“Set and write down your your goals,” says the random guru with bad and incomplete advice.

Earlier I wrote about having internal and external goals. And it’s valuable to see what type of goal you’re trying to achieve. But what’s also important is having a goal with it’s micro and macro goals that go along with it.

All goals should be written down in their micro and macro form to make them effective.

Many people get hung up on the micro goal and it keeps them from easily progressing. For example, if a customer service rep is stuck trying to figure out why the system isn’t processing a coupon and trying to get things to work, they’re stuck in a micro goal. But perhaps the macro goal is to get the free 1 day pass into the gym. And it’s easier for the rep to just look the other direction while the person walks into the gym. The real problem, the macro goal, has been solved.

It’s like that “can’t see the forest for the trees” cliche, but actually helpful now.

You may need to get a cake for a party, so your goal is to find the best flour possible for the cake. You may struggle with that, but if the macro goal is really just to have a cake, instead of searching for the perfect flour, maybe you just need to go to the store and buy a cake.

It’s easy to become bogged down in the micro goals, but when you’re struggling, it may be worth examining the idea that you can just figure out a different way to get what you want.

The micro goals are the steps in the recipe. The macro goal is the cake.

Are the goals you’re striving for, and/or struggling with, part of the real ultimate outcome that you want, or simply a step in the process that can be side stepped by doing things a little differently?

“Don’t be envious.” – Random guru.

I say, get green with envy!

First, envy is just Admiration’s ugly sounding cousin, and we’re all fine with admiring someone. Regardless, think of whom you envy, what’s their life like? Who do they hang around? Who do you want to hang around?

When you get the answers to this, you start knowing a bit more on what you really want without the surface level resistance of saying that you don’t want anything at all, or that you want something (ie. money) you think would get you what you actually want (ie. respect).

Envy also helps you get away from unrealistic goals.

If you come up with a goal to make a billion dollars feeding the homeless, that goal might not be very realistic, considering there’s no billionaires that got rich feeding homeless people. You’re more likely to be like Mother Teresa feeding homeless people than becoming a billionaire.

Envy is your secret to a grounded reality in what your goals could be.

Also, when you do notice whom you envy, you can start to ask yourself why you envy them. For example, your “goal” could be to “make a million dollars.” But if the person you want to be the most is a movie star hanging around cool people, you may realize you don’t care about money as you do fame. And you may discover you don’t even really care about the fame, but the ability to hang around cool people that elite movie stars get to connect with.

Envy can obviously be bad for people that don’t use it correctly. However, Envy does 2 things wonderfully well:

1) Establish what you really want. As it’s easier to admit you like the idea of someone else’s life without your self-imposed restrictions / limitations.

2) That your goal is possible. Since someone else is already doing it, you know it can be done as opposed to some goal to make 1 billion dollars and party like a rock star, considering those 2 things don’t seem to go together in reality very much.

“We interviewed 100 millionaires – here’s what they ALL had in common!” – Random guru.

This results to this make someone believe that if they found the magic common fundamentals, they could have the secrets and be able to excel.

There is no case of success where all they were in total was a conglomeration of commonalities.

The stuff that is uncommon is what creates the successful part of the equation.

If you want to build a house and all you ever build is a foundation, you’re not going to be very pleased when try to go to sleep on a concrete slab.

If success was building a house, you have 2 options to build your own house:

1) Look at 10,000 case studies of houses to see what they all have in common. On a scale like this, it may be a very limited amount of things like “nails.” Then what they’d do is tell you to read 100s of books on nails, learning everything about “the secret commonalities of all houses!” Now you’re a nail master…but unlikely to be building a house anytime soon.

or

2) Look at 1 house, and build it as closely as possible to what you see already done and how it was specifically, and uniquely, built.

You’d obviously pick the 2nd choice. But somehow in other endeavors, we’re looking for those commonalities – those “secrets!”

You need the commonalities, but you ALSO need the extra things that are all unique to each case.

What things in your life are you trying to make hard by telling yourself you need some sort of secret, when the best answer is right in front of you on what to do?

Yawning is riddled with logical things around it, such as “it’s to help you get oxygen when your brain is sleepy,” or a “herd communication to relax,” and so on. That’s why it’s contagious. But how is it contagious? Some say it’s the sound of yawning that creates the trigger of contagiousness. Some say it’s visually seeing it.

But we often yawn when we don’t hear or see the other person prior to our yawn. Whoops…there go our current explanations!

There’s an easy solution to the question though –

Do deaf and/or blind people experience yawning contagiousness?

If yes, we’re missing something big in human biology. Maybe it’s ESP!?Probably not…

What other questions in life can you find the answer to by asking another question?

Ross Jeffries (the wildly successful god father of dating advice) says that Tony Robbins creates people that are addicted to Tony’s work. Ross means well I’m sure, but Tony absolutely needs to create addicts for self-improvement.

Tony Robbins made his customers addicted to him.

Drug addiction illustrates perfectly the main concept of nearly all positive change we have in ourselves.

Only after you’re addicted to something do you get the real effects from it. Self improvement material is not something you learn and are done with it. It’s like weeding a garden that requires constant maintenance to keep your mind clean, usually by listening to gurus repeatedly will allow you to catch the things you missed the last time you listened.

Most people probably think drugs are for losers that need a temporary high, just like self improvement material. Then one bad day happens, and you’re more apt to listen to some guru (or take a drug). Just like someone is more receptive to something on one day more than the other, repeatedly “pushing” the drug / self-improvement stuff will eventually click.

If you try drugs once, probably no lasting changes will happen. Same thing as if you listen to one self improvement video or go to one seminar. You get the results from repeatedly doing it, like going to many seminars (and doing many drugs).

I thought Tony was doing a disservice by making people addicted to his works. But it’s like picking weeds – you can pick all the weeds today and understand how to pick weeds, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pick more weeks next week. And like an overgrown garden, most of the weed picking is at first when you clear them all out, but it’s much faster to maintain a weed free garden.

Self improvement goes in the category of working out, weeding gardens, and doing drugs…there’s no end destination to it, and doing it repeatedly (aka “addicted” if it’s bad, “persistent” if it’s good) is the only way to keep those changes.

Mozart was cursed.

People look for hidden talents in ourselves like we’re all a hidden Mozart with abilities to recall symphonies from memory alone and such.

“If you could just find what you’re good at and born to do, everything else will fall into place!” – Random incorrect guru.

Here’s what you were born to do – lose. You’re not naturally good at anything. You’ve tried lots of stuff, and everything is hard for you.

It just seems like you’re not gifted enough, strong enough, smart enough.

Here’s why that’s a blessing…

When you’re born a savant with ‘natural God given talents’ and such, your pathway in life becomes almost predestined. Your DNA has dictated what you’re going to be doing: composing music.

What if Mozart didn’t like composing? What if he wanted to be a professional dare devil instead?

There’s no chance of the daredevil Mozart. Society would have pushed him SO HARD in ONE direction, he wouldn’t have the chance to consider what he wants to do.

You being a born loser is infinitely liberating.

You’re bad at everything, which nearly everyone else is too, so that puts you on a level playing field with most people. Then you can simply make a decision on what you want to do (instead of having your DNA tell you) with your time.

With time, you will get better at it. It’s just like the person that wants to be a YouTube star and realizes their camera presence is awful at first, you can look at how Ray William Johnson and Rhett and Link looked like at first – awful stuff. They kept at it, got better, and now look like they were ‘naturals’ all along.

Stop looking to be good at everything right off the start to find your path.

You want the balance of seeing both what your DNA could enable you to do (eg. don’t be a computer scientist if you’re the dumbest person in the room) as well as your choices (eg. don’t be a doctor because every generation in your family was a doctor).

When you hear someone say, “I’d love to do X, but I’m no good at it.” You can affirm to them of what a born loser they are…and also why that’s such a blessing.

You determine your path.

We’re taught to listen to what someone has to say and that’s how we learn. But if you look at the meta information that’s being conveyed, that usually is helpful.

Seeing “Do what I say, not what I do,” in a different light.

Russ Ruffino from ClientsOnDemand.com says they made all their money without having to the typical blog posting, podcasts, and creating a massive following that others have to do. Meanwhile, they have a huge podcast at this point and instead of “blogging” on a website, they just post frequently on Facebook (that’s just a mini blog).

Kevin David from OfficialKevinDavid.com says he offers a money back guarantee and you should offer one as well, but puts it in his fine print that you can only get the guarantee if you’ve paid full price for his course. But his course is almost always discounted. Therefore, no money back guarantee.

Sam Ovens says he has a joke of website with spelling mistakes on Consulting.com and says he doesn’t care about his YouTube following. He wants to focus on creating the best consulting course ever. But his YouTube channel has nearly 500 videos as of Mar 2019, and his website is beautifully designed currently. Whoops…

Ever wonder why someone would offer a 105% Money Back Guarantee? There is rampant chargeback fraud in America. People buy anything, and then demand their credit card company refund them without even trying to talk to the merchant first. If a merchant offers 105% money back, the fraudsters will go the merchant to get the extra free cash rather than screwing their merchant account over with a chargeback.

Continuing to think about why people are doing things as opposed to just what they’re doing will benefit you. Because I’ve never seen it in any course ever why to offer a money back guarantee like that, but that’s likely a very good guess.

To be fair, probably in all these examples, they all started differently than where they are now.

But you can learn often times just from observing the meta.

What are they actually doing (eg. blog posting, working nonstop)? Why are they doing it? What do all of them have in common (eg. all presenters make a joke every 7 minutes to keep audience attention)?

Why pay for a funnel course when you can just go through the funnel itself and watch them try to sell you? Many of the answers we’re seeking are right there in the meta. You have to block out what they want you to see and instead just see things for what they actually are and follow that.

Close your eyes and see for the first time.