Conversation between Jayson Lowe and Richard Canfield about how to set, track, and sustain annual goals. Key points: avoid focusing only on the remaining gap (focus on progress), use quarterly check-ins and habit-building, surround yourself with accountability-focused communities, and cultivate a curious, forward-looking mindset and self-care to maintain momentum.
Chapters
Get and receive more inspiration because of the progress that you've made up to this point, then your mind and your thinking is in the game. And so you should always recognize when you're in the gap so that you can move into the game. And this speaks perfectly to what Nelson said all the time to you, to me, to everyone who knew him. He would say, everything begins with the.
Way that we think. You have to be, you know, being curious about things. If you're not curious about something, the way the world works, the way something works, well, then you're not actively in exploration.
When people, if you, if you rewind the year to January 1st, and people had very specific goals maybe that they created for themselves and goals that they intend to achieve for the year. If you think of the premise behind the book, gap in the game, right? So we're in the second quarter of the year now. And if you've set a goal, you've got a timeline to achieve it this year.
If all you did was look at the distance that you have left to.
Cover.
Then you're thinking your mind is in the gap versus if you just kind of look over your shoulder and you. And you gauge all the progress that you've made on your goal or maybe goals up to this point, this year, and you get and receive more inspiration because of the progress that you've made up to this point, then your mind and your thinking is in the game.
And so you should always recognize when you're in the gap so that you can move into the game. And this speaks perfectly to what Nelson said all the time to you, to me, to everyone who knew him, he would say, everything begins with the way that we think and what happens for most people. And we can all relate to this. I am no different than anyone else. Like, we can all relate to this. When you decide, hey, I'm going to make a choice to.
You know, to better my life or to achieve this specific goal.
You'Re going to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. And whether for maybe some of our group, they want to make more money, they want to create more money, they want to improve their wealth, they want to expand their wealth. That can be heavy for people. And that's where most people break.
They.
They break and they go back to normal.
Even when being normal wasn't making.
Them happy to begin with.
And so you can control that. You know, there's different ways that you can do that. And. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I just said, Rich.
Well, it reminds Me of that, I think, trying to remember what the name of that movie was. But there's the. The guy, he's kind of crouching around as a bit of a hunchback, and he's talking about he had to go look for some, like, a brain. And instead of getting the normal brain, he got the Abby normal brain. And it's like the whole joke about the app, Abby normal. So. But I think that what's been really helpful for me, you know, I can. I can only speak for myself. My own personal experience is, you know, being involved in an organization like Ascendant and additionally in coaching groups like Strategic Coach, and getting more accustomed to thinking about stuff in a quarterly format. So a year can go, you know, as. As each year progresses in life, especially when you have children, you know, the. The. The passing of that year seems to happen faster and faster. Yeah, it's like, you look back on the year and it's like, where did it all go? Like, I can't believe the year's over. It just. It just. It's. It's, like, gone, like. But yet if you. If you get. If you take some real time and you really reflect back, like, I got a good recommendation, Jimmy, and he's like, you know, when you're reflecting back on year, you know, open up now with a smartphone, you open up and go through your, you know, Google or iPhone photos and simply scroll through your timeline of photos and think about all the things you did. Think about all the pictures you got with your. With your family and your kids and whatever the vacation and the events and, like, all these things that you've done. And it's like, oh, wow, like, a lot has been accomplished. Like, holy. Like, maybe you did a massive renovation. Maybe you did a flip project that was really profitable. So there's all these. These things that happen, and then we. We are moving on to the next thing and the next thing that sometimes we forget about all the success that's already passed behind us. So thinking or doing things in a quarterly format, you know, for me is really not natural, and I really have to put some focused energy on it. But it's. It's like anything. It's building a habit. So now I'm trying to build quarterly habits, and I'm getting much better, and I'm really starting to recognize how looking at things in that. That way is improving for me, because I'm trying to. I have to get clear on, you know, if all I could get accomplished in this quarter. You know, here's this. Here's this laundry list of things. And Jason, you've seen me write lists and they're pretty chaotic. They're not linear. They're on angles. There's bubbles and circles and squares around everything. It's. There's. There's nothing linear about how I write things down on a whiteboard. But when, when I have all these, you know, great ideas and then I write them down and new ones show up and it's like, wow, these are all wonderful. Except there's a limited amount of time in, in this quarter. So what of all the things that are on here, if I could only accomplish, you know, this one thing or these two items, would that mean everything else could be parked to the side and I don't have to look at it again? And so that's, that's a hard for me. It's hard to think about that that way. But asking that question, asking those good questions changes the way I look at what, what I can accomplish over the next little. And what I'm really happy to get accompl. I go to review that, that quarter and like in this most recent quarter, I like, I took a couple of days. I've been getting in the habit of actually taking for me a full day or two days away where I literally go book a hotel room and I'm, I'm out and I take the big giant, like post it note stickies and they're posted up on the wall in the hotel room and I've got questions and I'm post it notes and I'm going through things and ideas and I'm trying to carve out what I want to, what I personally want to be working on over the next quarter. You know, when I, when I, when I had my last day that I did that and I looked it through, you know, the next date that I had planned where I'm going to do that again. I added up all the days where I was actually going to be able to do some, some work because I had a vacation planned. There was a trip to Seattle plan. Like there's a number of things where I'm not going to have any working time. I need to set aside family time and everything. There was only about 40, 40 actually days, 45 days of actual days of energy that I could put into accomplishing these objectives. And I'm like, wow, if that's the actual amount of days I have, I need to reevaluate my list of what's reasonable to get accomplished in that time, you know. Cause I, you know, you believe I'M Superman, I can get it all done. Well, yeah, the reality is, no, that's not the case. And that's a who, not how situation. Pointing to the other book that's behind you is, it's not so much a matter of what I can get accomplished. It's can this thing or this idea or this project or this goal or this objective get accomplished working with the team and the other people that are around me, or is there another resource I need to pull in, etc. So the thinking about now, that limited window of time, if I really wanted to get this done, then what else needs to happen to allow it to get done so that it can still happen in that timeline because I don't have the physical energy and time to push that thing over the mountain, if that makes sense. Yeah. So just reflecting back on, on the year you, you set these annual goals in the end of December or January, what have you, because it's annual. If you're not checking in or looking at it or referencing it on a regular basis, the first important step is writing it down and making sure you've captured it. And sometimes your brain is just automatically going to make the. It's going to solve for that objective because it's important to you. But, you know, if you're anything like me, it's going to solve for that in a chaotic fashion. If you want to have a little bit more maybe linear progression on what you're doing so you can actually see that, that and you can, you know, you can see the small steps building towards the big objective, then checking in on those goals on a regular basis is really important.
Yeah, I agree. Because you know what, whatever it is that you're, whatever it is that you're feeding your brain, whatever you're telling your brain and repeating, so the more frequently you do that, your brain's eventually going to buy it. And so if you, if you set goals on January 1st and then you're not revisiting or looking at them until mid September.
You haven't programmed your brain to get to work on the things that you've set about to get achieved. And what I had referenced earlier about there are ways when it starts to feel heavy because for a lot of people that happens because either maybe the timeline isn't right, the goal is great, but maybe the timeline isn't right, so they start to feel really heavy and then they break back to normal. Normal wasn't making them happy to begin with, but yet it's more comfortable to go back there. You know, there's ways to.
There's ways to address it. So, you know, the first way would be make sure you surround yourself with the right people. Well, what does the right people mean? Like, what do I mean when I say that? Well, surround yourself with people who aren't going to tolerate complaining, they aren't going to tolerate loathing, they aren't going to tolerate excuses or explanations. They're actually going to continue to be a source of support for you.
In a very encouraging and motivating way where they just won't tolerate any of that other crap.
And that's so powerful. And when you talked about Strategic coach and you know, in Joe Polish's Genius Network and Strategic coach and most recently the lifestyle investor mastermind with Justin Donald and his group.
I'll ask you this question because you've got experience in coach. You think anyone in that group would tolerate loathing and excuses and complaining? You just wouldn't.
You just wouldn't fit in and you wouldn't engage with that person.
Yeah. And then the second thing would be focus on the most critical areas that are going to keep you moving forward. Always bigger, always better. Always bigger, always better. And when you create results there, everything else just becomes a distraction or it's a trigger for procrastination. Like you and I have learned. All credit to Dan Sullivan, that procrastination is actually a good thing. It means that the goal or the project, the idea, that's great, but you're not the who that should be getting those how's done. And then the third thing would just be self care. Right. Checking in on your mental and physical.
Health.
Really, really important.
And to do that regularly is really important.
Be in the gap.
Is going to hold you back. Being in the game is going to.
Move everything out of the way so that you can think and progress and feed your brain and be the master chef. You know, I was sharing in our Monday night mentoring calls. Be the master chef of your thinking. You can sprinkle in a little bit of ambition, a little bit of perseverance, a little bit of positive attitude, a little bit of action. Or you can sprinkle in negativity, some excuses, some complaining.
You're the master chef of your thinking. And so decide like there's. I talked to you about this earlier. There's no such thing as an unimportant day.
The workout, you know, that I had yesterday morning, I didn't want to be there.
That's the most important workout to have is the one that you didn't want to show up for, but I got my ass out of bed and did it anyway and felt great. Doesn't it always feel great? The one that you didn't want to do? It's like at the end, you're like, oh, yeah, I can go and punch today right in the face. Not like Mike Tyson did to that guy in the airplane there, but like, I can go punch today right in the face.
So, yeah, there's just.
There's so much more to. Everything begins with the way that we think. Be careful what you feed your mind, because it's going to buy it.
Is that period of time is that is the thing that you're focusing on that's missing, that's not getting done or not getting accomplished or how far off target you are with the goal you set and those kind of things. It's, it's in that negative space that's not supporting you actually reaching the objective. The gain is in how far have you come? What have you already done and accomplished? You started at zero. Now you're at 15 and the target is, say, 50. Okay, great, look, you made it all the way to 15. Like, look at how far you've come.
Precisely. It's all about progress, always constructing a future that's bigger than your past.
And you get to decide what you bring with you from the past, and you get to decide what you leave behind.
And so.
We'Re so accustomed to hopping on and we're talking about all things becoming your own banker and infinite banking and improving your wealth, accelerating your wealth, but we've got to also have more discussion about the engine that drives all that.
What good is having all the wealth and all the stuff that you can accumulate? If you. To have. No, if you're not happy, if you're just, if you're just, you know, there's no joy in what you're doing. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure anyone that's a listener of our show, our podcast, or in our community group would be, you know, would resonate with the idea that, yeah, sure, you, you want more. You want more wealth and everything, but wealth isn't a monetary value. No, it's a, it's a, it's something that you feel. I mean, you can be wealthy in many areas of life, not just limited to what your bank account or your, your policy values are or, you know, your net worth statement. It's. It's. What's. What's the net worth of your family, your quality family time. Yeah, right. And, and where are you building wealthy habits and wealthy feelings in other areas of your life. And it's. Again, it's. What do you, what do you feed your mind? Um, you know, it's. There's, there's so much really, really incredible things out in the spit in the world. There's lots of amazing podcasts. There's lots of things that can get your brain thinking, thinking positively, asking yourself good questions. What's one of the things I like about podcasts, one that I really love is with Dan Sullivan and Peter Diamandez, it's the Exponential Wisdom podcast. And in that one, what's really helped me and is it's helped me expand the way that I think about the future.
Yeah.
And recognizing all the different kinds of technology and in around health categories and different things that are happening and they're taking place, they're being built out in the world I wouldn't otherwise be familiar with if I wasn't a listener of that particular show. But the things that they're thinking about, the possibilities that exist 10 years, 20, 50, 100 years from now and what's being built today and how they're approaching to, you know, these, these future potential outcomes. Well, what's my place? What's my role in that? How do I want to be positioned when these changes happen? And so the questions that come out of it are forward looking, forward thinking. They're, they, they create new, new goals, new ideas, and I didn't have those in my head before I started listening to that show. So that's just one isolated example of how, you know, we're taking something new, new content, and we're feeding our brain to give ourselves the ability to ask a question that wasn't in our head before. I encourage people to develop a mindset of Curious George. You, you, you have to be, you know, being curious about things. If you're not curious about something, the way the world works, the way something works, well, then you're not actively in exploration. Absolutely. I think as human beings, we're designed to explore, to be explorers. And in different areas of our life, whether it's an internal exploration of what's going on with yourself or what have you, or it's an active exploration of something you don't yet know. We, that's how we learn and grow, and we are built to learn. We're really good at it. There's a quote that Nelson used to use in his presentations from John Holt, who was an educator, and I'm going to, I'm going to paraphrase from memory to the best of my degree, but it's the human animal is a learning animal. We're good at it. What, what interferes is what is when people try to, you know, basically blockade the process, we naturally are designed to do this. Don't, don't interfere with it and get in the way. Like that's a paraphrase version of the quote. But I always resonated with that, well, the human animal is a learning animal. We're good at it. And that's kind of the premise of the whole. And John Holt was a very well known educator, he wrote a number of books around that topic. And so Nelson used a number of his quotes in his seminars.
And you know, always surround yourself with people who are pushing you to move forward and people who are, you know, pushing you to never settle. Never settle. Because potential.
Whatever it is that you're thinking, the, the actual potential is far bigger.
Far, far bigger. And I shared a story with.
A group in our Monday night mentoring deal. And I was telling the story this fellow wanted to do. He wanted to write a book and sort of document.
The life of before, during and after of Navy seal. So this guy wanted to do this book and the Navy SEAL said, yeah, well, I want to obviously come and.
Meet you and talk to you.
And so the SEAL shows up at this guy's house and this guy's in his garage and the SEAL goes, oh, I can see you got some fitness equipment, you got some gym equipment in here. Cool. Do 100 pull ups. And the guy goes, you want me to do what? He says, I want you to do 100 pull ups. We're not doing anything related to this book until you can do 100 pull ups. And so the guy gets, you know, knocks out maybe a handful and he's.
Just like ready to die.
And the SEAL says, we're not doing anything as it relates to the book until you get to 100 pull ups. So I'm talking several hours later. Hours later, the guy finishes his hundredth pull up. Now you're ready to start talking to me about this book idea that you have. Because.
Your mind.
Is going to quit on you long, long before your body will.
Because the mind goes, you're done. And the muscles are like, we don't even know what that means, but we'll listen to you.
And so he got this guy through.
And the guy was thoroughly convinced that he couldn't do it. Well, your brain's buying that.
So be careful what you tell yourself.
If he shifted his thinking and said, I'm going to stay here until I get to the Hundredth, pull up. I don't care if I'm here for three days, I'm going to get it done. He's feeding his brain with very clear instructions. We're not going anywhere until we're done.
So just imagine what that can do, that way of thinking, how that can impact you in your life in any area. And believe me, it works. It works really well. Isn't that good?
Yeah, it's great. I think something that comes up for me, Jay, is that there's also that openness, mindset, and mentality. It has a way of just bringing things into your life that you didn't expect, because if you're not open to it, you just won't see them. They pass you by. You know, it's like people have probably seen those little video clips where they speed up like a time lapse at late at night, and it's like an overview of a downtown busy street. And it's just like this blur of lights, you know, passing by. Well, that's like opportunities and in different areas of your life, showing up all the time. And a lot of times we just don't see it. It's just a blur of lights that are going by, you know, but something, you know, interesting that I wouldn't have necessarily known about. And other than one of, you know, one of our clients and our listeners, he reached out and he said, hey, why aren't your. Why isn't your podcast on. On the Fountain app yet? Like, I don't. Because I don't know what the Fountain app is. I've never heard of that. Like, okay, great. So I went and took a minute and explored. I'm like, oh, great. This is a. An app that you. Is a podcast player, kind of like a Spotify or whatever, but it's operated on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Well, that sounds really cool. So I'm curious about that. So, you know, follow through an hour later, and boom, the podcast is now available on the Fountain app. And it's. It's, you know, this is like a way where someone saw an opportunity in a podcast space. Plus this, you know, this other method of this, the Lightning Network with Bitcoin. And it's like, why isn't these two things being married together? And they went and put the energy and the effort to go make that happen. And now here we are, you know, finding out later again through our network of our client community. And it's like, what? You know, same thing you talked about, the Lifestyle Investor Network. That's another situation where, because of our, our community of people. We're, we're also learning about things that we don't know about. We, and we love to learn. So we're getting exposure to all kinds of things that by the virtue of open communication and being receptive to that. I think that there's just such a. You have no earthly idea what's going to show up in your life unless you're ready to show up yourself.
Absolutely. And you've got speaks brilliantly to what Dan Sullivan said. Your eyes only see and your ears only hear what your brain is looking for. So make sure you're looking for those things and your eyes will see it, your ears will hear it, and opportunity will track you down.
