painful emotions, sadness, anger, regret, resentment, fear, depression. And if you take those two hands that you’re holding up in the air, if you’re holding yours up or imagine I’m holding mine up, and I take my right hand and I pull it to heart center with my palm facing the opposite hand. And then I take my left hand and I pull it to heart center, so now it’s touching my right hand in prayer position. In between the positive emotions that we experience and the negative emotions that we experience is a place that I call peace, it’s that inner peace. So, if you imagine, you’ve got your hands in the heart center, prayer position, or you imagine me that I’ve got mine right now, mine are in the heart center, prayer position, and you understand that when you accept life exactly as it is, when you accept your painful emotions exactly as they are, it doesn’t mean you’re happy that you feel that way, but it means you’re at peace.
And peace is not an emotional state. Emotional states are fleeting, you can be happy one minute, and then a phone call changed that, now you’re upset, you’re angry or sad or whatever. You can be upset one minute, and then you win the lottery, and now you’re like, oh my God, who cares? I have things right. But when you live your life in a state of unconditional acceptance, you are at peace. And peace is a rooted, ever present state of being that doesn’t change with the tide, right? It’s not fleeting like emotions are. And so, when I’m talking about enjoy every moment, yes, I mentioned a bunch of positive emotions that I want to be genuinely happy and grateful and playful and positive and loving and have peace and all of those things. Yes, that’s my ideal. But on those tough days, I’m able to enjoy feeling whatever I’m feeling. I’m able to choose to feel it fully. And in doing so, it loses the power to hurt me.
And I’m not special, this is something that for all of us, we all have the power to be at peace with the things we can’t change, focus on things we can. And in that, for me, I’m able to enjoy every moment. And on top of that, or this is very important, like I said, I don’t like feeling depressed, I don’t like being angry, I don’t like being scared or being sad. I don’t particularly enjoy those. There’s value in them, but I try to transmute those painful emotions as fast as humanly possible. You may know my 5-minute rule, we’re not going to talk about that, but give myself five minutes to feel negative, feel painful emotions. And then I say, can’t change it, and then I move on. So, the point is, 95% of the time, I want to feel happy. I want to feel grateful and joyful and loving and all of those things. And so, with that being my number one goal, whenever I find myself feeling something other than those positive states that I’m striving toward, I ask myself, why am I feeling this way? What’s the purpose in feeling this way? Is there value in feeling this way?
And sometimes, it’s yeah, there’s a lesson here for me. There’s a lesson here for me. The thing that I did or the thing that someone did to me that caused me to feel this way, I’m going to learn to not do that again. But as soon as I extract the lesson, I just move on. I was like, oh, okay, got it, can’t change it, move on. Or I find often that I’m focusing on the negative things in my life that are causing me pain, and there’s really no value in dwelling on these things that I can’t change. They’re out of my control. They’re in the past. They’re what other people are doing. They’re going on in the world way out there. Like, why am I allowing my emotional state to be determined by things that are out of my control? Because that for me is a commitment is I will not allow things that are out of my control to determine my emotional state, I choose my emotional state. You choose your emotional state unless you don’t. And if you don’t, then you don’t, but you have that power, you have that ability. If good things happen, I feel good. If bad things happen, I feel bad, right? That’s being at the mercy of the things in your life. If it feels foreign to you to choose how you feel, no matter what’s going on, just start somewhere and make this a conscious practice, and it will get easier and easier and easier until you realize that you really do have control, not 100% control. Like I said, I have bad days, I have down moments. So, nobody has 100% control that I’m aware of. But you can have that 95% control or 65, whatever, there’s no specific metric.
It’s like what Michael Singer talks about in his book The Untethered Soul. He calls it the vow of unconditional happiness. He says, “Everybody wants to be happy, but they always have, well, I’m happy if everything goes according to plan.” And he says, “No, no, I didn’t ask you if you want to be happy if everything went according to plan. Do you want to be happy no matter what?” And if you do choose to be happy and then deal with life’s challenges while you are happy versus allowing life’s challenges to make you unhappy. So, I ask you, how do you want to feel most of the time? Do you want to be happy, and all those other joyful and loving and at peace? Seriously, if you could like actually think about it, if you could experience any emotional state, what would it be? And now, decide to consciously choose to feel that as much as possible while being completely at peace when you feel otherwise.
I’m feeling down today, I’m going to feel it fully, that’s okay. And you can actually smile in the midst of the pain. I touched my heart as I was saying that, I feel down today, that’s okay. And I actually smiled because I decided that that was okay. Again, it lost its power to hurt me. Consciously choose to feel the way you want to feel as much as possible while being at peace with anything else when you feel any way else, just don’t ever let your emotional state be dependent on your circumstances. That’s my encouragement to you. When we realize that we have the ability to choose how we feel and also to choose how we feel about how we feel, meaning I feel depressed, but I’m going to be at peace with that. That’s okay. I feel that’s normal. Life becomes like a game. You can’t control the roll of the dice or the moves the other player makes, but you can control how you play. And one day, life is going to end for all of us, so we might as well enjoy it while we’re blessed with the opportunity to play.
Alright. Let’s talk about setting inverted goals. That was a long tangent, I hope that was valuable for you. But again, that’s my mission this year to enjoy every moment because I find that as long as I’m enjoying every moment, I win. Michael Singer says that as long as you’re happy, you win, right? Meaning like, that’s the point, you’re doing everything you want to feel good and enjoy life. Like, let’s say you have a really hard life, but you enjoyed every moment, and then at the end, you look back and you go, wow, I enjoyed my life. It was wonderful. People from the outside might go, well, what do you mean? You endured some serious hardships. Yeah, but I enjoyed every moment even in the midst of the challenges, the midst of the adversity, the midst of the pain. I enjoyed every moment. It was a great life. Most people are striving for things that will bring them that feeling of joy. And I’m inviting all of us to consider, no, I’m going to have that feeling of joy, no matter what’s going on, whether I hit a goal, don’t hit a goal, reach a goal, whatever, I’m going to enjoy every moment of my life because I’ve been blessed with one life. That’s it. Just one. And I’m not going to waste it, wishing it were different, being upset, being angry, being frustrated, no, I’m going to be grateful in every single moment.
Alright, inverted goals. So, I won’t spend a lot of time on this. I mean, it’s simple, and I think I already gave you a general definition. But again, this is about clarifying what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, how much of it you’re going to do, your pre-determined process? I first implemented this approach, by the way, in January of– what year was it? 2001, I think, January of 2001, I was in sales, and I had set a goal for the year. And one day, I was on the phone making calls for scheduled appointments, and it went terribly. And nobody scheduled with me, and people were rude to me that I talked to and they hung up on me, and I felt really crappy, I didn’t feel good. And then I realized my emotional state is dependent on my results alone. Like if my calls go good, I feel good. And if they go bad, I feel bad. And it was a light bulb that went off, and I went, I’m not in control of how I feel. That doesn’t seem right. This was an epiphany. I went, I want to be happy all the time, or not even happy all the time, I just want to be in control of how I feel. I don’t want my emotional state to be dependent on things that are out of my control. And when you hear that, you’re probably like, yeah, that’s like so simple, that makes sense, why would we allow things, other things, people, places, events, whatever circumstances to determine how we feel? Why don’t we determine how we feel?
And so, I decided that, I went, okay, well, I have a goal this year. How many calls do I need to make to reach that goal? And I pulled up the calculator, I figured out make about 20 calls a day, five days a week. That’s about average. And then I went, wait a minute, what if I just make 20 calls a day, five days a week, and I enjoy every moment, and I don’t stress about how my calls go on any given day? And I don’t even stress about how my appointments go on any given day, like if nobody buys from me, or people kick me out of their house, or they don’t show up or whatever. What if I don’t allow any of that to affect how I feel? What if I just commit to the process of 20 calls a day? That was my inverted goal, right? 20 calls, that was my inverted goal. What if I commit to the process of 20 calls a day without being emotionally attached to my results? That was my epiphany. But it was also, I didn’t know if it was like, I was like, oh, I don’t know, try it out. That spring, I went and I made 20 calls a day, five days a week, I didn’t worry about anything else, no stress. And I ended up being the number one sales rep out of 60,000 sales reps in our company.
Here’s the difference. They were stressed out all the time. They were still riding the emotional rollercoaster that human beings ride in, especially if you’re in sales, right? You really ride that emotional roller coaster. But I had no emotional rollercoaster, I was committed to my daily process of 20 calls a day, regardless of my results along the way. I was not emotionally attached to how the calls went, how the appointments went, how my sales went, etc., etc. And it was a life-changing epiphany that changed the rest of my life because I applied it to everything that I do. Commit to the process without being emotionally attached to the results.
So, again, if you listened to Part 1 of the series, we talked about the eight key areas of your life to set goals in. Now, inverted goals are the predetermined activities, the process that will move you in the direction of where you want to be in the eight key areas of your life. So, I encourage you to go back to Episode 1, listen to that episode in full, get clear on the predetermined outcomes you want to accomplish this year aka your goals, and then determine what are the inverted goals that will support the external goals? What are the predetermined processes, the process or processes for each and every one of these areas that will move me in that direction?
And like I said, I’m not worried about how many pounds of muscle I put on this year, but I’m committed and I have been for quite a long time to follow my workout routine five days a week, no matter what. And when I do that, I win. And the beauty of that is when you set inverted goals, when you determine your daily process and activities that you’re committed to, then not only do you move in the direction of your bigger goals, your predetermined outcomes, but you’re successful every single day, right? It’s not hinging on what happens in 365 days. No, it’s hey, today, I achieved my inverted goal. I made my 20 phone calls. I did my 30-minute workout routine. I read my 15 pages. I wrote for an hour, etc. So, you are in control. Let’s make this our best year ever. And I love you guys so much. I’ll talk to you all next week.
[END]
Episode Resources
Share This
Related