Full transcript of “The ULTIMATE Guide To Achieve Your Goals (NLP)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 How many of your goals do you actually achieve? Probably not as many as you would like. You work hard at it and do it the way you're told, and yet you still come up short. That used to be me as well. I was [music] great at setting goals. I used to tell people, but terrible at achieving them. That wasn't until I learned what I'm about to show you. More than a decade ago, I walked away from a career that I hated to build a life where I travel the world, make my own schedule, and spend my days doing what I love, coaching and teaching. I've been living that dream ever [music] since. The truth about goal setting that you're not going to hear from anyone else is that the least important part of setting a goal is the goal itself. That might sound crazy, but by the end of this video, it will make more sense to you than anything else. Life is not about squeezing yourself into narrow [music] goals. It's about setting a direction that makes achieving
0:45 them inevitable and fulfilling. But first, let's talk about why your goals keep failing. Because if you skip this part, you're going to keep repeating the same mistakes. Mistake one, you're treating your goal like it's sacred. Most people become completely beholden to the goal. They set it, they commit to it publicly, and then they feel like quitting it would mean they failed as a person. So, you keep grinding towards something that stopped making sense a long time ago. Here's what I want you to consider instead. Goals are disposable. They're not contracts. They're not a measure of your worth. They point you in a direction, and if you discover mid-journey that it's not actually doing it for you, you should change direction. That's not a personal failing. You're just being smart with your time, which is the most precious currency you have. Don't waste another moment working
1:31 toward a goal that is not fulfilling you. It's not worth it. I lived in Los Angeles for 5 years. I moved there to become a film director. Despite graduating film school and making several films, I didn't find film making that fulfilling. But my goal was to become a professional director. So, I altered my life and myself to align to that goal, even though it didn't feel right. I spent the next several years beating myself up for not achieving it. But the truth is that achieving it would have made my life much worse. The mistake wasn't setting that goal. The mistake was treating it like it was written in stone and that abandoning it would make me a failure. When I finally walked away from it, that decision opened up everything that came after, including the work I do now, which I genuinely love.
2:17 Mistake two, you're focused on what you don't want. This one is so common, it's almost invisible. Ask most people what they want, and they'll tell you everything they don't want. I don't want to be broke. I don't want to stay in this job. I don't want to feel stuck. Now, I know you have a goal, something you want, but how much attention are you giving it? Are you focused on what it takes to get there, or are you more focused on avoiding failure? If you're not sure, there's a simple way to find out. How much is fear, worry, and anxiety tying up your attention? If you're grappling with these feelings even a little bit, it means you're too focused on what you don't want. You might have a money goal you're trying to reach, but if your focus is on not being broke, you're spending most of your mental energy on the very thing you're trying to escape rather than the way to
3:03 escape it. It's like trying to drive to your destination while staring in the rearview mirror. For most people, their goals are just empty words while their fears get all of the attention. Mistake three, you have unaddressed resistance. This is the one that kills more goals than the other two combined. Almost nobody talks about it, and when they do, they give the worst advice. You set a goal. You feel motivated. And then at some point, you just stop. You tell yourself you've been too busy, you're not ready, or the timing isn't right. But what's actually happening is that some part of you has an objection to achieving the thing you say you want. Most people deal with this by using willpower and discipline. While those may get you over the finish line, I assure you, eventually you'll lose the plot. This is why some people can appear
3:48 to be incredibly successful and yet miserable and empty on the inside. More success in this situation actually means more pain and misery. Here's the important thing. Resistance is not your enemy. It has a positive intention. It's part of you trying to protect you. If you just push through it with willpower and discipline, you're fighting yourself, which means you can't win. If you ignore it, it will quietly sabotage everything you do. If you beat it and accomplish the goal, you've just defeated yourself. Continuing to do this will destroy you a piece at a time. What you need to do is listen to it. I'll come back to exactly how to do that later. Now, let's talk about what actually works. In NLP, there's a process called the well-formed outcome. I'll be honest with you. The first time I came across it, I thought it was too simple. I'd
4:33 been through enough goal setting frameworks by that point that I figured I'd seen it all. I skipped over it. That was a mistake I spent years paying for. It wasn't until I came back to it with fresh eyes and a much deeper understanding of values that I realized what I had been missing. The well-formed outcome isn't just a goal setting tool. It's a process for understanding yourself and what you actually want at a level most people never reach. I'm going to do an overview now while giving you the insights I was missing the first time I came across it. For the full process to follow along with, you'll find a free PDF in the description, or you can scan this QR code. Step one, state it in the positive and make it tangible. Start simple. What do you want? Not what you want to avoid. What do you want? And it needs to be something concrete, something you can measure. You either cross the finish
5:19 line or you don't. You either hit the money target or you don't. A goal is a tangible and definitive either-or mark. Happiness, freedom, and peace are not goals. They are values, which means they're actually more important than goals. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you can't think of a goal, but values keep coming up when you think about what you want, ask yourself, what could you create, achieve, or obtain that would bring you those feelings? Start there. Step two, get clear on the context. Once you know what you want, get specific about the when, the where, and with whom. If you want a new career, the context is your professional life. If you want a better relationship, the context is obvious. But even when it seems obvious, it's worth getting clearer about context so you can focus your attention where really counts and
6:05 with the right person or people. Step three, elicit your values. This is the part that most versions of the well-formed outcome don't give nearly enough attention to, but it's the most important part. Ask yourself, what would achieving this goal do for me? For every new answer you get, ask the same question. What would that do for me? And that. Keep going until you've pulled out every value connected to this goal. You might find five. You might find 15. Write all of them down. This step changes everything, which is why it's an essential part of my coaching practice. Your values are what you're actually after. The goal is just one possible path to get there. When you know your values clearly, two things happen. First, you find out fast whether this goal is the right vehicle. A lot of the time, it isn't, and it's better to know
6:50 that now before you've spent years chasing something that won't deliver the fulfillment you're after. Second, your motivation becomes automatic. When your actions are aligned with your values, you don't need to manufacture drive. It's already there. The pursuit itself feels rewarding, not just when you arrive at the destination. The goal is just a hypothesis, an educated guess about how to fulfill your highest values. Your values, according to my mentor Steve Andreas, are generalizations about experiences that are important to you. If you felt unmotivated to work toward a goal you've set, it's likely because the goal and what you need to do to achieve it are not aligned with your values. It's a lot easier to change the goal than to try to change your values. The goal should serve your values, not the other way around. This is a critical understanding
7:36 most people never discover. Life isn't about achieving goals. It's about fulfilling what's important to you. This is why the goal is the least important part. A goal is just a placeholder for you to discover your deeper values and fulfill them. When you do that, not only will you fulfill your potential, you will be fulfilled as a person. It's so much easier to achieve your goals when you focus on your values. And when you do, you'll see that the achievements themselves are the least important part of your life. Step four, build a strategy, but hold it loosely. Once you know what you want and why you want it, you need at least one strategy for how to get there, ideally more than one, because strategies will fail and you want options. But here's the critical thing, do not fall in love with your strategy. I watched people stay loyal to
8:22 a failing strategy for years simply because letting go of it meant admitting they didn't know what to do next. That's just avoidance. Humans are hardwired to fear feeling lost more than fearing failure, but you're never lost when you know your values. Your values are your compass in a world that looks dark. When you're connected with your values, goals and strategies are just means, not the end. They're disposable. When a strategy stops working, throw it out and find another one. The question to ask yourself about any strategy is this, is this within my control? Can I initiate it and keep it going, or am I dependent on luck, the economy, or someone else's decisions? If you can't initiate it and sustain it on your own, you need to find a different starting point. There's
9:07 always something you can do right now. Start there. Waiting to start is not an option. You'll end up waiting forever. Step five, address resistance. This is the step most people skip, and it's the step that determines whether everything else actually works. When you have your outcome clearly defined and your values clearly elicited, ask yourself honestly, is there any part of me that objects to achieving this? Any part that feels hesitant or resistant? If the answer is yes, don't push through it. Don't try to motivate yourself past it. Sit with it and ask, what is this resistance trying to protect? What is its positive intention? Almost every time, resistance is pointing to a value you haven't accounted for yet. The nature of resistance is to resist, which means it's functioning from a negation, as in
9:53 what you don't want rather than what you want instead. Your resistance may fear that succeeding at a goal will alienate you from important relationships. For example, perhaps your resistance is fear of disappointment if you fail. Your resistance is valid. Listen to it. Integrating your resistance is an opportunity to become more whole and unified, especially toward achieving what you want. A goal you pursue with full internal alignment is incomparably more powerful than one you have to constantly force and fight yourself toward. Instead, your goal should be exciting and fun. I will throw you a bonus tip on how to think of your goals in a way that makes them feel freeing rather than restrictive. But first, step six, check the ecology. This is about looking at the external picture. How
10:38 will achieving this goal affect the people and systems around you that matter? One of my clients wanted to lose weight. He was motivated to get healthy. He had a solid plan, but he couldn't take the first step. We elicited his values, and even when I checked resistance, everything seemed to be okay. It wasn't until I asked him if he was concerned about something outside of himself, like his job or his relationships, that something came up. All of his coworkers were unhealthy and ate food that was bad for them. If he showed up suddenly with a healthy lunch and noticeable weight loss, he was afraid they would no longer accept him. That's an ecology issue. And until it surfaced and was addressed, no amount of effort was going to get him to his goal. Ask yourself, will achieving this goal affect any relationship, any commitment, any context outside of the goal that
11:25 matters to you? If so, how? And is that a problem you need to solve before you move forward? If there's no solution, is it a loss you're willing to trade for achieving the goal? Know the possible consequences and make your choice. Regardless of what you decide, think of every goal as a science experiment. You have a hypothesis. You think that this achievement might fulfill you. You do the well-formed outcome, and you test it with action. And at the end, whether you achieve it or not, you learn something. You're either a little closer to knowing what does it for you, or you've discovered what doesn't. There's no such thing as failure, only feedback. And sometimes quitting a goal is the best decision you can make. You should quit your goals when they're not fulfilling you, but never quit on your values. There's your bonus tip. Make sure you
12:10 grab that free PDF. You'll find the link in the description below. Download it, work through it with one goal, and see what shifts. This is a great start, but when you take this work up to the level of your identity, instead of chasing goals, you become the person who has what you want and who inevitably creates the life you want. If you're ready for that, watch this next video.
