There is an actual science behind setting and achieving goals. A science that you can learn and implement in your life going forwards. A science that can be a complete game changer for you! Learn the difference between a goal and a fantasy how to address potential pitfalls many people experience that can lead to frustration, and the specific steps to follow to set goals that you’re most likely to achieve.

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The reality is that it becomes very present and you actually don't perceive it

into the future if you have a balanced orientation,

because you've strategize and mitigated the risk and you can see how you can do

it, and now you see there's nothing in the way. When you do,

you get rewarded by a balanced chemistry.

Every perception we have

has a ratio to it.

If we perceive and we're conscious of the upsides,

the positives, the advantages, the pleasure side,

and we are unconscious of the downside, the negative, the pain side,

the disadvantages, the more polarized it is,

the more it becomes unobtainable.

It's like if you imagine a magnet with a positive and negative pole

and try to cut the magnet in half and get only the positive pole, if you cut it,

you would find out that it has a positive, negative, and a positive negative.

And so often human beings strive for a one-sided

magnet and then eventually found out the other side of the magnet always comes

with it.

So a fantasy is an assumption of a monopole a one-sided outcome.

That's one form of fantasy.

So anytime you're striving for something that's one-sided,

a pleasure without a pain. It's like getting in a relationship

and maybe in the beginning you might be infatuated with somebody.

Might get a dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin rush, and you might assume,

'oh my God, this one is going to be different. This one's all positive.

It has no downsides.' And then a day, a week, a month,

a year or five years later, you find out it has downsides.

So while you had the one sidedness in your awareness and you had a subjective

bias and you were seeing only one side,

by definition you had a fantasy about what it was going to be like.

A fantasy is a monopolar perspective.

Instead of seeing both sides of the magnet. That's one aspect of a fantasy.

The next aspect of the fantasy is to pursue something that you think

is important to you that isn't really truly important to you.

I have had people tell me they want to be financially independent,

but what they really mean is 'I want to spend money like the lifestyles of the

rich and famous',

and they don't really want to save and actually invest money and actually be

patient. They want immediate gratification.

So they say they want to be financially independent,

but they actually have a set of values that say,

'I want immediate gratification.

I want to buy consumables that depreciate.' So anytime you set a goal

that is not aligned with what you really value, or anytime you set a goal,

that's really one sided,

by definition the more extreme that polarization is to one side and the more

extremely it is away from what you really value, you have fantasies.

A fantasy is something, or third one is something you say you want,

it may be aligned with your values, it may be balanced,

but you don't have a strategy for it.

And because you don't have a strategy for it and you haven't chunked it down and

put a plan of action into it,

you're pursuing it in a haphazard way,

and to some degree you're going to end up self-defeating.

So all three of those could be by definition a fantasy, one sided outcomes,

monopolar,

something that's not really truly as high on your values as you thought,

that you just think is important to you.

And another one is the one that you didn't really think of a strategy.

Like I want to go to Mars without doing all the engineering that it takes like

Elon Musk has had to do.

And all the ups and downs and pains and pleasures and trials and tribulations to

get there. Those are fantasies.

Depends on the goal. We have,

when we set a goal, if it's a true objective,

I'd like to differentiate for a second.

Pardon me for finishing up the first question. I hope you don't mind.

But we have a set of values in life.

And whenever we're setting goals that are aligned with what we value most,

they're more likely to be objectives. Objectives are balanced.

Objectivity means balanced mind. Neutral.

Subjectivity means polarized mind, opinion. Subjectively biased.

So anytime we're setting a goal that is truly aligned with what we value most,

we have the highest probability of having a balanced objective.

Anytime we set a goal that's not really important to us and we're striving for

something that we think is important that isn't,

we go into our amygdala and we want to avoid pain and seek pleasure and we want

a monopole, which is a fantasy.

So if all of a sudden you have a fantasy,

when you set that and you think it's a goal,

your neurochemistry is quite different,

as you're fantasizing about the goal and thinking about the goal,

while you're in the fantasy, you've got dopamine and serotonin firing off,

and the content of the fantasy is going to determine what areas of the brain.

So if you have a visual fantasy or an auditory one, or an auditory visual, one,

or a smell associated with it, whatever you're putting in there,

the various regions of the brain are going to be doing it.

The olfactory component maybe, or it may be the temporal lobe for audio,

or maybe the visual lobe and the occipital lobe for visual.

It may be something that you're imagining yourself running a marathon or

something, and you might activate the motor cortex.

So the areas of the brain that are firing,

the various transmitters that are facilitative like glutamate or

inhibitoring, which is Gabba.

Those firing neurons will go off in addition

to the things that are pleasure,

and any time you perceive that you're getting your outcome,

you get the dopamine, you get the serotonin, you get the enkephalins,

endorphins, all the pleasure compounds.

Anytime you perceive 'I can't seem to see it in my mind's eye and I'm

frustrated, I don't know how many get there', you get other compounds,

osteocalcin norepinephrine, epinephrin, histamine.

So you get a series of neuro-transmitters going off based on whether you

perceive you can get it, is it a fantasy? Do you have a strategy?

What's the content?

So many areas of the brain could be firing off on one goal or you

can be really focused on a goal in one area and just really activate a certain

area of the brain. If you're playing piano,

the fine motor activities of that might be involved,

and you're maybe hearing the audio in the temporal lobe.

So depending on the area of the brain that's going to be activated based on the

content of what the goal is, based on,

is it a motor goal, is it a sensory goal,

is it a piece of art you're looking at,

or is it some skill that you're going to do with your motor actions,

your muscle actions?

But most goals eventually create dopamine when you perceive you're making

progress towards it, or you can see it in your mind.

See the difference between an objective also, and a fantasy,

is a fantasy is perceived in the imagination in the future,

and an objective is seen in the now.

And if you study the goals you'll see that the real and the imagined

seemed like they fire off in the brain,

but the reality is that it becomes very present and you actually don't perceive

it into the future if you have a balanced orientation,

because you've strategized and mitigated the risks and can see how you can do

it, and now you see there's nothing in the way. When you do,

you get rewarded by a balanced chemistry, not a polarized chemistry.

So many people are pursuing fantasies, looking for a polarized chemistry,

and then going through what is called a sequential oscillation,

where now they're having anxiety and phobias and anxieties and distresses,

'I can't get this one-sided outcome.' And then you get a chemistry going in the

opposite direction,

and you've got vacillating chemistry instead of actually being a true objective

that's balanced, that you've mitigated the risks on,

you've thought through all the different challenges,

you see in your mind's eye a strategy, and you become present with it,

and then you feel it's impossible for you not to fulfill it, it's destined.

That's when you know you're living from congruently with your highest value,

you're really present with the objective.

That's the one that has the highest probability of you

the strategy on how to do it, and just taking action spontaneously.

Most sciences, when they think of a goal, they're thinking mostly of fantasies.

And when they look like they're making progress of it,

they're going to get a dopamine fix. Dopamine is one of the key elements that,

it fires all over the brain,

there's many dopamine receptors and neurons that release it,

but the amygdala is where the main center is. It's the desire center.

And so anytime you get a desire met,

you automatically get a bit of dopamine.

But if it's actually a goal that is really an objective, not a fantasy,

you'll get a more balanced chemistry. In fact,

fantasies create bipolar responses.

It creates the nightmare to counter balance it.

And I always say that depression, which is an imbalanced chemistry,

a depression is a comparison of your current reality to

onto. So whenever you have something that you don't have a strategy for,

that's not really aligned with your values, that's one sided,

that's unobtainable, depression is the compensation for it.

So if you're pursuing that,

you can vacillate back and forth between these two sides and both poles lead to

different opposite chemistries.

But if you set a real objective and you've mitigated the risk and you're

pursuing challenges that really inspire you, you have a balanced chemistry.

It's not just dopamine. It's,

you get both sides of the autonomic response in both sides of the

brain, because now you see it in your mind's eye,

you see the strategy with the left hemisphere,

you see it visually in the right hemisphere,

you literally have a balanced chemistry.

And the reward is not a localized amygdala,

dopamine response.

It's a more holistic brain response with all the different components in the

mind that you see fulfilled in the vision of it,

and the auditory feeling, you can hear it, smell it. It's a gestalt.

The more gestalt your objective is,

the more the brain is engaged and the more glucose and oxygen it is,

it's actually the best weight reduction program you got.

Pursuing challenges that inspire you,

that are objectives that you have that serve people, that are meaningful to you,

is probably the most powerful way to keep your body in shape.

Your neurochemistry utilizes glucose and oxygen more than even your muscles.

And it's just amazing what that can do.

I tell people don't even waste your time pursuing goals that aren't really true

objectives that are deeply meaningful that serve.

Those are the ones that really get the most balanced chemistry and you get more

than dopamine. You get dopamine, oxytocin,

but you also get the chemistries that are pursuing challenges.

There's a thing called hormesis that when you actually have challenging

chemistries, you help your immune system.

Pursuing challenges that inspire you is one of the keys to making the most

powerful goals and objectives that you can.

Well anytime you're going after a fantasy, and I'm going to say,

if you can imagine a fantasy down here and a gradation

of goals to objectives up here,

when you're going after an objective that has both sides,

the chemistry is different than if you're going off to a fantasy,

you have a bipolar type of chemistry.

And so what happens when you go after a fantasy,

you're automatically setting yourself up for the nightmare.

Cause it's not obtainable. The Buddha said it really nicely,

according to the writings of the Buddha anyway,

who knows what's actually he wrote,

but the Buddha says the desire for that which is unobtainable, the fantasy,

and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable, the nightmare,

is a source of human suffering.

So people don't get how important it is to set goals that are really aligned

with your highest value.

That's why in the Breakthrough Experience program that I teach,

I've been teaching all these years, 32 years plus,

I make sure they make a distinction between a fantasy and a real objective.

Goals range all the way from fantasies to real objectives. People call them.

I've seen new year's resolutions that are complete fantasies.

I've seen people set goals that are complete fantasies,

and then they have letdowns, and then they have depressions,

and then they end up beating themselves up.

It's so important to set goals that are truly aligned to what you value most,

make sure that you have a strategy in your mind thinking it through.

The purpose of the executive center in the forebrain,

the medial prefrontal cortex,

the purpose of that is to transform fantasies into true objectives.

That's because you increase the probability of achievement.

And it's all probability.

You have a probability of measuring system in the frontal cortex.

It's trying to basically do it based on all the data you see and the probably of

achieving it.

If you perceive that you can achieve it and you exceed what you did,

you get one response.

If you don't feel like you're getting what you did to get another response.

One increases the dopamine, one doesn't, and one balances the chemistries,

and one polarizes it further. And then we get depressed and frustrated.

So whenever you're not feeling like you're achieving what you think is your

goal, but it's actually a fantasy,

you change the chemistry's into substance P,

you get adrenaline,

you get the sympathetic fight or flight kind of response cause you feel like

you're being challenged by obstacles, like a predator in your brain,

you end up breaking down and catabolising in physiology

and you go entropy and literally the aging process.

So it's so important not to pursue fantasies,

but to pursue true objectives. Now some people think, well,

the fantasy is just a big goal.

I have nothing against the size of a goal or an objective. I mean,

if Elon Musk can go to Mars and he'll make it there,

there's nothing wrong with a big goal. Audacious goals are fine.

But you need to strategize,

and you need to make sure it's aligned with your values.

All the people involved need to be aligned with the values.

And make sure when you're setting goals,

that if it's including lots of other people to get there,

if it encompasses tens or thousands or hundreds or thousands of people to get

that goal, make sure you think about what their highest value is,

because if they're not engaged in doing it,

you have a decreasing probability of them doing it

and you have to micromanage and push people uphill to get things done.

So it's so important to make sure you're setting objectives that are truly high

on your values that are balanced, that have a real strategy.

And that's what the executive center,

that's what distinguishes us having meaning and having strategic planning that

we have with foresight is what distinguishes us from some of the other

mammals and other species. So yeah, that's the key.

If you don't get your goal, you're going to get feedback.

Your physiology is going to give you a feedback to let you know that you're not

pursuing a real objective.

Anytime you're inauthentic your physiology and your psychology will offer you

feedback in the sense of physiological symptoms and psychological symptoms,

to try to get you authentic,

on real objectives that are really important to you,