Episode 009 - How to achieve what you want in 2020

I think goalsetting in principle is a fundamentally important element to anybody wanting to make a growth in their life, a change in their life, a transformation in their life.

Building a business, starting a new relationship, being a parent, you have to have something to aim towards.And if goalsetting is the language you want to use for it fantastic.

Hello this is Dr Ro and you’re listening to the Seekardo podcast with Dr Ro and Harms. This is the pod cast where two completely different generations tackle the most challenging topics that people are facing today.

Above all else, the main reason that we chose to develop and record these podcasts is because we both have a passion for helping people go through life transformation for improving their lives, for taking their lives to a completely different level.

It is our hope, our genuine and sincere hope that by the end of each of these episodes you’ll have gained at least one insight that you can take away and apply directly into your own life.

Practical tools, voices that come in from both generations. The younger generation with tips and tools and the older generation with a sense of wisdom and experience, so you can help unlock your true potential to give the opportunity to make changes both on a  personal, professional, financial and relationship level. To give you a chance to impact both your lives and the lives of other people around you.

So we welcome you.

Welcome to the Seekardo podcast.

Hiit’s Harms here with Ro again for another episode of the Seekardo podcast. Today the question we want to be talking about is quite an ideal time in the year to be talking about this. It’s a reflective state and there is also a time in the year when we are looking forward into the next year.

So the question is:

How to achieve what you want in 2020?

The way we are going to answer this is to talk about goalsetting and potentially using goalsetting as a way to achieve what you want in 2020. Let’s start with a contrarian approach to this question.

Goalsetting is widely spoken about, it’s been spoken about for many years in the business sense, in apersonal sense. For those property entrepreneurs that we are connected with. Often you start the year with a plan to buy X houses and then you go out into that year and do your best to go achieve that because that was your goal at the start of the year.

But Ro, having worked in the sector for decades now, 30 years in the world of personal development, goalsetting, coaching people, transforming people’s lives. We are talking about audience of 300, 400, 500+ audiences that you’ve been in front of.

What are your criticisms with goalsetting?

We know there’s lots of pro talk about it, what are your criticisms about goalsetting and I guess the question to start with is, does it really work?

Thanks Harms and thank you all for listening in on this.

This is a really important subject and although we are recording it in 2019 going into 2020. I would say think of this as an evergreen recording, you might be listening to this in three, four, five years’ time from now. But the content will still be the same, it is still as much value to you whenever you listen to it.

We set a goal funnily enough to record this and unfortunately with me travelling a lot at the moment, we are actually in Denmark. We are staying at a place so you might here some of my family in the background. But we made a decision to see that goal through which is why we are recording this right now.

The other thing I just want to touch on in this subject you mentioned about being in front of200, 300 people, actually over the years my audiences have been a lot smaller than that and a lot bigger than that. But the common theme is that people want to achieve something.

So whether it’s I’m in front of a group of 10 people, but they have something they want to achieve, or whether its 10,000 people that group of 10,000 still only wants to achieve. And goalsetting historically on a one-to-one basis, on a group basis has been the mechanism by which people have said, “Right I want to get to this result. What’s the best way to get there? I know, I’ll set goals.”

But the challenge with that is and my biggest criticism is for a lot of people they set the goals based on what I call, ego setting. Well maybe that is not completely correct, I’d say some people when they’re setting goals at the beginning of the year, or at the start of the business, start of a project they will do it driven by this need to want to prove something. To build something big, to create something amazing. And to prove to other people.

That is potentially dangerous because the concept of setting goals around your ego ultimately means that you’re going to work towards trying toprove yourself right or prove yourself bigger than you are right now. But the danger to that is you end up just trying to compete as opposed to doing something out of passion.

Does this make sense Harms?

I’m trying to get across a message.

That makes sense because we asked a question to you Ro on what are your criticisms, and does it really work?

Just from that I’ve written something down, so one of the biggest criticisms is when people approach the subject of goalsetting and they sit down to do their goals. They don’t goal set, they ego set.

Yeah.

That’s the phrase I wrote downlistening to what you said. They don’t goal set they ego set. I think that’s something we want to help listeners who are listening to this podcast right now, not to fall into the trap of ego settingbut instead do goalsetting in a way that would allow them to achieve everything they put down on paper.

Is that fair?

Yeah, and I think somebody might counter argue with me and say, “Hold on a minutehow do I know if it is anego set or goal set?” Surely they’re the same thing.”

Okay so for example if you have an absolute passion to help people who are in financial difficulties, maybe people on the street and you want to work in a charity environment where you can go and feed children, feed people who are homeless, give them a chance to get back on their feet possibly put a roof over their heads. That’s a beautiful goal to set for the year.

You might say, “I’d like to help feed 200 people over this next year by going out taking some of the money I’ve earned, giving up some time to do that.” Whereas an ego set might be going around telling everybody, “Yeah I’m setting up this massive charity what we are going to do it istake one thousand people per month off the streets and what we are going to do is absolutely blow it out there. No one has ever created anything like this. I’m going to absolutely make sure that we feed all these people, get them back into an education program.”

And you go out and tell people that, but it’s coming from a place of, “I want to do this” and “I want to do that.”

It becomes less about the beautiful cause which is to help people that are genuinely homeless and maybe need help versus this is about me and how big I’m going to build this.

Does that distinctionmake sense?

That makes sense because ultimately, the goal is the same there, but it’s the way the goal is presented and spoken about is an indicator of where it is actually coming from.

Is it coming from a pure place?

Or is it coming from a place of ego?

Exactly I think that’s one of the areas to be mindful of when goalsetting.

I think the other thing is that people set goals that are maybe optimistic or overoptimistic. They say, “This year I’m going to X,Y.”

Forget the ego for a minute this is purely because they want to start a project and they want amassive result that they want to achieve, they tend to try and compress that goal into a shorter period of time. So they become over optimistic about what they can achieve in such a compressed space of time.

I had this conversation with somebody earlier this year who wanted to be a speaker, and they were saying, “Yeah it’s January now I’d like to be up and speaking professionally by March, actually outdoing events. Three-day trainings and starting to deliver those.”

I said okay to give you some context typically, it can take somebody a year, year and a half, two years to get to that point. And they were like, “But I’m going to smash it.”

I said I understand you’re looking to smash it, but do you have the time to attend this many weekends before then? Do you have the time to sit and record at least two or three independent speakers logging the times that they take to actually deliver, logging the sales message. Then understanding the dynamics of the audience, understanding the content and the sales element as well as making sure you manage your emotional state and your timings.

Do you have the time do that in the next three months as well as running a business?

And they looked at mewith blank eyes and that’s the difference.

It’s great to have the goal, but unrealistic timeframes are the other thing I find causes most people to break down the goals. I don’t know if you experienced that yourself, certainly for young people. Someone my age we are talking about the older age and younger age here, at 54 I know there are certain things that even if somebody is incredibly capable, I just know from experience they’re not going to achieve in the timeframe. Whereas somebody your age that hasn’t experienced that to start with, you might just assume you can do it.

It is not to take away the dream or steal the dream, it’s about making the dream practical and fitting into your own existing lifestyle as well.

Again I’m talking a lot here butI just wanted to try to get a point across before we kick into this, again I’m asking you the question Harms as a millennial does that make sense?Because you’re probably thinking, yeah but Ro I can conquer the world.

Yes, so when I first started to build my property business and then subsequent businesses after that point about five, six years ago, I naturally fell into that mould because you just don’t know all of the things that you’re going to come across.

Nobody ever discouraged the goals. For example say I wanted to buy 20 houses in 12 months, that’s one of the goals. In our marketing business we want to turn a revenue of £500,000. These are just examples they are not exact figures that we used but I just want to give some context.

When we were setting these goals it was a case of, when I say we I have a team around me which is a fantastic team, and we would all goal set together. The challenge was, it was great to get that on paper and say this is what we are going to do, but there was no level of self-awareness.

There was no level of experience, because then, once we actually went through that year and we came to the end of the year thinking, oh my god now we know why we didn’t achieve that £500,000 revenue or the 20 houses, because there was actually a hell of a lot more to do whilst balancing a marriage, potentially if you’re a parent managing the kids, whilst still keeping a relationship with friends and family. Attending social functions, whilst taking care of your health and trying to get a holiday in that year.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t a realistic goal, maybe the time was not realistic, so that’s just a personal experience. I’ve gone through that for multiple years and now we are at a stage where time is a big factor as part of all the goals we set.

When somebody says to me Ro, I think we can do this in a month or we can nail this in six months’ time. I am almost agreeing with them because I don’t want to crush their dreams, but in my head I’m processing and knowing all the things that have to happen in place…

Yes.

…in terms of a timeline. I start to paint a timeline in my mind and say, actually let’s be realistic that six months maybe should be stretched to a year and a half. That’s more realistic.

So I’ve personally gone through that.

I think the challenge here is for somebody who is mentoring the younger person. You don’t want to piss all over their dreams. But you also need to be pragmatic at the same time, it’s taking outthe best quality of that person and setting goals in a way that we know that they can be achieved.

But it is then managing some of the elements we are going to cover in the rest of this podcast, which is who needs to be around you and how are you going to manage the time on that.

I think in going back to your first questionwhich was what are the challenges I think goalsetting in principle is a fundamentally important element to anybody wanting to make a growth in their life, a change in their life, a transformation in their life. Building a new business, starting a new relationship, being a parent, you have to have something to aim towards.

And if goalsetting is the language you want to use for it, fantastic.

Be mindful of some of the challenges that can happen and for examplepeople go off in so many different goalsetting strategies, techniques, approaches, and over the yearsI’ve studied so many, and we will go through the 10 steps that I like to use. But that doesn’t have to mean everyone has to use these 10 steps.

The key thing is you’ve got to do what best suits you, we are all different. I’m quite creative by nature, so are you. However we know people around us that are incredibly analytical and much more methodical than us in the way they deliver things, so they wouldn’t have the same vision that we have.

But the detail in their goalsetting might be 10 times more than ours. It’s horses for courses, but at the same time, you’ve got to have somebody accountable with you to make sure you’re achieving those goals because otherwise we can go down the path and we believe we are getting on in the right place, but actually we’ve got nothing to measure it against. We’ve got no one to check in against.

I think the other thing with goalsetting is don’t just set it and be your own sense check, don’t be your ownaccountability check, use someone else around you to make sure that what you’ve set number one is realistic, and number two you’re going to achieve it and then to hold youaccountable to that during the process of that year, the 12 months, the one month, one week, whatever the goal is set for.

That makes sense Ro and I just want to come back to one of the questions that we haven’t covered yet,it’s one of the first questions which is, does it really work?

You’ve covered with us some challenges that you’ve seen, some criticisms of current goalsetting or things that you’ve seen which really is defined well by people don’t goalset they ego set.

But the question I want to answer for the listeners at home who are maybe sceptical about goalsetting, you know putting pen to paper, vision board and potentially stuff we are going to talk about in this podcast.

But the question is, does it really work?

I believe it does. I think the simple reason is this. If you and I got on a ship right now and let’s say it’s a sailing boat and we just start sailing and after about 10 minutes you’re like “This is amazing Ro, this is fantastic., where are we going?” And I’m like I don’t have a clue where we are going, just get in the boat and go. “Yeah but it has been 10 minutes now and I’m thinking maybe we can get to somewhere, stop have some lunch and then sail on somewhere else?” Yeah that is a good idea Harms but I just thought you could just sail.

Now that’s wonderful for about an hour, but after about anhours’ worth of sailing you’re hungry, I’m hungry, we are in the middle of the bloody ocean, where are we going?

We need some form of reference to move towards and goalsetting has just simply become the term, the language that we label to this process. It absolutely works if you do certain things right. It doesn’t work if you just become an obsessive goal setter and you overpromise, you under deliver to yourself as well as to others which ultimately means that trust is broken down into two places.

Trust in yourself because if you start to question should I bother doing this anymore but the trust in other people becauseyou keep saying, “Yeah we’ll get there.” Husbands and wiveshave these conversations all the time. People that come to seminars that we run and they go, “Yeah my wife keeps telling me why are you going to this training again? How many have you been to?I must have been to at least 12 this year.” Okay and how have you moved forward from those trainings?“I haven’t really got as much done as I was hoping to.”

That is probably why trust has been broken with your partner because you keep saying you’re going to do this but you’re not seeing it through. It works as long as you follow a system and you check-in, and you’re accountable and you’ve got some way of measuring it.

It doesn’t work if you just keep randomly setting goals because it makes you feel good, which goes back to ego setting again.

That makes sense.

You touched on a few points therewhich I wanted to cover as well, which is you started to identify some of the common mistakes people make when goalsetting. You spoke about that system of accountability and I thinkyou mentionedyou’re going to cover 10 steps of a process that you like to use. I’m really curious about and I’m going to be taking notes alongside, we are going to cover that in a moment.

But before we get into the actual process that we like to work and maybe listeners at home can try, let’s give them some things to avoid or be careful of. So we know that ego settings are one to be careful of.

Yeah.

We know that not using a system is one to be careful of, not having accountability.

But are there any other common mistakes that you’ve seen with people who have attended in your audiences and I know your audiences have been from actually, I know I said it was hundreds of people, but actually your largest audiences have been into the tens of thousands. Where your small audiences have been 10, you’ve had that level of experience and had a lot of people asking you questions.

What are the common mistakes that you see people make when goalsetting?

The nicest thing when it comes to numbers even if it’s one-to-one, an individual human being can still make the same mistake as a collective group of people as well. A classic example I sat about a year or two ago with a couple in an Indian restaurant. Now he has a beard and she is an ex-accountant.She’s beautiful, has a great, lovely energy and she’s probably been saying these things to husband for a while, but he hadn’t heard it.

This particular conversation was where the person I was talking to had become financially free and then decided to start about five different businesses around the same time, I was wondering why he was struggling a bit to manage his time.

I don’t know who that could be though Harms.

If you’re listening at homeI have no idea who Ro is talking about, none whatsoever.

I guess the first one and you can talk into this space because you were there, maybe you can explain to us as millennial why that is because I think somebody my age would not have done what you did, simply because of years of experience under the belt. But overwhelm, that’s the phrase I want to use.

It’s taking on too much, setting too many goals, trying to do it from a place of ego but also from a place of “I just want to achieve, I want to grow, I want to expand, I want to get to another place quickly. My life isn’t where I want it to be or my life is good, but I want to get it to another level.”

In your caseit was good, but you wanted to take it to another level.

Overwhelmis incredibly destructive because what happens is you end up firefighting instead of achieving the results in your goals that you set. So, you get to the end of the year you feel very tired, very exhausted and you feel like you’ve been very busy. But you haven’t really progressed forward, so that’s one of the dangers of over setting goals, but I want to come back and reflect it back on you.

What happened there?

Because we had dinner and it became quite clear and I just asked you coaching questions and then you started to describe your world at that time.

Yeah I think you’ve nailed it with the word overwhelm.

We were in the place of overwhelm, I say we, I was in the place of overwhelm andthe scenario is I couldn’t see on paper that overwhelm was the word screaming out to me.

Instead, I was building my goals based on number one is, ambition. I wanted to do lots, I’ve just stepped out of a career place, I saw lots of opportunity around me and wanted to grab as much as I can, but that was also partly linked.As part of the coaching questions that was also partly linked by a potential and this is where the ego plays in, sometimes you’re not aware of the ego unless somebody asks you a certain question like you did Ro and then I thought actually is this coming from a place that I’m truly passionate about these projects, or is this coming from a place of comparing myself to others or just chasing financial wealth?

Some of the goals on that list we started to describe, all the things that we were starting or being involved in, they were driven from a place of ego, which is typically “I’m just chasing this particular project because it’s wealth orientated, it’s going to make me some money.”

That’s not a bad thing, but if all five projects on the piece of paper are all chasing money, then that’s a problem. That’s where overwhelm can play as a factor.

And number two is comparing myself to other people and not necessarily directly, but more from a place of inspiration. There are two ways to compare yourself to other people, one is to feel shit about your life you know, and I’m lucky I’m wired in a way that I don’t really fall into that category but that is very common. The other way is to be inspired by the people and then want to achieve what they’ve done.

I was being inspired by lots of people and saying that person is doing that, that person is doing that, rather than picking one thing and focusing I wanted what all three people have done all at the same time or within the same year, so that’s the scenario that we were in.

You wrote a word on the piece of paper that said one thing, that’s overwhelm and when you’re in a position of overwhelm are you really going to achieve any of this?

You could end up in 12 months’ time having achieved none of this.
How would you guys feel as a couple?
How would you feel Harms in a relationship wanting to achieve that but done none of it? What would that feeling be like?

That’s where it left us.

Yeah and I think the other thing was that had those goals been set, those businesses been set to be running for say four years it had a different feel. My concern whenever I’m talking to somebody, particularly when they’re setting goals, married or in a relationship is what’s the impact on your relationship?

I think that was the question I asked at the time.

That’s really important for anyone listening right now, as you might be thinking, “You know what my partner doesn’t see things the same way as I do, I’m just going to get out there and build this, do this. Yes, this is about fulfilling my desires.”

But if you’re in a partnership with somebody else and you start pursuing that what you’re starting to place is more importance on that then the relationship.

Now maybe you still love your partner you want to be with him or her, but if you’re spending and consuming huge amounts of time and emotional energy on those other areas then you have to accept that something else will go out of balance.

In factthose of you that have had a chance to come and join us on the Seekardo inside the vaultthere’s a whole series of videos in the vault on life balance.

Something I talk about a lot there is if you get balance in your life, and I’m not sure I completely agree with the word balance by the way because nothing is ever purely in balance. Because that means it will be static, there is a place where everything is moving. But it’s juggling those things in such a way that you feel more in balance, because what happens if your relationship becomes so compromised but you’ve gone outand made yourself an extra half a million that year, but now you come home to an empty house.Because you got so overwhelmed in doing your pursuit of your goals that you didn’t actually keep the other area of your life in balance. Or your health or your kids, for example, so this whole thing about goal setting has to be taken in context with everything else in your life.

Again I’m checking in with you to see if that makes sense.

That sort of age group 25 to 30 age group.

If I’m being raw with this, the way these applications are designed, the way they trigger certain parts of us as human beings it triggers almost an automatic instinct that is triggered within us, a fight or flight mode. That sort of instinct is triggered within us.

Right.

When that’s happening on a continuous basis it becomes an addiction and then when you’re addicted to something which is essentially what we are. If I was to be very self-criticalI’m addicted to my social media, but then the next level of that is what are you actually consuming? What is actually being inputted into your mind?

And what’s been inputted are brands, people who look absolutely beautiful online, people who have filtered images, filtered lives. So when you close the app, say you’ve just shutdown the app, then I’m sitting in my room and the lighting is pretty dim at the moment.If you’re based in London at this time of the year 2019. It’s not a snowy Christmas, it’s not a perfectly idyllic Christmas that the media portrays, it’s actually pouring down with rain, dark clouds.

So what you’re describing here if I was using NLP or if we are watching a movie. You’ve just flicked between this beautiful colour, this amazing image that might be on social media versus a grey, dull almost grainy type movie which doesn’t seem very appealing. That’s what you are describing.

People are drawn to the one that’s nice, flashy, shiny and colourful.

And they start to believe that’s true.

They believe that is how reality should be 24/7, 365 days a year, so that’s the challenge that I think my generation face. It is a very tricky way to navigate and I think listening to podcasts like this where they actually listen to these realistic concepts, i.e. have a realistic timeframe, don’t compete with others, don’t ego set, goal set based on the contents of your life. What you want for your family.

That’s important.

Number one is you’vegot to put yourself into the future. In other words, fast forward to the end result of what you are looking to achieve, that could be six months, it could be a week. And by the way, this process isn’t going to happen over five minutes because there are 10 steps, so even if you apply a minute to each one that’s 10 minutes. It is going to take more than a minute for some of these.

If somebody is listening at home thinking, “This already sounds like a tough process.” Wellthis is the plan. This is the plan for the next 12 months. If it takes you 12 days or 12 months, is it worth it?

If it takes you 12 hours for 12 months is it worth it?

That’s that way you’ve got to put what you spend your time to. Right before we started I just wanted to jump in there because in the past I’ve thought is this worth me doing that extra bit of effort? But then when I compare it to the results it’s going to give me, hey I’ve got a plan now, I’ve got direction for the next 12 months.

My wife and I to give you some context, we block out three- or four-days during December and sometimes prior to that, to work through processes like this. I think it is massively important.

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

That’s what this is about.

This first step is and we’ll probably jump back into this a little later actually, but the first step is so important you put yourself into the future. I’ll bullet point these to start with to keep it simple and you can ask me to elaborate on the ones you think are worth looking at.

Okay.

You have to go into the future and imagine yourself at that point, having achieved that goal. We use the word goal but another label might be aspiration. Having achieved that you’ve got to ask yourself the question more than anything, is how does it feel?

How does it feel?

If I’m now sat there 12 months from today and I have achieved this goal. What are the feelings attached to it? And that’s not just about feelings attached to the actual experience of the goal having achieved it, but who you were in the process and how did it feel to get to that point?

I’ll comeback and maybe elaborate on this in a bit.

The other thing is what would you like to have physically achieved at that point as well.So this is about me and you sitting on a rocking chair in 12 months’ timeHarms and saying, “Right this is what I’ve achieved over this last year. This is what I set myself and you know what, this is how it feels.”

That’s the first one.

Second one, step two is get clarity.

Now having seen this big colourful as you described a few minutes ago lacking in detail image, but it’s just a big image. The next thing is get clarity.

What exactly is it you’re looking to achieve at that point?

This is how it feels, this is want I would like to achieve, but specifically what do you need to achieve?

What is the goal?

Let’s be really clear.

Is it a number?
Is it a set of things you have to achieve?
Is it certain amount of money you have to raise?
Is it the certain number of kids you needed to have fed?
Is it in your relationshipto be more connected and to have a more passionate, intimate relationship?

What is it?

Be absolutely clear because the vision is great and that’s when most people go, “I’ve got this amazing vision”, and suddenly they just get on and start doing stuff, but they haven’t got clarity because how will you know you’ve got there? It’s the same thing with the boat. We are on the boat now again you and I go, right we are going to this island. And you go, “Okay Ro, we are going to an island, but there is like 20 islands around us.”
Okay it’s an island with trees. “Okay Ro that rules out five of the islands because five of the islands are basically just barren, but that still leaves us with another bunch of islands.”

The clearer I am in describingit to you the easier it’s going to be for you to get to the island that we need to get to.

Yeah because if we get there, I love that analogy. So we get there say after 12 months we get to the island Ro and you say, “Harms we are at the island.” And I’m like this doesn’t look like the island we spoke about 12 months ago. So that the clarity is essential.

Exactly and it is a very, very frustrating feeling when you get to an end destination that you’ve set yourself in life and you go, this doesn’t quite feel well the way I want it to feel, and that’s another problem with goal setting. People set goals without really going to the end first and getting that vision and then understanding the clarity needed to get there.

Step three is on a scale of one to 10, how committed are you?

One is you’re just doing it because Dr Ro and Harms told me to do this or 10 is I’m going to freaking work and do whatever it takes, I’m absolutely committed. Usually eight, nine, 10, are going to get you there. Six and seven are borderline, five is it’s unlikely. It’s just a nice feeling you want to have.

So start considering what level of commitment you are at in order to get to that and this is where you might find if you’ve set yourself five, six or seven goals for the year, it’s a good place to check in and go, you know what on a scale of one to 10 of those seven goals four of them I’m an eight and a nine and 10. But the other three I’m probably a five or a six.

This is when you start to thin down and tighten up you goal setting, does that make sense? I’ll stop them for a minute just to check in with you, is that making sense?

That makes sense because say for example you had about seven goals this year. Every single goal had a score of eight to nine and then you’ve got to ask yourself the question, yes I am committed, but can I realistically achieve all seven of thesein the timeframe that I gave? And typically we are talking about 12 months, they can be shortened and extended, but that’s unrealistic. You just have to sit with a coach and the coach what would you say Ro, the better coach would actually then start asking deeper questions.

You literally took the words out of my mouth. I think that is a very good point in the process to check in with somebody else externally who will go,“Well, okay, so let me ask you a question. You’ve set the goal so you’re prepared to work two extra hours an evening on this particular project, you’ve got six projects. You’re happy to give up your time with your kids. You’ll probably have to do some weekends on that, sleep less, and the social part of your life will have to compromise for that particular goal. How does that sound? And you go, “Oh okay I was a nine.”

The minute you start to even get a slight inkling of doubt whether you can achieve that you’re going to move from a nine down to six. So we have to ask very brutal questions to thin, because if you said to me,“I’ve got seven goals this year, I’m 10 out of 10 on every single one of them. I’m married, I’ve got two kids and I run a job and I’ve got two businesses.” I’m going to go yeah right.

So brutal questions are number three.

Make senses and now we are on number four.

Number four is working backwards. Now this is really important working backwards is the contrarian approach for a lot of people. Most people just go ploughing into their goals, “Right here is what I’m going to do this week Harms. We are going to shoot across North Easterly for five minutes and then we are going to get the boat to turn into a different direction.” And all we are doingis keep tackling backwards and forwardsbut we haven’t got an end result and you’re going, “Yeah but Ro we are going left here, we are going right here, left here. Sailing for 10 minutes here.” But we haven’t looked up to see where we are going and I go yeah good point actually.

Whereas had we worked backwards we could have mapped out the route so the working backwards is literally understanding the steps that were necessary throughout the 12 months, if it’s a 12-month goal, in order to get the end result. But we don’t work from the start we work from the end.

I think if it is okay I’d like to come back it is one of on myhighlighted ones.

I just made a note can we expand on that one because that sounds like a useful one, it is not common.

No.

Step five is okay, so now you’ve got your goals set now we need to start putting projects in place.A project for each of those goals.

A goal is simply an idea in your mind and a place you’d like to get to.

We’ve now got to wrap a title around that and I call it projects, you can call it different departments if you want.Health department, this is my relationship department. I like the term projects because within a project I can have subprojects as well, so I need to establish what that project title is. I want to give it a sexy name, I think you and I have talked about this before. But give it something that makes it feel exciting and then inside the project, which might be project charity for example helping the kids, what are the subcategories?

What are the subprojects that need to take place?

So what are the subprojects if I say I’m going to feed one thousand kids next year is about one project might be raising funds.

Another project might be finding the right team to have around, so one is funds, one is team. Another project might be finding the right course for example or working with the right charities.

So, I would have subprojects inside of that and I have to do that because if you don’t do it and break it down it just feels overwhelming.

Which is why businesses have departments.

Exactly.

They have lots of departments, marketing department, salesdepartment, operations, HR. Because without those departments it’s like, wow, it would just be chaos.

I think the good thing here is you start to use language that you were familiar with in the career, in the work, in the business place, which is project management. So who is the project manager for this part? Here is my goal for the year, but who is the project manager for that? It might be me, might be I’ve got somebody else helping me with that.

It gives us a chance to start to go to step six which is who needs to be involved and what do they need to do?

I think this is a massive mission for a lot of ego driven people, ego goals that we talk about. Which is, “I don’t need anybody else; I’m going to do it on my own.”

Whereas actually the beautiful thing about step six is who do I need to have around me when I set my goals this year to expand my own brand, to get out there and start to get the Dr Ro name out there. Working with Seekardo to expand that I knew that I needed to have you there because your skill set is social media, your skill set is business online you and the team from B Street have now taken what we’ve done with GrowthTribes to a whole different level. I could not have done that on my own.

Part of that was and again, who do I need to have this good question at this point Harms is, do I want that person to be someone that’s going to work with me, work for me, going to be a partner on this?Very important, we’ve not talked about that before but we can come back to that one as well.

Fantastic.

Step seven is focus.Now I need to focus down, where do I put my time, my effort and when?

So I’m going to focus on projecta, project b and project c this week. I’m going to spend three nights a week on this, and over the next month and I’m going to put one night onto each one of these projects. I won’t pick up the next projects until I’ve done the first month. It’s focusing, focusing, focus which leads us to step eight, which is commitment.

Actually putting the work in, can I do it?
How do I do it?
How many hours do need to put in?
Who needs to be involved going back to step six but we’ve got the focus now and now I’ve got to physically put the effort in to move brake the inertia to move this forward.

I think that’s where a lot of people and I’ll just pause to check in with you on this one but I find the younger people get really excited at the start of the process when they’re goalsetting. They don’t have a structure like this and they go, “I’m going to do this and buy this many properties, I’m going to build this much business. I’m going to go and conquer the world, I’m going to trade on the stock market, write a book”, whatever it is.

But when it comes down to commitment they’re so overwhelmed.

Overwhelm usually leads to a complete lack of commitment because no one knows where to start.
Have you seen that?
Have you witnessed that?
Have you personally experienced it?

There is one element there.

Number one is overwhelm because of the amount of choices we have now. My generation, the millennials, other generations coming up after us. We have so much choice, but now there’s also another thing I am witnessing.

You would have potentially seen this with your audience as well, which is you paint the picture, you tell them what’s possible. So these are all the possibilities they start to goalset and they say, “I want to achieve this, I want to achieve this by this time and it’s going to change my life because it’s going to allow me to travel more, and so on.”

Okay, now it’s time to make a commitment and actually do the work and then they look at you and say, “Oh what do you would mean work?How much work? I have to give up weekends, I have to give up evenings to achieve these goals? I have to work in my lunch hours to achieve these goals.?”

That’s so true.

“Maybe it’s something I’ll look at next year.”

That’sthe challenge that I think my generation are seeing.

I’ll be honestRo; I don’t know what the reason for that is. I don’t know if we live in such an amazing society now where everything is greatyou know. I think this is going back to I guess human needs where our security was never under question, so my generation are always going to have a level of security.

We are always going to have a level of financial stability not necessarily aspirational finances, but we are going to have a level of stability with the way society helps us in this great country, the Western society.

It is fantastic in that sense, but I guess it’s made us and this is debatable, but I think this is where we get criticism that we are not willing to work.

I think it’s probably a complacency as well, because when I grew up for example, there was a point where if I needed money I couldn’t just go get it on a credit card. I couldn’t go and borrow the money readily. I had to physically go out and work for it and we always joke about this and say the older generation, “When I was a lad I would go and do this and you don’t know what it’s like Harminder you can buy a property using other people’s money, but I had to bloody save up for that.”

But there’s an element of truth in that, so it forced us to physically just get off our arses and go do what we needed to do. Whereas now, and I know the term laziness comes in when describing millennial’s, but it could just be a sense of apathy. It could be a sense of comfort zone.

I think that’s the word comfort.

Whereas you don’t have to do it, “I can fall back everything is okay I’m getting paid right now.” When people suddenly move to commitment it’s usually when they’ve made a massive decision in their life and they’re not prepared to go backwards they want to go forwards. That’s a conscious commitment.

Another conscious level of commitment is where they’re forced. They’ve lost a job, lost a loved one, something happened in the family, they’ve witnessed somebody die in the family because of health issues and they go, “Fuck this, I’m not going to live like that.”

And they massively make a change, that’s when commitment comes in.

This is singularly one of the biggest challenges here in this process and it is a growing issue. You come to trainings right with me and we go and deliver three days on property and people have to invest in themselves, 10, 15, £20,000 to education.

They’re keyed up, they can see the value they’re going to make 10 times that from their business, but when they finally come to making the commitment to doing it someone else around them pisses on their dreams. Or steals that dream or tells them you shouldn’t do this, you can’t do this, it’s too expensive.

The commitments there in their heads and in the heart, but it’s the physical commitment of actually seeing it through, which is lacking today. I think that’s partly because people are used to sitting down watching stuff as opposed to doing it and I know it sounds like an esoterically argument, but I do believe that’s one of the reasons.

I do believe so too, and it’s one of the ways where I struggle to defend my generation when it comes to this specific topic. I can always pick out examples of people who are doing it, but they seem to be less than the majority which I will defend them but where justified.

But then the flipside to that is there are people my age group in their 50s that feel like they are in their freaking 70s. We see them come into the room on an event and they’re sat there, “But you don’t understand I’m tired, I’ve worked my entire life.” So there is that as well.

I think that it is innate in all of us, because by equilibrium we get to a point where we would rather sit down and relax and not do something.

It’s the same thing with Seekardo we get people come through and they really love this and they’ll come to the page, they’ll go to the booking page and go, “Right there is a community here great.”

I think we’ve got a crazy offer on at the moment which is one pound for one month and I’m thinking, one pound to get into the community where people will support you, you’ll get access to hours and hours of unbelievable content and tools, and then the commitment just weighs in a little bit because, “Oh my gosh does that mean I have to talk in that environment? Do I have to do something,do I have to commit to something? Do I have to get engaged?”

The answer is no you don’t, you can watch it for a month or two just learn. But that little question mark that comes up in their head can stop them making a commitment to what we know is a life transformational experience.

It’s a first step of a phenomenal journey, it’s just a first step and that’s often where it’s most challenging.

Bringing it back to goalsetting Ro, it’s exactly the same principle. Sometimes the goals will feel audacious. Sometimes they will feel out of reach.

Yes.

But by working through this system the first step I mean we launched a new business last year, which is a tweak of what we currently do. But it was a different factor and that first step was probably the hardest. But had we not done it we wouldn’t be doing what we do now, so I guess if there’s a message here it’s the first step requires the greater level of commitment because it’s stepping into the unknown.

And that’s going to be the case with many of your goals because for example, bringing it away from wealth bringing it to health. Maybe you want to run a marathon next year. Now that first run, I started running this Ro and the first mile oh my god it was painful.
That’s just the reality of it, but unless I made that commitment to put those running shoes on and start running, I wouldn’t have done it.

Yeah.

Same thing I’ve just driven three days nearly 2000 km across Europe and we arrived late last night, I was up until 2 o’clock this morning editing a video for some of the stuff we are doing internationally. Got up this morning had a phone call with the head of the company just to do some speaking and then I said I’ve got to go out for a run. I want for a run it was cold, pissing it down but my backside has been sat in the car for three days so I had to do something. And I knew if I could just get out the door and start running even thought it was raining it didn’t matter, I was doing it and that’s the challenge. It’s do I go out to the cold or do I stay here where it is warm?

The problems when we stay and do something that’s warm and comfortable we usually reward ourselves with a hot drink, a movie or something else so we are rewarding the very thing we shouldn’t be rewarding ourselves for. We should be rewarding ourselves for the things that are uncomfortable, but that’s another conversation for another day. We should make that a point of conversation for another podcast.

Yeah it’s naturally opened up.

It’s actually something we’ve not talked about before Harms, but actually it’s something I see fundamentally that most people do wrong is when they decide they’re going to do the thing they’ve set themselves to do,“I’ll do it next week for now I’ll just have a week, I’ll just chill.” Then they go and massively reward themselves for that week for doing fuck all.

It’s like the people that say they’re going to start a diet next week but they go and binge, they drink. It is something fundamentally wrong there but that’sa different conversation.

We’re on step nine.

You’ve got the commitment, now you’ve got to get smart.

Get smart, be smart in the actions you do. Be smart in the people you put around you. Be smart in the thinking and the way you manage your time, every time you have a choice ask yourself a simple question, is it smart here that I go and do something that moves me away from my goals? Or is it smartI do something that moves me towards my goals?

Is it smart to sit here and watch TV for the next three hours or is it smart to switch the TV off and go and spend the next three hours doing what I committed to doing?

The smart element is about asking smart questions in that moment, to make sure that you get to step 10, which is momentum and that is keeping doing it.

Keep doing what you’re doing, keep doing it again and again and again.Little steps just keep working towards it, that momentum is absolutely essential because the problem is it’s like January is coming up soon, first 18 days in January people go to the gym. They eat healthy, they juice, because health is a goal they set themselves.But then they don’t keep the momentum going and slowly those little momentum steps stop to the point where they go, “Yeah I set myself this goal at the beginning of the year, I must do that next year, but for now what I’ll do is eat shit and chill out. But I’ll exercise next year.”

Momentum is really about consistently achieving the goals you set. Which is why the project management is so important because the project management breaks this down into smaller steps, Moving one step moves you closer and before you know it you’ve got to the end result.

Great book there is Slight Edge Principle, Jeff Olson and there is another one out there in the market called The Compound Effect. Both similar topics but just go and see which one resonates with you.

Yeah very good, so they’re the 10 steps. I was supposed to go through them quickly.

Amazing and I jumped inbecause I thought there’s some parts where this is applicable and I think I can add an additional layer of value here.

So that’s amazing Ro, those are the 10 steps for those listening at home they will be put onto the show notes and you can find that at www.growthtribes.com/podcast. As simple as that growthtribes.com/podcast and those will be on the show notes.

But Ro you said there was a couple that you wanted to touch upon and if I can start first and pull out the one that just jumped at me immediately, and I wanted to hold it until this part of the podcast which is, put yourself into future. This is step number one. Put yourself into the future and ask yourself the question, how does it feel?

That in itself is quite contrarian because having gone through the process myself often the advice that is given on goalsetting is the first thing to do is what would you like to achieve? And often sometimes people don’t even speak about the feeling and I’ve fallen into this trap many times. Even when we’ve achieved certain goals at the end of the year and it’s just like, okay, great we achieved that awesome. We had another £500 passive income to the portfolio this year cool, that’s great. Why am I not feeling fantastic about it?

What can you expand on there because not many people are talking about attaching a feeling to the goal.

I think that’s because goalsetting as a philosophy is actually very left brain, it’s like right we are going to state on paper what we want to achieve, then we are going to logically work through step-by-step the plan. Yes, let’s do that. Okay, so tomorrow we wake up, set the alarm clock for 6:30 and spend the first half of an hour writing the content for my book. It all becomes very left brain.

So let me ask you the question when have you had a situation whether it’s that example there with the property portfolio, or something else. When have you noticed Harms that you’ve kind of got to the end result and you’ve gone, “Hmm didn’t feel quite the way I wanted it to feel.”

Can you think of a time and if so what in your mind and your heart, why didn’t it feel quite the way you expected to feel? Because that’s the key point to this process.

If I’m looking back at the goals I’ve set in the last couple years the thing that stands out isI feel like I’ve finally got to a point where I actually feel great with the type of routineI have, which is exercise.

Okay yeah.

I think this is good for listeners because it is quite a common one, which is health.

Health is a very high value on my value list what I resonate most with, but I’ve had all sorts of stuff on my goal list in the past. For example I want to be doing yoga twice a week, I want to hit the gym three times a week and do resistance training. I want to try this particular activity, and then never really stuck to it.

So I was doing lots of exercise routines, tried lots of different things circuits at the gym, joining a group of people and I tried lots of things just to get myself exercising because I’m naturally resistant to it. Until I started running and the feeling I get from that is a completely different feeling. Joyous, doesn’t feel like I’m having to force myself to do this.

At the end of the year I’ve looked at my exercise goal in the pastand thought great I went to the gym three times a week, but that was a struggle. Yoga class yeah it was cool but it wasn’t very social only about four, five people turned up to that class, wasn’t really fun.

That’s from personal experience.

Bingo.

Just to jump in there, you’ve just put your finger on it. By way there is a great book called Born To Run if you haven’t read it.

I love that.

You have read it?

Yeah.

Okay so that’s a fantastic example of why we naturally evolved to take in a flow and our spirit definitely goesinto flow when running but that’s a side conversation.
The thing here is that you’ve just described exactly that.

You have to achieve that goal and know that the feeling leading up to that was right. So what I’m saying here when I describe this is when you’re sitting there, I always talk about rocking on a rocking chair in the future. When you’re sitting there how did it feel leading up to that point?

You might have achieved an amazing financial goal at the end of the year and you still don’t feel quite on centre and you say to me, “You know what Ro I did make an extra million this year, but my relationship was on the rocks, my health was compromised because I had to work so many hours, I hardly got any sleep over the last four, five months. And on top of all of that I literally missed most of my kid’s social events, school events this year, but I made a million, but it doesn’t feel right.”

That’s because what you’ve done is you’ve had a goal just so exclusive to that end result. It didn’t take into account all the other elements of your life that need to fit in around that, or into it or alongside it. I have to be careful with the wording I’m saying there because it’s not about fitting into it, it should be that your goal fits in alongside anything else that is important to you to.

So, this feeling is the only way to measure it. This is the problem, when we start off at the beginning of a goalsetting exercise we get excited by the idea of achieving the goal.That’s a fantastic feeling at the start of the year, but it’s no measure of the actual true experience of having done it and having put in the fucking work in through the whole year.

It’s really important to just literally stop and in your mind and your heart and soul, do a visualisation.

If you’ve never done one there is a great one that we’ve got in the GrowthTribes called Meet your ancestors.And if you go into the vault those of you in the vault already go and have a look, It’s a guided visualisation. Those of you that haven’t you should go and get yourself involved with that because that visualisation takes you to the future, the past as well.

It gives you a chance to get a sense of the feelings that you have around anything you’re aiming towards and if you can get those feelings now you can ask yourself some really sensible questions,“How would it feel if I did not sleep as much? How would it feel if I didn’t spend as much time at work?”

What I’m trying to say is that all the different elements that lead to that point in the future you’ve got to measure them now, am I making sense Harms?

Because it is quite a complex process, it’s not as simple as just going right,yeah that could feel good. It’s saying, “Okay, here I am I’ve just made a million quid this year. How was my relationship as a result of that? Let me just think about that for a minute, what had to be compromised there? How was my health? How was my relationship with my kids? How was my general overall well-being?”

You have to ask those questions in association with the goal, it’s not just about the result feeling of that.

That makes sense Ro and if I was just to tag onto the example I gave, so if I had actually used this example whichis why I highlighted that I wanted Ro to expand on it is the feeling.

And if I said okay if I imagine myself in 12 months’ time having gone to the gym to pump some iron, pump some weight, three times a week, four times a week. If you’re listening to this you’ll just hear the way I’m describing it almost gives it away. But okay I’ve got to spend an hour getting to the gym. Find parking then it takes me five to seven minutes to get to the locker room, changeup. Okay, now I’ve got to wrestle for a piece of gym equipment because it’s always quite busy at the timeI’d go. Great now let me do 45 minutes watching the clock to make sure I get home in time for dinner, great shower up great, now I feel like I’ve spent three hours at the gym for my evening, three times a week.

Then I would ask myself the question just like you said Ro, I know I’m probably giving it away just by the way I’m describing it, but the question I’d ask myself is am I happy to give up three hours three, times a week? Is there another place I would feel happier in terms of getting the health box ticked?

Those are the questions that I should have asked myself and this is why we want you to avoid this if you’re listening to this, I want you to avoid this. You can do that just by planting yourself12 months in the future, visualising what the next 12 months has in store for you. What you’ve got to do, who you will interact with, how much work is involved and actually be realistic and say do I want to do that? Am I doing it for the right reasons?

Yeah.

I think you’ve nailed it there with that description because there are other people who would love that, they live for that. When I go to the gym I see guys that are there regularly and they’re loving it, but that’s part of their lifestyle and who they are, their identity fantastic.That fits around their goal, their vision for they want. But for someone that’s making it part of their health regime alongside anything else they are doing; it might be there’s a different type of exercise that you feel. In your case you found running at the moment that gives you the feeling that you want as well as the sense of health as well.

That part one there is absolutely vital, but can I just jump to another one I think is important in the list I gave earlier?

Yes please.

That kind of ties into the step four. Step four is working backwards so to help you try and logically, for those of you that don’t quite get this you need some logic behind this.

Think of it this way in order for Harms to achieve a certain physical exercise, goal or health goal, certain things would have had to happen in the month preceding that. For somebody else to achieve a certain financial goal by the end of the year, the month preceding that they would have had to achieved another level of goal to set them up for the final goal at the end of the year.

Someone else in a relationship an area they want to work on and improve the relationship, maybe have more connection with their partner or have more experiences with their partner. Something would have happened the month before, so you can work backwards. Think of it as 12 chapters in a book, 12parts of a movie, however you want to phrase it.

I like to use the concept of a book, so each chapter leads you to the end of the book. So, when you look at the end of the year or the end of your goal period, you go back if we are doing a 12 month one you go back. What was the chapter before?

Chapter 11, that is November. What would have had to happen in that chapter to prepare us for chapter 12?

Then you go back to chapter 10, what would have had to happen in October i.e. in chapter 10 in order to prepare us for chapter 11? Which then prepares for chapter 12.

The beautiful thing about this process is we can do a big emotional feeling exercise in part one, how would it feel? And then you start to say well actually there are certain things that would need to have had to happened.

Step four in the process is the logical working backwards so then we get to chapter one which is January, what needs to happen in January in order for me to get that big goal in 12 months? But I don’t make the leap to go from chapter one, to chapter two, to chapter three, which is March into April.

So that comes down to the project planning, which is step five. So does the working backwards makes sense Harms? Because a lot people don’t do that, they tend to work forward to their goals whereas I always work backwards.

That’s the engineer coming out in you.

That’s a great way to apply principles at work so well in writing a book, working from what’s the end purpose of this book and then creating the book from that. From bit building a building or renovating a project, you’re reverse engineering it. I think it makes total sense, because what the most common thing is Ro is to work forward. Okay, so I want to do that next month, I want to do that in February, that in March.Whereas if you work backwards also what I feel the benefit here is that you take a larger goal which feels large at the moment on paper and then you’re shrinking it down chapter by chapter, which is way more attainable.

It is way more achievable.

Yeah for example, if you’ve got a one-month goal you can have four chapters. If you’ve got a one-weekgoal you can have seven chapters, that’s just seven days.

I like it because every great book naturally leads into the next chapter, you’re hanging ontothe next part, what happens next in this book? What’s the next chapter, and that’s your goal, these are your projects. You start to do that and that’s whyto me, one and four are absolutely vital. There’s one other element I want to do because I’m conscious of time.

Is it number six because I had that written down.

Yes, it is the who and what. Everybody it doesn’t matter who you are, you will need people along the way. Most goals you set yourself particularly if they’re project-based goals where there’s a lot more involved, you will need key people involved.

I always ask the question, who are the people that know more than I do that have a better skill set than I do or who I trust enough to bounce off and I can go to and say right, in order for me to hit this goalI need your help. I’m either going to pay you because I’m paying for your services or we can work together, so maybe you’re doing this and you’re sharing some of the profits in this. Or it could be that you’re a business partner on this with me so you’re coming in on this and we are going to share the load in certain ways.

But that’s about removing the ego from the process and saying right, I’m good at a lot of things but I’m not great at certain things and I need people around me that are great at certain things to make it even easier. And then the question behind that is, what do I need from them?

Because the more specific I am about who they are but what they can do for me. I can just say, “Look John I know you’re brilliant at this, this, this, and this. But this project I’m on this is where I need your skill set.

For example, with the kids, you’re amazing at working with specific groups of kids. Would you be prepared to come out into the street with me? I can do this I can raise the money but if we went to these charities with your skill set, I think we can get into the door and can really help them out. Would you be open to doing that?”

It is finding out who you know that has a certain skill set and then talk to them about what is needed from them in order for that to be part of your goal process.

Now look it’s always going to be there, it’s not always going to be people all the time, but if you can pre-empt it and let them know in advance because they’ve got their own goals, their own projects.

We had this conversation 24 hours ago me and Harminder, because Harms is looking atother projects at the moment, alongside a couple of big projects I’m doing with him. I simply asked him the questions as a friend and coach, do you have the bandwidth to do all of these things because if you don’t, I’m more than happy to step back a little bit and see if I can find somebody else to step in on that role.

Do you remember that conversation we had literally 24-hour ago?

Yeah, it was a great question.

It is me in the same process here. I just said to myself, wow I think what Harms is doing is great. The only concern I’ve got is that we’ve got a goal that we’ve got together and if he can’t fulfil that right now, let me see if I can find someone to step in while he does the other things. Because you can always step back in later on, and that’s why this is so important.

If I hadn’t had that conversation in my head we might have hit a brick wall in two months where you go, shitRo I’m totally stretched, I can’t do all of this. Or worse in a business partnership when somebody starts dropping the ball and because it’s a partnership nothing I said between the two of you until it flares up and then, “We should’ve picked this up earlier.”

So, the who and what do they need to do is absolutely a vital part of this process.

I love that, let me give you some examples if you’re goal setting. What do you mean by who? I’m not sure on who needs to be involved?

I made a few notes whilst you were talking there Ro.

You mentioned business partners, you need a team around you. It’s not necessarily having to do everything yourself. You need people who are supportive around you. This can be people I think there are two layers.

One, peoplewhich are directly related to that specific project and also people who can help you achieve the overall goal, so you need people around you who are supportive, people who can hold you accountable.

When I say supportive you need cheerleaders. People who are going to keep you going, keep you motivated and at the same time you also need probably a smaller trusted group of people who can be candid with you.

They can ask you those really difficult questions when you may be so focused on a goal or task that you become disillusioned with the reality of things, and you need somebody to ask you candid questions to get you back on track.

Spoken about it on a separate podcast Ro, which is a coach and a mentor episode two or three, so a coach and mentor if you want to know the benefits of them to your goalsetting or your business go listen to that podcast. And professionals who are directly linked to achieve the project, then you can also budget in, create a budget planner and work out how that affects your cash flow of the business. How much it’s going to cost for the professionals? I think that’s important.

I think there are some non-negotiable ones in there which is you need like-minded people who are going to support you, people holding you accountable, people who are also go-getters, inspirational. So that when you are having that day when you’re feeling like you just want to binge watch something or you want to eat pizza and you know that it’s going to detract you from your goals, somebody in your community and this is what’s great about Seekardo is not doing that. What they’re doing is they’ve just said, “Guys I’m feeling crap today but I’m still going ahead and getting my goals that I set at the beginning of the year.”

That inspires other people, you may be thinking I’m not going to binge watch this, I’m going to spend the extra half an hour on writing my book, creating my podcast, working towards my property goals, business goals.

Or it could be just hitting the gym like I’m doing at the moment, putting some trainers on and going for a run.

I think those are some key people who factor into the who part of the goalsetting.

Ofcourse there are going to be niche people who are exactly directly related to your goal, it could be a personal trainer as an example.

One other thing I’ll say is be careful about bringing people in that you use a lot, that are always good at saying yes because the problem with people that say yes to everything is that, when you need them in the crunch point in your goalsetting process, if they’re yes people and they say yes to everybody they may be very thin on the ground and may not be able to support you.

I made this mistake in the past where I’ve gone to people that are more familiar with me and they’ve said yes to me because it’s me, but also because that’s what they do. But when the push came to shove and it was the crunch point they say, “I’m so sorry, I’m so busy, I’ve got three, four other things I’m doing at the moment.” That’s because they said yes to everybody else.

So choose people carefully and be honest about the commitments needed and make sure they’re prepared to commit to you when they’re needed. Otherwise, find somebody else and it’s not being disrespectful, but you’ve got results to get to as well.

Absolutely, and that comes out in the what part. Ro said step number six is who and what do they need to do, what do they need to have in place. So you have that conversation, this is what I need from you, is it is a viable thing?

Like Ro asked me 24 hours ago do you think you’ve got the bandwidth for this project next year? I have to really think about it, process it and come to him with a real answer, realistic answer. That’s what that conversation is about.

I think that’s phenomenal Ro.

Let me do a capture a summary of what we’ve done so far.

We had acontrarian approach at the startI guess, which is criticising goalsetting in the sense that does it really work? What kind of goalsetting best suits people and the common mistakes people make when goalsetting.

The big thing that jumped out to me was often people don’t goal set. they ego set, I think that’s a nice phrase if you’re listening at home just to remind yourself to be goalsetting not ego setting.

Then Ro walked us through the 10 steps that he uses and that he helps his audience use and takes them through that process of goalsetting. And finally we pulled a few out well which were essential.

Number one is, how does that feel? How do those goals feel to you?

Number two is working backwards, number three is who do you need around you and what do they need to do to make those goals happen.

Can I just jump in and add one last thing here and that is the process of momentum, step 10 is that it incorporates reviewing as well. So, in this process of keeping momentum it’s reviewing what you achieved, what you haven’t achieved, what you did well, what you didn’t do well and then saying in order to keep my momentum what do Ineed to do?
What do I need to tweak?
Looking at the projects do I need to drop a project?
What do I need to adjust?
Do I need to bring somebody new in?

Under that last step momentum massively involved in that is the reviewing and the resetting and readjusting of your path as well.

Awesome I’ll make sure to tag that on onto the show notes as well.

Ro I think this has been incredible and a lot there. I think it’s a great time of the year and I honestly this should be a practice that you do often. You know Ro has just mentioned it, highlighted it very wellwhich is reviewing. This is not just set it and forget it. There is a review process to this, so it is going to be an ongoing task maybe me and Ro will pick up a maybe a review episode Ro, a reviewgoalsetting maybe in two or threemonths’ time to check in on how people are getting on with their goals as part of this system.

I think that might be an idea we can cover on a future podcast episode.

What I want to leave them now with is, do you have any actions for them to take away? Because I’ve gotan action that is a bit of a new thing that I’m going to be trialling with the listeners, and I want to see if they’re up for it.

I’m going to keep it brief because we have gone through quite a lot in this particular podcast and I hope it’s been valuable to people.

I’m going to give you four things I think will be really useful to take away and if you can come back into the space with us in the GrowthTribes community and share some of this.

This would be wonderful for me to see because I always like to get a sense of what people are setting for themselves and how we can be part of that process and accountability for you as well as you move forward.

Number one is what is your vision for next year, it’s 2020 whilst we are recording this for next year, but whatever year you’re listening to this. So, a clear statement on paper your vision for the next year ahead.

A description of it, how you want to be as a person, how you want to be financially, relationships, the balance of your life. Make a description of an amazing story about somebody over a year, how’s that going to look?

Number two don’t bullshit yourself.

Don’t set goals that are ego setting.

Make sure that those goals are genuinely around that vision and not to prove to anyone else, I guess that’s the main thing. Don’t set your goals to prove to anyone else, just purely set goals to fit into that vision you’ve just described.

Number three is who do you need around you to achieve? No one individual is an island, we’ve already talked about this, start to list out the most amazing people you can think of that you can have on your team supporting you, engaging with you to make sure you achieve that vision you’ve just described.

And finally, what is the next step after you’ve done that? What would be the next first step you have to do? Is it picking up the phone to speak to somebody?
Is it going and talking to a business partner?
Is it going and physically doing something?
Is it simply just capturing your ideas on paper?
But what is the next thing you can do because nothing is ever achieved without that first step and that’s it.

Four simple actions, I think if you can do that on the back of this you’ll start to create some momentum, over to Harms.

Awesome. Thank you for that Ro.

Again, that will be in the show notes. Something from mewhich is actually related/unrelated to this episode my action is we are now coming up to our 10th episode for the growth tribes podcast, so as a thank you to all the listeners we want to give you guys an opportunity to ask some questions and have them answered by either myself or Ro, or we may both just jump on the answer if we have something of value to add.

There’s been nine episodesincluding this one and we’ve hita range of topics from mentors and coaches, past life experiences, money topics, we’ve covered goalsetting, anxiety, being a workaholic.

So we’ve covered so many topics and including, are you ready to be a parent, which was one particularly applicable to myself.

We want to give you the opportunity to ask us a question which we can answer live on a podcast like this, and if we get the questions in quick enough, we can actually construct it so that episode 10 answers your questions live ready for the end of the year and also a way to say thank you for listening to the Seekardo podcast.

The simple action is this just head over to a brand-new Instagram account, which has been set up.

All you need to do is log onto Instagram and type in The Seekardo Show, a brand-new into account it will have zero followers so by all means follow it as well, but you have a choice. You can just direct message us your question. That way it comes up with your name, your question and the team will collate these questions for us, and then Ro and I will answer that live on a podcast.

Let me just break that down again, simply ask us a question on any of the topics that you’ve heard so far on the Seekardo podcast, anything from episode one, to today’s episode which is episode nine, then head over to Instagram search The Seekardo Show. Head over to the direct message section and DM ask your question and we look forward to answering your questions on the next episode of the Seekardo podcast. As a big thank you for all the listeners.

That will be amazing.

For us it gives us a chance to really interact and find out what people are asking so that’s a great idea, I’m looking forward to that Harms.

Thank you for breaking down your 10 steps today Ro.

I’ve taken some notes, I’m going to be working on some of that with my beautiful wife Geena as we start to finalise our goalsetting for next year as well.

That’s myself and Ro signing out for this episode of the Seekardo podcast.