Choose A Battle You Know You Can Win (2061)

He was talking about how most people don't set goals that are big enough and I said , with all due respect , based on our anecdotal evidence of coaching many , many people , I think most people who tell people to set goals have way more self-belief and they're actually misaligning them and misguiding them .

Beginners and novices are different , novices and professionals are different , and so it changes for everyone . So it's very difficult and very important to understand this .

It was a whole thing . I had to cancel the podcast . I was on . It's a whole thing . But here we are for take two and this one's going to be better .

Okay , I was listening to Upstream a book by Dan Heath that was recommended to me by Alan , and I was getting out of my car today , after the gym , got home , parked the car , getting out and the last thing I heard was something along the lines of this If you're doing something new , if you're focused on progress , if you're outside of your comfort zone , choose

a fight that you really believe you can win . And I had this moment where I was like that might be the best way I've ever heard that put . If you're somebody who is feeling stuck right now , you most likely should not try to reroute and uproot your entire life . You should probably pick the first battle you think you can win .

Then when you win that battle , I can pick a different one and it can be a bigger battle and if you do that for long enough , eventually you have really big battles that you can win . But it's really easy to get lost with the advice out there that is being given to you by people who have super high self-belief .

I remember in the beginning I would see people that were quote unquote successful and I remember thinking they don't understand me .

I can tell by the advice that they are giving other people that they don't understand what it's like to be somebody who doesn't believe in themselves , and that has been a thing that you and I have been working together on for the last eight years .

So I just felt like , yeah , we've talked about this a lot , but that was a breakthrough for me , and if it's a breakthrough for me , I assume somebody else out there will take something from it as well .

You were on it , I think , and again , it was a great episode , like great dude , but it was like you have so much self-belief you don't even know how much self-belief you have you have so much self-belief Like it's super high , but no one tells him that how much self-belief you have .

I know this when I go on a podcast and it's for achievers , they'll say , hey , my podcast is for achievers . I was like perfect , fuck , yeah , awesome , let's do it . What does that tell me ? People who have high self-belief ? Yeah , pretty much . If you don't have high self-belief , you don't identify as an achiever .

I've been in rooms where I said who here identifies an achiever ? And no one raised their hand and I was like , seriously . But now I understand . Everyone thinks they're right , which is why everyone's wrong , because what is constructive for one person is destructive for the other . If I set low goals , that would be terrible for me .

I would get too arrogant too quickly . It would be big fish , small pond . I won most of the basketball games that I played in pickup basketball in my small town . That got to my head . And then I was in Venice Beach and I got reverse dunked on by someone in sandals who played D1 for UConn . That was important for me . That was that changed my life .

That changed my perspective and my life in a good way , in a very good way . I think that self-concept and self-belief and self-efficacy is what it's known as in psychology is the most important understanding of self .

I don't know why I say important in such an interesting way , when I go on these podcasts , I find myself trying to explain this to the host , because they'll say things like well , you got to aim super high , and I'll say , yes , but it depends , and you and I on the previous episode that was nine minutes and my wi-fi kicked out multiple times .

So far , so good . By the way , yeah , everything's with this . I feel good about this one same same . I did not feel good about the last one me either . Let's talk about a challenge . Let's do this in nine minutes .

The thing that we were talking about on the last episode that did not work out that was a battle we lost is how many people at the top of an industry tend to be the speakers or the leaders . So whoever has the most credibility sometimes has the worst advice sometimes has the worst advice .

They actually need to hear drastically different stuff , because if they hear the right stuff , they actually can unlock within themselves what they're supposed to be doing .

I do believe that when you and I continue to earn our way to success , I feel like you'll have a stage , literally and metaphorically , to talk about this , Because I didn't know this until you told me Kevin , way back eight years ago . He'd say dude , that doesn't make any sense to someone like me . And I said what do you mean ?

He's like I don't believe in myself like you do , so that's dumb . And this is something I used to say .

I would actually set up , create a new account and go back to so .

Starcraft 2 is just an example , but I'll go quick with this . They had ranking . Most games have ranking .

They gamify the game and you start with I don't know bronze , and then it's silver , and then it's gold , and then it's diamond , and then it's super diamond , and it's just like this whole ranking system and eventually you become a grandmaster and then you only play the best on planet earth and it's not fun anymore . It's .

This is fucking brutal If I suck , if I suck for even a millisecond . I mean there's something click rate . Your click rate has to be 400 clicks per second , or per minute , rather , in order to even be at that level . And you , if you've ever seen this on twitch and people that are pro gamers , you can't fuck around .

I mean , that's a very competitive e-sport , not a sport . I can't call it a sport . It's an e-sport . However , I would purposely create a new account , like I'd have a friend come over , we'd play 2v2 all night and we'd create new accounts so we could just stomp on newbies and and it was awesome , we never lost a game .

It was just we'd win 100 in a row , just have a blast , just stomping people , and then , when we got to Diamond and Grandmaster and all that Master and then Grandmaster , we started losing again . But I remember every time we lost , I would go back to what they did Because we would have a strategy right .

This is called a real-time strategy game by RTS is what it's called For the nerds out there you already know this . We would literally get beaten . So we used to use a certain unit Zerglings is what it was called and we would beat everybody . That same strategy we would beat everybody .

And then we'd do that until we lost , and then we'd figure out what we lost to , and then we'd do that , and , and then we'd figure out what we lost to , and then we'd do that , and eventually you just get so damn good . And then I remember I went to a tournament once and we were winning .

But here's the problem with the tournament Everyone can watch the games . So they saw our strategy and it only worked for the first few games . So we beat one of the best 2v2 teams in the entire country , but we couldn't only , we could only beat them once , because then they country .

But we could only beat them once because then they changed their strategy and we were so not adaptable . We only had one strategy that we just rinse and repeat . But my point of all this is I would just lose until I was the best .

And I know how freaking pretentious that sounds , but at the end of the day and I said this in the last episode that didn't air if you give a speech to a thousand people and bomb and then go back to the drawing board and figure out why you bombed , and then get back on stage and then do that over and over and over and over and over again , eventually you

will be a really strong speaker . I had a speech recently that I very rarely think . I very rarely step off a stage virtually or in person , where I don't think it was awful . This one I crushed it was . I mean , everyone was just blown away .

hello , hello , hello . Nlu listener . Thank you , as always , for listening to Next Level University . Real quick , I just want to jump in and let you know about the Next Level Dreamliner . This is a journal that I use every single day . Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time . It breaks down your dreams into goals , milestones and daily habits .

We hope you enjoy it . The link will be in the show notes .

If you said yeah , but I'm telling you , if you said , give me one sentence to sum everything up , not everything , all of this . The difference , all the difference is is you either say I don't know how to do it yet or I'll never know how to do it . One is a growth mindset , one is a fixed mindset . That is it for the longest time . For me it was .

I will never know how to do that .

Okay , let's do speaking , because I think that's one of the top fears in the world being a speaker . And I'm afraid of it too , just not in the same way you are . I'm afraid everyone's going to hate me , and I don't . I'm not sure . I mean in Toastmasters , I think a lot of them really enjoyed me , which I was very grateful . So something's changing .

I like that . Either that or they were pretending to like me . We'll see . You and I both decided to be a speaker eight years ago , and this is something that Brian Tracy says , and Brian Tracy is the most boring personal development speaker in the game . But this dude has some fire .

He said if you do not love what you do , enough to at least want to be the best at it , get out of it like you would a burning building . But again , that's probably bad advice for someone who has low belief . He says this excellence driven . People at the top of their field always decide in advance to be the best .

They don't go into a job and say I'm going to just see how this goes . That's not how a lot of people that are achievers do things . I don't play Starcraft to play Starcraft . I play Starcraft to get to be the best to ever play it , knowing that I might not , but I'm going to at least go for it .

And like when I was snowboarding or basketball , I never just did that for fun . It was always how do I get better , how can I be the best ? And when I saw a friend getting better , I would find out why they were better and all that kind of stuff . It's something called mastery driven . So you and I both decide to be a speaker .

I have high enough self-belief to say , okay , I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to eventually be successful , no matter how long it takes . And I'll just constantly go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get better , how to get better , how to get better , how to get better .

I'm going to look at where I suck more than where I win , and I'm never going to stop until that's mindset one , and that's the rare one .

You would have been so much better off . I don't think I was capable of it .

I think well , and I think when you have super high self-belief you don't really care if you take an l saying , yeah , whatever , I'll just do better next time for me , you know really messed up way I wanted the challenge of not prep it's it's fair I don't .

I need the certainty of prepping less now , less now , because now it's like , yeah , I do think I don't prep as much as you used to because it's more of a challenge .

I never do that . I do a warmup set and then I increase the weight as I get more gassed . Same , and I do that through the entire , through the entire workout , for all six exercises , sometimes seven . I'm trying to make it as hard as humanly possible , because that's how growth is a byproduct of making it harder , assuming you have high self-belief .

But here's the problem I tweaked my knee , so now I have to be careful . Like I went in , Emilia and I , we were crunched for time . I had an 11 o'clock , so did she . We had a long morning , good things , all this stuff . We had a long conversation about finance and our future in the car and we're like Seems to be a trend today .

Yeah , I was gonna say and I'm like we gotta , can it ? We gotta do a half hour and then we gotta walk later . She's like , good , let's get in the gym . I wanted to get all six exercises done in 30 minutes with no breaks . I tweaked my fucking knee Because I was trying to get too much done in too short of a time .

So then I had to back off a little , but I didn't go down in weight , I just didn't go up as much as I usually do . Your level of self-belief , known as self-efficacy , determines how much challenge you can handle in a given moment . The nine minutes with my Wi-Fi not working , that was too much . It was too big of an issue .

My wifi cut out two for like three minutes out of the entire nine . That was too much of a challenge for us . And it's not , it's going to be garbage . It's going to be at the expense of the audience , at the expense of the show , you and me . Okay , here's the topic , here's the title Cold opens , boom , let's rock that . 20 minutes we got , we both have .

I have coaching in five minutes . You have something that is good amount of challenge . I'm always trying to optimize the right amount of challenge always , and that's why they have the ranking system . You're not supposed to create a new account and then play newbies that you don't get any better doing that well , it's called skill based matchmaking .

That's not what we're told . We're not told to set . Set your goals based on your skills nope , nope , fire . People are telling you to set your goals based on what they think your goal should be or what they create . That , yeah , we can , we can create that . That's trademarked . Don't take that . No , I'm just kidding . Skill-based goal setting .

I think that again , I don't know if I like skill-based , but I think there should be things that you don't just pick a goal , you just pick a goal out of a fucking hat . I know that's good , I'll do that . No , no , why don't we ? When you go to a buffet , you choose the food that you like .

You go to the buffet because it has a bunch of food , but most of the food you like .

If the goal is to get better , you don't have to win as long as you have a growth mindset ellen I had , I had to do really well the first speech I gave . I'm telling you it would have been drastically detrimental if I didn't . I had to crush it .

than that .

Second next level lesson yeah , choose a fight that you believe you can win and if you lose , you'll be able to get up tomorrow and fight again . When I was training to fight , I had this thought all the time . I'm not gonna win every fight , but I do want to make sure my opponent never wants to fight me again . That was my goal .

If you're gonna fight me , you might beat me , but you're gonna say I don't want to do that again . That was always my thought process . I think set goals like that too nice .

I , I think , I think all of us need people ahead of us , behind us and at our level , because it keeps us centered . I can't just win all the time . Anyone who wins all the time gets arrogant . Anyone who only loses is going to have terrible self-esteem .

So you've got to find enough wins and losses and I think that we're all in control of that a little more . When I'm flying high , I look at my L's more . When I'm down and out , I don't only look at L's . I tell Emilia I need snugs , I love you , I'm vulnerable , I'm feeling it . Her and I are hard on each other . Only when it's optimal Makes sense .

Next , ll Nation . As as always , we love you , we appreciate you , grateful for each and every one of you at nlu . We don't have fans , we have family . We will talk to you all tomorrow keep it next level , next level nation thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university .

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