Ep 234 Book Club: Discussion of Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold goal crushers. Today is a book club episode, and I'm very excited about this book. Your best year, a five step plan for achieving your most important goals. This is by Michael Hyatt. And like always, I have tons of tabs. This book took me a little longer to get through in full disclosure, because there are a lot of points in this book where you can stop [00:01:00] and do the work.
Sara Mayer: And I encourage you to do that. So just like always, if you haven't jumped in to the book yet, I'm going to give you an overview. So spoiler alert, don't listen if you are still reading or want to read later. So I want to read the jacket of this because it does really paint the picture for this book, which I loved.
Sara Mayer: By the way, this year is the year you finally close the gap between reality and your dreams. We all want to live a life that matters. We all want to reach our full potential, but all too often we find ourselves overwhelmed by the day to day. Our biggest goals get pushed back to the burner. And then more often than not, they get abandoned.
Sara Mayer: And forgotten. It doesn't have to be this way. In this new, fully revised and updated edition, your best year ever, Michael Hyatt shares a powerful proven research driven system for setting and achieving your goals. You'll learn how to design [00:02:00] your best year ever by discovering what's holding you back, how to overcome your past setbacks, the seven attributes of effective goals, how to quit your.
Sara Mayer: How to quit proof your goals, the role of habits and personal achievement, what to do when you feel stuck and much more. If you're tired of not seeing progress in your personal, intellectual, business, relational or financial goals, it's time to have your best year ever. This book truly is a roadmap for goal setting and it aligns with a lot of the things that we talk about on this show.
Sara Mayer: Michael does a great job of putting together a framework and how you might use the, this framework to set and crush your goals. And so I have a lot to cover. So I'm going to jump in and I'm going to tell you that there are So many gold nuggets in here. Again, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see all these little tabs, and if you're [00:03:00] not watching on YouTube, you certainly should subscribe to YouTube.
Sara Mayer: Definitely like to see you. You can see my office where I work, and all that fun stuff. So check us out on YouTube if you just. Bringing me along on your podcast journey. Of course, I love my audio listeners as well. Just making sure you knew there was an option out there. So one of the things that he truly encourages right at the beginning is to really think about your.
Sara Mayer: Sorry, this pages are flipping to really think about what your goals are. And many times he talks about how he does talk about how goals and dreams are as diverse as people. So it doesn't matter what your goal is. It really matters that you are moving forward with it and achieving it. And then it's worth pursuing.
Sara Mayer: So one of the ways that he talks about goal setting that doesn't work is that many [00:04:00] times we come up with these goals and we just don't have a plan. And so he has five key assumptions. So his first little comment is that Excuse me, real life is manifested and their life, that our lives consist of nine inter interrelated domains.
Sara Mayer: So we have our body, we have our mind, we have our spirit, love, family, community, money, work, and hobbies, and every domain matters. And. they all affect each other. So if you are following along on page 19, he has a wheel of life domains and where you can rate where you are in each of the domains. He also talks about in this five key assumptions.
Sara Mayer: The second assumption is Every domain matters. And the third is progress starts only when we get clear on where you are right [00:05:00] now. So you have to start with where you are now before you can move forward for progress. And then there's also an assumption that you can improve any of the domains as well as A fifth and final assumption that confidence, happiness, and life satisfaction are byproducts of personal growth, which, we're all about personal growth here.
Sara Mayer: So then he outlines really the path you have to figure out where you're at before you can start to achieve your goals. And. You need to get closure on the past. So that is one of the things that many times we don't learn or get closure from the past and we're still stuck there. And then there's a framework for that, for how to set goals that works, which we'll cover, and then he talks about your why are you trying to achieve these goals?
Sara Mayer: And finally he pulled, he really does pull it all together to give you the three best tactics to achieve your goals. All right, so let's jump in. So the first [00:06:00] one. The first thing is to really think about your beliefs and that's, as almost a self fulfilling prophecy. If you think you're not going to do it, then you're probably not going to do it.
Sara Mayer: So There's this difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset. And he talks about how in golf that some people make impossible shots and the difference between making it and not making it truly is the belief inside of the golfer that they can pull it off. So it's really important to. Truly know what your beliefs are.
Sara Mayer: And then one of the biggest reasons we don't succeed in our goals is that there's doubts we simply believe they're out of reach. And so if we can really make sure that we believe in our goals, but not only that we believe in ourselves, that will help us to achieve our goals.
Sara Mayer: All right. Then he talks [00:07:00] about. A lot of different things, like when you feel powerless, how that might affect your goals. But what I really liked is when you feel powerless, like maybe you can't do that. We all have these powers within ourselves and probably more so than we give ourselves credit for. So there's a Stanford research psychology professor, Albert Bandera.
Sara Mayer: And he says that This power comprises four properties that help us achieve our goals. So these are the ones we need to hone in on intention. If we can imagine a better reality than the one we're currently experiencing, we can work with others to achieve it. Forethought. By visualizing the future, we can govern our behavior in the present and give purpose and meaning to our actions.
Sara Mayer: Action. We have the ability to act on our plans to stay motivated and to respond to it. In the moment to remain on course and self reflection, we not [00:08:00] only act, we know we act. That means we can evaluate how we're doing, make adjustments and even revise plans. Many people will say they can't achieve their goals because of resources and resources.
Sara Mayer: As they say, he says in the book, resources are never, and never the main challenge in achieving your dream. In fact, if you already have everything you need to achieve your goal is probably too small. That's powerful.
Sara Mayer: So there's a way to revise your beliefs. If you don't believe you can achieve the goal, if you don't believe you have the resources, you don't believe you have the time, you don't believe you have the talent, all those things. First, you need to identify the limiting belief. Second, you need to interrogate the limiting belief.
Sara Mayer: Third, you need to imagine a liberating truth and fourth, you need to implement with a new strategy. So remember, we need to look backwards in order to achieve our goals forwards, and you need to do [00:09:00] the work of what? Limiting beliefs may be coming up now that are actually from past experience. So I don't have enough experience.
Sara Mayer: I don't have the right experience. I can't write. I always quit. I'm not creative. I always fail. Eventually I'm not good with money. I'm not disciplined. I'm terrible with technology. Those are all limiting beliefs, but the clues are in the past. If we're honest, everybody thinks those at some point for various different things, but in order to move forward, we need to address that past.
Sara Mayer: So he gives us an exercise to find our limiting beliefs. So the first one is in those life domain categories. I'll use an example of body limiting belief is I don't have stamina to play tennis. A liberating truth is I can up my stamina through high cardio workouts to play tennis. Another one might be community.
Sara Mayer: I can't help that the green spaces in the city are [00:10:00] disappearing. A liberating truth. I can plant and maintain a community garden for all to enjoy. So it's really about identifying those limiting beliefs and turning those into Upgrading those beliefs so that we can then achieve our goals. So here's the action plan he outlines in the first section.
Sara Mayer: First is recognizing the power of your beliefs, truly understanding that your beliefs shape everything. The second one is confronting your limiting beliefs. So confronting those things. And then the fourth one is upgrading your beliefs. upgrading your beliefs. Sorry. I have a hair. There you go. If you're watching on YouTube, you saw me trying to get this hair out of my headset.
Sara Mayer: So step one really is about, hold on, where did it go? Sorry. Step one is about believing the possibility that you can achieve your goals. Step two is [00:11:00] completing the past. So we're going to talk about this. So We are reacting to our personal histories instead of getting the closure we need to move forward.
Sara Mayer: That's what Michael Hyatt says. What I call completing the past is possible to do. So we've all gone through experience and your past is a story. How you frame that story will largely impact your future start. So if we look at the past from an abundance mindset instead of one fueled by scarcity, we can reframe the past.
Sara Mayer: That's the purpose of this section in step two. So backward thinking, so reasoning flows not only forward, but also backward, according to Dale Miller, from experiences to what reminds us of our Makes or makes us think about, so the power of backward thinking, we can't complete the past until we acknowledge what we've already experienced.
Sara Mayer: So backward [00:12:00] thinking is all about learning awareness and analysis and forward thinking is about action, possibility and progress. So good. And he brings up this concept of after action review. It's a, it's an activity that the military has used for years that they. Review everything that happens. And so stage one, they talk about what you wanted to happen.
Sara Mayer: What do you want to happen with this activity, task, whatever. You're working on, and then what did you want to happen? So you want to outline that. How did you see it going? What were the things, the plans that you had? And don't focus on the, what didn't work. It's easy to do that at this point, but it's about really thinking about what you wanted to happen.
Sara Mayer: And then stage two is acknowledging what actually happened. So what really happened? What disappointments or regrets did you experience? What outcomes [00:13:00] that were unexpected? What things really worked well? And it's okay to jot down your disappointments, but I challenge you to really think about the positives because it's easier to come up with the negatives.
Sara Mayer: All right. And then another question you could ask yourself in this section is what did I feel I should have been acknowledged for, but wasn't that's powerful. What did I accomplish this past year? I was most proud of. And that is all about step two. Step three is learning from the experience. And you want to ask yourself, what were the major life lessons I learned?
Sara Mayer: So what you went through, what did you learn? But Pulling out those learning lessons is so critical so that you are able to truly learn from your past stage for adjusting behavior. This is where we start to tweak the dials a little bit. We move them up and down and. If [00:14:00] something in your beliefs and behaviors contributed to the gap between what you wanted to happen and what actually happened, something has to change, honestly, and if it doesn't, that gap will only widen.
Sara Mayer: So it's truly about going forward. What are you going to do differently so that you can have a different result from your action? That activity is called the After Action Review. All right. Then he talks a ton about regrets, which is very interesting. And what was interesting is only 1 percent of respondents say they never engage in regretting behavior.
Sara Mayer: And
Sara Mayer: Michael, he shares a lot about regrets and he says that if you have no regrets or intentionally set out to live without regrets, you're missing the value. The value you may be asked is what is the value in regrets? [00:15:00] But the pain could be truly real and intense. And the problem is how quickly we distance ourselves from it.
Sara Mayer: So we don't want to live in the pain of that regret or whatever happened, but. But that is a big mistake, says Michael. He cautions us. He says, when it comes to experiencing your best year ever, we can leverage our regrets to reveal opportunities. We would otherwise miss and ensure we don't. Create repeatable behavior.
Sara Mayer: So good. So self regrets not only don't help us improve, but they sit on the evidence table of court. So like we know that, Oh, we didn't, weren't able to do that then. Like we could hold the whole court about what we had. This is a quote from the book. I'm going to actually read it. If on the other hand, you believe you can, you simply sometimes fail, you can begin evaluating what's missing in your performance and seek corrective action.
Sara Mayer: And there's an advantage. [00:16:00] Success consists of going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. You're not a failure. So the failure you do experience creates dissonance that requires your attention to resolve. So good. So there are several benefits of regret. Surprisingly, the first is instruction.
Sara Mayer: Regret is in form of information and it can avoid, it can help you avoid. Encouraging doing those things in the future motivation to change. It can be a tremendous motivator to change and Integrity regret can work in us like a moral compass singling that we've veered off the path So there is opportunity in regret interestingly enough here the six biggest regrets people expressed education career romance parenting self improvement and leisure Wow
Sara Mayer: Okay. So researchers did find that [00:17:00] one of the biggest feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment are strongest where the chances for corrective action are clearest. So regrets, in other words, don't just flow backward. Like a sewer pipe, a blocked up sewer pipe, they also point forward to new and hopeful possibilities.
Sara Mayer: And so that's the opportunity principle. It's where you do have the opportunity to create that behavior and that future for yourself by really addressing these regrets. So he gives us an action plan for how to do step two, which step two is. Dealing with the past. Where did that go? The action plan.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Completing the past. So the first one is conduct an after action review, find the opportunity hidden in regret, and then trying [00:18:00] gratitude exercises. So that's a great way of dealing with your past. Then, and only then can you move on to step three, which is designing your future. So step three, I really liked this story.
Sara Mayer: How he. Paints a really great picture about in Asheville, North Carolina, there's a place that was built by George Washington Vanderbilt. It's called the Biltmore. It's 18, 180, 000 square feet. And he tells a story about how it was very meticulously planned. And it's one of the places that people line up to visit all year.
Sara Mayer: And then he tells the opposite story about Sarah Winchester, who bought an eight room farmhouse in 1884. And now She built upon it and she did all these things and it was not well planned out and it's very chaotic in the structure and people line up to view this house too. [00:19:00] And the main difference between the two houses is George Vanderbilt started with a very clear vision.
Sara Mayer: Sarah didn't, or if she did, she got lost along the way. And we know that happens to a lot of us. And so daily life consists in arranging countless variables. So you have your personal hopes and dreams, family responsibilities, financial circumstances, professional demands, and more. And often we're building something, but we often stand back and look at it, and we're not really sure what.
Sara Mayer: So we're doing all the things, but without that clear vision, we won't get the same results. Planning for your goals is important, and there are seven checkboxes to great goals according to Michael Hyatt. First, you need to be clear on what you want. So this is imagine setting out on a trip with no clear destination.
Sara Mayer: I'm going on a trip, I don't know where I'm going. Unless that's truly what [00:20:00] you want to do. Second, He talks a lot about writing your goals down, and I know many people have so many goals and dreams in their head, and they don't take the time to write them down. I encourage you to do that. I have a goal tracker that you can purchase on my Amazon store.
Sara Mayer: We'll link that in the show notes, and it's a great way to keep track of your goals. Third, the reason that you want to have goals written down and the seven checkboxes is because it motivates you to take action. And then fourth, it filters out other opportunities. Definitely make sure that you're staying focused on the right things.
Sara Mayer: Fifth, it enables you to see and celebrate your progress. It's so important to celebrate your progress. He brings up a couple things in a study outside of Duke University, researchers found that people with more specific goals Gain more momentum and motivation while people with [00:21:00] less specific goals had the opposite tendency They lost steam along the way and reported a decline in motivation even when they made some progress So the more specific you can get about your goals the more you can visualize it the better All right.
Sara Mayer: And then he talks about risk and risk is comfort is overrated. Risk is where the learning happens. It's also where it's a catalyst for growth and third discomfort signals progress. So when you push yourself to grow, you'll feel discomfort, but there's a profit in the pain. So it's really important to really get uncomfortable.
Sara Mayer: And there've been more than. a thousand academic experiments in goal setting, 90 percent have produced positive results. So when people set goals, 90 percent of the time they have positive results. Oftentimes, and this happens to me too, goal, people set goals that are too low, [00:22:00] but difficult goals actually by research show more sustained enthusiasm.
Sara Mayer: And When we tend to reach for the impossible, we often do the impossible. There's like that old adage of shoot for the moon, you'll land on the stars. So there's these three kind of different ways of goal setting. So there's goal setting for the comfort zone, not recommended. And then. There's this little bit of risk where you get in the discomfort zone where you may have to learn or overcome a challenge and you know it that you don't have the tools, resources, or talent.
Sara Mayer: And then there's the delusional zone. So we're not talking about setting goals that we know we can achieve. They're just delusional. We would need to dial that back. There's a sweet spot and people tend to do one of two things. And then the middles. So they tend to be in one camp and they need to either move to the middle or move up and [00:23:00] that's what, you want to do.
Sara Mayer: So let's talk about the next types of goals. So he suggests setting achievement and habit goals. So for example, achievement goal could be. Read 50 books this year and a habit goal could be read 45 minutes each evening, which is very similar to what I teach. Have a big, bold goal, but then the tactics for how you achieve them are very specific.
Sara Mayer: Oh, I just pulled that tab off of wherever it was. All right. And next we have the action plan. So the first one is to set your goals, consider the format, and you want to think about being dreamy and then writing those goals down. And you want to set goals in your discomfort zone. So it might be acknowledging the value, learning, leaning into the experience, noticing your fear and not overthinking it.
Sara Mayer: And then you want to [00:24:00] pick the right mix of achievements and habits that will help you achieve that goal. It's really critical that you write these down as well. Step four is finding your why. And this is something that I think many people miss on setting goals. So he talks about a book, A Million Miles, where Donald Miller's talks about crossing a stretch of river, not just leaving the shore and arriving on the other side.
Sara Mayer: But the hard work in the middle, and it's a metaphor for anything we undertake. So anything we do, that's worth doing truly does have a messy middle and why you need to know your why is because when you're about to quit, it's a great way to go back. So he says there's five elements to combat the urge to quit.
Sara Mayer: The first one is perspective. Really knowing the perspective of where you want to be. You can't blank on that. Like you need to know. The second [00:25:00] one is a new frame. So this is where you're using a process where you reframe your frustration so that you can do better. Your third is self compassion and that's really, letting go of perfectionism, not judging ourselves and moving forward.
Sara Mayer: The fourth is a sense of urgency. We all know if you can create a sense of urgency, you will get it done. And the fifth element is your why you are doing it. And I would argue that your why is probably one of the most compelling motivations because that's what you can go back to when you are about to quit or you're feeling you want to quit.
Sara Mayer: So what he does is he creates a list of things like if I'm writing a book, why do I want to write a book and writing those down so when he's about to quit, he can go back and look at those. And I think it's really important to think about your motivation, but also be [00:26:00] realistic about the commitment.
Sara Mayer: So many people will track habits and I have a habit tracker as well. I'll link that in the show notes. It's in my Amazon store. And. There were always these comments about how many days or months it takes to achieve a habit. And actually it has been researched now, and Michael shares this in the book, from the University College London, and they tracked people attempting to form different types of habits.
Sara Mayer: Instead of three to four weeks, they found it took an average of 66 days for new habits to become automatic. Correct? Correct. Automatic more when three, more than three times the duration that people originally thought. And some activities, it might be up to 250 days that they found. And that's because the goals are more complex or what you're trying to overcome in order to keep that habit is a little more robust.
Sara Mayer: So he brings up the comment, the. The idea [00:27:00] of tracking habits and how it's like a chain and your goal really is just keeping that chain together. So I did this on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I mark it off and all that stuff. But what I would argue is. There's more value in what you do after the day you quit.
Sara Mayer: And I read that in some book and I cannot remember what book that is, is that it's about the rebounding. It's real, it's easier to keep the streak. It's really difficult when you miss a day to come back the day after. And that's where the magic happens. He does talk about Sharing your goals. Should you share your goals?
Sara Mayer: And we've probably heard that some people like to share their goals with everybody and not everybody and other people don't like to share with everybody. And so there is some interesting, an interesting idea, a TED talk from Derek shivers, founder of DC CD baby. And he says the repeated psychology tests have [00:28:00] proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen.
Sara Mayer: Why? Because your brain experiences the same sensation as if you already accomplished it. Works against you. And Michael says, I knew that couldn't be the whole story. So what he talks about is sharing your goal with select groups so that you truly can build the community to achieve your goal. So your action plan for this section is to connect with your why, master your motivation, and build your team of community that can help you in achieving your goals.
Sara Mayer: And then step five, the easiest thing we're here so easy, make it happen easier said than done. So Michael talks a lot about the art of start art of the start. And he says that people spend a lot of time in the detailed planning stage and he's kind Quoted as saying if you're as if you're building a [00:29:00] nuclear submarine and for most people the goals We set don't need that detailed plan and it's really just a way to procrastinate He likes to do the easiest tasks first so when writing a book Michael writes the table of contents first because he says that gets you into motion and allows you to be more like a springboard and also It does cause you to then have the emotion.
Sara Mayer: To get a couple of quick wins to be excited and it creates momentum. So you're able to keep moving forward. And we talk about that a lot on this podcast.
Sara Mayer: All right. And then finally, where did that go? Sorry.
Sara Mayer: The make it happen action plan is really about breaking down the goals. So they're manageable scheduling rather goal. Regular gold reviews and using activation triggers. So this could be like a [00:30:00] leverage that you can use when it gets hard. Like for him, it's going back to his why it could be, okay, I'm going to take a break.
Sara Mayer: I'm going to take a walk, things like that. And then finally, Michael concludes with the law of diminishing intent. So he says that Jim Rowan noted that our intention tends to diminish the longer we wait to take action. So it's all about getting into action. I just love this book. He has some great. Worksheets.
Sara Mayer: I don't know if you can see that on zoom in the back of the book with how to actually plan out your goals. You can certainly take advantage of my goal tracker as well as habit tracker because they are tools that will help you achieve your goals. All right, bold goal crushers, it's time to crush your goals and everything that gets in the way.
Sara Mayer: I hope you join us live for the book club. It is saramayer.com/joinbookclub. If you have not signed up, talk to you [00:31:00] soon.
Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way.
