Category: Mindset

I originally planned on having this post done on Friday…

This here is the second attempt that I’m writing and I hope it finds its way to your computer screen.

I got 800 words into the first draft before I scrapped it because it was boring and dry. Shit you can find if you search, “how to set goals” on Google.

Instead of giving you a lame ass academic goal setting article, I’m going to keep it real…

I’m going to share with you the MISTAKES I’ve made when setting goals. Hopefully you can accelerate your results and learn from my experiences.

Goal setting is something I first learned about after university. My brother Ty introduced me to the field of personal development and I dove head first into books and audio courses. Goal setting was and still is one of the hottest topics.

So I set goals here and there, trying different methods and tricks to make them work for me.

Many goals early on centered around income because I was building my business.

In my second year in business, my goal was to earn $100K.

Then, I trained my first MMA fighter, Jeff Joslin. 

Now I’ll be quite upfront and say I didn’t come close to earning $100K in 2006.

I’ve actually missed a lot of monetary goals I’ve set for myself.

One of the biggest reasons why is because deep down, I really don’t care that much about money vs. other things.

With this being so, why set a money goal?

Heck, I was living at home that second year in business and didn’t need much money to get by anyway.

But, I did care about who I was working with and my day-to-day life.

Once I got my first taste of working with an MMA fighter, I was hooked. It wasn’t about the money at all. Hell, when I started, I was doing it for free!

I was doing it because designing exercise programs for MMA was challenging and rewarding work. And I like hanging out and training athletes more than 40 year old women trying to lose their muffin top.

So the money goal wasn’t congruent with what made me happy. And I’m a happiness-driven kinda guy. I think we all are, ultimately.

I’ve shared this story because maybe your goal is to be the UFC champ, or some other title. 

If this is you, then I suggest you think about the lifestyle first…

Are you prepared to do what it takes to get there?

Spending hours in the gym everyday, putting your body through punishment, fighting your up through the ranks against guys who want to rip your head off?

If the idea of this excites you, then go for it.

But if you don’t love the training or the lifestyle, you’ve only got 2 choices:

a) Set another goal

b) Set your first goal to be to fall in love with the training and lifestyle

If you don’t love it, it’s going to be real easy to quit when the going gets tough.

And more philosophically, you’re going to be spending all this time and energy doing something you don’t really love and that’s time you don’t get back. Why bother?

The best fighters in the world didn’t get there because all they wanted was the fame and money. Those things are by-products of their passion for what they do and their mastery of their craft. Their devotion to constant learning and improvement and love of being in the gym day after day.

Maybe you’re more focused on the potential payoff at the end. The fame; the money.

And while there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things, if you’re going to go down this road, I suggest you learn to love it.

Same goes for any weight loss goal.

If you don’t learn to love eating healthy and training consistently, you’re going to be setting this same goal again in the future. Guaranteed.

This is what people need to know.

Another problem I’ve run into is setting too many goals at once.

You’ve only got so much energy and focus.

Setting too many goals for yourself weakens the energy you’re able to put into each of those goals.

I’ve made lists of 20 or 30 goals before. Needless to say, not many of them got achieved.

It’d be ideal if you could simply have 1 goal to focus on. For the caveman, it was to survive. Because of this, he got really good at it.

But for us, we’ve got lots of different roles and responsibilities, so we need a few goals in each area if we want to continue growing as people.

Here’s a shortlist of some of the areas in your life to consider:

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• Health and fitness
• Relationships
• Work, career and business
• Personal growth
• Fun and recreation[/green_plus_2_list]

I suggest setting goals for each area and then breaking them down into actionable steps with measurable outcomes every 3 months or so.

Some goals you may not start until later, which is good to know now so you can plan out when you will attack it.

Either way you do it, just have some rough plan to follow and to check-in with yourself on a consistent basis.

The last mistake with goals I’ve set for myself includes not checking back in regularly.

I’ll set some goals then not constantly review them and check them to keep myself accountable.

So remember to review your goals daily, lest they fall by the wayside.

MMA Goal Setting Worksheet (Download)

Finally, I’ve promised to hook you up with a little worksheet that will help you skyrocket your MMA skills.

All the info is inside, so just right click to download:

MMA Goal Setting Worksheet (Right Click to Save As)

Put it to use and it’ll work wonders for you.

Since we can all celebrate the fact that the world did not in fact end in 2012 as was so popularly debated to occur, we might as well roll with the punches and continue to celebrate all good things that made up the year 2012.

This is the first post in a 2 part series on setting (and achieving) goals. 

It’s something I’ve spent most of the month of December on.

Training winds down as parties, shopping and get-togethers dominate the schedule.

Writing and program creation take a back seat, perhaps as a side effect of all of the parties and get-togethers (aka HANGOVERS).

But before I share some unique concepts and frameworks for goal setting with you, there’s one important thing to do…

You see, we often get stuck in is the whole idea of “What’s next?”

I’m horribly guilty of this. I’m always thinking ahead; planning, strategizing, dreaming.

I easily get caught up in the future while forgetting about the past and present.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or work a corporate job, getting caught up in this is part of the rat race.

But reliving past successes, learning from past ‘mistakes’, and enjoying the moment is a key ingredient in successful living.

Why strive for anything if you’re not going to enjoy not only the achievement of it, but also the process of achieving it?

Now I’m not going to get all YOGA on you and tell you that living in the moment is the only thing there is.

Without thinking about the future, you’re apt to be stuck with whatever life decides to throw at you, which is often a pile of shit, to be quite frank.

But if you’re always chasing the next win, achieving more, or being better, you can easily lose your life to the future and prevent yourself from enjoying the process of achievement and the actual achievement itself.

So let’s all take a collective step back and answer these questions:

[features_box_light_blue width=”85%” + border=”1px”]In the past year…

1. What is ONE thing with respect to your health and/or fitness that you’re proud of achieving?

2. What is ONE thing in an important relationship (e.g. as a son, father, spouse, friend) that you’re proud of achieving?

3. What is ONE thing in your career that you’re proud of achieving?[/features_box_light_blue]

Go ahead, take a few deep breaths to relax and the time to answer these questions for real.

Don’t rush through this. It’s important to you. And it never hurts to relive past successes, because it feels good and these good feelings energize you to create more of these good feelings in the future. It’s magnetic.

Now, your successes don’t have to be HUGE and world-changing.

Let me help you by sharing a few of my answers…

With respect to my fitness, I’m super proud of working up to 10 Muscleups.

I set the goal of 10 Muscleups and worked up towards it. It was tons of fun creating programs to get to 10 and scoping out new places I could do them, like this beach in Barcelona that I stumbled upon on vacation this past summer:

[jwplayer config=”600×338 (Blog Posts)” mediaid=”6262″]

Moving on…

In my relationship with my wife, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been better able to communicate my feelings, of happiness or unhappiness. Trust me, it’s a work in progress. But letting myself be a little vulnerable or communicating something I’m unhappy about even though I’m uncomfortable doing so is greatly helping our relationship.

It’s not something that comes naturally, as Chinese culture doesn’t tend to promote the sharing of feelings. Traditional Chinese culture is about obedience and discipline.

But I think it’s important to feel more for my own health, my relationship with my wife and other important peeps and eventually, my kids.

Finally, with respect to my career, one thing I’m extremely proud of is launching powerDOJO. It’s been something that has been brewing for years. This year, I’ve finally taken the various ideas jotted down in old notebooks, saved in random .txt documents and stored in the back corners of my mind to create a progressive ‘program’ to achieving your ‘black belt in fitness’ and made them a reality.

But once I decided to make it do it, it took a few months of work by myself and my Russian programming team to create the site and I enjoyed every second.

I’m so proud of the way it’s turned out; I love coaching and interacting with all of the positive and like-minded members (the powerDOJO Kyoudai), I’ve awarded 7 Yellow Belts so far and I’m only going to continue to improve and add to it throughout 2013 to make it amazing.

Now that you’ve got some examples from me, go ahead and answer the 3 questions above.

It’ll get those endorphins flowing that will charge you up for Part 2, which is all about proper goal setting.

I’d love to hear 1 or all of the answers to the 3 questions below, if you’re willing to share. If not, no worries, just make sure you answer the questions as it’ll set the stage for setting goals that stretch you and you’ll be proud of achieving.

PEACE~

Ahhh… A New Year, a fresh start. 2012 is upon us and it’s up to us to make it a big one.

I woke up bright and early today with an agenda packed full of little tasks. Go to the walk-in clinic to get my medicals to submit to Boxing Ontario. Work on this blog post. Train Bocek. Get some writing done for a new project. Spar.

When I left the condo this morning, my wife and my dog were both still sleeping. Got on my bike, hit up the clinic. Closed. Rode to the next one. Talked to the receptionist. It’s an hour wait. I flashed her my biggest smile. Usually when I do this women instantly begin tearing their clothes off. Still an hour wait.

No way I’m waiting in the lobby of a walk-in clinic for an hour. I’d be likely to come out worse than I went in. Defeated, I chose to move on to task #2, writing this blog post.

As I contemplate the coffee I’m going to brew once I lose my writing ‘flow’, I’m thinking about how I can go about helping you get off to a good start to help you achieve your goals this year.

I think back to what I’ve done that has helped me achieve my goals, and what I did wrong when I didn’t. Thinking about both of these things is important, not just focusing on what we did right and forgetting about our failures. Do that and you render the failure useless. Discover why you failed and the failure becomes education and an opportunity for growth.

For me, one of the reasons why I’ve failed to achieve goals in the past is that I have too many goals at one time.

We only have so much mental and physical energy to direct each day. If we’re spreading it out over 10 different goals or projects, each one only gets a tenth of the energy it could get if we had 1 project. Simple math.

That’s one of the biggest things I’ll be working on this year. I’ve got a zillion ideas of programs and projects to work on for myself and to make available to you. For example, I’ve wanted to release my eXplosive Muscle Building Blueprint for months; same with the Olympic Lifting Mastery Course.

But something else has always taken priority. Finally I got them done and I’m proud of what they’ve become.

So one of my resolutions is to narrow my focus. Not put too much on plate. Target those goals that would really make me proud of myself for achieving. The goals that would make a significant impact on my life and those around me.

As Master Bruce said, mastery isn’t about adding more and more, it’s about hacking away at the unessential.

In simplicity lies efficiency. Efficiency is one of my core principles. Others I’ve shared in this video.

I’ve been thinking about my goals for a few weeks now. I still haven’t narrowed them all down. But when I do, those are going to be the main focus for the year.

One of them as you might’ve guessed is having a boxing match. That one has been on my plate for a while. I’m embarrassed that it hasn’t happened yet. But I set the date, now I’m doing what I have to do to make it happen. January 28th baby!

The second tip I’ll give you is to set your goal, then at that moment, create some type of action list or plan.

This takes your goal from your mind into reality.

When I set my boxing fight date, I printed up a calendar for January and wrote in each and every workout I’m going to do. Now, I’m on autopilot. All I’ve got to do is look at the calendar and follow the plan. Easy.

To make it even easier, I signed up at a big box gym around the corner. I even gave the devils my credit card info. I mainly signed up because they have a heavy bag. And I’m not just getting the convenience, I’m also getting entertainment.

I like watching the Stock Trainers put their clients through random and often ridiculous workouts. It seems like the gym taught all of their Stock Trainers the power pose: stand behind client with arms crossed chewing gum more rapidly than a cow on speed chews cud while spending more time looking at yourself in the mirror than watching your client’s exercise technique. I’m going to have to work on that.

So with respect to your fitness, what is your ultimate goal?

If it’s anything like, “To get in the best shape of my life and have the body of my dreams” then now, you’ve got to boil it down…

What’s the one thing you want to focus on first that will get you to your ultimate goal?

To help you, here’s a poll that shows the most common objectives, choose the ONE that you want to start with:

[poll id=”9″]

Now that you’ve got your focus, think about your plan. While your focus should be narrow, your plan is more broad, including things like exercise, diet, stress reduction, accountability, assessment, etc.

To make this official, write down a couple of your next action steps in the Comments section below. That way you can come back to this post and assess your progress. Here’s a list of possibilities to help you get started:

• Create / get workout program
• Schedule workouts
• Get necessary gear
• Find a coach, workout buddy, or someone to hold me accountable
• Create / get nutrition plan
• Schedule grocery trips and meal prep time

Can you think of any others to add to this list? If so, let me know in the Comments section.

The last tip I’ll give you is this: don’t be a PROGRAM FLOOZY.

A Program Floozy is just like a normal floozy who jumps whoever’s bones they find interesting at that particular (drunken) time, without any commitment. Just looking for a good time. That’s a surefire way to not getting any long-term, lasting results. Once you’ve found a program that looks like it’ll work for you, see it to the end.

Even if it’s not the “best” program out there, if you stick to it, chances are it’ll get you closer to your goals, even if it doesn’t get you all the way there. When you’re done with it, if it didn’t give you everything you wanted, get a new one.

So those are my 2 tips to achieving your goals in 2012: narrow your focus and stick to a plan.

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Now leave your next couple of action steps below and let’s kill it in 2012: