How To Actually Achieve Your Goals In 2020

Happy New Year Everyone. Hope you all had a great festive period, enjoying time with friends and family. We have been enjoying Paul’s family from the UK here, while eating far too much… sooo, time to get on to those New Years Resolutions 🙂

Every year people make New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions but often these resolutions fall short. 

Why do most fail despite having the best intentions? 

In today’s newsletter I am going to give it to you straight. The simple yet profound method of actually achieving your goals in 2020 

Having been in the field of fitness for over 20 years I have learned a thing or two about achieving goals. Most of what the media tell you as to how to be successful is just over sensationalism hype. Without a doubt the most successful transformations I have seen over the past 20 years are honestly, well quite boring 

Words like consistency often get banded about and though this is absolutely correct it doesn’t answer the question of ‘how to be consistent’ 

The real key to achieving a result aka the Miller method 

I believe there are essentially 6 major steps to achieving any goal 

1 – One Thing 

Make it simple. Make it a priority. Choose the low hanging fruit. I would almost go as far as to say make it easy. Stacking multiple easy wins on top of each other makes for a great win.

In the book ‘The One thing’ Gary Keller simply says focus all your energy on one thing. Not five, not three but one. 

In the book ‘Essentialism’ Greg Mckeown talks about stripping away anything that is non essential 

In the book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’ Mr Ferriss talks about outsourcing as much as possible. 

Do you see the pattern here. What’s your one thing? Make it a specific action and get rid of any distractions 

2 – Consistency

To quote Dan John  ‘if it’s important, do it everyday; If it’s not important, don’t do it at all’ 

Just like showering, brushing your teeth, getting dressed and eating food. If it’s important, then do it everyday!!

Everybody knows that being consistent is important but the problem for many is actually being consistent 

3 – Habits 

Habits are what make consistency. The magic of good habits is that it takes nearly no brain power to do them. If you drive a car ask yourself how hard is it to get from A – B. Pretty easy right? 

Once upon a time it would have been pretty hard. When you were first learning to drive a car it was mind boggling. Clutch, gear, timing, mirror checking there was so much to remember. Now you get in the car, drive and you often don’t even know or remember how you got to where you were going. 

Habit’s are simply down regulated actions from our conscious brain to our subconscious brain in order to make life easier. What a brilliant system but the bit of brilliance does come with its downfalls. With all good habits there are many a bad habit to go with it. 

Brushing your teeth everyday is a good habit but eating a whole bar of chocolate every night probably isn’t. 

In order for a successful transformation it is important to identify what current good habits you have and what habits you may want to drop. 

Side note  – By far the two best books I have read on habit building are …

1 – The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg 

2 – Atomic Habits by James Clear 

Both of these books are must reads for anyone wanting to learn the magic of habits  

4  – Cue 

Habits can be wonderful but the biggest downfall I see is in the formation of making the habit. We focus so much on the habit, the action, the being consistent that we forget about the most important part. The cue. The cue is always the precursor to the habit and without the cue you have no habit, no consistency and no result. 

Everyone has great intentions but they simply forget or get distracted. AKA – it’s not a habit yet. 

The latest research suggests it takes 66 days to form a habit. That’s 66 days of conscious hard earned actions and behavior patterns. 

In order to be effective with cue(ing) you need to overdo them. One cue won’t do. Multiple cue’s so it’s impossible to forget or get distracted. 

Some of my favourite cue’s include 

• Multiple daily phone reminders 
• Sticky notes all over the house, in the car, at the office
• The Pomodoro method and apps that use the method. Some apps will disable computer use for 5 minutes after every 25 mins 
• Screen saver reminders 
• Photo, image reminders
• Scheduled appointments 
• A nagging wife (note – this only works sometimes 😉 

The key to cue(ing) is to totally bombard yourself with it

5 – Identity 

How we identify ourselves is a very powerful technique that makes goal success far easier. Is it tough for the vegan to not eat meat? Nope!! Because the vegan identifies them self as someone who doesn’t eat meat. How about the runner, does the runner find it hard to wake up at 6am to go for a cold morning run? Nope!! Because it’s just what the runner does. 

David Benner, a psychologist and author of the book The Gift of Being Yourself, defines identity as “who we experience ourselves to be – the I each of us carries within.”

To get an identity we need to pass through two gates of learning  

Gate 1 – Basic comprehension

This gate is a basic understanding of the subject

Gate 2 – Unity of heart and mind

When your thinking centre and your feeling centre align and you have that ah ha moment

Gate 3 – Identity

The gateway to being 

 In order to really begin to identify yourself as something you really need to connect to it. 

Who is it that you want to be?

What type of actions does this kind of person take? 

How do they interact with others? 

What kind of rules do they have for themselves? 

Take some time to ask the questions, peel back the layers of the onion and decide upon the rules. 

This leads us to our 6th major step….

6 – Immersion 

If you want to make massive change in your life you have to set yourself up to win. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by immersion. 

Too many people today look for instant gratification and when something doesn’t elicit an instant result they are quick to move on to the next thing.

Lasting change is about mastery. In the book Outliers Malcom Gladwell explains that mastery is reaching the 10,000-Hour Rule, which he considers the key to success in any field, is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years. 

Mastery is not tentative, it’s a 100% full commitment. Throw yourself in the deep end, burn the bridge. 

If you are a history buff, you may know the story of Cortés and the burning of his ships. In the year 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived in the New World with six hundred men and, upon arrival, made history by destroying his ships. This sent a clear message to his men: There is no turning back.

Two years later, he succeeded in his conquest of the Aztec empire. 

Some of my favourite ways to immerse yourself are.. 

• Make yourself accountable by telling people what you’re doing 
• Read books about people who have already got what you want 
• Listen to podcasts 
• Read articles 
• Upgrade your peer group (If you spend your time with 5 incredibly successful people you will probably become the 6th)
• Get social support 
• Put some money on the line, that you will give to a group you very much dislike. 
• Practise, practise, practise 

Conclusion 

Focus on one thing, do it everyday until it is a solidified habit. Make sure you bombard yourself with daily cue’s in order to not get distracted or forget. Identify yourself with an I AM STATEMENT and dive into books, podcasts, like-minded groups. Make yourself accountable and practise, practise, practise. 

That’s it. 

If you have made it this far.. Well done. It’s time for my shameless pitch 

The reality for most is that they will read this and do nothing. Then next year will be in the same place or maybe even worse. They will have great intentions but something will come up, get in the way and before you know it, it will be back to square one. 

May I ask of you – don’t be that person. 

If you’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired then consider Personal Training. There is no better way of being accountable, having appointments prioritised and scheduled.   

Or you could join our Fitnesscamp where you will find like-minded people journeying towards their results. 

No procrastinating, take action now. Be bold, burn the ships and come and join us in our conquest. 

Paul “burning your bridge.. ah ship” and Krystie “reach for the stars” Miller