Ok, Seriously, This Is The Last Cookie

One of the biggest problems with goal setting is ultimately a lack of integrity and trust with yourself.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said to myself, “after these two rows of Samoas I’m done.”  Only to finish the box and have an internal argument on who’s fault it was. (If you don’t know what a Somoa, is google them immediately)

If you can’t say to yourself, “do this now”, or “stop doing that now”, and actually listen and act accordingly you’ll never be able to make major changes in anything.   But it’s insanely hard.

One of the best conversations I’ve ever heard was between Lewis Howes and John Assaraf… It’ over an hour long, but go to 11:00 in and listen for 5 minutes…Click Here  You’ll get much more out of it than this article, I swear.

John Assaraf talks about the power of habit, training yourself to do little things daily, and building on it.  Studies show that it takes 60 days to build a habit, so go 90 just to be safe.  The interesting part is that he notes it’s the habit and repetition you’re trying to build, not the intensity of the habit.

Think back to how most new year’s resolutions and changes go.

January 1-7 – we’re ALL IN.  Sure it’s different going to the gym everyday, or forgoing that extra 7 cookies, but hey, it’s time for some serious change!

January 8-24^th – Ok, so we slipped a day or two each week, but all in all things are going much better than last year, if we can just hang on until the end of the month…

February or March – And…there’s always 2019….

Now what if you looked at the year in 4 Phases (4 sets of 90 days) and make your goals easily attainable and progressive?

Piggybacking off of my prior post my goal for the next 90 days is purely to track on a 1-10 scale or Y/N for each of the below.

•        Eating (Overall eating for the day)
•        Planning (Set plan in AM or Night before)
•        Execution (How well the plan was executed)
•        Fitness/Working out
•        Relationships (Wife, Kids, Family/Friends)
•        Overall Feeling
•        Journal at Night
•        Journal in AM

You can probably see that the act of tracking these should make my behavior adjust, and so far it has…yes, it’s Jan 2^nd as I write this.  But this is really easy.  It’s 10 minutes before bed, and 5-10 minutes in the AM, and I love to write.

Now I do have longer term goals in my 4 other aspects (and I suggest you have big picture goals to), and they’ll be reviewed and monitored, but if by April it becomes automatic to track these things, then I’ll keep tracking and pivot to focus on the other big picture goals.  Side note on that, you have to keep those big picture goals in sight at least every week or two, which helps keep things in perspective.

What is the easiest thing you can do every day for 90 days before moving on?

It was rather ironic that this was the topic I wanted to tackle and a friend sent me this Instagram post by Chris Powell… Here The suggestions and philosophy he has is fantastic.

Chris Powell talks about their ‘Foundation 5’ where they master each of these one at a time, before moving onto the next.  These are extremely easy changes that will have a compounding effect once they all are mastered.

1 – Drink an extra quart of water daily
2- Eat breakfast (or as soon as your feeding window opens)
3-Eat a source of protein at every meal
4-Reduce sugar to less than 50g
5-Deliberately move for 5 minutes every day

These are all great suggestions, especially the move for 5 minutes every day.

Ultimately the intent here is to give yourself a command, and do it for 90 days to build trust and credibility with yourself.

So how can you make your goals easier? How can you make them a layup for 90 days?

How do they start out a backup quarterback coming off the bench? Short easy passes.

Give yourself some small wins to build on, then start throwing downfield.  On second thought, 4-yard pass after 4-yard pass will eventually get you into the end zone.