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Goal Setting for the New Year

November 23, 2021 by Jon Salmen

In the spirit of the pending holidays and the coming new year, let’s talk about goals. Not coals in your stocking, but how you’re planning to hit the ground running in January or even before then with concrete goal setting.

There’s a bottomless buffet of advice for how to set goals. When it comes to my personal experience around school, fitness, and my career, I have 3 factors to which I can attribute lasting, fulfilling success. Here they are:

Clarify your ideals and direction.
Take action and stay motivated.
Surround yourself with people who inspire and support you.

Before You Set Goals, Start with an Ideals Framework

First, and most importantly… Ideals. Have them.

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable”
– Seneca

There is no glory in effort alone. If effort is just being cast into the world around you frivolously, there is no guarantee that life will return what you want. You are not entitled to anything just because you “tried really, really hard,” Hard work does bring success, true, but what is success to you? For all your hard work to pay off, start by defining your personal, specific vision of success.

Ask Yourself: What Is My Ideal Life? Then Match Your Goal Setting to Your Answers

In fitness, specificity training is important, especially for endurance events like marathons, century bike rides, or long swims. For the sake of a familiar example, let’s talk about a marathon. Whether you’ve participated in one or not, entertain me here.

If you need to run 26.2 miles straight, then where is the effort going for most of your training? Swimming? Biking? Weight training? No, running. Running is what you’re trying to do, so running is what you need to do more of, get better at, and devote more of your energy toward. (Yes, alternate exercises like weight training, swimming, and stretching are valuable as part of a well-rounded running regimine, but these are accessories to your running practice, not your area of focus.)

The takeaway is this: Practice who you’re trying to be by being that, now. (In this case, a runner.)

Similarly, our goal setting should reflect a level of commitment and consistency.

Next, Match Your Actions to Your Goals

“Begin with the end in mind.”
– Steven Covey

This ideal goal of 26.2 miles is what sits in the back of your head as you sweat your ass off on a treadmill or cramp up during a neighborhood jog. The ideal inevitably becomes your intrinsic motivation. So, let’s pause for a reflection moment: What ideals have stayed dreams for too long?

Ask yourself: What specific actions I can take today, right now, to execute this dream?

Once we’ve established our ideals, we have to center ourselves back in the present. Now we’re charged with taking our first steps toward making our ideals our reality. To do this, we have to act.

“TAKE MASSIVE ACTION.”
– Tony Robbins

No dipping your toes in the water, either. Our actions should be big, bold, and consistent. Go all in. I bring life to this idea in an episode of my podcast, which you can listen to here.

There will always be a reason to quit. At anything. A sport, school, on family, your marriage, your friends, your job. Yes, it’s critical to draw boundaries and know when it’s time to walk away from something if it’s toxic or simply no longer serving you. But if you’re looking for a reason to quit just because something is uncomfortable or challenging, you’ll certainly find it. Do your best to eliminate those reasons. Keep going.

“As is your sort of mind, so is your sort of search: You’ll find what you desire.”
– Robert Browning

Chasing a Goal? Burn Your Boat

Fight as if everything rides on accomplishing this goal, which it does. Vikings, upon entering the west, had a tradition of burning the boats as they arrived. In doing this, they eliminated even the tangible possibility of retreat or failure at conquering the land they’d just entered. They believed a warrior couldn’t give a 100% effort while knowing there was a way out. How well do you work when distraction is close by?

We Don’t (Usually) Reach Our Goals Alone

Lastly, similar to your motivation and conquering mentality, consider the direct influences that persuade you and shift your wind. These are your people. The people around us sway us off our path on accident or sometimes maleficently. Which way are the people in your life moving you? And how much is this impacting your goal setting or your motivation and actions that follow?

Do you have a friend who is always spilling the tea, eating fast food, gets you to drink too much at the bar, or maybe straight up discourages you? Who knows what that person’s motivations are. Maybe it’s insecurity or fear. Maybe it’s something else. You cannot control how another person acts or feels or what they say. You can only control how you react. Control what you can and leave the rest. As my uncle once told me, “You can’t change the people in your life, but you can change the people in your life.” Maybe it’s time to make some hard decisions and uncomfortable concessions toward renovating your social landscape.

We have all heard the sayings like “You’re the average of the five people you hang out with,” or, “You are who your friends are.” And plenty of others. These ideals are based on Harvard studies of socioeconomic studies and cohorts, current social/positive psychology research, and lifetime longitudinal studies of people. A lot of extensive work has been done to drive home this takeaway: Who you surround yourself with matters a lot. The people in our community affect how we act, how we spend our time, how we eat, and even in some ways how we think. This goes on to affect how healthy, happy, and successful we are.

A Formula for Productive Goal Setting

A concept that I think brings us full circle today is: Gleicher’s Formula for Change.

D * V * FS > R
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

A timeless business and life concept similar to the brilliant philosophy from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which gave us Hegel’s dialectic (thesis–> antithesis–>synthesis). Beyond the years of philosophy and science in which this is based, there is a simple formula for how we change when it comes to goal setting and staying motivated to work toward those goals. We move directly from what is, to what is not, to a new what is, and then repeat.

The first thing that encourages change is dissatisfaction. How dissatisfied are we with the status quo (that’s the “what is” or thesis).
Next is vision. Our vision, which is the antithesis to the status quo, is what we compare to our ideal.
Lastly, we have our first steps. Our massive action, action plan, and confidence as we step into a part of the world and a part of ourselves we don’t know yet. A synthesis of our dissatisfaction and our goals. Sustaining this is what builds our motivation.

The formula has one last element, however, and that’s resistance. The three pieces above must outweigh any resistance to the change we’re going to make. Resistance obstacles could be a lack of commitment, fear, insecurity, bad friends, close-minded family, limited support, you name it. Just as you can augment the side of the equation for the better, you can decrease the resistance against your plans too.

As we head into the new year, use this time of renewal to engage in some goal setting. What’s making you dissatisfied, and what actions can you take to bring yourself closer to your vision?

Need a guide for practical goal setting? Use this SMART worksheet for identifying goals:

Looking for more comprehensive coaching for clarifying your vision, goals, actions, and community? Learn more about our programs here.

My Battle with Depression

April 29, 2021 by Anonymous

Wherever you look or scroll, there is an advertisement, quote, or magic pill to cure depression. Not to mention the virtue signaling friends, manipulative practices of pharmaceutical companies, and books pushing from self proclaimed self-help gurus. What I hope to convey to you, or even persuade you of is that perhaps your path to a better sense of being doesn’t begin in a book, a conversation, or a pill. That there may be some alternative hypothesis to your condition. These will not be as flattering as the ads you see and the language of the books you might read. That is primarily because I don’t benefit by tricking you. So here’s my truth.

Regarding my current battle with depression, or melancholy as it was during Abraham Lincoln’s time (my personal favorite term), I am currently winning. But it was not always this way, I have been down and desperate to put some points on the scoreboard before. As we all have been at one point. The reason I felt it was important to write on this was in no small part thanks to the valid growing concern and the subsequently ill-placed sentiment directed at young men and women struggling with depression and contemplating suicide. These are all valuable depression-root-cause-analyses that I overlooked all those years ago when I found myself hopeless, bawling in therapy over how hard life is. I never considered these things because a brain doesn’t work properly when you are depressed and everyone is too spineless to actually make any of these points to a sick person. I am not like all of you, but maybe you’re like me and tough love wakes you up. If that is the case, then continue on. These are 5 things I wish more people had the audacity to tell me when I was diagnosed with depression:

I wish more people told me that…

I am the problem
I am dealing with major changes and reacting normally
I am living an inhuman lifestyle
I am a lazy sympathy-fisherman
I am lost

Alternative Hypothesis Number #1: I am the problem.

It is not society. It is not my ex. It is not my dysfunctional family. It’s not the person that wronged me a year ago. It is not my race. It is not any of my series of useless identities that I have crafted to avoid personal responsibility. The cause of my suffering are the choices I made. My life is the fruits of the seeds I planted yesterday and tomorrow will bear the fruits of the seeds I plant today. Instead of being a cynical, drain on everyone’s happiness, I may try growing up and getting my life in order and seeing what that does for my mood.

Alternative Hypothesis Number #2: I am dealing with major changes and reacting normally.

What if my life is actually really f#%ing hard right now and it has been for a while? What if I am reacting normally to the situation at hand and there is nothing inherently wrong with my neural makeup, genetics, or hormones and I am just going through a rough time? Regardless of the choices I made yesterday, it could all be temporary stress because of problems I am avoiding. Maybe I should put out some fires instead of finding ways to avoid feeling the heat. Who promised you life was easy? Maybe that person is the first fire to put out.

Alternative Hypothesis Number #3: I am living an inhuman lifestyle.

I sit on my phone, play video games, study inefficiently and I am trying to pass it off as natural even though I don’t know anything about what “natural” means or a damn thing about human biology. Crazy how my brain gets stressed out after seeing eight thousand and fifty seven memes per minute while procrastinating calling my mom back. I must have a real problem on my hands since my brain can’t accurately calculate the sociopathic 3D chess strategy that I am attempting daily on dating apps and snapchat. I just need to get my diet, exercise and mindset clear of toxicity and focus on being a solid human before I can begin thinking about the future.

Alternative Hypothesis Number #4: I am a lazy sympathy fisherman.

I love those texts and DMs asking if I am okay. Oh it just lights me up, doesn’t it? The attention I can’t receive because I am too lazy to actually add value to anyone else’s life, so I suck what emotional capital they have laying around for myself like a big dumb hippo. I am addicted to being sad because it provides me passive emotional income. I do zero work and sit back and watch my friends attempt to establish connection with me that I don’t even want. I just want the attention. I live for the short dopamine bursts instead of the positive feedback loop I could create with meaningful human interaction.

Alternative Hypothesis Number #5: I am lost.

What if I am just ignorant of so many variables that everything that happens feels like stress? Can I honestly tell myself I cannot read more, work harder or exercise more? Would I bet you $1M that I have been giving it all I have? Further, do I think even if I were at my personal best, that there is nothing more I could learn? If I am suffering and I also apparently know everything, can I not see how dumb that would be? I would rather buy into old Russian fatalist cliches than to consider that there is something I don’t know that is keeping me from being happy? Give me a break, Fyodor. All I need is to establish direction and focus to be in a better place physically and feel better too.

In hindsight, I realize that there were plenty of people telling me these sorts of things all along. It’s just that I wasn’t listening.

How NOT to Communicate

April 28, 2021 by Jon Salmen

I often feel disingenuous speaking on topics, regardless of how well-read or studied or peer reviewed my content becomes. So instead of a tip, how about some basic confessions? I hope I can keep you from falling into the same pitfalls that I have found myself. These are strategies, most of which unconscious, that have stifled relationships, kept me from specific opportunities, and plain displeased others. These are my top three communication no-nos.

Number 1:

Giving the Long Story Long

If the prospect of wasting the only finite resource we have on this planet doesn’t concern you, perhaps just some basic logic can. Telling a story and communicating like a marketer is great if you’re making a commercial, but the vast spectrum of listeners in your world would rather you make your point clear. Whether you are talking to creative types or what seems to be a living computer, they want to know as quickly as possible if what you have to say will be worth their interest. If you aren’t adding value, then not only are you wasting their time and yours, you are essentially just talking to yourself.

If you find yourself constantly trying to regain the attention of the person across from you or they are trying to clarify with questions as you are speaking, you have most likely failed up front to answer their questions or make your point clear. An example is the classic “tell me about yourself” question. A bottom up communicator may begin with “so I’m from so and so town blah blah blah…” and bounce from idea to idea. A top down communicator would start off with “I would have to say who I am is a combination of three things: where I am from, what I enjoy doing and studying, and an array of experiences.” Now the interviewer knows exactly the framework that you’re going to speak in. This gives the listener dumbo ears, it allows them to take in more of what you’re saying. When others have incentive to listen combined with a way of categorizing and organizing what is being said to them, they’re more likely to retain the information. After all, that is the goal of communication in the first place.

Number 2:

Talking like Icarus

Stop going way too big picture. It is important to think big picture, but it is not your best move to speak to everyone this way. We are built to pick up on snippets and pertinent details within conversation. The longer the story, the more your audience will be trying to remember relevant details. So what if there are no details? This is what I like to call the Icarus flight of ideas: A series of loosely aligned ideas with no particular feature that ends in nothing. Talking big picture is fun, but if effective communication is the goal, you’re missing it if you talk like this. Just imagine a clock catching on fire.

Too many times have I caught myself on a manic roller coaster of thoughts and tangential idea sharing. One thing reminds me of the next thing and before I know it, I’ve created a cool band name and drafted a bill for the state senator’s office. All without the help of the person or people listening.

Like I said, creative conversation and ranting is great, I think more people should interact authentically like this with one another. Personally, idea sharing is my favorite thing to do on this planet. #1 overall activity. But this is foolish if I am trying to really persuade or convey an idea clearly. Most people are looking to hear me say what they want to hear. Do not assume every person you talk to is consensual to challenging belief systems, truth-seeking, and exploring ideas every waking moment of their lives like you.

Number 3:

Sucker Punching

Imagine you are sitting down to dinner at your favorite restaurant and, before the waiter gets to your table, you scream your entire family’s order out loud from across the restaurant. What are the odds that he says “what the f#%”? Moreover, what are the odds that he picks any of that up and brings it to your table with no mistakes?

This is how people feel when you skip over the introductions in presentations, rapport building in meetings, and any scenario where a general social easing is expected. Skipping immediately to business disallows trust building, emotional priming, or idea preparation for the other side. They might feel stressed out, tense up and send the conversation in a totally different way than you intend. They feel like the waiter, “what the f#%?” Even if they don’t directly express it to you.

Always get to know the person, the context of their day so far, their life, and their purpose for meeting before diving into features, sales, negotiations or propositions. This information is sometimes more valuable than the minutia of points and topics covered by the conversation. The small talk has giant returns on relationship strength, networking, and executing successful sales. But more importantly, this is an efficient and polite way to communicate smoothly and effectively.

DM or put in the comments all the ticks, devices, strategies, and nonsense that has messed you up too.

The Secret to Getting Better Sleep

April 14, 2021 by Greg Pestinger

We all want the secret to getting better sleep, waking up and feel energized so that we are able to take the day on full force. Oftentimes though, we find ourselves hitting the snooze button over and over again, wishing that those few extra minutes would somehow make us feel the energy we are looking for. No matter the amount of times we hit snooze, we still aren’t waking up feeling rejuvenated and full of energy. Today I am going to tell you about the secret tip that is proven to help you improve your sleep.

You didn’t guess it… the secret is sunlight

What? That is usually the reaction I get when I work with people on improving their sleep and I mention sunlight. I am not telling you to sleep in sunlight, to buy artificial lights that mimic sunlight, or to get a certain amount of Vitamin D to improve your sleep. I am going to explain how to use sunlight to scientifically tap in to your circadian rhythm to promote higher quality sleep.

Our circadian rhythm can be defined as “a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours.” It is our internal clock! Our internal clock is naturally set by a combination of things: when we eat, when we exercise, when we went to sleep and woke up the day before. But more than anything, sunlight impacts our circadian rhythm.

How we can leverage sunlight to improve our sleep

The short version: within 30 minutes of waking up, go outside to get some sunlight (do not ever look directly at the sun, it can permanently damage your eyes. Simply being outside in sunlight is enough) on hitting your eyes. If you are able to, get some exposure to sunlight as the sun is setting as well.

The longer version:

Exposing ourselves to sunlight within the first 30 minutes of waking up for 2-3 minutes helps to set our circadian rhythm. This is as simple as walking outside for a couple of minutes or sitting on your front porch while you drink your morning coffee. This sunlight triggers our brain to let it know that it is the morning and we are getting started for the day. It is also beneficial to see sunlight as the sun is setting, as different wavelengths of sunlight are admitted which trigger our brain to let us know that it is time to start winding down for the day. If you are looking for this to be explained in depth scientifically, check out this podcast by Andrew Huberman where he explains this in great detail.

This has been scientifically proven to help improve the quality of your sleep in just two days. This will help for you to fall asleep easier and to go to bed earlier if that is your goal. There are all kinds of medicines, supplements, tips and tricks, and routines that are utilized to help you wake up feeling refreshed. Why not start with what is natural and biological to us? Sunlight!

Some important details

Please do not stare at the sun or even look directly at the sun, this can cause permanent damage to your eyes. You get more than enough sunlight (measured in Lux) from simply being outside.
Sunlight produces around 10,000 Lux depending on where you are on the planet. If you have the windows up in your car while you are driving, you may be hit with 1,000 Lux. “So if I need 2-3 minutes at 10,000 Lux, I can just do 20-30 minutes of sunlight at 1,000 Lux?”. Not exactly. For you to get the amount of sunlight necessary to set your circadian rhythm while you are behind a window, it will take 50-60 times longer than it would by just going outside to direct sunlight.
Standing in your living room, you will only be receiving 50 Lux of light. A mere fraction of what the sun produces!

3 ways to increase productivity at work:

April 13, 2021 by Greg Pestinger

Whether you are working 9-5 or you create your own schedule, when you are “on the clock” there is no doubt that you are wanting to get more done. Of course you could work more hours to get more done, but there is a lot of time “on the clock” that isn’t being utilized. We are not going to tell you to skip lunch and take no bathroom breaks. We are going to run through simple tools and techniques you can implement today to help you get more done.

Turn off notifications… it is backed by science

Let’s start with a scary fact. The average worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes. You may be thinking, “how is this even possible?” or “that could never be me!” but let me explain in more detail. It seems obvious why this turning off notifications is important, but I promise there is more to it. If you are in the middle of working hard and your phone lights up from a notification you get, you may lose 5 seconds from looking at the notification and getting back to your work. Even if this happens 12 times a day you only lose 60 seconds of productivity.

Or say if you have your email notifications on and you get an email that takes 3 minutes to thoughtfully read and respond to and that happens 15 times a day, that is only 45 minutes. So after our notifications and our emails, we are down to 7 hours and 14 minutes of productivity. How do people get down to less than 3 hours of productivity a day? A lot of emails? Possibly, but not entirely.

The human brain is not efficient at switching between points of attention and maintaining a great deal of focus. When you are in the zone working hard on a project at work and you get an email that you read and respond to right away, your brain does not automatically jump back into the deep focus you had before. It takes your brain roughly 11 minutes to get back to the focused state you were in prior to your email. Every time you look at a notification and then back to your work, you lose 11 minutes of focus. That is not saying you won’t get things done in the 11 minutes until your brian is focused, it is time that could be better spent. If every hour, you get distracted by 3 notifications, you lose 33 minutes of focused productivity. That is 4 hours and 15 minutes of focus that is lost because…you won’t turn your notifications off.

Turn your notifications off on your phone and email except for the people who you want to always have direct access to. Try this for one day and your focus and productivity will sky rocket.

Plan and Prioritize

There is always going to be more to do, but you are never going to be able to do it all. The seemingly endless list of tasks that we have to accomplish makes it difficult to start. It makes it even more difficult to start on what is most important! When you sit down at your desk or your kitchen table (your virtual office), spend the first 10 minutes of your day writing down what you need to accomplish that day. Make an exhaustive list of tasks and projects that need work. Then, prioritize that list to what needs to be done first, second, third, and so on. A good way to prioritize tasks is to start off with what is most important and most urgent. These are things that have the greatest consequences if they are not completed and they also have an impending deadline.

After you plan and prioritize your tasks, start on the first one! Do not do any work on the other tasks on your list. Stay single focused on the first and most important task at hand. When that is completed, move on to the next. You will be amazed at how in just a few hours, you went from feeling completely overwhelmed to knocking off everything on your list! Writing what we have to do down and prioritizing helps to take the weight out of our mind with the list of things we have to do and the decisions on what we should do next.

Declutter your Environment

The next time you sit down to work, really take in your work space. Those pieces of papers are piling up to your left and you have had the same sticky note on your right for 5 months now. Take some time to declutter your environment. The cleanliness and organization of your work space will help for you to stay focused. It also allows you to start the day off with some productivity! You feel good when you take the time to clean up and declutter your workspace. You are then able to carry your momentum into your work.

A clean workspace makes us feel good about ourselves and our environment. It is a booster for the day. A cluttered workspace equals a cluttered mind. Everyone knows how difficult it is to get things done when you have a lot on your mind. It is the same with your workspace! You move faster, are more efficient, and more organized when you start the day with decluttering your environment.

Stress Management

October 15, 2020 by Jon Salmen

Right now, this year, the year to come… it is all very stressful and the world is a bit tense. But I believe that we can approach our lives with more optimism and hopefulness despite each negative circumstance. We are trying our hardest to field every piece of information we receive and filter them all out, but what if we can put a positive attitude on auto-pilot?

Our lives consist of more than just randomly occurring events and individual moments and they are more than our routines. The way a painter or writer takes days, months, even years to craft something beautiful, we too can approach each of these moments with similar finesse and style.

Stress gets in the way of our patience to see things through and it hinders our ability to look ahead. Stress often begs us to look down at each and every small step. We sometimes go like this until we are brought to our knees, consuming to make ourselves feel better; TV, alcohol, social media, food, drugs, etc. But as we all know, those are not permanent or healthy solutions.

If our vision is ahead of us and we are looking down, of course those steps feel like chores, like useless expenditures of our time, money, and energy. Likewise, we will create other games and states of mind to distract ourselves from our problems. But it is only when we are able to see that what has been is in the process of creating what will be, that we can begin to appreciate each and every moment as a moment of our own unique creation.

When we are constantly moving closer to our vision, each step feels more important, and when something is important to us, the stress becomes a motivator instead of a depressant.

How do we do this?

First and foremost, Create a Clear Vision.

Get your What Will Be extra clear. This is your vision for life! Have you no vision for your life?! Of course you do. But we forget sometimes, don’t we? If you haven’t already, create a clear vision for your life or go back and revisit one you’ve already made and adjust. Feel welcome to use the P3 commitment coaching format available for planning out each category of your life.

Additionally, Have a Silent “I” Time. SIT.

Show daily appreciation to yourself by sitting undistracted for 20-30 minutes. There are plenty of ways to do this outside of your shower, but you have to make the effort. There are hundreds of guided meditations online (headspace, youtube, podcasts) and plenty of beautiful peaceful lo-fi beats or piano compositions wherever you get your music. Just plain silence is also nice, and this time to yourself allows you a safe space to analyze your thoughts and feelings so they cannot control your day. During this time, reinterpret your emotions and thoughts and remember that they are not 100% true. You decide what your thoughts mean. Thoughts are not dictations, they are interpretations.

Lastly, Turn your emotion into motion.

Yes, there is only so much vision boarding and nirvana reaching you can do before you must move your body into action. Set physical goals that are as ambitious as your career or relationship goals and do them together. When we put ourselves to work, we can consciously choose to see ourselves manifesting something healthier and better for ourselves. This commitment to your health will carry over to your other commitments as well.