You can essentially have anything you want in life…the syntax of goal acquisition

As time has come to the 2020’s, I’ve gotten rid of that word from my speaking vocabulary. Goals are things people say they want and never end up with. Let me explain. …if you choose to develop the skills to predictably attain what you desire. That means – after creating a Sequence of Events, you can know in advance how likely you are to hit your target. That knowledge helps you decide if it’s time to scrap the goal or light the fuse to make it happen. Google Maps for Your Mind It’s simple. You pull out your phone while you are in your car and type in your desired destination. Then, you tell Google your current location. Stab “Directions.” In less than one second, Google gives you the route as well as your estimated time of arrival. Google also indicates whether you will run into traffic or the need to take an alternative route depending on current road conditions and accident locations. This is an outcome attainment algorithm. And that is why use of the word “goal” will become archaic in your vocabulary. Imagine that Google told you that you had a goal to reach your destination. You wouldn’t feel too comfortable. Instead, you get the answer and the step by step directions. That is now your mind interpreting your brains knowledge. Now… destinations are predictable. If you have the program Acquisition, you’ve learned a number of precise strategies that, to my knowledge, no one has ever put in a book or a program. Not for the public. Not for academia. Not for business. And without these specific strategies, attaining goals is very, very difficult. Before Google had Google Maps, I began training this method of getting what you want. The results are as you would expect. You get to your destination.

3 “New” absolutely critical elements of “Goal” Acquisition are:

• Control Your Environment to Cause Outcome Acquisition
• Use Energy Sources that You and Only You have Chosen
• Use a 4-D Available Simple Organizational Structure for Sequencing Your Goals

Pretty much all people who get what they want in life do all three of the above, whether they are familiar with how you and I are labeling their successful goal acquisition behaviors or not.

Types of Outcomes

You now know that there are numerous different kinds of desires you have. And there are different time frames over which you want to have those things. A few might look like this: “long-term” or “short-term,” “family” or “spiritual” or “income.” And ultimately while, those are interesting designations, they aren’t very important, and they do nothing in helping you get what you want. My desired outcome for you in this last article before the program is released, is multifaceted. I want to give you a foundation, a beginning place to understand how goal attainment really works. I want you to begin to be able to distinguish what can work for you vs. what typically won’t work in real life. I want you to begin setting important goals and then attaining them. Most people who have taught about goals really haven’t taken the time to study how real goals get done in real life. This is true across the disciplines, professions and fields. Not everything “on the market” or in the scientific journals is useless. But nothing hits the head on what you are taking home now.

Our Hypothetical Goal

You and I have created a hypothetical situation of making it a goal to have Dinner with British actress/model, Emily Ratajkowski. If this would be undesirable for you, swap out Emily for someone you would like to entertain for a Tuesday evening dinner. Select someone you don’t know personally and someone you’d REALLY like to meet. Just the thought of it has to make you really want to make it happen. That’s how you know you have a real goal. Stop right here. Watch. Lots of people reading today think, “I definitely would like to earn $100,000 more next year vs. this year.” Look at the picture of the stacks of money here. Allow yourself to feel that in your chest. Got it? Good deal. Now look over there at the wall. Look at the TV. Look at the corner of the computer screen. Good enough? Give yourself a few moments to settle, and then go on. OK. Continue. Now, do this: Look closely at the next picture. Run this thought through your brain, “I definitely would like to have Dinner with Emily.” Got it? Now, feel that in your chest. Got it? Excellent. Now that’s nice and I’m glad you got it. Now go with this… “I’m going to have dinner with Emily.” Feels scary and different, right? That is an outcome that you will get, or not, and your will is seriously challenged. For most people seeing an image that represents earning an extra $100,000 gets you perhaps a 2 on a 1 – 10 scale as far as adrenaline, heart pumping, reaction? Your brain is not interested, which means without some mental rewiring, it won’t happen. Dinner with Emily? Doesn’t matter whether you wanted to or not. For most people, the adrenaline – the heart pumping reaction –  was 5 or 6 just reading and watching for that one moment. Legend Point: If it is your goal to earn $100,000 more next year and you haven’t done that in a year before, when you think about it- you don’t feel it in your chest, and it’s not going to happen in real life unless you RE-CHANNEL brain fuel. In science, it’s simply pairing two different factors together to create a driver or behavior. I have a good friend who loves sports cars. I went to the car show with him once and he oooohheedd and aahheeddd all over every cool new model sports car. He literally looked in love…or perhaps lust. Didn’t matter. It was obvious that whatever it was, it was possible brain fuel for him. For me? Nothing. I don’t drive much. Maybe 3,000 miles per year. Looking at a sports car means or does nothing for me…it’s a hunk of metal. To me. But realize that to someone else, that hunk of metal is no hunk of metal. It represents freedom, action, racing, adrenaline, excitement, danger, fear. Back to our contrastive scenario above. In this case you could literally pair the goal of earning $100,000 next year or $100,000 more money…with a sports car (for my friend Scott) or with Emily (for me). IF the second image bumped you to around 5 and it caused you to WANT and not be repelled, you have brain fuel. Anxiety and excitement are essentially similar feelings in the brain. They are simply interpreted by the mind differently. We like one. We don’t like the other. But if you pair a stimulus you like with a response you want to get, you have now done simple science in your home or office and you WILL get the result if the experience (and similar experiences) are repeated everyday, all day. Please understand that the stack of hundreds is brain fuel for some people just like sports cars are for Scott. But for most people, direct wiring straight into human drives is optimal.

Know Your Goal Inside and Out

Sometimes, you have to learn about a goal to know what it means. After all, $100,000 is only a bunch of paper. It’s what you will do with the money that might increase the reaction, correct? You need that adrenaline and cortisol release for goal acquisition. The dopamine rush then makes the fuel much higher octane. Meanwhile, you can now have guiltless pleasure obsessing about the dinner, because no one but you and me knows…and I’m not telling anyone! Part of goal acquisition is being familiar with the target and setting your mind (not your brain) to the task of triggering details to make it all happen. For anything that matters, this doesn’t happen in one “goal setting session.” Writing a goal down and having it in front of you is nice. It’s cute, but it’s not so impressive in capturing results. Essentially, goal setting sessions amount to writing stuff you’d like to have on a  piece of paper and knowing you’ll never have the pleasure. You and I obsess about our future dinner date because if you don’t, other non-conscious goals which tend to get you very little of significance, mostly problems, will take center stage in the brain.

The Passive Goal Guidance System

It’s this simple: You are either pursuing Dinner with Emily and the vastly important goals of your life, or your conscious brain shuts off and the Passive Goal Guidance System  (PGGS) goes to work in your brain and takes you to a bunch of little meaningless and sometimes harmful goals like eating, eating again, eating again, taking a nap, basking in the sun. The PGGS will help your conscious mind (you) toward a goal YOU set until it “senses” that something important has been accomplished. (You opened the IRA and put $1 in your new account.) Then, it switches off telling you, “Enough accomplished. Next up is to go eat.” And your body goes to the cupboard or the candy machine. When the body is satiated, the brain moves you to step outside and get a breath of fresh air. Then, when you’ve met that PGGS goal, the brain takes you to the restroom. You don’t think of any of this, you simply find yourself doing it.

Go Ahead and Obsess On Your Goal

Ideally, the final outcome, if there is one, needs to be understood as being the culmination of a sequence of steps and parallel behaviors with specific people, preparing thorough responses to likely and less likely obstacles, and harnessing the energy, fascination and/or excitement to not only “get up and do it,” but to be frustrated by taking time to do much of anything else UNTIL the goal is accomplished. If it isn’t an obsession, it is likely you’ll never see the result you want. Goals are the things, experiences, and people you really want in life. In most instances, your brain really couldn’t “care” less about what you want. It’s going to take you where it wants to go regardless of any planning you have and it only switches to manual override for as long as you have the self control to make it happen!

Do Until It’s Done

When you make an agreement with your Self or someone else to “do it,” it’s a contract. It’s “Do it: Period.” It’s not, “Do it unless you get tired, frustrated, irritated, upset, annoyed….” You always train everyone around you to do it until it is done….PERIOD. 6 PM would have been a good time to end the day and go home. 11 PM was reality. The brain wanted food, wanted to sleep, wanted to go outside, wanted to check email and do 50 other PGGS goals and, as the night went on, my mind forgot why it was so important to me to learn and use this new software. My mind forgot how important it was for me to have this new ongoing experience for you. The brain began to take over, but because there was more than one person, there was always someone to say, “…staying until it’s finished” regardless of “I’m tired,” “…finish it tomorrow.” Because it won’t get finished tomorrow, because today is Coffee day. All day today is 100% Coffee with Kevin Hogan from 8 AM til 8 PM. This is why almost all goal setting/time management systems fail. You block specific time chunks for specific tasks. Unless you are doing repetitive work you’ve done a hundred times, this kind of time management just doesn’t work. The kids are sick, the pet has to go see the pet doc, you have an argument with your wife, your boss or your neighbor. You can’t seriously plan by the hour as a creative individual. The assembly line worker, yes. The person answering the phones at the office, no problem. The guy who goes to work for 8 hours but only has two hours of work to accomplish, no problem. But for real people, with real lives and real life challenges, you see what works. Today’s Coffee article will be as excellent as the previous three in the series because it is an “until it is done” project. It doesn’t have a time slot. 150-200 people will want to talk by email today. There will be phone calls from people who just want 5 minutes. There will be requests for interviews and more irritating requests to fill in the form for the interview that will take place ONE MONTH from today. But Friday is your (that’s you) day. You are top priority on Friday and all weekend until Coffee is complete. Period. I write Coffee with the thought in mind that you are one of my best friends. Part of what drives me is the dopamine rush I get when I think of the emails that say, “Thank you! This helped me and I will apply/did apply and will get/got these results.” Or similar. That’s what you do for people, and you see them respond with appreciation, and when you see people responding with appreciation, your wiring tells you to do an excellent job for that person. Brain fuel? Of course. Brain Fuel Several kinds including no lunch until 3000 words have been written. Doesn’t have to be edited. Nothing ever is completely edited in a 3000/4000 (or today 8,000!) word article. That would take weeks to do. But the tangible result you (the reader) have is huge. Lunch happens when the lower left hand corner of this document says “Words: 3,000″…not “…when I’m hungry.” It’s that simple. There’s stimulus all over the place. I look to my left I see two books facing me. Human Accomplishment and Dirty Minds. Dirty Minds isn’t really dirty at all, of course. It’s a fantastic book written by one of the smartest science writers out there, Kayt Sukel. I love to read her. She talks sex, behavior and neurology and she’s good looking to boot. And there is another piece of stimulus to my left. I treat my books like my kids. Except one book is on the couch open to a page and instead of sitting on the sectional on its back like all the other books, it is open and facing down. So the book looks like a bird that is flying. I hate putting pressure on the spine of any book. Comes from childhood days of treating the Bible with great respect and reverence. So it digs at me that my trigger to read that chapter again is sitting there and the spine of the book is getting torn apart. I’ll look at that chapter again as soon as Coffee is done this week. Like Human Accomplishment and Dirty Minds, that stimuli is Brain Fuel. Most important, my planner sits right next to me. Not to remind me what I need to do today. No, No, No! That is USELESS INFORMATION. The planner is there to remind me of what will happen tomorrow, Sunday and Monday. There is ZERO space tomorrow for an incomplete project to happen today. Thus “thy will be done,” is truer than true.

Defeating the Mind

Obsession all by itself won’t work. The brain will almost always defeat the conscious mind, causing you to do ANYTHING that makes you more comfortable than having to create and then take the next day to prepare Coffee after the article is written. But, do understand that obsession is crucial. Without obsession, no significant goal is attained.

The Enemy of Outcome Attainment

To obsess about cool things, experiences, and people is what life is all about. To live a life where you aren’t engaged in cool things, projects, experiences and people is indeed living only on autopilot in “survival mode.” There is nothing wrong with survival mode. It is the human default, and it is just fine. Seriously. I would argue it is often a very good thing. But it is the enemy of goal achievement! Question: What is the difference between attaining a goal like…

“I want to have Dinner with Emily. vs. “I want to do $250,000 in new business this year.” vs. “I want to lose 20 pounds.”

By far, the easiest goal to attain is the second one.

Goals That Require Agreement

Dinner with Emily is an End Point Goal that has a sequence of events, obstacles and specific strategies to overcome each and every one of those obstacles with the requirement of agreement. Everything up until agreement is a piece of cake. But obviously, there are inborn problems with goals such as this. I won’t be recommending putting your life on the line for one of these goals. You can get close to the end, and the goal might fail to be attained because you need agreement from another human that is significantly involved in your goal. In this case, all of your plotting and planning over time will put you in a good position. But, in this specific case, Emily’s decision makes 100% of the ultimate decision in this scenario. In other words: YOU are NOT at CAUSE. You will need to be persuasive, ask correctly, and be perceived as someone of high value by your Tuesday evening dinner partner. We’re coming there… Using and completely implementing the right sequencing and asking correctly, I can see this goal coming to fruition about 30% of the time. You immediately think: “30% of the people who correctly ask Emily to dinner are going to dinner with her? No way!” Correct. Perhaps 1% of those who ask her will end up going to dinner. (Make note, there is asking…there is asking correctly.) The goal is to have Dinner with Emily. Asking her is only part of that goal, but the person has to be in the position to be able to ask in the first place. THAT is the real challenge of this goal. The plotting is actually not all that complex, because this is ultimately a Connection then Persuasion Goal, one where you want an introduction to someone else for a Next Purpose. Connection Goals only require that the person on the other end of the connection have a strong enough “why” to interact with you. Better for them to hear you want to meet/meet with them and they want to meet you more than you want to meet them. We’ll get there, too… Ultimately, with your perfectly executed sequence, the goal is 100% dependent upon the Sequencing, a connection point and what Emily had for breakfast today. As you’ll see in a minute, experiencing goal attainment 30% of the time is actually a lock on long-term success in similar goals. And implementing pursuit of a lot of similar goals to “Dinner with Emily” is going to ensure a rich, challenging, fun, fascinating and rewarding life. Adding $250,000 in sales this year is an End Point Goal that requires far more daily actions, a much broader spectrum of obstacles and a much more certain outcome because the outcome is almost 100% under your control.

Failing Often Leads to Success

Adding some dollar figure in sales is like having dinner with 30 out of 100 Emily’s, perhaps once per week. When you are only looking at one Emily, it seems difficult. When you add in Lucy Pinder, Jessica Alba, and 97 others, you have many, many more opportunities to fail – which means with proper plotting, you’ll succeed quite often. $250,000? Using the old math approach to selling and persuasion, let’s say that you know that 1 in 10 will say “yes” based on history. Each sale is worth $25,000. You need 100 dinners/appointments to get 10 sales to get to $250,000. It’s easy to plan two extra dinners or appointments per week. I’ll spare you the math, but if (on average) 100 well-executed dinners was likely to = $250,000, then 150 dinners would be almost guaranteed to = $250,000 or close enough to where it would be all good. Random factors and factors out of your control will make Dinner with one Emily very uncertain. The same variables enter each of your 100 dinners in business, but miscalculation and probability work to your favor, of course. Let’s look at an example that might be familiar to you.

Striking Out

Suppose there is an excellent baseball player whose history showed him to be a lifetime .300 hitter, getting a hit in 30% of his at bats over the last 4,000 at bats (about 7 years worth). He’s earning about $22,000,000 per year with that track record. Only 20 other guys in baseball are better than this guy. If that specific player were to go the plate one time and had a goal to get a base hit BUT everything (his salary of $22,000,000) rode on that one single plate appearance, 70% of the time he will go home broke. We know with almost certainty (4000 specific results over 7 years is a lot of information to work from!) that 70% of the time, he will not achieve that goal. Wow! Therefore, no baseball player would ever put their salary or definition of achieving a goal or success on one at bat. The chances are 70% he would have to give his money back. As every baseball player will tell you, the more opportunities to fail and in fact, the more failures you have will cause you to generate the most revenue. Failing (a lot) is absolute crucial. Mike Trout plays for the Los Angeles Angels. So far this year he has struck out times in the last 82 times and he has 105 hits in just over 353 at bats. A good ball player will rarely strike out about as often than he gets a hit. It’s really hard to strikeout 1/4 of the time. Yet Trout earned $39,000,000 last year and has just signed a new 12-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels worth $426.5 million. Why? He hit 39 home runs last year, which makes him fun to watch in anticipation that about one out of every 4 games he’ll hit one out of the park. He’s an all or nothing ball player. From a hitter’s perspective, he’s not what you would say is a team player. (That might be different when he plays the field.) Home runs are half as important as a lot of people think they are, but they are an exciting part of the game. Excitement puts people in the seats. Reynolds is like a slot machine. Most of the time? Nothing. But when he hits it, it is quite often a home run. Not a ton of players strike out 1/4 of the time and stay on a roster. But because he got a chance to fail 353 times, and he did more than fail 250 times, he had a chance to hit 34 home runs, which have a great deal of value to a player’s salary.  And a lot baseball stats guys will tell you he’s having a great year in 2019. Hats off to him. But he fails 2/3 of the time. And you might do so as well…and still create your own life contract that is quite good. Life is a lot like baseball. You can fail a lot. You will fail a lot. The more you fail, almost assuredly the more money you will earn. This is true pretty much in all aspects of life. The more often you fail, the more opportunities open up. It is all counter-intuitive to the person who doesn’t currently attain goals. But, the fact is that’s how it works in real life. But that’s not the biggest lesson from baseball here. Let’s return to our excellent ball player for a moment.

Predicting the Success of Your Goal

For this player to achieve an average of say, 30% hits (.300 hitter in the language of the game) over the course of this year is much more likely to happen than getting a hit the next time he bats. If he’s achieved .300 in 5 of the last 7 years, let’s say it’s an 81% chance he will attain his goal of hitting .300 or better again this year. The same excellent player who would fail 70% of the time when everything rides on one at bat, will succeed at hitting .300, perhaps 71% (5/7) of the time. The great lesson is that any End Point Goal with someone else involved (the pitcher in this case) is much less predictable in addition to being much less likely to succeed. The same type of opponent is involved in each at bat, but tons of variables influence the result of any one at bat. What you have on your side is the batter has a proven history that makes the possible futures collectively much more predictable. The same basic goal, but very different outcomes because the goal opportunity is now a CUMULATIVE goal which is offered say 100 times and each attempt is only a small percentage of the final cumulative result. Succeeding only 30% of the time can actually be meeting a valuable and specific goal in 71% of the years. A Self Dependent Goal But nothing is ever as simple as it looks in a self-help book. There are parts of the Self (sub-routines/ego states) that don’t necessarily “agree” with the goal of losing weight! How could that possibly be?

The Survival Gene

Your non-conscious brain is not only culturally programmed, but behaviorally conditioned and genetically programmed to keep you alive. It doesn’t think. The non-conscious brain can’t think. It doesn’t do logic. It simply responds and reacts based on these subroutines (ego states, if you will). People call this “intuition” or “gut response.” People who “always go with their gut,” in anything but their areas of expertise, are dangerous to be in proximity to. I can tell you their income…it’s tiny. The subroutines are designed to cause you to fulfill your core human drives. Sounds good so far, and it IS to a point. This begins with survival of the genes. Survival happens because:

1. The body reproduces and makes little people that carry those genes forward. This is precisely why the “sex drive” is so intensely powerful. It can be channeled for Brain Fuel or it can experienced more like setting a nuclear device off, depending on “who” is in control.
2. The body avoids danger – including pain, fear and starvation – by making sure the body feels reduced pain, reduced fear and being certain it has all the food the body can consume. The drive to eat is not as strong in most people as the sex drive, but never underestimate the power of that non-conscious drive. It, the brain, is very, very strong.

The conscious mind, you, by comparison to YOUR thousands or millions of years of genetic success…well…it takes a great deal of “self-control” to override your genes and programming. Reasonably so.

Why Weight Loss Often Fails

Your body exists today with you inside because the genes in that body have successfully reproduced for approximately 2,000,000 years. That is truly amazing, because a lot of stuff had to happen for your genes to be here today. And this is why people fail far more often than they succeed at long-term weight loss. People’s conscious mind, their thinking, their ability to decide, to calculate – has proven to be evolutionarily…not very helpful at absolute survival. As poor as “the gut” (the non-conscious brain) is at causing significant goal achieving behaviors, at the level of SURVIVAL, your gut has a 2,000,000 year track record. Your brain, therefore, shuts you down most of the time so it runs on autopilot. That means it will eat a lot, do very little physical work…only what is required…and do everything possible to achieve comfort at every moment of the day. The brain has zero interest in your goals. It has zero capability to help you get to goals you set early on. (This can be adjusted…in time…)

The Trained Brain

In theory however, if you are dealing with someone who has trained their conscious mind to be in control of their body, the goal of losing weight could be reasonably attained 100% of the time. When drafting your own plots and sequences, do be certain to consider your Self, or your selves if you wish to be literally precise, as your biggest obstacle to success. The question to ask yourself is, “How does my desire to achieve this goal cause my body (my other selves) to react?” It’s not the end point that your brain ever considers. Brains don’t really consider anything. The brain reacts to what is happening to keep it from being as comfortable and pleasure filled as it can be right NOW. Pursuing even one Dinner with Emily could be extremely and rarely desirable to BOTH your non-conscious and your conscious. Agreement between conscious goal and biological drive is rare. But your conscious mind will have to overcome your brain’s desire to eat food NOW, to sleep NOW, to take care of your kids NOW, to have sex NOW, to pursue pleasure NOW, to surf the Internet and meet the drive of curiosity NOW…if someone wants to have Dinner with Emily or someone like her. Therefore, if you find having Dinner with Emily to be a highly desirable goal to you, your conscious “you” that is reading this and not sleeping or eating, “you” will need a LOT of Brain Fuel channeled to attain the goal. Aligning Your “Selves” (and some stunning imagery) … This page is huge. Get this and you take home goals…as in the real goals you set. Here is how you can get your brain to align itself with “you” or to let it return to default and fail to achieve any goal. It’s all about Brain Fuel. The two next photos of Emily photos  each generate reactions in your brain. The first photo is a very nice, sweet picture of a kinda edgy girl, and you pass it by shortly after you’ve appreciated the image. The second image appeals to your genes and drivers, though the manifestation in behavior is different from person to person. Even though it is the very same woman. Each picture triggers a very different drive. Wait! Don’t scroll down yet, just briefly look at the image up and to the right for a second. Notice how your chest feels. OK, Now go ahead and scroll down… The interesting thing is which genes are driving your brain – and how they react to Emily.

Intentionally Harnessing Your Drivers

The second image could, for example, conceivably trigger the drive of Vengeance in either a man or a woman. Vengeance isn’t necessarily bad. It can be. Vengeance is the drive of competition, revenge, justice and violence. Channeled properly, that could cause you to lose weight. Channeled improperly, it could cause you to have an impulse to do ill to someone. Or The second image could also conceivably trigger two core drivers like Vengeance and Reproduction. For the heterosexual man, he might wire into Vengeance as the competitive drive that will drive him to raise his value on the marketplace to a point where he would be able to more easily attain Dinner with Emily. Intentionally channeling your drives, i.e. Brain Fuel is what harnesses the drive for goal attainment. Without this, you can have the best-laid plan, the most perfect sequencing of events step-by-step to an end result, and never defeat your own brain. Without brain fuel, you will not accomplish goals of significance, beyond getting something done today or tomorrow.

External vs. Internal Imagery

The “imagery” for Brain Fuel is ideally external, though some people could and do accomplish goals with only internal imagery. You are looking for whatever drive is strong enough to propel you to overcome stasis, the status quo, laziness, comfort, familiarity, your comfort zone. It should be noted that “imagery” doesn’t have to be visual. Men historically are considered to be more visually-oriented than women. The “proof” is that women are stimulated more by romance novels (story, plot, a complete sequence of fantasy driven action) than they are images of men. Most men have no clue what is really in a romance novel…it is most intriguing. Stuff not many guys I know would ever consider…. Meanwhile, men won’t read a romance novel and are stimulated by images of women. There is some truth to this, but it is a broad generality. [Note: If you wonder whether women are stimulated by looking at men, you can google research on brain studies and what women look at vs. men when presented with erotic images. It is fascinating. Men and women are quite different. Eye tracking studies show that women are much more likely to view a man’s…private parts… both when first presented with photos and over time, when compared with men. Men? No. They look at the face first and then scan the rest of the image. I completely confess to this as having been a surprise to me. Women are more complex and difficult to predict as they become much more aware of “male beauty” during ovulation. I would argue that visual stimulation between men and women is similar when women ovulate and men are men.]

How Brain Fuel Works

+98% of significant goals that require effort over time simply can’t and don’t get accomplished because there is no Brain Fuel to get you past day one. Your Brain Fuel is almost always an experience of intensely riding an intense dopamine rush against delayed gratification. Brain fuel causes tension in the body. The stimulus doesn’t necessarily have to be visual. It could be music, and it could be sounds or spoken language. It could also be physical sensation itself. You’ll know you have the right stimulus by how you feel. If you feel comfortable, you have the wrong Brain Fuel. The goal(s) will not be attained. If you feel ongoing excitement, a rush, anxiety, a bit of fear (but not too much), a bit of stress (but not too much), then you are in the ballpark. When a stimulus stops goal attainment behavior or fails to kick-start it, it has failed and you should replace it immediately. It’s either going to trigger that adrenaline or not. Self-analysis is crucial in determining just what fuel goes into your tank. I know a lot of people who attain goals who love to watch boxing, wrestling, anything with a pretty violent edge to it. Not me. I have a hard time with violence and the imagery of violence whether visual, auditory or sense-ational. It just doesn’t drive me to attain goals. I’ve tested it and it often causes me simply to be a bit hostile which for some people is “the right stuff” to get stuff done but not me. There’s all kinds of stuff on cable that is hugely violent. I thought Game of Thrones was brilliant. But I had to look away from the screen every now and then. That didn’t make G.O.T. bad. Someone puts on G.O.T. in the background or some martial arts stuff, that WILL trigger testosterone and dopamine rushes in a lot of people. It has for millennia. But not me. There is no judgement obviously. Game of Thrones really was a pretty good show. It’s just tough for me to watch as I don’t know when the next head will roll and …well yeah…you get the idea. Meanwhile, if I have Football on in the background I get a lot done. An insane amount. I set the goal, turn on the game and “it happens.” You have to find your sweet spots. Music like imagery of competition, sports,a beautiful woman (or guy/whatever)can be a powerful driver. When I’m requiring RIGHT NOW to get stuff done so goals get attained, music can be my ace in the hole. But it has to be specific. Everyone knows I find the Beatles to personally be a strong driver. The same is true of Elvis Presley.  Watch a video that gives YOU JUICE. This generates adrenaline in your body. Big dopamine release/rush. It feels good and for most people you are not so distracted that you “have to watch.” Then your fingers fly on the keyboard. All the time, every time. There’s other bands that do the same thing. Other songs. But this is consistently predictable for me. Now check it out for a minute or so or watch the whole thing but DO watch for a minute or so. If you find music that generates and perpetuates goal behavior, others will likely react at the extremes of positively or negatively, so what happens if someone else doesn’t like your music? Maybe you loved the clip. Maybe it drove you nuts. You probably didn’t have an ambivalent sensation about it. You get the idea. It might be great fuel for me and a million other people and lousy fuel or even anti-fuel for someone and another million people. So what happens if someone doesn’t like your high octane brain fuel? It will happen, every single day. When others react badly to your Brain Fuel (and some will)…

When Others React to Your Brain Fuel

If you find physical sensations that generate and perpetuate goal behavior, what happens if someone else is uncomfortable with the stimulus? Prepare to meet with obstacles. Anything that drives your behavior is likely to generate “chemical release” in a lot of other people’s brains. Some reactions from some people are going to be different than what yours is. Never assume that everyone is stimulated and driven by identical stimulus. The reason almost no one achieves significant goals is because people have a biological drive to BELONG and BE ACCEPTED. When people experience criticism or rejection, that biological drive kicks in to say, “Wait, that’s not right, I’ll turn that off.” And that might be the right option in a given moment. Goals aren’t the only important factor in life. But if the option was something that was channeling energy to your goal…it almost certainly will go unrealized.

Your Brain Will Take Care of “YOU”

You have two million years of successful gene transmission driving your body. That means you have a specific combination of strong desires to practice reproduction, eat plenty of food, avoid danger, engage in pleasure, to belong, to fight injustice, be independent, be dependent, be altruistic. All people are driven to survive by a combination of the drivers. The drivers by default serve as Brain Fuel for the brain and NOT the conscious mind. In most cases, brain and mind “pursue” very different things. Dinner with Emily (or someone like her) is a rare exception where biology and conscious choice line up. Re-channeling the fuel puts you in control of your drivers instead of your drivers being in control of you. So, go grab paper and pen. Don’t bother typing this in your computer…you’ll be wasting your time. (You learned why last week.) You can print this out. We’ve only talked about “stuff” in the environment as far as influential stimulus. All stuff in the environment. You test to see what causes you to attain goals. “Stuff” influences you more than most other people would ever guess, but there is more than powerful stuff in an environment.

People as Brain Fuel

There are people. There is an adage among successful people that goes roughly like this, “Tell me the incomes of your 7 best friends or the 7 people you spend the most time with, and I’ll tell you your income.” No study has ever been done on this, but I believe you can take the principle to the bank. It’s not true just for income, either. You and I become like the people we are in the presence most of the time….in most ways. There is no greater choice you will make in your life than who you will surround yourself with in each of the next 10 years. Some goals are difficult to measure. “I want to be happier,” is something that is almost impossible to measure. But if it were possible, part of the solution would be identical to the Goal Attainment process. Goals with numbers attached are much easier to measure. Because they are easier to measure, they are much easier to attain once you’ve done the rest of the things we’ve discussed over the last few weeks. A goal with a number is like a light switch. You either got it up or down. You attained or didn’t. If you want to lose 10 pounds and you own a scale, you weigh yourself every single day as you cut out 100 calories per day (a small cookie) and by the end of the year, bingo. You’ve done it. That’s 3500 calories per month, which is 1 pound per month. People who fail at goal attainment will tell you to weigh yourself weekly or monthly. That is absolutely ridiculous. I did original research about 10 years ago that showed daily weighing works. It provides immediate feedback, and that feedback also acts as stimulus. Numbers that can be measured as you observe change help a great deal. Wealth works in a similar way. Nothing happens in a straight line in wealth accumulation or say building a small Coffee Table Business. This is one reason people who are familiar with getting paid every two weeks become fearful of setting and acquiring goals related to life and income choices. At first, it’s really unfamiliar and feels rather strange to not pay yourself weekly. It does take time getting used to the experience. Observe your reaction to this: Your goal is to pay yourself once each year. See how that felt inside? That’s a smaller, less intense reaction to a drive being activated. That reaction can hold enough fear and release of cortisol and probably adrenaline to drive your behavior for a short time. The trigger is an excellent short-term stimulant. It’s lousy for long-term goal acquisition. You don’t want to rely on large amounts of cortisol as fuel. You want Dopamine and then you want it “on hold.” Why pay yourself annually? The less often you get paid, the more money you are almost certainly making. Most wealthy people I know pay themselves at the end of the year and only then because they have to for tax purposes. The second most painful thing I do each year is on December 31 when I write myself a check for the year. Oh sure, it’s nice to determine your own income, but it’s determining Uncle Sam’s half that drives you a bit nuts… This notion is a completely foreign concept to 80+% of the population, but it’s one you become familiar with fairly quickly. If you aren’t already, my goal is for you to live from paycheck to paycheck. The one and only paycheck you write yourself on December 31 each year. Cool? As far as Brain Fuel, that italicized piece there is not great Brain Fuel. That chemical reaction that went off was a little different. Some release and relief, but lousy brain fuel. Release and relief is the opposite of fuel. The statement is simple cognitive impact that is good for your conscious mind to be focused in the moment, but it’s not going to do anything for you tomorrow. When you have measurable goals it makes it much easier to attain them. The reason is simple: You have no question you have arrived. Other people actually cause change in you – how and why? …

Changing the Brain

When you enter the environment of people who regularly attain goals, their success doesn’t just “rub off” on you, it causes you to CHANGE inside. Every significant piece of stimulus that goes into the brain changes the brain. Usually, those changes are slight. But when they are repeated over and over, like getting paid twice each month, the brain gets into a groove, for better or worse and stays there until a BIG STIMULUS comes along and changes the groove. When it becomes familiar with certain new stimuli, the changes become semi-permanent. In other words, change doesn’t happen easily in the vast majority of people’s brains. Ironically, God made you that way. If you could be quickly changed by any whim, “be fruitful and multiply” would have been tossed out the door long ago. Your default programming is what keeps you alive when you are non-conscious, which is the vast majority of the time for most people. When you put yourself in the presence of people who are familiar with achieving goals, it is very, very difficult to not gradually be assimilated… I dare you to hang out with goodhearted, kind, wealthy people for one year and not be goodhearted, kind and wealthy yourself. It’s not impossible. You COULD resist. But you’d eventually break down and attain the same outcomes. Income and wealth building goals are important. Money itself is just paper. But as long as people believe that money will pay the rent or tuition or the car payment or buy food or save starving families in Africa, money is a very important thing to have goals set around. About 2/3 of U.S. families live paycheck to paycheck and need no reminder of how important having money really is. Although I’d encourage you to set income goals, the next crucial element of goal acquisition we visit today is the specific people in your environment.

People Cause Change

People change your attitude. They change your feelings. They change your observations of life. They change your outlook on life. How do you know who should be in your life? How can you decide something like this? Sequencing is about plotting your course toward a goal – how you will overcome all obstacles and realize its outcome. It’s similar to plotting a book. You can’t fit it in a box in a Goal Planner. You need 5,000 words. Probably 10,000. In those 10,000 words, you don’t just include projects, obstacles, overcoming; you include people. People who are obstacles, people who help and people who do both. Once you have put together a rough sketch of your sequencing (think JK Rowling’s one sheet I showed you last week) now it’s time to stand your friends and family up against that one sheet and simply ask: “How will this person help me achieve…” and then go down each column and see how that person helps you achieve each goal you have. In general, you don’t need people to DO stuff for you, you need them to be EXCITED for you. And more importantly, you need people to hold you to your goals, making them crucially important to you. You’ve chosen your life, your life path, your destiny, if you will. You’ve plotted out the equivalent of a Chapter or Two in a book. These are all your choices. Not mine. Not your Pastor’s, not your Agent’s. Yours. Only you will live and then die in your life. Your goals and whether you attain them or not ultimately comes down to your choices in life. Life. Live it the way you choose. Then determine to what degree each person will be valuable to you in your life. This factor could change from goal to goal. One friend might be great at helping you lose weight. She’s thin, eats well and when you are with her, you’d feel stupid eating poorly. That’s perfect. Meanwhile, you might have a friend that typically encourages you to perform behaviors that cause weight gain…which, if you have chosen for your life to lose weight so you look and feel better and feel better about your Self…is probably not so good. BUT, don’t just shut her out. It could be very good IF you can see what being grossly overweight is doing to her and you realize that you don’t want that to be you. THEN as you improve, as you lose weight, it’s quite possible she will, as well. Nevertheless, if you aren’t driven by that story line, then you have a choice you want to make. Your children? You’re stuck for life. (I hope.) 🙂 Everyone else? You pick. Because most of us spend significant amounts of time with very few people in general, less than a dozen people in any one month, perhaps…it becomes make or break in goal acquisition. Don’t let other people steal your ____________

How Much Do People Matter?

Most of the time, people’s influence on you is quite strong.   If you are like me and recognize when friends aren’t helping you toward your goals, you can use competitive energy as Brain Fuel to show them that you can indeed do “it.” (Because you can and will.) But, if you don’t have that competitive energy and a lot of people don’t, then you can only surround yourself with people who will be supportive, offer plans to complete your ideas, people who will judge your results because you asked them to do so. (And you should.) There is one quality that is crucial to have when surrounding yourself (putting yourself in the presence of…) with other people. Integrity. Let’s be specific. Integrity is authenticity. The person is real. Something I look for in every person is for them to be able to share their flaws with me. Being flawed is normal. Those who look too perfect in life…aren’t. And looking for perfect people is life bound in futility. Look for someone who is consistent. Someone reliable. Someone who helps others secure their futures. Someone with a track record. Someone who can say they were wrong and is willing to evolve and grow themselves. Being a consistently valuable person in other people’s lives. Someone who treats people well. Someone who treats children well. Someone who pushes people when they are flat out lazy. Someone who cares enough to give people what they need and not just what they want. Someone who is on time all the time. 100% reliable. They are “there” and you’d bet on it every time. When I think of “integrity”, I think of “built to last.” Someone who didn’t go for the fast buck but always serves other people first. This is more than a “soap box” point of discussion. In general, you become like the people you interact with and simply *see* each and every day. It’s just how the neurology of the brain works. I’ve coached a lot of people in the last 7 years. Most of these people are a treat to work with. But sometimes I have chosen unwisely. I hate it when that happens. Integrity: Do they have your back when your back is turned? Do they spread good gossip about you? Say good things that they would say face to face? Are they constantly conspiring to do you good? Bingo.

Why People Often Fail to Meet Goals

Where do people who want to attain their goals commonly fail? They have no idea how crucial other people were in their life in making it better or worse.

1. The biggest problem I see with my clients when I first begin work with them is their friends/partners not coming through on their promises to my clients. (This is a problem of too much trust in someone.)
2. My clients tell me stories of having erred by not having relationships clearly defined. (I do this, you do that, here’s how we split everything.) Undefined relationships can be very costly.
3. They are in unbalanced relationships where Person A gives 80% and Person B gives 20% and they split 50/50.
4. They have invested time with people who are malicious in some way toward them, and haven’t severed the handcuffs yet.

These situations must be fixed and fast and it’s not always easy to do so elegantly, but it’s always necessary. Repair or Delete.

Don’t Let People Steal Your Energy

The people in your life will imbue you with energy, even if it is competitive, which can be fantastic, but if they steal your energy, they will need to have much less mental real estate in your brain. YOUR LIFE is short. Getting what you want in life is not that hard if you surround yourself with valuable, productive, supportive friends…including a few who will push you and compete with you! Treat other people VERY WELL and be treated well by getting relationships well defined up front. Never assume because you treat people well that they will indeed reciprocate. There are other factors than reciprocity in all relationships. A part of an individual will always want to reciprocate, but the individual themselves simply may not.

The Emotional Favor Account

You might call this the Emotional Favor Account. Every account has a balance. When you do a favor for someone, your account has had a withdrawal. As time goes on and the other person doesn’t reciprocate in equal value, you have now done more for the other person than they have for you and your account goes down for that person. That’s actually OK. Your brain has room for an imperfect balance. Eventually, if it isn’t replenished, it can go bankrupt to the other person. They can’t make any more withdrawals without depositing some favors into your account, without adding value to your life. As people move away from the time a favor has been done, two things happen.

1. The person who did the favor for someone else anticipates and expects a return more and more each day. The favor is “in front of” the person giving because the reciprocation has yet to occur. It is anticipated, in the future, forward. The favor has greater value to the giver over time.
2. The person who had the favor done for them spent energy and time trying to figure out how to ask for the favor and receive the favor. Once it has been received, the favor becomes part of history. And as each day goes by they view the favor as less valuable over time.

I tend to do a lot of favors for people. If there is one place I set myself up for stress and distress, it is here. I still do this to this day. Learn from the error of my ways, and make sure you get favors reciprocated quickly. Do what you can to keep the Emotional Favor Account very close to “in balance.” Once people withdraw too many favors…too much life energy from another person, someone will begin to feel very bad in some way. If the other person doesn’t want to “catch up,” then it’s time. Now it’s your turn to do some writing.

Building A Life Strategy

Grab that pen and paper right now.

1. Of all the people you know PERSONALLY, who is it that consistently attains their goals that they have personally set for themselves? These are goals that are set and accomplished independently, not part of their job. Example: Jane lost 20 pounds a year ago and kept it off. Bill had a goal to earn $50,000 his first year in business and did it. John wanted to do a quarter million this year in business and he accomplished that. Be as complete as you can be in listing people here. You’ll be using this information on the next page.If this is a short list of people for you, don’t worry. It’s true for a lot of people. The reason “everyone knows each other” in a certain field is because they all hang out together. In 2019, even fierce competitors can help each other in a mastermind setting.
2. Of the people listed in #1, if they were out of work for one year, would they be concerned in any way? If not write their names down here.This is very important. You want to be in the presence of people who:

   a) Attain their goals. And… b) Are secure and able to take care of themselves and their family.

   These kinds of people are not only “successful”, they are not likely to make stupid mistakes in ridiculous “investments” or encourage you to get involved in something that would be a disaster in your life. It requires self-discipline for both -a- and -b- above. You want to be in these people’s presence. Make it worth their while to have you around.
3. Among your friends and family, whose lives are out of control? In other words, they had a bankruptcy or foreclosure in the last year. Perhaps they lost a job through no fault of their own. When that happens, one of two things happens next. Either they had plenty of money saved for a rainy day, or they didn’t. Again, it’s self-discipline and wisdom you are looking to put yourself in the presence of.What if YOUR life is out of control? Don’t worry about it yet. For the moment, we’re working on building a life strategy for you to attain and achieve your goals and live the life you choose.
4. As you compare the list of people in #2 vs. #3, which group in general seems to be “happier?” This is simply an observation on your part. Support your observation. In other words? Why does that group seem happier to you?
5. Which of the two groups seems to have the most fun in 2019 and will likely continue that way into 2020? Explain why.
6. As you look at each person on both lists, note their level of physical health. Poor, fair, average, very good, excellent. What conclusion can you draw?
7. Which group do you think would be the best overall influence on you going forward?

Feel free to go back and get detailed in those explanations. The research is crystal. It’s the details of these explanations that cause the end results you want, the goals you wish to acquire, to become more attainable. This leads to a happier, more joyful, secure and fulfilled life.