517. Guaranteed Success

What if I told you that no matter what your goal is, no matter how big it is or how impossible it seems or how far away it is from anything you’ve ever done before? Maybe you’ve even tried and failed many times to achieve this goal. What if I told you that no matter what your goal is, there is only one process you need that will guarantee your success?

This is episode 517 and I’m going to be teaching you that process today. This is Better Than Happy, Guaranteed Success. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

What’s happening everybody? Welcome to the podcast. Do you have goals? Maybe you don’t like the word goals. And so your initial answer is, “No, no, no, I don’t set goals.” I know people who feel this way. Great. No problem. Do you have dreams? Do you have ideas of things you’d like to see come to fruition? Do you have desires? I hope so, because if not, we got a different problem we need to solve on a different day.

But most of us have some things, at least, that we desire. Maybe you secretly desire them. Maybe you very publicly, outwardly desire them. And if not, we need to, like I said, awaken that part of you that has desires. Now, I want to preface that I’m not talking about the desires you have for other people, right? I know a lot of you who listen to this podcast are parents and we used to joke growing up because my mom would say, “Oh, I don’t want anything for my birthday. I just want everyone to get along.” That’s what I want for Christmas, for everyone to get along. Right? So we used to say, “I know what I’m getting mom for Christmas this year. I’m just going to get along with everyone.”

Okay, so I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about, I wish my kids were happier or succeeding in some way or I wish my husband didn’t do the things he does. I’m not talking about your desires to control other people. I’m talking about desires to accomplish things, to have things, to experience things, to be something that is yours to own. 

This is a super important part of an overall healthy life. You have to desire to try things, to create things, to become things in order to keep growing in a healthy way. Otherwise, you’re just going to go crazy making up what my sister and I like to call fake problems. Right?

If you don’t have something you’re seeking after, something you want to pursue, something you want to try to achieve, your brain loves to figure stuff out and be strategic and problem solve. And so it will start making up fake problems. In other words, nitpicking about things that aren’t even yours to control or maybe actually don’t matter if we were to step back and take a look at the big picture.

So, I’m going to talk to you today about how to guarantee your success at achieving anything you decide to set out and do. It’s very simple. There are only four steps required that if you pursue these four steps and you don’t quit, I guarantee you can achieve any outcome. Okay? Maybe you want to lose twenty pounds. Maybe you want to make a million dollars in your business or in your job. Maybe you want to get a new job. Maybe you want to get married. Maybe you want to run a marathon or win a trip to Hawaii or get onto some TV show or become president of the United States. Whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be something big and grandiose, but it can be. And this same four-step process will apply, no matter what.

So, let’s dive right in. The first thing I recommend that you do is to define the goal. Put some specifics around the goal. Don’t just say, “I want to grow my business.” Don’t just say, “I want to get healthier. I want to make more friends.” These are general things. And the reason I want you to get specific is because the way our brains work is we try to filter out information which comes in through our five senses, things that we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. Okay? And there’s so much stimulus coming at us, information in the form of stimulus ongoing, that we couldn’t possibly process it all. This is why we’re tired and overwhelmed because a lot of it is getting through, but our brains are doing our best to filter out anything that’s not relevant or important to us. Okay?

So, what I want is for my brain to allow into the filter anything that will be useful and relevant and powerful and helpful as I pursue goals. So, if I just think, “I want to grow my business,” that doesn’t give my brain anything very specific to look out for. But if I set a goal like, “I want to double my revenue this year,” and you know what your current revenue is, then you just do some simple math, multiply by two and you’ve got what is your projected, desired goal revenue for the next year, then it gives your brain something more specific to look out for. And the more specific we get with our brains, the better job the filter can do at not only filtering out what’s not relevant, but looking for and seeking out what could be relevant.

Okay, this is called the reticular activating system, this part of the brain. I talked about some of this information in the coach training class I just taught today and we talked about how to use this to help clients. But I thought it would be really powerful to put out here on the podcast because I haven’t talked about this in a long time. But this reticular activating system is the part of the brain that filters information. 

So, in the movie, The Social Network, we have Mark Zuckerberg’s character who is trying to figure out how to get people onto his new social media platform he’s created, which will ultimately become Facebook, right? And he’s thinking, “How do I get people to opt in?” People have to volunteer to be on this system. I want them to put their photo in and all their information. And he’s sitting talking to a fellow college student who says, “Hey, you know that girl in our history class? Do you know if she’s dating anyone?” And Mark Zuckerberg’s brain goes, “Ding, relationship status.” Okay?

So that’s an example of how him having the goal of getting people to want to participate on his online platform takes what would just be an otherwise boring and unimportant everyday conversation about somebody in his history class that his friend’s interested in dating. And it turns it into an idea that can help him to achieve his goal. So, the more specific your goal, the better job your brain can do at looking for solutions. 

So, you can have specific numbers if that’s a relevant part of your goal. But I do want to say for entrepreneurs, it can be money. Money’s an easy way to get specific, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be number of clients. It could be some other metric that again is as specific as you can get, and that’s the beauty of numbers is they are very specific, the better.

Again, it may not be a goal that has numbers involved. But again, if you say, “I want to get married,” or, “I want to meet the person and be engaged by such and such a date,” or, “I’m going to run this marathon on this date. I want to again win a trip to Hawaii by this date.” Putting a date on it puts some pressure in, if we can do this right, you’ll put pressure in a good way on your brain to look out for something that will achieve it in that timeline. Because if we leave it open-ended, there’s not a lot of urgency to find the solution and it just, it can create a different effect, right?

Okay, so that’s number one. Define the goal. Again, if you don’t like the word goal, you don’t have to use the word goal. But define the objective of what you’re trying to accomplish because how are we going to get there if we don’t know where we’re going? Your amazing brain can go to work helping you get there if you tell it where you’re going and you choose to believe that it’s possible for you to get there. That is step one.

Now, let’s go to step two. Step two is a part that you’ll probably find very easy. It’s where the brain naturally wants to go. And it is an important part of this guaranteed success process. And that is to list out all the potential obstacles you can think of, all the hurdles you would have to overcome, all of the challenges, all of the stuff you don’t know, all of the things that you would need to do as far as you know. There’s going to be a bunch you don’t even know yet. But as far as you know, things that you would need to do or learn. 

I would include in this obstacles list things that I know about myself that may prevent me from succeeding, such as I tend to get overwhelmed and then quit or I don’t like doing this part and I know it’s essential and I know it’s going to be hard for me to get myself to do it. Even whatever little dramas you have going on in your head like, “My spouse doesn’t support me. I’ve got all these children. Who’s going to watch the kids? Because I don’t think that I have the time. My kids are going to interrupt. I’m worried.” This is a whole separate one. 

“I’m worried that I’m going to miss out on something with the kids. I worry about what people will think of me. I worry that this is a selfish goal. I don’t have the money to achieve it. I think I’m too old to achieve it. I think I’m too young to achieve it.” Whatever are all the potential obstacles, just let them come. Don’t edit them. Don’t tell yourself that they’re silly.

Like judging the objections that your brain has, you guys, to anything doesn’t get rid of it. It just kind of buries it down deeper. And then we have a harder time accessing it. So we don’t want to bury what’s going on. We want to bring it up so that we can understand it, so that we can see what to do about it, okay? So just brainstorm a list of obstacles. 

These are the things that might prevent me from getting there. These are the things that are going to be challenging about it. Okay? Let it be long. Once you think you’ve listed everything, ask, “What else? What else? What else?” Until you have a pretty exhaustive list of the obstacles that you’re aware of at this point. Again, you’re going to learn about obstacles you didn’t even know existed down the road and I’ll talk to you about what to do about that, but just begin with what you know or you’re guessing.

Now, the next thing you do is you take another piece of paper and you look at each obstacle one at a time and you determine a strategy or a solution for each obstacle. Now listen, this might sound challenging. I’m going to give you some further instruction about what these strategies or solutions might be made up of. But I’ll tell you what, it’s not actually that hard if you just take each obstacle one at a time. 

What’s hard is figuring out, “How am I going to accomplish this big goal?” Because we know big goals or again, any goal that feels kind of out there or challenging for you. Goals are made up of lots of steps and there are lots of components to achieving it. And so when we try to answer that question, it’s so big and hard to answer that we just get overwhelmed and shut it down with, “I don’t know.”

But if you just take each obstacle one at a time and decide, “Of course there’s a solution or a strategy for this. What might it be?” And you write that solution or strategy next to that obstacle. That’s it. One at a time. I’m going to go into more detail on how to determine the solutions or strategies, but let me give you the fourth step first because I think this is going to be important as we talk about solutions and strategies. 

The fourth step is to take every solution or strategy that you’ve come up with and put it into your calendar and then do it. And then do it. Now, I know some of you are like, “Oh, that’s actually the hardest part, the doing it part,” right? I’ll come back to that in a moment. I just want to mention that step so that as we dive deeper into the solutions, you know what’s coming. Okay?

So, your solutions or strategies are usually, I want to say always, but you know, I hate to use absolutes like that. So I’m just going to say mostly always going to be one or more of these three things. It’s either going to be something that you need to do, something that you need to learn, or something that you need to get coached on. It might be a combination of two of these three things. Suppose it could be all three if we say that once you learn something, then you need to go do it and you might need to get coached on it at the same time. But that’s it. It’s either something to do, something to learn, or something to get coached on. That’s it, you guys.

So let’s say I in my list of obstacles have the kids, like we brought up earlier. I have all these kids. Maybe your goal is something around growing your business. And so you know that you’re going to need to spend time doing some marketing. Okay. So, one of your obstacles may be, “It’s hard for me to focus and get that done when my kids keep interrupting and they’re all going to be home from school for the summer.” Okay? That’s a potential obstacle. So, is this something to do, something to learn, or something to get coached on? 

I would probably offer that this is a something to do. It’s something we need to do. It’s simple. We need to find some childcare. We need to decide, are we going to hire childcare? And if so, who’s that going to be and how much can we afford to pay? And if that’s not the solution, who can I think of that I could ask to help out with childcare? Or what am I going to do with these kids? Or how am I going to change my work schedule to accommodate being interrupted and just know that it’s going to take me longer to get everything done? But then now I might have a coaching situation where I need to coach myself around, “It’s okay that it’s going to take longer. And it’s okay to do it this way.”

Let’s say one of my obstacles is, “I don’t have the money to pay for something that I need in order to achieve my goal,” or that I think I need, a tool that I want to utilize. Maybe I’m trying to lose weight and I want to hire a weight coach or I want to pay for, I don’t know, some kind of supplements or something to help me, okay? Then how do I overcome the obstacle of needing more money? 

Well, I would begin with, “How much money do I need exactly to cover that?” Is it three hundred dollars a month? Is it one thousand dollars a month? What do I need to come up with? Again, more specific you can get, the better your brain will be at finding solutions. So if I decide I need three hundred dollars a month to cover this thing, maybe it’s a coach, maybe it’s a tool, maybe it’s a whatever, marketing in your business, okay? Then what is a solution or strategy? Maybe I’m going to go get a part-time job at Chick-fil-A. Maybe I’m going to, I don’t know, sell something online. Maybe, I mean, there’s literally so many ways to make money. 

Maybe I’m going to cut it out of part of my budget and I’m going to sacrifice something. I’m going to cancel a bunch of my streaming subscriptions and I’m not going to get my hair done for the next six months and I’m going to whatever. Like cut back in all these ways so that I can scrape up an extra three hundred dollars a month to put towards this thing. Okay? I don’t know what the way is. All I know is you do, for you, you know what the way is. And if you give yourself one small obstacle, specific obstacle that you think is in the way of you achieving your bigger goal, and you just solve for that one thing, it’s not that hard to do. I promise, it’s not that hard to do. These are just things that we need to go and do, right?

Now, sometimes there are things that we need to learn. So again, maybe I have never tried working on my health and fitness before and I’ve decided that I want to lose twenty pounds or maybe I just had a baby and I need to learn about how to make sure I don’t lose my milk supply as I’m reducing calories, or maybe I’m in menopause and I need to learn something about those hormones. So there are times when I’m like, “I need to go research this a little bit. I need to learn a little bit about this before I even know what should be the first thing that I do.” And then again, you write down on your piece of paper next to that obstacle, “Spend two hours Friday morning from 9 to 11 on Google and ChatGPT and YouTube learning about this subject so that I can make a decision about where to begin.” Okay?

Now, be careful with this “something to learn” one. Because it’s very tempting to think that most everything is a “something to learn” problem. That I just need to take another class, listen to another podcast, read another book, listen to somebody else talk to me about this subject. That is much more comfortable for our brains than the first kind of solution, which is just taking some kind of action. Okay? Most things are not a “something to learn” problem. They’re a “something to go do” and or “something to get coached on” problem. 

Occasionally though, there is a, “I need to make a phone call to that friend who knows about this thing. I’m going to text her today and ask if we can talk tomorrow at 10 AM and I’m going to set aside an hour to learn what I need to learn from my friend,” okay? Or, “I need to Google this or research it.” Sometimes there is some of that, but don’t get lost in that. Don’t tell yourself, “I don’t know how I need to go learn more.” You probably do. All we’re doing in the “something to do” category is taking a guess and trying something. I didn’t say, “Do the right thing, find the best thing, find the thing that’s going to “work.” I just said, “Do something.” Okay? So if you have a guess about something you could try, I want you to go right to “something to do.” Don’t go to the “something to learn” unless it’s genuinely something that you have no idea where to even begin.

And this will happen as you set bigger goals. Right? I was listening to a podcast the other day where Jimmy Fallon was being interviewed and he talked about even as a young kid, his goal and his dream was to be on Saturday Night Live. Okay? And so that’s a big goal, that’s a big dream. But the beautiful thing about it, and I learned this from my friend Dr. Benjamin Hardy, is when you set a 10X goal, when you raise the ceiling on your goal, there becomes really only one simple path or maybe a couple paths to get there. There aren’t a dozen paths. There are a dozen paths to smaller goals if you will. But if you’re going to raise the ceiling and go big, he didn’t just say he wants to be a successful comedian. He said he wants to be on Saturday Night Live.

Now, if I decided today that I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live, I would need to spend a minute learning what is a likely path that could lead me there. And again, as Jimmy Fallon talked about this, he mentioned there is a comedy improv school that a lot of Saturday Night Live alums came from. And there is a particular management company, talent management company, if you will, that manages a lot of those staff. So, is that the only way? No, but there’s probably only a couple of ways. And so then it becomes clear what path he needs to get on and what he needs to do.

So, again, you may be wrong when you go to the “something to do.” You may do something that doesn’t work, that doesn’t move you closer to the end goal. That’s okay. Do something else. If you genuinely have no idea, no guesses about where to begin, then go spend a little time in the “something to learn,” but I do like to put it in my calendar, put a time frame around it. I don’t just say, “Yeah, I need to go learn that. I haven’t done that yet because I haven’t learned that.” I say, “I’m going to learn that Friday morning. I’m spending two hours on it.” 

If it’s something more extensive, maybe I have a course I’ve bought and I want to go through the course and maybe it’s an eight-hour course. Okay. Well then I’m blocking out eight hours worth of time in my calendar, either all at once or in chunks of when I’m going to go through that course. I don’t just leave it open-ended or when I do, I should say I often don’t achieve my goals. They just stall out. But when I’m serious about achieving something, it’s, “This is when I’m going to go learn it and here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to this person. I’m going to Google or Chat GPT or research this or I’m going to take this course.” Done. Okay?

The third thing that you may do, again, possible solution or strategy for your obstacles is to get coached on it. So many of our obstacles are just mind problems, focus problems, thought problems, story problems. In other words, if I say to you, “Well, one of the obstacles is that my husband is not supportive of me doing this.” That is a coaching problem, okay? I don’t actually need my husband to be supportive in order for me to be successful. And we don’t have to get in a big fight and I don’t have to say, “Forget you, I’ll do what I want.” There’s a way that I can be the kind of wife I want to be, that we can have peace in our marriage and he doesn’t have to believe in me if I get coached and I get my head straight about this. 

You know who needs to believe in you? You do. You know who doesn’t need to believe in you? Your spouse. If they do, great, happy for you. But if they don’t, who can blame them? It’s hard enough for us to believe in ourselves if we’re trying to do something we’ve never done that feels impossible and it’s really out there. How do we expect them to believe in us? They’re not going to believe in you until you achieve the thing. And that’s okay. You believe in you. Believe in you enough for both of you. Okay, so that’s why that’s a coaching problem.

“I get overwhelmed. I don’t always follow through on the things I say I’m going to do.” These are all coaching problems. It’s not wrong that you have these kinds of shortcomings and weaknesses, my friend. We all do. I have them, so many of them. And as soon as I think I’ve mastered one, a new one pops up or an old one comes back to haunt me again. And you know what I do? I get coached on it. I have somebody help me get in my head and see what’s going on and figure out what’s driving me and figure out what am I really afraid of? And you have to get inside your head and do some internal work. You know why? Because we are becoming the person who can achieve the thing we’re trying to achieve. 

I heard Myron Golden today say, “Some of y’all want the outcome without the become. You have to become before you get the outcome.” He is so brilliant with words, right? That is the truth, but it’s okay that you haven’t become that person yet. Of course you hadn’t. If you had, you would have achieved the goal. Okay? The becoming is where the real powerful work happens of you growing and evolving. Growing and evolving sometimes means overcoming past, what many people like to call trauma. 

Sometimes it just involves you becoming and trying on a next level version of you. Sometimes it involves you giving yourself permission to believe in things that you’ve never believed in before or let go of things that aren’t serving you anymore. And sometimes it just involves you improving your relationship with yourself. Often it’s a combination of all of those things and it’s you strengthening yourself in ways you want to be stronger and it’s you overcoming things that you want to let go of. This is all coaching work. You can see why this is not only going to help you achieve the current goal you’re working on, but it’s going to help you out in every other area of your life. And you cannot skip this part and achieve a goal in the way that you want to.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you want to make a million dollars in your business. You can do it without getting coached. You can hustle your way there and white knuckle your way there and pressure your way there and you can get there. But you will get there and you won’t like where you’ve ended up because you might make a million dollars, but you’ve tortured yourself along the way and you still don’t like yourself any better or feel really even any more confident. 

And now there’s the next horizon that we need to get to before we think we’re going to feel that way. That’s not really where you want to go. You want to make a million dollars and feel good about yourself and enjoy the process and create something that’s long-term sustainable that you could even now take and go to the next level, right? You don’t want to just torture yourself to get there. So, without coaching, you can get there, but it won’t be a place you actually want to stay or at least are able to stay long term.

Get coached. Get a good coach who knows how to get in your head, not just tell you what to do. Telling you what to do is great and fine. I will tell you what to do all day long, but it won’t matter if I don’t get in your head because you know who else will tell you what to do? Chat GPT. Just go type up whatever is your goal in. “I want to win a trip to Hawaii, Chat GPT. Give me 10 ways I might do that.” It will give it to you. Why do we not all have unlimited success then? Because of this part, because we’re not getting coached. And so we don’t do it. 

“But I’m afraid that sounds hard. What if it doesn’t work? What will people think of me?” All of this noise and drama doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It doesn’t even mean you’re not going to be successful. It means you’re a human being with a human brain, but you’ve got to get coached. You got to find a good coach who can get in your head, my friends. I’ll tell you, when you find coaching like that, it is such a gift. Okay?

So those are the three ways: do something, learn something, or get coached. And I want to again reiterate that there should be a heavy bias on doing something. I mentioned that you want to be careful about thinking you need to learn stuff because that’s usually the least necessary one. But even be careful about always defaulting to coaching. Okay? I’m not saying you have to get coached on everything. If you have an idea of something you could do, go do it. You’re going to need some coaching, but I want you to have a bias towards doing things. 

As you go do things, you will have opportunities for coaching that come up. And I would much rather you be getting coached on that stuff. Like, “Oh, I didn’t realize I was going to feel bad about whatever this customer that’s unhappy with me,” or, “that I was going to get discouraged when I was on track losing some weight and then suddenly the scale went up.” Now we’re going to get coached because we’ve been doing things and it’s bringing up opportunities for us to evolve to again, heal past trauma or to evolve to next level of us. But do stuff and let it come up. Don’t sit back and try to feel good before you do things. That’s pretty tough to do. Just go do it and then see what comes up and get coached. Does that make sense?

Now, remember, what’s the last step? Put it in your calendar. Specific days and times that you’re going to execute each solution or strategy and then just do it. Don’t overbook your calendar. Don’t punish your future self by going, “Hey, next week, Jody, sorry, but you’re going to have to get these 27 things done because I think it needs to happen right now.” 

No, next week me is not going to want to do 27 things and she’s going to be tired and burned out, so we’re not going to do that to her. I’d be like, “I got you next week, Jody. I’m giving you three things that need to happen. Thank you in advance for following through on this commitment because I know you’re probably not going to feel like it. Thanks for doing it anyway. But I’m not going to overload you. It’s cool if this takes some time. No big deal.” Okay? So put it in your calendar, be very realistic and then do it no matter what.

Now, as you execute this strategy, you are going to discover new obstacles that you didn’t even know existed. And here’s the good news. One of my coaches pointed this out this morning in our coach training class. Some of the things you listed as potential obstacles, you’ll realize aren’t actually problems at all. They sort of naturally resolve themselves as you take action or they just actually don’t come up as problems. But there will be probably others, like I said, that you hadn’t anticipated because you didn’t even know what you didn’t know at some point. That’s okay. Now we just do it again. Can you change your plan because you didn’t know what you didn’t know? Yes, absolutely. But can you change your plan because you just don’t feel like it? Not recommended. Then we need to go get some coaching again.

So, I’m telling you, it feels so overwhelming to me when I set big goals that I have no idea how to achieve. I just kind of want to like, ugh, shut down or not even set that goal, right? Because it feels so impossible that my brain doesn’t know where to begin. But when I go, “Listen, all we need to do is make a list of potential obstacles towards even what we want to do in the next three months.” Maybe your goal is a 10X kind of goal that you plan to accomplish in the next five years. We don’t have to list every obstacle that we think we’re going to encounter for the next five years. But what do we want to do this year or what do we want to just do this quarter that feels like it’s pointing us in the right direction, putting us on the path. Okay? 

Then list the obstacles to that part and the solutions or strategies to that part and put them in your calendar and let’s go. And once three months has passed, we do this process again. That is how you get to a goal. It’s just one step at a time, one quarter at a time, one day at a time. But you got to leverage your brain in a way that serves you. Your brain’s very good at finding obstacles and problems and challenges. So leverage it, let it. But it’s also good at finding solutions and strategies to specific bite-sized obstacles.

This is how I’ve achieved anything significant in my life. Really. This simple process along with patience, along with not giving up, along with lots of coaching when I start thinking this isn’t working. All right? Do this and I promise you can achieve any goal you want to. Guaranteed success. Thanks for joining me today, you guys. I’ll see you next week on another episode. Bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.