John Assaraf (motivational speaker, New York Times bestselling author) contrasts being interested versus being committed as the key difference between wanting goals and actually achieving them. He illustrates this with a mentor’s advice from his early 20s (write goals, state necessary beliefs, take daily actions) and a later anecdote about his son Noah choosing and committing to play lacrosse at the University of Maryland; commitment led to behavioral changes and results. The practical takeaway: switch from interest to commitment, set a date, and acquire the knowledge/skills and daily disciplines needed to reach goals.
Chapters
This John Assarat, New York Times bestseller of having it all and the Answer now, one of the things that I hear about all the time from people around the world is how frustrated they are that they haven't achieved their goals. And so some people are dealing with whether it's fears, some people are dealing with doubts, some people deal with self confidence issues or certainty issues. And one of the things that I want to share with you is a story, actually two stories that tie into each other that I think you'll find really interesting. When I was in my early 20s, one of my mentors looked at me and he said to me, says, you keep telling me that you want to become a millionaire. You tell me you want to have a nice lifestyle, you want to give to charity, and you want to be healthy, and you want all of these things. And he said to me, but my question that I have for you is this. He says, are you interested in making those dreams and goals a reality or are you committed? He says, because everybody has goals and dreams. Everybody has things that they want to achieve that are greater, bigger, or more rewarding than what they're achieving or doing right now. And when I asked him, what's the difference between interest and commitment, he said to me, when you're interested, you'll come up with excuses. When you're interested, you'll come up with all the stories and reasons and the doubts and the fears and all of the precedence that you have in your life, the facts from the past to basically stop you from growing and doing what it takes to get to your next level of success. And as I thought about it, he was right. I had limited my own success based on thinking that because I didn't go to college, I wasn't smart enough because I didn't go to college, I didn't know what to do because I didn't go to college. Nobody really believed me or have trust in me. So I was dealing with a lot of inner stories and games because I was interested in achieving those goals. And he also said to me, he says, if you're committed to achieving those goals, you'll do whatever it takes to let go of the traumas, the stories, the excuses, the reasons, and you'll start to put yourself on a path to gain more knowledge, gain more skills, and you'll start to take actions a little bit every day towards what it is you want to achieve. So he had me write out my goals, and then he had me ask myself this question. What do you need to believe about yourself in order to achieve Those goals. And so I wrote down, well, what I need to believe about myself is that I'm worthy of achieving them. I would need to believe that I'm capable of achieving them. I would need to believe that I'm smart enough, and I would need to believe that it's possible. And so the first part was to help me believe what I would need to believe. The second part, he said, well, what do you think would be three things that you could be doing every day to move towards those goals? I said, well, I could prospect more. I was in sales at the time. I said, I can upgrade my skills on my job or what I was doing, which was a real estate agent at the time. He said, I can go and really take action every day and. And overcome my fears. And what I can share with you is just by following those few little steps of having the right beliefs and looking at them every day and emotionalizing them and feeling them. And even when I felt like I really wasn't those beliefs, I didn't really have those beliefs. I did it anyway. I started to take action every day and I started to see an increase in my income and my health and my relationships and everything else started to fall into place. That's because I was willing to pay the price, price of discipline instead of being regretful. Now, I share that with you because just recently, my son Noah, who's 16 and a half years old, is a wonderful, loving, beautiful young man, had the opportunity to play lacrosse at a few different universities in about two years that were recruiting him. And as he was making his choices for which university he was going to play for, he was really looking at the bottom of the barrel as far as which universities wanted him, as opposed to one of the top five schools that was trying to recruit him. And when it came time to making a decision, you know, he was really leaning towards the bottom of the barrel. And I asked him, why would you settle for less than what you're being offered? When he was really honest with himself and with me, said, well, I'm afraid that they're setting too high of a benchmark for me. He says, I'm going to have A's and B's in every class. I'm going to do well on the field, I'm going to do well in school. And he says, I'm a little bit afraid. I said, well, why don't you put yourself in the place of in five years or 10 years, which university do you wish you would have said yes to? And he said, well, I would take the number one university, which is one of the top five schools in the country for lacrosse. I said, well, why don't you make the commitment to doing that, and then let's work on overcoming the fears. Let's work on overcoming anything that's holding you back from doing that. And he thought about it for several weeks. He finally came back and he says, dad, I'm going to choose University of Maryland, which is what he chose. And what I can share with you is he went from being interested in doing well to being committed. And the minute that he made that commitment, he started waking up in the morning, driving himself to school on time, and he started doing his homework every single day, which we were having a challenge with him doing. Before he started handing in his homework, which he wasn't doing. Before he started exercising, he started working out. He started to see the results of his decision to make a commitment to a university two years from now. Now, why am I sharing this story with you? Because what I want you to understand is that if you're not achieving your goals and your dreams, it's probably because you have an interest in achieving them. Switch that interest and make it a commitment. Set a date of when you will achieve it by, and then find the knowledge, the skills, the tools, the resources to be able to overcome any emotional barriers, physical barriers, strategical barriers, so you could put yourself on the path to goal achievement instead of having these goals and dreams in your head and in your heart that you really want to achieve. Huge difference between interest and commitment. When you become committed, you'll start taking actions. When you start taking actions, you start seeing results. When you see one good discipline, it affects all other good disciplines. I hope that's helped you, and I hope that we can help you even more in the future with some of these programs.
