Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Your Best Year Ever, with Michael Hyatt (Purpose, Business, Management, Vision)

Transcript

REMASTERED: Your Best Year Ever, with Michael Hyatt (Purpose, Business, Management, Vision) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Host: We have an incredibly insightful and influential and
• 0:04
  well known guest. His name is Michael Hyatt, if you're not
• 0:07
  familiar with Michael, he's the former CEO of Thomas Nelson, New
• 0:10
  York Times best selling author, Michael, you know how much I
• 0:13
  admire you and appreciate you. Thank you for being here.
• 0:16
  Michael Hyatt: Great to be on again.
• 0:17
  Host: So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is you
• 0:20
  mentioned a research driven system for achieving your goals.
• 0:26
  Michael Hyatt: Sure, well, first of all, there's an entire
• 0:28
  discipline, scholarly discipline of goal achievement research. So
• 0:32
  there's all kinds of scholars icons, all kinds of studies out
• 0:35
  there, you know, we don't have to guess at it anymore. You
• 0:38
  know, sometimes people wonder, well, what really works, and you
• 0:42
  hear this anecdote, and that anecdotes from this speaker and
• 0:45
  that speaker, but there's really a scientific basis now for it.
• 0:49
  In addition to that, we've had 32,000 people in 110 countries
• 0:52
  go through my best year ever course over the last five years.
• 0:55
  So we've collected data from those people, we know what
• 0:58
  works, what kind of works, what doesn't work at all. And we've
• 1:02
  been able to separate sort of the myth from the reality.
• 1:05
  Host: You talk about limiting beliefs. So can you tell us what
• 1:08
  those are, and you know, if you can talk about the three
• 1:10
  different types?
• 1:12
  Michael Hyatt: Yeah, well, so let me start with this story
• 1:13
  that I actually tell in the book about my dog, Nelson. And so I
• 1:17
  had his dog when I was the CEO, Thomas Nelson, I thought it was
• 1:19
  kind of cute to name him after the company. But he would bolt
• 1:23
  out the front door, and we wouldn't be able to catch him,
• 1:25
  like, for 20 minutes, we didn't have a fenced in yard at the
• 1:28
  time and couldn't have one. So we then put in an electric, or
• 1:31
  one of those electronic, invisible fences. And that was
• 1:34
  amazing, because he got so trained that when he would
• 1:37
  approach that invisible fence, he gets this little vibration in
• 1:40
  his collar, and he would shrink back from crossing the boundary,
• 1:43
  he got so good at this. So train, that we removed the
• 1:47
  collar, never put it on again. And he never would cross the
• 1:50
  boundary, even if we held treats on the other side of the
• 1:53
  boundary. Why? Because the fence had moved from the external
• 1:57
  world, to the internal world of Nelson's brain. And that's how
• 2:01
  limiting beliefs function. For most of us, we have some kind of
• 2:04
  experience some kind of setback, some kind of challenge. And we
• 2:08
  develop a limiting belief around it, which is like blinders or
• 2:11
  colored glasses that influence how we see everything. Some of
• 2:15
  these are global beliefs, like we think, you know, well, the
• 2:18
  economy is messed up. So there's no possible way that we can
• 2:21
  succeed, or, you know, whoever's president at the time, because
• 2:24
  of the President, we can't succeed, you know, that's like
• 2:27
  this, this global belief, or all men are, you know, pigs, or
• 2:31
  whatever it is, we develop these global beliefs. And there's
• 2:34
  beliefs about other people where we start thinking about, you
• 2:37
  know, well, she wouldn't want to spend time with me to present me
• 2:41
  that interesting, or I'll never get the time of day from that
• 2:45
  person. But the most damaging ones of all, are the beliefs
• 2:49
  about ourself, I'm too old, or I'm too young, or I don't have
• 2:53
  enough education, or I've got too much education, or I don't
• 2:56
  have enough experience, or I've got too much experience. And
• 2:58
  I've heard it on both sides of the equation. But it really is a
• 3:02
  reality that for the most part exists inside our head. And
• 3:05
  that's the only place that exists.
• 3:08
  Host: One other thing on this resources are never the main
• 3:13
  challenge in achieving your dreams.
• 3:15
  Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I have this fundamental conviction that
• 3:18
  resources, always follow clarity or vision. So the resources,
• 3:23
  don't show up, show up until we get clear on what it is that we
• 3:26
  want. And so our job is to get clear on what we want. And then
• 3:31
  the resources show up. Now, when we get this backwards, it's very
• 3:33
  dangerous. Because we might start thinking about the future.
• 3:36
  And we think, Well, I don't really have the money to achieve
• 3:39
  this. So I'm not going to dream about it, I'm not going to think
• 3:42
  about it, or I don't have a network of contacts, where I
• 3:44
  don't have the time, it's very important to get clear first, on
• 3:49
  what you want, and then trust that the resources will show up.
• 3:53
  And they do. But they always come to people who aren't clear
• 3:56
  on what they want. And sometimes the clarity of that will attract
• 4:00
  the resources, you know, and we're clear about what it is
• 4:03
  that we want. I mean, how could anybody aligned with us or lend
• 4:06
  us their resources, or use their resources to help us if we're
• 4:11
  not clear what we want? So there's an attraction factor
• 4:14
  that happens when we get clear. It's a way of enrolling other
• 4:17
  people in the vision to where they can bring their resources
• 4:20
  to the table and help us
• 4:21
  Host: So I want to talk about risk. Why are you saying that
• 4:25
  risk is a necessary part of this journey?
• 4:27
  Michael Hyatt: Well, you know, in in corporations, especially,
• 4:30
  but I've really noticed that some on salespeople, a lot of
• 4:32
  times people will quote sandbag their numbers, you know, they'll
• 4:35
  they'll aim for a goal that's in their comfort zone, because
• 4:38
  maybe in the past, they've been upgraded or fired or penalized
• 4:43
  in some way, where they missed a goal. And they didn't like to
• 4:46
  feel into that. They didn't like the results of that. So they
• 4:49
  dial it down to something that safe. All the goal research says
• 4:54
  that that is a prescription for not hitting your goals. Why?
• 4:58
  Because of the goals in your country. for its own, it's not
• 5:01
  going to ignite your imagination, it's not going to
• 5:03
  demand innovation, it's not going to focus your execution.
• 5:07
  Instead, it has to be dialed up into the discomfort zone, the
• 5:12
  goal has got to be risky, not in the comfort zone. But in the
• 5:16
  discomfort zone. Now the major feature of the discomfort zone
• 5:21
  and how you know, you're there is the ear uncomfortable, you
• 5:24
  feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt, you know, you feel like
• 5:28
  there's some risk that if you fail, you're afraid of that. Or
• 5:32
  maybe you're uncertain of the path, you've never done this
• 5:35
  before, you're not quite clear how you're going to get from
• 5:38
  point A to point B. And maybe you've got some doubt even about
• 5:42
  your ability to pull it off, do you have what it takes to
• 5:45
  achieve this goal? If you feel that way, that's awesome. Those
• 5:50
  are positive indicators, your goal that your goal is set in
• 5:54
  the discomfort zone. Now, here's the distinction, though it's
• 5:57
  important. You don't want to be in the delusional zone, you
• 6:00
  know, where you dialed in so far up there, that you don't have a
• 6:04
  chance of hitting it. And you're deluding yourself, you're
• 6:07
  fooling yourself, it's not going to happen. So the trick is
• 6:10
  almost like the three bears, you got to get it just right. I was
• 6:15
  talking to a friend of mine, and this guy had never made more
• 6:18
  than $75,000 in his life. And so he got all excited about goal
• 6:21
  setting. And he'd heard me talk about He's actually my fitness
• 6:23
  trainer. And he said, This year, I'm gonna make a million
• 6:26
  dollars. And I said, Well, wait a second, you told me before
• 6:29
  that you've never made over $75,000 You're gonna make a
• 6:31
  million dollars this year, and talk about talking smack. That's
• 6:34
  exactly what he was doing. He didn't have a clue. He was
• 6:37
  completely delusional. Well, as you can imagine, he got to the
• 6:41
  end of the year, he didn't get anywhere close to it didn't make
• 6:43
  any more money that he made the previous year. And you know what
• 6:45
  he said, and goal setting thing doesn't work, goal setting
• 6:48
  works, goals in the delusional zone don't work. And that's
• 6:51
  exactly what he had done.
• 6:52
  Host: Yeah, well, so let's talk about the smarter framework. So
• 6:55
  there's, you know, the seven sort of atrophy attributes of
• 6:57
  effective goals. So can you walk us through the seven just kind
• 7:00
  of high level?
• 7:01
  Michael Hyatt: Yep, I'll give you the ones that everybody
• 7:03
  knows that I'll tell you how mine are different. So the S
• 7:07
  stands for specific goals. Gotta be specific, not vague. It's got
• 7:10
  to be measurable, you know, if you can put a number on it, all
• 7:14
  the better because then you know, when you crossed the
• 7:16
  finish line, but it needs to be actionable. So I always
• 7:20
  recommend that people start with an action verb, not a to be
• 7:23
  verb, but a good strong action verb, like, you know, run, walk,
• 7:29
  lose ERD, increase, decrease something that's an action verb.
• 7:33
  The R stands for risky, which we already covered. The T stands
• 7:37
  for time keyed in my system, because I make a distinction
• 7:41
  between habit goals and achievement goals are a little
• 7:43
  bit different. And the way that the time component works is a
• 7:47
  little bit different on each one of those, we can come back to
• 7:49
  that if you want to. But here's where it gets interesting. The E
• 7:52
  in smarter stands for exciting. If the goal is not exciting to
• 7:57
  you, you're not going to stick it out and cross the finish
• 8:01
  line, you're gonna get to the messy middle, you're gonna throw
• 8:03
  up your hands, and you're gonna say, You know what, this golden
• 8:06
  mean that much to me, I just give up on it. So it's got to be
• 8:10
  exciting to you. Now, this is an important distinction. Every
• 8:13
  goal is a project. But not every project is a goal. And one of
• 8:18
  the key distinctives of whether or not it's a goal is is it
• 8:22
  exciting? So I had a lady in one of my groups this last year, who
• 8:27
  said, I'm having a hard time around one of my goals getting
• 8:30
  motivated. And I said, Okay, so what's the goal? She said, I've
• 8:33
  got to reconcile my accounting. I'm several months, you know,
• 8:36
  behind on that, I got to reconcile it. And I said, Okay,
• 8:40
  are you excited about that? She said, Heck, no, I'm not excited
• 8:44
  about that at all. And I said, Okay, that's a project. It's not
• 8:48
  a goal. Every goal is a project, but not every projects a goal
• 8:52
  that set her free, then the R stands for the goal has got to
• 8:57
  be relevant. It's got to be relevant to every other goal.
• 9:00
  You know, you can't have conflicting goals. It's got to
• 9:03
  be relevant to your season in life aligned with your season in
• 9:06
  life. What I can do as somebody who's an empty nester with a lot
• 9:10
  of free time is very different than somebody that was small
• 9:14
  kids. So it's a completely different season. And our goals
• 9:17
  need to be informed by that season. So that's the smarter
• 9:20
  framework.
• 9:21
  Host: Yeah. Do you think they're all equally important? Or what
• 9:24
  do you think?
• 9:24
  Michael Hyatt: I think they're all equally important. In fact,
• 9:27
  that chapter is called goals that check seven boxes. So I use
• 9:30
  that kind of as the criteria when I'm evaluated a goal is it
• 9:34
  set up so that I can win? Now, here's an important component of
• 9:38
  all this, your goals got to be written. Now, that sounds
• 9:41
  obvious. But I've spoken all over the country to a lot of
• 9:45
  CEOs, senior corporate leaders, salespeople, I always ask the
• 9:48
  question, how many of you believe in the power of written
• 9:52
  goals? I mean, every hand and the audience goes up. And then I
• 9:55
  say, Okay, I want you to be on it. So how many of you have
• 9:59
  written goals for this year, leave your hands up, everybody
• 10:02
  else put your hands down. On average, 5% of the people are
• 10:06
  left standing. They've got their hands up still. Everybody's in
• 10:09
  it, you people practice it. But this is a key bit of research.
• 10:13
  Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University in California did a
• 10:17
  study, pretty large study. And one of the things she found is
• 10:20
  that people who write their goals down as opposed to just,
• 10:24
  you know, expressing them orally or in some other way, people
• 10:28
  that write them down, have a 42% chance, better chance of
• 10:31
  achieving the goal merely by writing the gold down, this
• 10:34
  really comes down to the fourth part of my five, five part
• 10:38
  framework in the book, where I talk about, you know, believe in
• 10:41
  the possibilities number one, complete the past as number two,
• 10:45
  design your future as number three. And number four is find
• 10:49
  your why. Now, here's the thing, inevitably, in the pursuit of
• 10:52
  any important goal, we're going to get the messy middle, you
• 10:56
  know, this is where like, when you're running a half marathon,
• 11:00
  like I've done numerous times, you get to that point at about
• 11:03
  mile marker 11, where you're too invested to stop, but you just
• 11:07
  don't know if you've got the energy to finish. And it's
• 11:10
  really easy to get stuck at that point and want to quit. Unless,
• 11:14
  before you begin, you've identified your why people lose
• 11:17
  their way when they forget their why. And so one of the parts of
• 11:21
  my framework is to really drill down deep at the very beginning
• 11:25
  of the process, once you've identified the goal, to ask
• 11:28
  yourself the question, why, why is that important? Why is it
• 11:32
  important that I achieved that and keep peeling the skins of
• 11:35
  the onion back until you get about three levels deep. And I
• 11:39
  say come up with three key motivations that will keep you
• 11:42
  going when you want to quit, because the goal all of a sudden
• 11:46
  is not going to be that important anymore. Unless you
• 11:49
  can remember the why. tell you story. Several years ago, when I
• 11:53
  wrote my book platform get noticed in a noisy world, I was
• 11:56
  writing it at a very busy season of my life, I was out speaking,
• 12:00
  I was trying to establish this new career as an entrepreneur.
• 12:04
  And I just got busy, I had a commitment to the publisher that
• 12:08
  I would have the manuscript in by the end of November. Well, it
• 12:11
  came up to about September, and I realized that I was so busy,
• 12:15
  my schedule was so jam, there was no way I was going to do
• 12:18
  that. I had a first draft, that, frankly, wasn't very good. I
• 12:22
  wasn't very proud of it. And I looked at it. And I got
• 12:25
  discouraged. Even though that was my number one goal for the
• 12:29
  year was to get that book written and turned into the
• 12:32
  publisher. So I thought, well, you know, maybe this isn't the
• 12:36
  year, maybe I'll just quit, they'll give the money back to
• 12:39
  the publisher, maybe I'll cue it up for another year. And then I
• 12:43
  remembered, I remembered that I had written down my key
• 12:46
  motivation. So I pulled out my goals looked at my key
• 12:49
  motivations. And I found things like this, I want to write the
• 12:53
  book, because I'm trying to establish my authority in this
• 12:57
  space, and nothing like a book will establish your authority. I
• 13:00
  said, I want to help 10s of 1000s of authors who have been
• 13:04
  turned down by publishers who said, great concept, but you
• 13:07
  don't have a platform, I wouldn't be able to help people
• 13:11
  build a platform and learn what I've learned about social media.
• 13:14
  So it was that why that got me to say, You know what, I
• 13:18
  couldn't find time to finish this, I'm going to finish it,
• 13:21
  I've got to finish it. It's a must. It was that motivation.
• 13:25
  And I did I was about a month late turning it in. But the book
• 13:28
  got turned in and went on to be a New York Times best seller.
• 13:32
  And so it all came back to identify in my why early on at
• 13:35
  the beginning of the process.
• 13:37
  Host: You actually talk you kind of talk a little bit about how
• 13:40
  visibility is essential. Can you talk about that? And you know,
• 13:44
  how are they related or not related?
• 13:46
  Michael Hyatt: Well, this is a part of quick proofing your
• 13:48
  goals as well. You've got to keep the goals visible. And so
• 13:51
  often I see people frame up a set of goals, you know, they get
• 13:55
  eager at the first of the year or whatever, they come up with a
• 13:58
  list of goals, and then they file them away and don't look at
• 14:01
  them again. And we used to do this on a corporate scale, even
• 14:05
  autonomous know. So when I was there, do an off site planning
• 14:08
  retreat, come up with a brilliant plan come back. And it
• 14:11
  was like it was very difficult to get back to that and to
• 14:14
  review it on some kind of regular basis. So I encourage
• 14:17
  people in the book to follow a process where they're reviewing
• 14:20
  sort of the top line goals seven to 10 goals for the year,
• 14:23
  reviewing those every day. Just a quick scan, ask yourself, Is
• 14:26
  there anything I could do today to move forward on one of these
• 14:30
  goals? And then once a week and a weekly review, process review
• 14:33
  not only the goals, but your key motivation so you can connect
• 14:36
  emotionally and intellectually with why that goal is important.
• 14:40
  And then on a quarterly basis, ask yourself the question, Am I
• 14:43
  still committed to this goal? Does it need to be revised? Does
• 14:46
  it need to be removed? Does it need to be replaced by something
• 14:50
  else? But you've got to keep your goals visible. You've got
• 14:53
  to keep reviewing and if you don't do that, I can virtually
• 14:56
  guarantee you that you're not going to achieve your goals.
• 14:59
  Host: When you talk about, you know, finding, finding your why
• 15:03
  I think a lot of people struggle with that. And how do you know
• 15:06
  when you have it? Is it is it? Is it basically that you have an
• 15:10
  emotional, you know, response to it?
• 15:13
  Michael Hyatt: No, I don't think it's just emotional. I think it
• 15:15
  could be intellectual, it could be intellectually compelling to
• 15:18
  you, you know, maybe just something that you're trying to
• 15:20
  solve some problem that doesn't really have an emotional
• 15:23
  component. But if you could pull that off, it would really be
• 15:26
  interesting to you. And allegedly, it could be moving
• 15:28
  emotionally. You know, either one of those, but I think you've
• 15:31
  just got to ask yourself the question, why is this important.
• 15:34
  And if you can't come up with a good reason of why it's
• 15:36
  important, because honestly, it's going to take a lot of
• 15:39
  effort to accomplish the kind of goals that are in your
• 15:41
  discomfort zone. And if you can't come up with a compelling
• 15:44
  Why, you're probably not gonna go the distance that actually
• 15:47
  achieved the goal. So I just think asking yourself, not let
• 15:50
  yourself off the hook. But just ask yourself the question, why
• 15:52
  is that important? And just brainstorm it. Keep writing,
• 15:55
  keep writing, why is this important? They give every
• 15:57
  reason you can then go back and rank them. And I throw out all
• 16:00
  of them. But the top three, I feel like if I can focus on
• 16:03
  those top three, that's efficient.
• 16:04
  Host: So this is the last thing and you mentioned, the journey
• 16:08
  is better with friends?
• 16:10
  Michael Hyatt: Yea, well, let me just quote this great verse from
• 16:12
  Solomon. In the book of Ecclesiastes, he says, Two are
• 16:15
  better than one, because they have a good return for their
• 16:19
  labor, for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his
• 16:22
  fellow, but woe to the one who falls when he is alone, for He
• 16:25
  will not have another to lift him up. So you know, this is
• 16:29
  ancient wisdom, but it's also been verified by science. Now,
• 16:32
  I've heard for a long time, in fact, I used to practice this.
• 16:35
  go public with your goals. And then I saw that very famous TED
• 16:39
  Talk by Derek sybers. Maybe you've seen it to where he says,
• 16:42
  no, no, no, no. The problem with going public with it and the
• 16:46
  research shows is that you get the same psychological bump as
• 16:49
  if you'd have as if you'd accomplished it. So you don't
• 16:52
  want to do that people that go public with their goals, all of
• 16:56
  a sudden, think, in their subconscious, that I've
• 16:58
  accomplished the goal. And there's a lot of distance that
• 17:02
  has to be covered between announcing it and actually
• 17:05
  achieving it. But that doesn't mean you have to keep your goal
• 17:08
  to yourself. So Dr. Gail Matthews, whom I quoted earlier,
• 17:11
  another goal researcher, one of the things she discovered was
• 17:15
  that people who have accountability with other people
• 17:18
  raise their chances of achieving their goal by about 50%. And
• 17:21
  what you've got to do is share selectively share selectively
• 17:24
  with people who will give you inspiration, feedback, and hold
• 17:28
  you accountable, not beating you up or shaming you, but holding
• 17:31
  you accountable to what they know and you know, you want to
• 17:35
  achieve. So I always suggest you get a small group of friends or
• 17:38
  a group of like minded people who are all in this together,
• 17:42
  who will encourage one another, be positive in one another's
• 17:45
  lives, and reinforce one another's best thinking and best
• 17:48
  achievement. What you don't want to do is share your goals with
• 17:52
  people that are negative people that will say, Oh, yeah, I
• 17:55
  remember the last time you tried that, and it didn't go anywhere.
• 17:59
  You know that that's not helpful. And you don't want
• 18:02
  those kind of you don't want to share your goals with those
• 18:05
  kinds of people.
• 18:06
  Host: Yeah, thanks for making some time for us.
• 18:08
  Michael Hyatt: Appreciate you having me on.