Does Goal Setting Actually Work for Millionaires? With Michael Hyatt

Author of the New York Times bestseller, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World – Michael Hyatt

I want you to have your best year yet. But HOW? Michael Hyatt comes back on the show to give us insider information on how he sets goals, and if they always work for him or not. Plus step by step how to create your goals this year and why your brain and your thoughts will determine your year! Don’t miss out on your best year ever!

Use this affiliate link to get a special price for Michael’s goal setting course, 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever!

?http://www.bestyearever.me/jaime

Check out MichaelHyatt.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Today on Eventual Millionaire I have Michael Hyatt back on the show and the only thing we're here to talk about is this New Year, 2014, and how you can make it the best year yet. Make sure that you stay tuned all the way to the end because there is an amazing free giveaway that Michael Hyatt wanted to give to you guys. You can find out exactly how to get his brand new course for free, so stay tuned. I hope you enjoy.

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today I have Michael Hyatt on the show again. I'm so excited. We're going to be talking about making 2014 your best year ever and Michael is the guy to listen to on this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Michael.

Michael: Thanks, Jaime. I'm delighted to be with you.

Jaime: So you're making the rounds, you're doing a ton of interviews right now, so I'm going to try to change it up a little bit.

Michael: Good!

Jaime: I definitely want to get your information on how we do this, but first I want to go back in time. Right now everybody looks at you and goes "Oh my gosh, of course you're successful, you're a best-selling author, you have 300,000 people on your blog - of course you can achieve your goals, you've I'm Jaime Tardy and today I have Michael Hyatt on the show again. I'm so excited. We're going to be talking about making 2014 your best year ever and Michael is the guy to listen to on this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Michael.

Michael: Thanks, Jaime. I'm delighted to be with you.

Jaime: So you're making the rounds, you're doing a ton of interviews right now, so I'm going to try to change it up a little bit.

Michael: Good!

Jaime: I definitely want to get your information on how we do this, but first I want to go back in time. Right now everybody looks at you and goes "Oh my gosh, of course you're successful, you're a best-selling author, you have 300,000 people on your blog - of course you can achieve your goals, you've already achieved a ton of them." so if we were to go way back in time, like think about the first time you ever set a goal, what was that goal, if you remember, or one of them, and what was it like?

Michael: I was in college and I set a goal to marry an amazing woman. So I started listing all these attributes that I wanted in the woman that I would eventually marry. Then I was sharing it with a friend of mine and he said "Buddy, let me tell you this. If you're going to marry that woman, you're going to have to become a better guy." So it was the first time ever that I was aware that I needed to set personal development goals - that I had to grow intellectually, physically, spiritually and all of this stuff. So that really started my goal setting journey, when I was trying to improve so that I could eventually marry that woman.

Jaime: How old were you when you were in college doing that?

Michael: I was 19.

Jaime: You were 19 and your main goal in life was to marry an amazing woman? What did that goal setting look like?

Michael: Really, I just wrote it as an aspiration. Honestly, looking back at it, I don't think it even met the criteria of a good goal, but it really articulated something that was important to me and, boy, I didn't realize how important it would be. I've been married 35 years now, I had five daughters, eight grandchildren and I'm still in love with that woman that I eventually married, but I knew it would be important and it's turned out to be hugely important.

Jaime: Tell me a little bit about how that goal came to fruition, because it's never this easy thing. It's not like you wrote the goal and the next day you found her, I'm assuming. Tell us what the process was like.

Michael: This is one of the fascinating things about goal setting, in my experience, and that is that there's something powerful about just articulating your intention. So that even if you don't create an action plan, even if you don't step towards it in any concrete way, just the act of writing it down sets a lot of things in motion. I started working on myself and doing some of these personaldevelopment things. I actually swore off dating because I didn't want to be distracted by random women, I want to wait until "the one" showed up. I remember we were at a function at a friend's house one night, it was actually a church function, and I saw her across the room  and I knew, in my heart, that that was the future Mrs. Hyatt.

Jaime: What?

Michael: Yeah, I mean literally. I said "That girl is so different." She really turned my head. It took her several months to be convinced but I knew immediately. I didn't walk up and say something stupid like "Oh yeah, you're supposed to marry me," but I did ask her out and it began a romance and that was kind of the first step. But it began with that intention and it began with writing it down - and I did write it down.

Jaime: How did you know, looking across the room, that she would be the one, considering that you didn't know her at all? I'm going off on a tangent but I just want to know.

Michael: It's one of those mystical things - if someone else told me that, I would say "Erm, there are drugs for that. You can get over that." But for me, at the time, it just made sense. I had goose bumps and just that sense that this girl was really different to all the other girls at my university. I don't know, there was just something about her that I liked. By the way, this is also a tangent, but we're totally opposite - on the StrengthsFinders, on the DiSC test, every single thing that you can test on, we're exactly the opposite - and opposites attract and we did attract. As it turned out, that presented some challenges for us early in our marriage, but initially it attracted us and once we got past the challenges it's been awesome because it's given us a greater set of capabilities in our marriage because we bring different skills and different strengths.

Jaime: That's amazing. That's a wonderful, amazing, almost storybook story, so let's talk about something that was more difficult than that! Maybe about a time that a goal failed, because that's a thing too - we don't achieve every single one of the goals that we write down.

Michael: We absolutely don't, and in fact I didn't achieve all the goals that I set out to accomplish in 2013, but I know I made a lot more progress than if I'd not written them down, so that was hugely helpful as well. But I think one of the biggest goals I had was when I started in business back in the '90s and the goal was to create this amazing business, and at the time I wanted a $5 million business that was throwing off about a 15% profit and we were able to achieve that. I had a business partner and we were able to achieve that in about five years. The problem was that it was a publishing business and it was so capital-intensive that we were consuming all of our available cash flow in accounts receivable and in royalty advancements to authors and in inventory, so even though it looked like we were making money on paper, we were broke and the business actually went bankrupt. So the goal, the dream that I had, everything that I had poured my heart, my life into for five years, came to a screeching halt when the business failed. So, yeah, not every goal does come to pass. But, and I really believe this about that experience, I wouldn't repeat it for anything but I wouldn't trade it for the world, because it was so valuable.

Jaime: What did you get from not achieving that goal?

Michael: I learned a pretty basic economic lesson on cash flow management and in investment = while you can look rich on paper you can be cash poor - and there were a thousand other lessons. The truth is, it was easy in that moment to blame everybody else - the distributor didn't do their job, the investors didn't pony up, and all this - but the buck stopped with me and one of the huge lessons I learned in that was to take responsibility for the outcome, because there was something about my leadership that led to that outcome and the sooner that I owned that, the sooner I could fix it; the sooner I could grow and get beyond it so that I didn't repeat it.

Jaime: I love that. We need to learn to accept our own responsibility and sometimes that's the hardest thing to do.

Michael: It is hard.

Jaime: That's a huge goal - $5 million in five years is huge. Who did you have to be in order to set that goal or was that a super huge, scary goal that you never thought you could achieve?

Michael: It honestly wasn't that scary. I set scary goals now and I've set some since then, but I think at the time I set that because it was naive. It was a bottom-up projection - we put together a business plan before we started the business and we did a bottom-up projection of all the books we intended to publish and what we thought we could do and what our expenses would be. We did a five year plan because we had to do that to attract investors and we thought "This is reasonable. We can do this."

Jaime: Were you already a success in business at that point, though? Because the people that are just starting out are going "Oh, and now I do a $5 million, five year goal," it sounds a little huge to them, and you're like "It was pretty naive," which is hard for some people to hear. So tell me where you were at that point - were you already very successful?

Michael: Context is everything because it's all what your experience has been and at that point I had been working as a marketing director in a larger publishing company and I was working ina division where the division was doing about $30 million a year and so,to me, it felt like a step backwards; it felt like a modest goal. I don't know if you're an entrepreneur, because I'm doing this now, starting from scratch, $5 million is a huge mountain to climb, but for us it seemed like we'd been doing $30 million in the corporate world and we thought, unencumbered by all of that corporate stuff, we had to be able to get to $5 million pretty quickly. So we were just naive.

Jaime: I love that; that's awesome. I thought it was naive in a lower sense but it ended up failing anyway. Tell me about another one of your goals that didn't work out.

Michael: Let's see. There's really been a lot of them. little ones, like even this last year I had a certain goal that I would finish, and by the way this is a question of whether I did achieve it or didn't achieve it, but I had to write a new book this year and it's called "The Life Plan Manifesto" and my wife, Gale, and I went up into the mountains for a month and my job was to write the manuscript. Now, we wanted to enjoy the scenery and do some of that, but I set a goal every day of a certain word count that I had to get to in order for us to go on a hike, which was very motivating to me. But I came up a week before the end of that sabbatical and the goal was to have the manuscript done by that date, but I wasn't done by that date - I was close, but I wasn't done. So it took me another week and I was able to finish it before we left from the sabbatical but I wasn't able to get the week of editing in that I had hoped for. So I missed the goal. But this brings up another important aspect of goal setting, and that is that when we set the goal and we set the deadline or we try to be specific or make it measurable, sometimes we just have to guess because we don't have a frame of reference or we don't really know what it's going to take until we get into it. But you know what? There's no penalty if we miss. If I hadn't had that goal, that manuscript would not be done, it wouldn't be being edited right now; it would still be an aspiration or a dream. But because I had a goal, it forced me to work harder towards attaining it, and even though I didn't hit it on the exact date that I wanted to, I still got it down.

Jaime: I love that. I mean it tweaks and it changes. I did the exact same thing when we went to pay off our debt - I wanted to have $70,000 paid off before I had my son and it took four more months - which, then, felt like forever, but now it's like "It was only four more months," that's ridiculous, I don't know why it was that big of a deal. But at the time you're like "Oh man, I didn't hit my goal!" and we're listening to you, going "It was a week off, Michael. It's not that big of a deal."

Michael: Yeah, but some people are so perfectionistic and they get kind of frozen as they're looking prospectively towards the completion of the goal and they'rethinking "Oh my gosh, what if I don't hit it?" I had set this goal, two years ago, for my book, "Platform", to hit the New York Times best-seller list, and I'm thinking to myself, as I'm writing down this goal, "Oh my gosh, what happens if I don't hit the goal?" Well, what does happen? Nobody's going to show up and write me aticket. I'm not going to get fined. They're not going to haul me off in handcuffs. If I don't hit the goal, I don't hit the goal, but I will be better and I will be smarter for having tried it - and I think that's what we have to get our heads around.

Jaime: Okay, we're going to bring me up - I want you to ask this very specifically. I have a book coming out next month and my goal, at the very beginning, was to try to hit the New York Times best-seller list, or at least work my way. Now I am so crazy busy, because I'm moving to Austin, Texas, I'm going on a cruise this month, I'm meeting you in Vegas this weekend, so being able to move forward and try to hit that goal seems a little overwhelming. My friend was like "You don't have to do that, you know?" and I'm like "I know!" but I put all of this unneeded pressure on myself. My publisher doesn't even care, by the way - they were like "We look at the long-term, so we don't even care." So I took off that goal because that was providing too much pressure to try to hit this huge, huge thing. Tell me what you think about that.

Michael: I think that, first of all, your goal setting has to be done in the context of your life and you have to consider the season that you're in. I'm in a very different season than you're in. do you have small children?

Jaime: Yes, I do.

Michael: How many?

Jaime: Two - 7 and 4.

Michael: That's demanding all by itself - and you're married and you've got a business and you've got all of this stuff going on. I think you have to exercise some common sense. You can't compare what is important for somebody else - for somebody else, it might be important to hit the New York Times list. For you, it might be important to get through this move, to keep your family intact, to make sure that you're giving the love and attention to them that they need, and that's okay. I think that actually takes greater courage and will result in a longer term goal that, probably intuitively, you're pursuing. Books come and go. Listen - this is going to be the first of many books you're going to write. I promise.

Jaime: I appreciate that. I chatted with someone who has a very large company and is a best-selling author and all of that fun stuff and he said "If I were you, I would cancel everything in January and only work on the book." And I was like "You don't have kids, do you?" Because me telling them I'm going to cancel their Disney cruise is probably not going to work out.

Michael: That's probably not going to work out very well. Do you know Chalene Johnson?

Jaime: No.

Michael: This very thing happened to her - she had a book come out and it came out when she had a crazy busy month. It still hit the New York Times list.

Jaime: Really?

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: Oh, good!

Michael: So I think, if I were you, I would ask the question "Is it possible, given my constraints, without killing myself or stressing my family, what could I do to move the ball down the field and get closer to the goal? And if it doesn't happen, I'm okay with that." But there might be some things that you could do to be really smart about it that would advance it even when you're off on the Disney cruise.

Jaime: Oh yeah, I'm working on that in the background. It's not like I totally put the goal aside, I still, in the back of my mind, have it there, because that's what, eventually, I'm shooting for, but I really like your advice, I think that's great. Thank you, I really appreciate that.

Michael: You're welcome.

Jaime: So let's go over your step by step system for setting goals - so, right now, today is New Year's Eve, when we're recording this, which is amazing because in a few more hours it will be 2014, which is very exciting.

Michael: I know!

Jaime: So tell us, if we were to go through and figure out, okay, 2014, I know I want to set goals, I know how important they are, millionaires talk about them on my show over and over and over again, but how do I do it right? Can you give us some step by steps?

Michael: Absolutely. I think it starts by acknowledging that you've got a blank canvas in front of you, and Tony Robbins says this and I really like it, but your past does not equal your future. Whatever has happened last year or in previous years doesn't have to determine the outcome that you're going to experience in 2014. So realize that you're standing in front of a blank canvas and the future is pregnant with possibility and you can dream anything you want. We have the unique gift of being born at this time and at this place where, for most of us, not everyone, but for most of us we have more options than we know what to do with. So it really comes down to us deciding that next year is going to be different - it's not going to be a repeat of the previous year, it really is going to be different. One of the things that I do on the course is take people through a process of processing last year because, too often, if we don't close that chapter fully, if we don't process it thoroughly, then we drag it into the next year and it can really inhibit the results that we could attain if we reprocess edit correctly. I believe in going through seven questions and really writing out the answers to these questions about what your regrets were for last year, what were the things you wish you could have been acknowledged for but weren't, and a few other questions to just basically get you clear, to get you free, to close that chapter so that you can make a 180 degree turn, look to the future with confidence and with all the possibility that it offers. Then, and this is, I think, probably what you're getting at in your question, you've got to go through a specific process - you've got to write down your goals, they have to be more comprehensive, I think, than just your career - and this is a huge mistake that a lot of people make, is that when they think of their goals they think of their career because that's what they're accustomed to - but we really need goals in all of our life because everything bleeds into everything else. If your health goes down the tubes it's going to affect your family, it's going to affect your career, it's going to affect your business. Your relationships matter, all of that. But don't get too crazy - you don't want to have too many goals, youdon't want to do that either. I go through a formula in the course about making the goals, and this isn't original with me, but "SMART", so they're specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound, that whole acronym. Then,I think, one of the most important things, also, is getting connected with our own motivation. Why is this important? What is at stake in this goal? What do we lose if we don't attain it? You're going to need this information when you get past that initial flush of beginning and all of a sudden it gets difficult and you want to quit. Then, the last thing I talk about in the course, is how do you implement all of this? Because, at the end of the day, it's not just the statement of the goal, it's the implementation and can you execute it and do it day by day so that you're making incremental progress towards the goal.

Jaime: Awesome - a very good summary of how we should go. I think that's one of the things that a lot of people have problems with. Everybody listening has probably heard of the SMART acronym, just because that's the baseline. I know a lot of Eventual Millionaires listening know this stuff. But how can we use it? I like how you do this in your course and that?s why I'm asking. Instead of it being another thing that gets lost on my computer or I have a piece of paper that it's written on and I end up not knowing where that went, how do we actually use it and make it meaningful and something that we move forward on?

Michael: One of the most important things that people need to do if they're going to achieve their goals is keep them visible. You mentioned something that happens to a lot of us, and that is that we write the goals on a piece of paper or maybe we create a text document or we do something and we file it away and we forget to look at it. So there's got to be a process for keeping it visible. I'm going to tell you what I've done and what I do today - I've done it where I take those goals and I put them into Evernote and I go through a process where I do a weekly review and, at least weekly, I'm looking at those major goals and I'm asking myself the question "What do I need to do this week to move the ball down the field on that particular goal?" Now, what I actually do today, what I'm doing this year, is I'm putting those goals into the task management system that I use, and I happen to use Nozbe. I'm pretty application agnostic, I don't think it matters what you use. The most important thing to use is the one the causes the least amount of friction for you, so if that's a moleskin notebook, great; if it's a yellow legal pad, great - but if there's a software you really like, use that. But I like Nozbe because I can connect it to Evernote and I can make each of those goals a project full of discrete actions that move me along in pursuit of that goal.

Jaime: That's nice. You say you have this weekly thing - that's great, I work with a lot of clients and they plan on having a weekly thing and as they start getting into the year it lasts a couple of weeks and then it goes away. How do you actually implement that every single week in your schedule?

Michael: The way I implement it is it's a recurring appointment with myself. So, for me, I do it on Sunday evening and I've got an appointment so that if somebody says "Hey, can you do something on Sunday evening?" of course I've always got the choice and maybe I'll switch it on some particular Sundays, like last Sunday my brother was flying in from Alaska and I had to pick him up, so I just rescheduled that. But I can have, and I often say to people, "Oh, I've got another commitment then." In my experience, what gets calendared is what gets done - so if you don't get it on your schedule and have time blocked off, it's easy to blow it off.

Jaime: Totally. I interviewed David Allen and he was like "You have to trust your system." Sometimes I have something in there but it's so weekly recurring I'm like "I can ignore that," and I keep moving it forward. That's not good. I love the technique that you say, that you have to move it somewhere else, that way it has to be done. How long does that appointment usually take you?

Michael: It usually takes 90 minutes. I have a whole process that I go through that consists of about 10 actions. In fact I talk about this in one of the bonuses with the course, but I actually go through a weekly review process that's very structured, like I'm going to review my previous calendar entries for the past week and see if there are any items that needtomake their way into my task list. I look at the upcoming calendar,I look at my meeting notes, I look at my goals, I look at my projects, etc. So that just takes some time to review but, oh my gosh, it gives me a tremendous sense of control and a tremendous sense that I'm making progress.

Jaime: That's amazing - 90 minutes! For somebody who works 20 or 30 hours a week, taking 90 minutes to do a review is amazing. If you were to take 10 or 15 minutes and boil it down, can you tell us what someone might be able to do this week, in 10 or 15 minutes, to do a weekly review like you do?

Michael: At the very least what I would do is I would review those goals, because here's what happens to most of us - the tyranny of the urgent crowds out the important. And so we're reacting, we're not pro-acting, and the thing about reviewing your goals is that those are something that's important, obviously if you've gone through the process and actually have written goals, they're something that's important and they're something that if you focus on just that you'll make sure that the important gets done. Because the urgent gets done - that's just going to get done by the nature of what it is, but the important is what gets shelved and too often we make it, to use David Allen's terminology, "someday, maybe." What it really needs to be is "now" because that's all we've got.

Jaime: It's so easy to push off those other things because, even though they're really important, nobody's banging on your door for it, therefore it gets shelved, which sucks because you're hurting yourself and of course the pain will come later, in looking at your goals at the end of the year, but it's not immediate pain, which is really rough.

Michael: Those important things, if they're not tended to, ultimately become urgent. It's not urgent that I go outside and run today or work out at the gym, but it will be urgent when I have a health crisis, you know, 12 or 24 months from now because I wasn't taking care of my body. So I like staving off as many problems as I have, because even if you do all of that stuff there's going to be trouble, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be obstacle's, but why bring it on yourself? So the thing I like about the weekly review is that it gives me a chance to get my head above the clouds, see where I'm going and make sure that I'm not drifting off course, because that's what usually happens to most people - they don't end up in a divorce because that's something they woke up and chose, or they don't end up with a heart attack because that's something they chose, it's something they drifted to, almost by accident, just because they went with the flow.

Jaime: Tell me more about this, because it seems like you have an amazing system that's working really, really well for you, and I loved how you said getting your head above the clouds, because most entrepreneurs aren't like that and they can't get that perspective that you get every single week, which is really inspiring. How can we embody that? As an entrepreneur who's running around and probably forgetting health, I've interviewed some amazing health experts and entrepreneurs don't do this stuff - how can we pull them all up? Because I feel like you can only have so many priorities, so if you have health, relationships, business, time with your family, all that other stuff, they no longer become a priority, you just have many things that you have to do and therefore become overwhelmed. Do you have anything to say about that?

Michael: I think, as entrepreneurs, and now I am one, I'm living as an entrepreneur now, I know it's easy to never shut it off - there's always something else that has to be done. You never come to the end of your task list and go "Oh, I guess I'll just take the rest of the day off and forget about this." What it really comes down to for us, as entrepreneurs, is choices. We have to learn to make choices and recognize that we don't have infinite resources. We don't have the ability to do everything. We've got to acknowledge our own limitations and realize that it really comes down to allocation. If I've got a limited set of resources I've got to allocate those wisely and I've got to choose what I'm going to give my money, what I'm going to give my focus, what I'm going to give my time to, and realize that that's not going to be everything that I wished I could. I think that's just part of maturity and part of growing older, too.

Jaime: How do we choose, then? Do you have any tips and tactics on how to choose?

Michael: I think you have to assess your own values - you've got to answer the question "What's important to you?" Because what's important to you is probably not what's going to be important to me. I may have a different set of priorities and a different set of values than you but most people have never done this - one of the things that I do, I actually wrote about this in the book that I'm writing, "The Life Plan Manifesto", is to start at the beginning by fast forwarding to the end and saying, this might sound a little bit morbid, but if you were at your own funeral and you were an observer, what would people be saying about you and what would you like them to be saying about you at your funeral? Well the great thing about being human is that we can inform that conversation now - and it's really all about how we allocate our time and resources now to the people that we love, to the projects that we care about. Maybe I'm naive but I think there's time for all that stuff - you can't do everything but you can do the things that are important to you if you are intentional, that's the key thing.

Jaime: I love that. I think it's amazing that we look back at our lives like that. I don't think it's morbid at all.

Michael: Good.

Jaime: I know some people might, but I don't think it's morbid at all. It's never about "I had this much money," it's never about the "success" that you think it is, it's about the stuff that's really intangible and hard to see through the trees as you're trying to become a success in life. So when you thought about that, when you thought about your deathbed, what sort of things did you have come up and how are they reflected in the goals you have now?

Michael: To me, the most important relationship in my life is my relationship with my wife. Again, 35 years, I said it earlier - and, by the way, we haven't had a perfect marriage. We've gone through a lot of struggles, we've gone through counselling, we've had outside, which I really believe in - if you really want to grow in any area of your life, hire the best people that you can hire or afford. Sometimes that's just a book that you read or a podcast that you listen to, but use these outside coaches to help you. But for me, the way that looks today, my wife has been wanting to go to Switzerland for 30 years and spend a month there. She went there as a student, we've just been too busy to get back, and so my number two goal for 2014 is to go to Switzerland for a month, be completely unplugged and just focused on her. So that's just a way. I know that's probably a crazy dream for most people, most people can't do that, I'm in a different season of life, but for me, that's really important, that's a value that I hold dear, because when I get to the end of my life, I really want that relationship to be intact and I want it to be richer and more fulfilling than ever.

Jaime: I love that. You guys are very inspiring with your marriage. That's amazing. I love how you said you're in a different season of life, you've said that a couple of times, and I think that's really hugely important because, no matter where you are, you tend to compare. Like I'll compare and I'll say "Oh, they're really successful," when they're 10 years older than me or have been doing it for 15 years longer than me, "How come I'm not there yet?" Well, I haven't had my time. Tell me a little bit about how you look at the seasons of life.

Michael: I really do look at them as the spring, summer, fall, winter metaphor. It's really important to realize that every season has its own purpose and to embrace that and go with it. In the summer years of your life you may be in a season of winter, where everything is kind of cold and dark and it seems like nothing's happened, and rather than resent that you can look forward to spring and all of that, but realize that that's a season - you're going to come out of that. Winter is always followed by spring, it's not forever. Other times, when you're in the middle of summer when it's hot, the days are long, you may be in this stage with your children, and you go"I don't see any change. Is this going to last forever? This seems crazy, like it's going to last forever," but you have to realize that, no, there's going to be a time when you have a harvest and you're going to be able to enjoy all of that and the years that you're spending now, investing in your children, are going to pay off later when they grow up and still want to be in a relationship with you. I love the relationship that I have with my kids today, as grown adults. But recognize that season, fully embrace it and go with it and, as you said, don't compare yourself with people who are in a different season. It's not fair to you, all it does is bring shame and a lot of pressure that you don't need and it really doesn't help you progress towards your goals.

Jaime: This is all a breath of fresh air. When you talk about that, I picture your head above the clouds again, so you're looking down at the seasons as though it's an extra thing and not in your head. What we tend to do, in general, is get stuck in our head. So it sounds as though you have a great support system set up so that you don't have to be stuck in your head all the time.

Michael: I do, but only because my wife and my daughters and our friends, we ask ourselves a lot of questions all the time and we realize what's happening to us and there's a story that we're creating about what's happening to us, and sometimes that story becomes such a strong narrative that it really determines the outcome if we're not careful. So if we can take control of those stories or challenge the narrative, it goes a long way towards helping us execute greater goals than we thought were possible because the story didn't allow us to do that. Does that make sense?

Jaime: It totally does. Tell me more about it, though - how?

Michael: I call it "The Narrator" but there's a narrator, at least in my mine, that is constantly interpreting reality as I go through it and making little comments. Sometimes I get confused because I think that narrator is me but it's not always me, it's maybe my past experience, maybe that school teacher that was always riding me back in the third grade and maybe rode me too hard, maybe it was a coach, whatever it is, but to recognize that the voice is different than who I am and I can script that voice differently. I can give that narrative words that are more empowering, more affirming, that open up possibilities for me in the future, but I think it's being self-aware, for starters, and going "Wait a second, where did that come from?" I was with somebody the other day who was talking about something that they really wanted to have and they said "Oh, but I could never afford that," and I said "Really? Tell me about that." Is that real? "I could never afford that." Do you know every possibility from now until the time that you're dead and know that you absolutely, positively could ever afford that? Of course not. 1001 things could happen - maybe you marry somebody rich, maybe you come into some money - a lot of things could happen but why would you shut out the possibility of that just with the narrative, something you're saying in your head, that probably comes from somebody who said that to you at one time, like a parent who said "We can't afford that?" By the way, I never say that. I say things like "I choose not to spend money on that right now," but if I wanted that badly enough I could probably find a way to pay for it.

Jaime: I love that. The funny thing is that they probably didn't even notice they were saying it.

Michael: No, they didn't.

Jaime: It becomes so ingrained we can't even recognize it.

Michael: It's not like I'm that smart about it either, because my wife and friends have to catch me on things that they notice. Our language is an access to our thinking. Things leak out of our mouth that are there in our hearts, so my family has to call me on these thing too. We just try to notice that and be alert to it, because our words so often snare us. They create reality for us. I think our words are really important and our thoughts are even more important.

Jaime: I think this is so powerful and this is stuff we don't talk about enough. Having somebody in a support system being able to call you out on things that could change your life is huge. Howdid you cultivate that? Were you guys always like that, from the beginning?

Michael: No, we weren't. For me, it came from hiring a consultant that I thought, this was in my last corporate job, when I was the CEO of Thomas Nelson, I hired a consultant that was about growth, that was her particular area of expertise, corporate growth. She was really an expert in exponential growth, really big growth, and this was at the onset of the recession and I thought "Man, we have got to get our heads out of all of this negativity. Everything's going to pot. We've got to be thinking "growth"." As it turned out, most of the work that she did was between my ears. She said "Look, it's your thinking as a CEO that's manifesting itself in this company so that the outcomes, good or bad, are a result of your leadership and your thinking, so if you want to change the outcomes, you've got to change your thoughts, because thoughts lead to actions and actions lead to outcomes, so you've got to go upstream and change the thoughts." So we just explored what I was thinking and it was part psychotherapy and part growth consulting but it had an enormous, powerful impact on me and made me really aware of what I'm thinking and whether or not it serves me at that particular moment. I have down days too, but there are days where I go "Wait a second. Is this really serving the outcome that I want? Can I change it?" Yes, absolutely - I don't have to be this way.

Jaime: That's huge. I just want to highlight that you were already ridiculously successful and a CEO of a major company, so it's not as though no matter where we are in life we don't have stuff going on in our heads.

Michael: I have to tell you, from meeting with other CEOs, because I used to get together with a bunch of other CEOs in the area where I live, public company CEOs, they all struggle with the same stuff that everybody struggles with - fear, uncertainty, doubt, feeling overwhelmed, feeling inadequate. They may not admit it publicly but I tell you, when you get them one on one, all of them, and I bet most of the entrepreneurs that you talk to struggle with the exact same thing.

Jaime: It's the whole reason that I have this podcast - to show people that people are all people, no matter how successful. I think that's huge for us to know.

Michael: I do too. Absolutely. And it makes it possible for anyone to achieve big things, because the people who achieve those things are not so extraordinary. Yes, they're talented, they're smart and all of that, but not any more so than the rest of us - they've just learned to push through. And, by the way, this is one of the things that I talk about a lot in goal setting, and in the course in particular, is intentionally getting into your discomfort zone - because that's where all the good stuff happens. That's where the growth happens, that's where we achieve our goals, that's where the answers to our prayers are, but we start feeling fearful or uncertain or inadequate and rather than those being a Geiger counter that's telling us "You're getting close now," we let them put up a wall and be a barrier so that we pull back. I think it's the people that are not smarter, not wiser, but have just learned to punch through that and get into the discomfort zone and are okay with staying there for a while, because if want to accomplish big goals, that's what you've got to do.

Jaime: You're highlighting exactly what 120 million interviews have sort of accumulated, which is perfect timing because at the beginning of the year, like you said, that's when the possibility is there, that's when we can really get excited about this stuff. You don't have to be perfect or smarter than everyone else, or all that other fun stuff, you can achieve the stuff you want, which I think is huge for people to know. Unfortunately we have to start wrapping this up, but I could talk to you for a very long time. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Michael: Decide how you're going to keep this year's goals visible. Whether it's to put them in Evernote, tape them to your wall, frame them - you've got to do something to keep them visible. Decide what that's going to be this week because it will make a difference all year long.

Jaime: And that can only take five minutes so don't make this a huge issue, just set some time, do it right now, listen to Michael and I highly, highly recommend that you'll have an amazing 2014 just from that one thing. Thank you so much, Michael. I really, really appreciate it. Where can we find out more about you?

Michael: You can find out more about me at michaelhyatt.com. If people are interested in the goal setting course - and, by the way, I don't care if you buy my goal setting course or not - do some goal setting regardless, make sure you have goals - but if people are interested they can go to bestyearever.me/Jaime and if you use that affiliate link you get a special price that is not available to the public.

Jaime: Everyone's going to spell my name wrong so at the end we're going to be giving away a course so if you stay tuned we're going to talk about how you can get one of those. Thank you again, Michael. I know it's going to be my best year ever. I'm going through your course and I really, really appreciate it, so thank you so much for coming on the show.

Michael: Thanks, Jaime. Great to be with you.

Jaime: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Michael and got a lot out of it and are now pumped for 2014 to make it your best year ever. If you want to win a free course from Michael Hyatt, all you have to do is go to eventualmillionaire.com/michaelhyatt. If you don't know how to spell his name, it's like that big chain of hotels - Hyatt. Go and post a comment - tell me one thing that would make next year, 2014, your best year ever. I'm going to pick one randomly - don't worry, you don't have to have the best one. I'll pick one randomly and let you know who won next week. I hope you enjoy and I hope this helps you make 2014 absolutely amazing. Take care and Happy New Year.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Daily Routine, Goal, goal mapping, Goal Setting, Goals, Lifestyle, Michael Hyatt, millionaire interview, Planning

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Goals, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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