4 Mental Models for Setting Goals (My Personal Process)

Hello all of you beautiful ladies. Adam lodolce here. And I woke up this morning thinking I want to do something different for the podcast feed because it's that time of year, it's 2024, everyone starts thinking about their goals, going to New Year's, and statistically speaking, most people set really big goals and then anywhere from two weeks to three weeks in, those goals do not happen. I get it. I have been there before. But over the past decade or so, I've really started to develop a bit of a framework that has been extremely helpful for me and I just thought I would share it with all of you. And I'm releasing this before January 1st because I think that it's healthy to spend this week before New Year's reflecting and thinking about what it is that we really want to do for the upcoming year and 10 years and beyond. And so what I thought I would do is just kind of walk you through my process of how it is that I think about goals. And hopefully this gives you some value going into the new year. And so as far as kind of taking a step back, most of you probably don't know this, but most. My dad was actually kind of a motivational speaker as I was growing up. He went through a, I would say two to three year phase of going around to companies and speaking on goal setting. And throughout that time he would also come to my school and do these kind of like Tony Robbins style board breaking sessions with all of our classmates. And of course, as a little kid, I always thought that that was super embarrassing. Right? That's not something that a little kid just wants is his dad to come in and, and teach everyone about goal setting. It was, it was very embarrassing. But I gotta say, definitely instilled this value in me of creating a vision for myself and thinking that through, it it took me about a decade to let it sink in. But thinking back on all this in this framework, it certainly was very helpful to have that instilled in me at an early age. But the problem is with traditional goal setting is that setting just the mere act of writing a goal such as I want to lose 10 pounds or I want to find love this year, it really isn't enough. And enough studies and enough information out there shows that this just doesn't typically happen for the vast majority of people and myself included. So like I said, I've created these mental models and just ways to think about goals to actually set you up for success. So I'm gonna walk you through these four frameworks and these Mental models that are really kind of, I've changed and I've. I've. I've just slowly but surely matured the process that I learned from my dad growing up. And it's been extremely helpful for me. So let me get jump into them. So the first thing I do before I even think about what specific goal I want to set, rather than asking myself, what do I want to do this upcoming year, I ask myself, who do I want to become? And when we tie our goals and our desires to our identity, then suddenly it allows us to create some emotion with that goal. And because we get so easily caught up in these very specific, smart goals, as they call them, and forget why it is that we are actually doing it, and when we can actually envision the type of person we want to become, suddenly these goals actually become ingrained into our overall being. So as a starting point this year, when you start thinking about your goals, don't ask yourself, what do I want to do? Start with instead, who do I want to become? That's the first mental model. Second thing that I think a lot about is understanding the difference between an outcome goal versus a behavioral goal. And this is something we talk a lot about with our clients as they're getting out there and attracting love. So let me explain. An outcome goal is a goal such as, I want to find love. And sometimes we have clients who join and say, I want to find love in six months. And that's all well and good, but that is what I would consider an outcome. And it's great to write that down and to think about that and have that as a North Star or an outcome goal. Just for a lot of you who might be thinking about health and fitness would be, I want to lose 10 pounds. And some people say, I want to lose 10 pounds in a month. But an outcome goal doesn't really do anything for you. It doesn't actually give you a. It doesn't actually achieve anything. It's just a goal of where you want to go. And a behavioral goal is much, much more helpful. And that's where we should be putting 90% of our energy into developing that goal. So a behavioral goal when it comes to finding love might be, I want to go on a date once a week for the next three months, or I want to meet five new guys a month and just set that every single month. Or it could be, I want to spend one hour a week online dating. All of these are behaviors. And the same goes with your fitness goals. Let's just say as an Example, something I've worked a lot on this past year, and it's taken me many years to really get focused on health and fitness. It's been extremely helpful. For me, a behavioral goal would be, I want to go to the gym five days a week or four days a week. It could be what could be. With healthy eating, you could have certainly behavioral goals such as, I want to remove for me a gluten from my diet, and I only allow one beer a week, one. One moment of that delicious IPA that I absolutely love. And for the rest of the week, I will not be doing that. Now, as a side note, with the gluten thing, I know a lot of people don't have gluten sensitivity. I'm highly sensitive to gluten. So, you know, that doesn't apply to everyone. And I don't believe that gluten is necessarily a huge problem for. For most people, but for me, it is a huge problem. Um, so you get the point. So when we're thinking about our goals rather than always thinking about the outcome goal like you, you gotta start with some type of outcome you want, but once you have that outcome you desire, start thinking about the behavior. And the behavior has got to be something that can be not only achievable for the next two weeks or the next month, but it really should be achievable for the rest of your life. Like most people set these behaviors that are so impossible to achieve that they fail within two to three weeks. It's gotta be something that really you can work into your life in a very easy way. Which actually leads me to the second, I would say, most important point of all of this. And this isn't something I really hear most many people or anyone talk about, but it's been extremely important for me, which is, and this is the second, the third mental model, excuse me, which is it is absolutely critical to find short term pleasure in your behavioral goals. All right, let me explain. So every goal, everything you want to achieve in life typically requires some level of sacrifice, right? Whether it is not eating gluten, whether it's losing weight, you know, you name it. Making more money. If you're trying to focus on your professional goals, maybe that means time away from your family or, you know, working longer hours at work. You. You get the. The gist here. But as humans, we cannot do something for a prolonged period of time unless we can achieve some level of enjoyment from that behavior. You'll give up. If. If going to the gym is like putting a hot needle in your eye every time you walk into that gym and you just absolutely loathe it. It's just the worst thing in the world for you. You are going to give up on that goal in less than two weeks, guaranteed. It just doesn't happen. And, and I hear that. I get it. I've gone on every single diet you can imagine. I've tried, I've tried everything when it comes to fitness, professional goals, you name it. And the only way that you can actually stick with anything in life is that you have to find the short term pleasure in your behavioral goals. There has to be some type of just enjoyment in these things that you do. So let's just go back to the fitness goal with, with the gym. If you hate going to the gym, find something about going to the gym that you do enjoy that gives you some level of short term pleasure. For me personally, like I actually just changed gyms. It has a sauna. It's amazing. Like the sauna is my moment of enjoyment and it makes everything worth it. Every once in a while I'll get myself a delicious smoothie afterwards if maybe I don't have time for the sauna. But just something that rewards me for doing that behavior and actually makes me excited to go to the gym. If it is in your love life, let's say you absolutely hate the idea of going to a singles event or a mixer or anything like that. We need to find something about it that you enjoy. It doesn't mean you have to enjoy the entire thing. Maybe it is treating yourself to a really nice dinner afterwards by yourself or with company. Get yourself that favorite meal that you really enjoy because you're all done up and you're just feeling good about yourself and you're excited and treat yourself afterwards and you can make that a habit. Same thing with just going on dates in general. If you are not enjoying going on dates because you're like, oh, the thought of going on another coffee date at Starbucks just makes me want to give up on love altogether, go become a nun. Then. That means we need to find some type of short term pleasure in this behavior. We have clients all the time that will redirect guys for when they ask them on a first date. If the date sounds really lame and not fun, redirect them to something that sounds more exciting to you. Maybe it's a music venue you can go to and have some fun, listen some music. Maybe it's a, you know, you name it, some type of event, some type of thing you enjoy doing that will make it fun regardless of whether or not the date goes well, There has to be some type of short term pleasure, like immediate. It has to be pretty immediate in your behavioral goals, otherwise you will not stick with it. Just as a to really like push this point home. I always, for most of my life struggled with my weight. And it wasn't until I found CrossFit about 10 years ago that I was actually able to really stick with going to the gym very consistently, anywhere from three to five days a week. And for any of you who have ever tried CrossFit, and I'm not one of those like CrossFit junkies who's like trying to promote it or anything, I get it if you're not into it, but if you've ever tried it, it is a horribly painful workout. It is brutal. But for me, what I really enjoyed about it was just going there and having a new conversation with a new person and just being around people. Because I worked from home. I've worked from home for my most of my professional career and that was like my social time. It was just like the one thing I really enjoyed doing. And that's actually what drove me like whenever I would go to the to CrossFit. It was not because I'm like, oh, I have this big outcome goal, I'm trying to lose weight or X, Y and Z. It was like, no, I want to just go hang out with some people. And so think about any of your outcome goals that you really want to achieve this upcoming year and tie some short term pleasure from those behaviors. Find the pleasure. If you don't, then it will not happen. Okay, I've really kind of laid that point home. The final bit that once again, I don't hear anyone really talking about this. That has been once again extremely important for me personally. May or may not be important for you is this idea of addition through subtraction. Most people in life, when it comes to setting goals, think about what it is that they need to do. Go to the gym, eat better, go on more dates, so on so forth. But in most cases, it's not about what it is that you need to do. It's more so about what it is that you need not to do. Most people are successful not because they're doing stuff that you're not doing right? It's not because they're doing all this stuff. It's likely that they're more successful in whatever area of their life because they're not doing stuff that you're doing. For example, let's say in your love life because we are a love coaching company. A lot of people say, oh, I need to go on more dates, I need to go meet more guys. That's all well and good. I hear that we promote that a lot. But what about those five guys you're talking to that are sucking your emotional energy dry? You know, you're still talking to your ex. You're still hooking up with that guy that has told you that he never wants to get married and wants to go move to Thailand for the next six months and it's gonna disappear at any moment. These are the types of things that people engage in that are holding them back. And so addition through subtraction is all about removing things from your life that are not helping you. Those who are really successful in their love life actually do a lot more subtraction than addition. They're comfortable with space in their life. Same thing with fitness. A lot of it is most, most health, I think, is about addition through subtraction. What do you need to actually stop doing in order to achieve your goals? What do you need to stop eating? What. What behaviors are you engaging in that are really holding you back rather than adding more things to your life? I think professionally this is an easy one. Like if you want to really achieve something in your life, people are like, oh, let's say you're in, I don't know, sales. And you're like, I want to make more commission this upcoming year. People are like, I need to make more dials, I need to do X, Y and Z. I need to send more emails, you name it. But they don't think about the fact that they spend five hours a day on social media in the middle of sales calls or after sales calls or whatever it is you name your profession. I guarantee there's a million things that we are doing right now that successful people don't do. And so if we can look at our goals through that lens of what it is it that I'm doing that I need to subtract from my life, then it actually kind of simplifies the process. Right? And so these are the things that have really helped me. I'll just go through them one last time. As you kind of reflect on your upcoming goals and set those goals for yourself, rather than ask yourself, what do I want to do? Ask yourself, who do I want to become? Secondly, really understand the difference between outcome goals versus behavioral goals. Focus 90% of your attention on the behaviors rather than the outcome. Mental model 3 is find short term pleasure in your behaviors. It's gotta be fun. It's gotta be enjoyable. You gotta have that immediate feedback loop. It doesn't mean the entire behavior has to be pleasant, but there has to be something in it that is enjoyable. And finally, remember, addition through subtraction. And so this will be the final podcast of the year. This is a little bit different style than what we typically do, but I just want to send my warmest wishes to all of our listeners and every, you know, for all of your support over the years and for those who are really ready to set that outcome goal of finding love this year. We would love to help you with your behaviors. If that is something that you want help with. You can always check us out. This is not even meant to be a shameless plug here, but you can always go to lovestrategies.com otherwise, really take that time right now to set those goals for yourself. And let's actually take those steps, take that action and make 2024 your year for ultimate thriving and success. Thank you all so much. All right, bye bye.