Bestselling author and CEO Michael Hyatt shares the 3 different types of limiting beliefs, how resources follow clarity, the 7 attributes of effective goal setting, why the journey is better with friends, and the secrets to having your BEST YEAR EVER.

We have an incredibly insightful and influential and

well known guest. His name is Michael Hyatt, if you're not

familiar with Michael, he's the former CEO of Thomas Nelson, New

York Times best selling author, Michael, you know how much I

admire you and appreciate you. Thank you for being here.

Great to be on again.

So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is you

mentioned a research driven system for achieving your goals.

Sure, well, first of all, there's an entire

discipline, scholarly discipline of goal achievement research. So

there's all kinds of scholars icons, all kinds of studies out

there, you know, we don't have to guess at it anymore. You

know, sometimes people wonder, well, what really works, and you

hear this anecdote, and that anecdotes from this speaker and

that speaker, but there's really a scientific basis now for it.

In addition to that, we've had 32,000 people in 110 countries

go through my best year ever course over the last five years.

So we've collected data from those people, we know what

works, what kind of works, what doesn't work at all. And we've

been able to separate sort of the myth from the reality.

You talk about limiting beliefs. So can you tell us what

those are, and you know, if you can talk about the three

different types?

Yeah, well, so let me start with this story

that I actually tell in the book about my dog, Nelson. And so I

had his dog when I was the CEO, Thomas Nelson, I thought it was

kind of cute to name him after the company. But he would bolt

out the front door, and we wouldn't be able to catch him,

like, for 20 minutes, we didn't have a fenced in yard at the

time and couldn't have one. So we then put in an electric, or

one of those electronic, invisible fences. And that was

amazing, because he got so trained that when he would

approach that invisible fence, he gets this little vibration in

his collar, and he would shrink back from crossing the boundary,

he got so good at this. So train, that we removed the

collar, never put it on again. And he never would cross the

boundary, even if we held treats on the other side of the

boundary. Why? Because the fence had moved from the external

world, to the internal world of Nelson's brain. And that's how

limiting beliefs function. For most of us, we have some kind of

experience some kind of setback, some kind of challenge. And we

develop a limiting belief around it, which is like blinders or

colored glasses that influence how we see everything. Some of

these are global beliefs, like we think, you know, well, the

economy is messed up. So there's no possible way that we can

succeed, or, you know, whoever's president at the time, because

of the President, we can't succeed, you know, that's like

this, this global belief, or all men are, you know, pigs, or

whatever it is, we develop these global beliefs. And there's

beliefs about other people where we start thinking about, you

know, well, she wouldn't want to spend time with me to present me

that interesting, or I'll never get the time of day from that

person. But the most damaging ones of all, are the beliefs

about ourself, I'm too old, or I'm too young, or I don't have

enough education, or I've got too much education, or I don't

have enough experience, or I've got too much experience. And

I've heard it on both sides of the equation. But it really is a

reality that for the most part exists inside our head. And

that's the only place that exists.

One other thing on this resources are never the main

challenge in achieving your dreams.

Yeah, I have this fundamental conviction that

resources, always follow clarity or vision. So the resources,

don't show up, show up until we get clear on what it is that we

want. And so our job is to get clear on what we want. And then

the resources show up. Now, when we get this backwards, it's very

dangerous. Because we might start thinking about the future.

And we think, Well, I don't really have the money to achieve

this. So I'm not going to dream about it, I'm not going to think

about it, or I don't have a network of contacts, where I

don't have the time, it's very important to get clear first, on

what you want, and then trust that the resources will show up.

And they do. But they always come to people who aren't clear

on what they want. And sometimes the clarity of that will attract

the resources, you know, and we're clear about what it is

that we want. I mean, how could anybody aligned with us or lend

us their resources, or use their resources to help us if we're

not clear what we want? So there's an attraction factor

that happens when we get clear. It's a way of enrolling other

people in the vision to where they can bring their resources

to the table and help us

So I want to talk about risk. Why are you saying that

risk is a necessary part of this journey?

Well, you know, in in corporations, especially,

but I've really noticed that some on salespeople, a lot of

times people will quote sandbag their numbers, you know, they'll

they'll aim for a goal that's in their comfort zone, because

maybe in the past, they've been upgraded or fired or penalized

in some way, where they missed a goal. And they didn't like to

feel into that. They didn't like the results of that. So they

dial it down to something that safe. All the goal research says

that that is a prescription for not hitting your goals. Why?

Because of the goals in your country. for its own, it's not

going to ignite your imagination, it's not going to

demand innovation, it's not going to focus your execution.

Instead, it has to be dialed up into the discomfort zone, the

goal has got to be risky, not in the comfort zone. But in the

discomfort zone. Now the major feature of the discomfort zone

and how you know, you're there is the ear uncomfortable, you

feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt, you know, you feel like

there's some risk that if you fail, you're afraid of that. Or

maybe you're uncertain of the path, you've never done this

before, you're not quite clear how you're going to get from

point A to point B. And maybe you've got some doubt even about

your ability to pull it off, do you have what it takes to

achieve this goal? If you feel that way, that's awesome. Those

are positive indicators, your goal that your goal is set in

the discomfort zone. Now, here's the distinction, though it's

important. You don't want to be in the delusional zone, you

know, where you dialed in so far up there, that you don't have a

chance of hitting it. And you're deluding yourself, you're

fooling yourself, it's not going to happen. So the trick is

almost like the three bears, you got to get it just right. I was

talking to a friend of mine, and this guy had never made more

than $75,000 in his life. And so he got all excited about goal

setting. And he'd heard me talk about He's actually my fitness

trainer. And he said, This year, I'm gonna make a million

dollars. And I said, Well, wait a second, you told me before

that you've never made over $75,000 You're gonna make a

million dollars this year, and talk about talking smack. That's

exactly what he was doing. He didn't have a clue. He was

completely delusional. Well, as you can imagine, he got to the

end of the year, he didn't get anywhere close to it didn't make

any more money that he made the previous year. And you know what

he said, and goal setting thing doesn't work, goal setting

works, goals in the delusional zone don't work. And that's

exactly what he had done.

Yeah, well, so let's talk about the smarter framework. So

there's, you know, the seven sort of atrophy attributes of

effective goals. So can you walk us through the seven just kind

of high level?

Yep, I'll give you the ones that everybody

knows that I'll tell you how mine are different. So the S

stands for specific goals. Gotta be specific, not vague. It's got

to be measurable, you know, if you can put a number on it, all

the better because then you know, when you crossed the

finish line, but it needs to be actionable. So I always

recommend that people start with an action verb, not a to be

verb, but a good strong action verb, like, you know, run, walk,

lose ERD, increase, decrease something that's an action verb.

The R stands for risky, which we already covered. The T stands

for time keyed in my system, because I make a distinction

between habit goals and achievement goals are a little

bit different. And the way that the time component works is a

little bit different on each one of those, we can come back to

that if you want to. But here's where it gets interesting. The E

in smarter stands for exciting. If the goal is not exciting to

you, you're not going to stick it out and cross the finish

line, you're gonna get to the messy middle, you're gonna throw

up your hands, and you're gonna say, You know what, this golden

mean that much to me, I just give up on it. So it's got to be

exciting to you. Now, this is an important distinction. Every

goal is a project. But not every project is a goal. And one of

the key distinctives of whether or not it's a goal is is it

exciting? So I had a lady in one of my groups this last year, who

said, I'm having a hard time around one of my goals getting

motivated. And I said, Okay, so what's the goal? She said, I've

got to reconcile my accounting. I'm several months, you know,

behind on that, I got to reconcile it. And I said, Okay,

are you excited about that? She said, Heck, no, I'm not excited

about that at all. And I said, Okay, that's a project. It's not

a goal. Every goal is a project, but not every projects a goal

that set her free, then the R stands for the goal has got to

be relevant. It's got to be relevant to every other goal.

You know, you can't have conflicting goals. It's got to

be relevant to your season in life aligned with your season in

life. What I can do as somebody who's an empty nester with a lot

of free time is very different than somebody that was small

kids. So it's a completely different season. And our goals

need to be informed by that season. So that's the smarter

framework.

Yeah. Do you think they're all equally important? Or what

do you think?

I think they're all equally important. In fact,

that chapter is called goals that check seven boxes. So I use

that kind of as the criteria when I'm evaluated a goal is it

set up so that I can win? Now, here's an important component of

all this, your goals got to be written. Now, that sounds

obvious. But I've spoken all over the country to a lot of

CEOs, senior corporate leaders, salespeople, I always ask the

question, how many of you believe in the power of written

goals? I mean, every hand and the audience goes up. And then I

say, Okay, I want you to be on it. So how many of you have

written goals for this year, leave your hands up, everybody

else put your hands down. On average, 5% of the people are

left standing. They've got their hands up still. Everybody's in

it, you people practice it. But this is a key bit of research.

Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University in California did a

study, pretty large study. And one of the things she found is

that people who write their goals down as opposed to just,

you know, expressing them orally or in some other way, people

that write them down, have a 42% chance, better chance of

achieving the goal merely by writing the gold down, this

really comes down to the fourth part of my five, five part

framework in the book, where I talk about, you know, believe in

the possibilities number one, complete the past as number two,

design your future as number three. And number four is find

your why. Now, here's the thing, inevitably, in the pursuit of

any important goal, we're going to get the messy middle, you

know, this is where like, when you're running a half marathon,

like I've done numerous times, you get to that point at about

mile marker 11, where you're too invested to stop, but you just

don't know if you've got the energy to finish. And it's

really easy to get stuck at that point and want to quit. Unless,

before you begin, you've identified your why people lose

their way when they forget their why. And so one of the parts of

my framework is to really drill down deep at the very beginning

of the process, once you've identified the goal, to ask

yourself the question, why, why is that important? Why is it

important that I achieved that and keep peeling the skins of

the onion back until you get about three levels deep. And I

say come up with three key motivations that will keep you

going when you want to quit, because the goal all of a sudden

is not going to be that important anymore. Unless you

can remember the why. tell you story. Several years ago, when I

wrote my book platform get noticed in a noisy world, I was

writing it at a very busy season of my life, I was out speaking,

I was trying to establish this new career as an entrepreneur.

And I just got busy, I had a commitment to the publisher that

I would have the manuscript in by the end of November. Well, it

came up to about September, and I realized that I was so busy,

my schedule was so jam, there was no way I was going to do

that. I had a first draft, that, frankly, wasn't very good. I

wasn't very proud of it. And I looked at it. And I got

discouraged. Even though that was my number one goal for the

year was to get that book written and turned into the

publisher. So I thought, well, you know, maybe this isn't the

year, maybe I'll just quit, they'll give the money back to

the publisher, maybe I'll cue it up for another year. And then I

remembered, I remembered that I had written down my key

motivation. So I pulled out my goals looked at my key

motivations. And I found things like this, I want to write the

book, because I'm trying to establish my authority in this

space, and nothing like a book will establish your authority. I

said, I want to help 10s of 1000s of authors who have been

turned down by publishers who said, great concept, but you

don't have a platform, I wouldn't be able to help people

build a platform and learn what I've learned about social media.

So it was that why that got me to say, You know what, I

couldn't find time to finish this, I'm going to finish it,

I've got to finish it. It's a must. It was that motivation.

And I did I was about a month late turning it in. But the book

got turned in and went on to be a New York Times best seller.

And so it all came back to identify in my why early on at

the beginning of the process.

You actually talk you kind of talk a little bit about how

visibility is essential. Can you talk about that? And you know,

how are they related or not related?

Well, this is a part of quick proofing your

goals as well. You've got to keep the goals visible. And so

often I see people frame up a set of goals, you know, they get

eager at the first of the year or whatever, they come up with a

list of goals, and then they file them away and don't look at

them again. And we used to do this on a corporate scale, even

autonomous know. So when I was there, do an off site planning

retreat, come up with a brilliant plan come back. And it

was like it was very difficult to get back to that and to

review it on some kind of regular basis. So I encourage

people in the book to follow a process where they're reviewing

sort of the top line goals seven to 10 goals for the year,

reviewing those every day. Just a quick scan, ask yourself, Is

there anything I could do today to move forward on one of these

goals? And then once a week and a weekly review, process review

not only the goals, but your key motivation so you can connect

emotionally and intellectually with why that goal is important.

And then on a quarterly basis, ask yourself the question, Am I

still committed to this goal? Does it need to be revised? Does

it need to be removed? Does it need to be replaced by something

else? But you've got to keep your goals visible. You've got

to keep reviewing and if you don't do that, I can virtually

guarantee you that you're not going to achieve your goals.

When you talk about, you know, finding, finding your why

I think a lot of people struggle with that. And how do you know

when you have it? Is it is it? Is it basically that you have an

emotional, you know, response to it?

No, I don't think it's just emotional. I think it

could be intellectual, it could be intellectually compelling to

you, you know, maybe just something that you're trying to

solve some problem that doesn't really have an emotional

component. But if you could pull that off, it would really be

interesting to you. And allegedly, it could be moving

emotionally. You know, either one of those, but I think you've

just got to ask yourself the question, why is this important.

And if you can't come up with a good reason of why it's

important, because honestly, it's going to take a lot of

effort to accomplish the kind of goals that are in your

discomfort zone. And if you can't come up with a compelling

Why, you're probably not gonna go the distance that actually

achieved the goal. So I just think asking yourself, not let

yourself off the hook. But just ask yourself the question, why

is that important? And just brainstorm it. Keep writing,

keep writing, why is this important? They give every

reason you can then go back and rank them. And I throw out all

of them. But the top three, I feel like if I can focus on

those top three, that's efficient.

So this is the last thing and you mentioned, the journey

is better with friends?

Yea, well, let me just quote this great verse from

Solomon. In the book of Ecclesiastes, he says, Two are

better than one, because they have a good return for their

labor, for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his

fellow, but woe to the one who falls when he is alone, for He

will not have another to lift him up. So you know, this is

ancient wisdom, but it's also been verified by science. Now,

I've heard for a long time, in fact, I used to practice this.

go public with your goals. And then I saw that very famous TED

Talk by Derek sybers. Maybe you've seen it to where he says,

no, no, no, no. The problem with going public with it and the

research shows is that you get the same psychological bump as

if you'd have as if you'd accomplished it. So you don't

want to do that people that go public with their goals, all of

a sudden, think, in their subconscious, that I've

accomplished the goal. And there's a lot of distance that

has to be covered between announcing it and actually

achieving it. But that doesn't mean you have to keep your goal

to yourself. So Dr. Gail Matthews, whom I quoted earlier,

another goal researcher, one of the things she discovered was

that people who have accountability with other people

raise their chances of achieving their goal by about 50%. And

what you've got to do is share selectively share selectively

with people who will give you inspiration, feedback, and hold

you accountable, not beating you up or shaming you, but holding

you accountable to what they know and you know, you want to

achieve. So I always suggest you get a small group of friends or

a group of like minded people who are all in this together,

who will encourage one another, be positive in one another's

lives, and reinforce one another's best thinking and best

achievement. What you don't want to do is share your goals with

people that are negative people that will say, Oh, yeah, I

remember the last time you tried that, and it didn't go anywhere.

You know that that's not helpful. And you don't want

those kind of you don't want to share your goals with those

kinds of people.

Yeah, thanks for making some time for us.

Appreciate you having me on.