#1553 - Two Words Worth Remembering For 2024

So we're coming up on the end of 2023 . And I know a lot of us have really big goals or maybe really specific goals or a lot of aspirations for what's going to happen in 2024 . My goal in today's episode is to help you set goals or help you make progress in a way that is more sustainable . That really is my goal .

I've coached a lot of people on podcasting and speaking and coaching and business far less than Allen when it comes to business , but most of my clients are business owners and I always say when I'm working with you , I'm going to give you two , I'm going to try to give you two options .

I'm going to give you what's realistic and I'm going to give you what's ideal . Ideally , we would get to a place where you do blank , blank , blank , blank , blank , blank and blank based on the results that you said you desire .

Realistically , right now , I think we should just get the ball rolling , and it's a constant juggle between what's ideal and what's realistic . What's ideal would be Allen and I jump on the microphones and neither of us makes a single mistake , and on Monday , when we're supposed to , we get all of our seven episodes done and everything is hunky-dory Sometimes .

That's not

realistic . What's real ?

we're going away .

Realistically , you might have , and you're not going to be able to see what's written on it because of my camera , but realistically , maybe you have a giant to-do list of things and oh , there you go , you can see it and you work your way through it and it takes you a week and it takes you three days longer to do some stuff .

It takes four days longer to do other things . Some things are a surprise to you and you get them done faster than you desired . It's the juggling act of both of those things . Now there's another two words that we can substitute Optimal versus doable . What is doable for you right now ? And what is optimal for you right now ?

Maybe what's optimal is you are drinking a certain amount of water and you're eating a certain balanced diet and you're getting eight hours of sleep and you're weighing yourself every day and you're exercising for 30 minutes a day .

Maybe that is what is optimal for you , but what is optimal for you might not be what's doable for you , and I just think that's an important fundamental understanding for us all to have , because we're really good at beating ourselves up when we don't do what's optimal and something weird happens . At least this happens with me sometimes .

When I can't do optimal , I don't even want to do doable . I don't . I want to do less than nothing . I don't even care what's doable , I want to just do nothing . So I've been going through a shoulder issue . Something's wrong with my shoulder . I've been going to jujitsu three to four times a week . No pain

. No pain at all , even though people are tugging on it and putting it over my throat and in positions . It's not supposed to no pain , but when I go to the gym it's the worst . So much pain . So I've stopped going to the gym completely . What's doable is I could go to the gym and do different exercises . I really need to go and do legs .

That's not going to hurt my shoulder . I could probably go and do arms . That wouldn't hurt my shoulder . I could probably go and potentially do back . That might not hurt my shoulder . Maybe chest and shoulders are off the off the board for now . So if you find yourself similar to me in this instance in an all or nothing attitude of well , it's not optimal .

Yeah , I couldn't do the doable thing , but I'm not even going to do that because I'm so frustrated . Maybe that's another thing to explore after you listen to today's episode .

And I had this honest conversation myself of you don't feel like you've had a great morning , but if you really look at it , you got more done this morning than some people do all day , but you never give yourself credit for that . This was like a dialogue I was having with myself loud .

No , no , no , definitely not , although I did tell Kevin , you and I we watched home alone yesterday and he just has outer dialogues . Yeah , you notice that in the movie he's just I'm not afraid anymore . His inner dialogue is his outer dialogue . A great movie it was . It is a great movie . It was a great movie . It was great , we enjoyed it thoroughly .

But anyways , I think that this idea of Okay , well , I can't , I only have 20 minutes and I can't get my 30 minutes of learning in , but I might as well get something in , let me get something done and I think that Something is better than nothing is probably a better mentality , mentality than I want , my perfect morning routine or no morning routine and I

think that the other piece of this is messy action . If you are not adopting messy action , we have a hole in our closet door from a , from a couch that we brought up . So we brought up for those of you who listen to the conscious couples podcast , you know the conscious couples couch . That's where we do all our coaching calls .

I actually have a coaching call right after this with a couple and that couch is heavy , super heavy .

So we tried to hammer that thing right on up the stairs in our house and we Hammered it into the closet door at the bottom of the stairs and it's just a big hole right in our closet door and Emilia and I have been really working quite diligently towards many endeavors , and so we just left it there .

so we'll be fine . My point is this there is no such thing . If you go to anyone's basement right now , what's it gonna look like ?

It's not just your basement , it's not just your bedroom , it's not just your pile of laundry sitting there . That is human Condition . That is the human condition . And right before the holidays , before your family comes over , you're gonna do a full December cleaning just like everyone else on earth , deep clean .

Yeah , quick , deep clean , before before people come and Thanksgiving . You know , it's like you think we can patch this door . Nope , let it ride . I'll tell the story . It's all good . So Messy action is the only way I Think shooting for ideals can be productive . But thinking there that you're ever gonna hit them is Is so silly .

I was on with a client earlier , showed it to Bradley , my man , bradley . He runs a big team , big financial firm , awesome , super on point , and we were talking about messy action . We were talking about 2023 versus 2024 and what you thought you'd achieve versus what you did achieve , and he crushes it .

And I'm telling you there are things that he had to let fall in order to crush it , and that's what the whole conversation was in 2024 . What are you gonna let fall ? What are you gonna be okay with letting fall ? You're not gonna be 10 out of 10 on point with everything . You're not . You've got to choose your 10 out of 10s very , very carefully .

And you know , in an ideal world We'd all be wealthy . In an ideal world , we'd all Weigh ourselves every day , you know , and and track our macros and our calories and our micronutrients every day , and We'd all eat nutritious meals and never get pizza on a whim . That isn't real . It's not real , it never has been and it never will be .

I coach some of the most incredible humans you've ever met . They are so on point , it's not even funny and they're still off the rails in certain things , and you just have to know that you can be 10 out of 10 on point in a couple things . That's it , though Only a couple . I've never seen anyone fully on point with everything . It's not real .

And Social media and going to people's

houses is designed to appear ideal . My backdrop and Kevin's backdrop it's designed to look ideal . My hair is gelled . I've got a collared shirt on . Everything is designed to look ideal . It's really beautiful packaging . That's okay , I'm not making that wrong .

But our very first backdrop was a black Curtain , just a black curtain , and we had my sister's an x-ray tech and we were in my sister's old bedroom for our first studio and she was an x-ray tech , I should say , and she had a skeleton .

So we , we put a hyper conscious podcast muscle shirt on the skeleton and called him Steve McQueen the McQueen , and it was our mascot . And so Just please , please , please , do yourself a favor and and Realize that no one on planet Earth has a perfectly clean car with a perfectly clean basement . Who , you know , has a perfect life ? It is .

It is so far from any reality you've ever seen , and it just looks that way from the outside in , but from the inside out it's not , and you just have to trust that . But Despite all that , you can get better and better and better .

In other words , your non ideal Version of yourself right now should be , and could be , and and ought to be , better than your Messy action version of you five years ago , and I think that's empowering messy action , messy improvement , messy discipline you know , messy , non-ideal action toward a better , bigger , better , right future . Well , and see , even right there .

Just just Jeff forward , please just mess it up . Just just break some eggs and You're gonna have an omelet that is way better Than what was before . There it is .

I've seen this a lot with people who are doing something for the first time that they've never done before , and they beat themselves up because it doesn't go ideally and they don't let's just say they don't release the thing , whatever it means , whether it's getting on a call with somebody who could be a potential client for their new Dream-chasing thing that they're

doing , or a podcast episode or a speech or whatever it is . And I always try to get them to understand that . I Know we want it to go ideally , I know we want it to go optimally , but even when you get to the point where you have the opportunities you want , even then it's not gonna go ideally .

Even when you get to the I guess it's kind of similar to the episode we did yesterday Talking about there's no before and after . Even when you get to that big speech , you'll have things that go wrong 100 might not , might not have the time to prep as much time as you wanted .

You might have been up up late the night before because there's something going on with the family . I had a client who just gave a really big speech in . I don't remember where it was aspen , I think , I think it was somewhere in , I think I was somewhere in Colorado and it was a really big speech and she forgot to record it .

And I said , well , I said I'll tell you exactly what I said not ideal . Yeah , we've done that . We've done that . Of course you have a speech coming up right . She said , yeah , next week . And I said , all right , what would be most optimal is if you hire someone to come get content of you . You don't have to worry about it , that's all .

We just will take the thing that was an ideal and , if we can plug that hole , hopefully that problem doesn't happen again .

Yeah , yeah because you'll do is always what's optimal because You'll actually do it . I .

Yeah , I was just gonna say quickly I was on next level , a next level live today in next level nation with Amy and I , and I was talking about how , now more than ever , understanding yourself and realizing what you'll actually do is one of the most important things ever , because you can hear all the advice in the world , but if it doesn't resonate with you

and you don't believe you're gonna do it , or you can do it , or if it's possible for you or you're not the type of person that would do it , what are you , the type of person , what would the type of person that you identify as ? Do Start there , start there Not and again , I think it's good advice what would the type of person you want to become ?

Do Awesome . I love that . I think that's great advice . I think , starting with what , the type of person that I identify as today , what would I be capable of ? Let's do this , yeah , yeah .

I don't think I follow him , but he just shows up on my feet a lot and he's making fun of , in a satire way , people . He says when you wake , I wake up at 12.01 .

I go to bed at 10 pm and I wake up at one minute after midnight and first thing I do is I buy an income property and with the money I make from the income property I buy a very heavy SUV that I can write off the taxes with , and with that SUV I do deliveries of DoorDash .

And he's just making satire of how people say if you're 30 and you don't have your first rental property , you're a loser or whatever . And he's just poking fun at the fact that maybe that was ideal for you , maybe that's the way it worked , but it's probably not realistic for most people .

I think most of the advice that is given is not realistic for most people . I really do , and I've been trying to say this more and more when I go on podcasts . I don't want , when I tell you my morning routine , which is now Jeff , three ways from sideways , I don't have one . I wake up and I work . That's my morning routine now , transparently .

I always joke and I say I don't want this to be that meme of I get up at 3.30 and then I do four hours of meditation while I'm juggling three chainsaws that are on fire . But I'm also , I'm also playing checkers with my feet at the same time and I'm winning at everything I do . This is the morning routine that I have that works for me . Quote unquote .

But I also miss and here's the thing you don't have to do my morning routine to get your level of success . That's it . Wouldn't it probably wouldn't serve you to do it the way I do . Again , one person's ideal might be your realistic , your version of ideal might be somebody else's realistic , your version of realistic , whatever . You know what I'm trying to say .

It's one of those hard things when you can only say it really two ways . So if you get the first way and you don't get the second way , it just doesn't make any sense .

We did some basketball and soccer and blah , blah , blah , like next of a whole foundation running around with the kids playing football and basketball . Okay , but here's the thing what if you wanna write every day and you wanna exercise every day and you wanna meditate every day and you wanna , you know , blah , blah , blah ? I was asked this on a podcast recently .

He said what's the one most important thing that

has changed your life ? And I thought of a couple things , but the one that jumped off was habit tracking . I don't care if you get 100% . No one does , no one does . You got 100% for four months .

He does a lot more than just track habits . Here's my point Tracking habits every day . I don't care if you get 50% or 60% or 80% or 100% , but if you do that one thing every day , that's something .

And that way you can kind of you can kind of have one non-negotiable that helps you stay more consistent at all the other seemingly impossible non-negotiables , if that makes sense .

And that's kind of what I've done with my life , and that's where I'll end , where I have a couple non-negotiables that I never miss and those hopefully keep me on the rails enough to get some of the other non-negotiables in . You know , three days a week or whatever .

Yeah , we can do seven episodes a week , but that's because one was doable and we did one long enough and then two was doable , three , now seven a week is Barely by the way .

That's supposed to be the way of it . Instead of trying to be optimal all the time , I think just focus on getting better all the time , and when you focus on getting better and failing forward and taking messy action , you end up optimal over the long term . That's really empowering . It is . I think it's empowering to realize optimal is impossible .

It's the same thing with perfect , Perfect and optimal . It's never going to be fully optimal . It's never going to be fully perfect . It's almost like you have to hold this duality of I want to make things as perfect as they can be

, knowing nothing's ever perfect .

You Link will be in the show notes , as always .

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