PODCAST - why failing to achieve your goals is actually progress
===
[00:00:00] Learning Transformed is brought to you by E-Learning Partners, your guide to designing transformational learning experiences in the age of ai. For millennia human intelligence was the highest form of intelligence on earth. Until now. Hi, I'm ai. I can process more information in seconds than any human in a lifetime.
This shift raises not only practical questions about the future of learning, but existential ones about the meaning of human life, growth and evolution
on this podcast hosted by me. Johnny Ha. We navigate these questions with clarity, creativity, and confidence. As the most adaptable species on the planet, we cannot only survive the rise of [00:01:00] artificial intelligence, but create better human centered, AI powered learning experiences that elevate humanity to a new era of abundance, transformation and meaning
AI is rising. And so are we
Now, let's dive in.
I have fallen short of achieving goals before, but this one hit differently and no, I'm not talking about the race I dropped out of in July of last year, where 20 miles into a overnight race that I was, I had the goal of setting the course record. I decided that my heel hurt too much. My head wasn't in it, and I didn't wanna suffer through eight more hours of running in the night.
No, this goal was a business goal, a goal that [00:02:00] I created based on the Impossible Goals framework that I've shared with you on the show before. The framework created by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, where we set goals that create a 10 x future for ourselves, and we set them in a ridiculously short amount of time, three years or less.
Well, I took this to the next level. I set the goal of serving a million dollars worth of customers in 90 days or less, and after using this goal to create pathways, thinking where we work from the goal. So once we set the impossible goal, and you can check out. Another podcast episode and video on my channel all about how to set impossible goals in the past.
I have struggled to achieve various business goals over the years, and I told myself this time it would be different because I used the impossible goal framework while spoiler, I fell short and I was crushed. I thought that I would never set a [00:03:00] goal again. I didn't really know what the next step was until I was reminded.
Of the principles in the book, the Gap in the Game by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, principles that Dan Sullivan has been teaching high level entrepreneurs in his Strategic Coach program for years, and that's why today I wanna share with you why. Failing to achieve your goals is actually progress.
It's interesting because back in 2021, I read the gap in the gain for the first time, and what I learned from this book is that it is important for us to, instead of measuring forward. So this is where we currently are. This is you. This is me. If you're listening to this as a podcast, I just drew an arrow across the board from one side to the other with you slash me.
On one side, what we do, or what I've done in the past is I have measured where I [00:04:00] currently am. So this is where we currently are, and I've measured forward to, this is where I want to be at the. Other end of the line where I want to be. The challenge of this is you are never going to be here because the line is always moving.
So when we measure forward, we typically are going to be let down. The opposite of this is when we take ourselves on this side. You me. So now I'm on the other end of the board and we measure back. So we have this arrow going the opposite direction, and this is where we were. Well, the whole concept in the gap of the game is to, instead of always measuring forward, we want to measure.
Back. We set goals to propel us forward, to work from the future self, to make [00:05:00] decisions, to create pathways thinking, which is basically changing how our brains think and change the actions that we take on a daily basis to achieve our, a possible goal, to work towards our impossible goal. But when we measure.
We always want to measure backwards. We wanna look at where we were 90 days ago. We wanna measure and look where we were a week ago, a month ago, 90 days ago, six months ago, a year ago, and compare where we currently are to. Then when we do this, we start coming up with wins. We start getting into the game.
Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy define the gap as when we find the gap, the literal, what we don't have is in our future to what we have now. That's the gap. When we look at, okay, I have this goal, but I don't have it right now. There's this gap in my life. There's this gap in my. Goals. There's just a gap that I can't fill [00:06:00] because I'm always reaching forward.
Well, the gain is this other philosophy where we look at, I've come so far, this is where I came from. One of the parts of the book that really struck me is when Ben and Dan discuss how we all have made. Massive 10 XA hundred x jumps in our lives. I want you to take that in for a second. We have all made massive.
You and I have made massive 10 XA hundred x thousand x jumps in our lives. If you don't believe me, think about the fact that when you were born, you couldn't feed yourself when you were born. You couldn't walk when you were born. You couldn't speak. You had to do these things it never done before. You had to take a monumental jump forward.
You had to learn how to crawl before you could walk. You had to learn how to [00:07:00] take care of yourself. You had to do all these things that we take for granted today. But when you look at that, that you are now here and these are all the things that you went through that you achieved along the way. We start.
Putting ourselves into gain thinking, and this was the solution that I was looking for when I failed to achieve my impossible goal. I didn't know what to do next, but then I realized that I needed to look at where I was 90 days prior when I set the goal to where I was today, to where I was, the day that I decided that I needed to achieve my goal by, and when I did that.
This all went away. No more gap thinking occurred. I started to look at, or Dan Sullivan, how he likes to put it is if you have a goal, and let's say that there's 30 steps to get you. To achieve that goal. Let's say you have a three year goal, one year goal, whatever it is. So [00:08:00] let's say, once again, let's draw our same image here with our line where we have you and me on one end of the board, and then we have where we want to be, or we're gonna call it goal this time on the other end of the board.
And we have this. A timeframe for my goal, it was 90 days is what I gave myself, and I did this because I wanted a ridiculously short timeframe that would change how my thinking occurred, my actions that I would take in the present moment. To get to the goal. 'cause I knew that this goal was going to challenge me, and it definitely did.
Well, let's say that there's 30 steps here, and this is where we start. We start here, we finish here at the goal. Well, the cool thing here is if I had never set this. Then I would've not made any progress to it at all. But since I set the goal, let's say that this is step 30, is achieving the goal, and that [00:09:00] we started step zero or step one, however you wanna say it, but I'm gonna say step zero, I believe.
That I at least made it to step 20. This is amazing. So instead of looking, oh, I didn't get the last 10 steps done to this goal, what we need to do, what the gap in the game teaches us, what Dan Sullivan teaches us is we need to look at, wow, we started at zero and now we're at 20. This is amazing, and this is why you need to continuously set goals and stop being hard on yourself.
When you don't achieve them, now you need to have some accountability. But as long as you have moved towards your goal, you have made progress. And that's why we wanna set impossible goals. 'cause if you set a small goal and you don't achieve it, you may not make any progress. But when you set an impossible goal, you are forced.
To make progress. Now, before I share my three step [00:10:00] goal reframe that I created for myself after going through this dark place of not achieving my impossible goal, I want you to think about other monumental achievements you have had in your life. For me, the biggest achievement that really changed how I look at how our minds limit you and I.
Is when I went from running only a couple miles here and there to being a race winning ultra marathon athlete and some context here. Back when I was four years old, I was diagnosed with asthma. I'd had it for years, had breathing challenges. Basically since I was born, there was talk that there was something wrong with my lungs.
And then finally at four years old, they're like, you have asthma. Here's your inhaler. You probably shouldn't run very much during your life. Not gonna run marathons, probably not gonna play soccer. That was my favorite sport at the time and for about 20 years. And uh, I was crushed. Well, uh. Throughout the years, [00:11:00] I went from being this 4-year-old who was told not to run to playing entire soccer games, to playing five games in a day during an intense tournament weekend, to running double digit mileage, to finishing my first marathon, to ultimately working my way up to winning a hundred kilometer.
Ultra marathon race. What is your story? What jumps have you made? Because when you look at that, when we look back, I invite you right now to look back and I know I gave you some ideas of we all at some point couldn't feed ourselves, couldn't walk, couldn't crawl, all these things, and now most of us can.
What other amazing moments in your life have you created with these 10 x jumps, with these impossible goals? Whatever it is. I want you to think about that. And celebrate and remember, this is why you need to set impossible goals, and this is why you need to celebrate the progress along the way. So here's my three [00:12:00] step goal.
Reframe now. This isn't mine. This is taken from probably a lot of different sources out there, most notably from Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, uh, or at least inspired by them. So. Here's what I do now, whenever I set a goal, an impossible goal, I want to think through why am I doing this in the first place?
And yes, I put goals, but really it's impossible goals, impossible goals, which remember, it needs to be a 10 x future. So something 10 x more than what you have right now in whatever area it is, and it needs to be in a ridiculously short timeframe. So three. Years or less. I like to think of different timeline horizons.
So three years, one year you can do six months, but my favor is do three years, one year, 90 [00:13:00] days, and I think through how would I go about achieving this goal, this 10 x goal, and each of these intervals. Well, the reason why it's important to come up with why we are doing this in the first place is because the goal of setting impossible goals isn't necessarily to achieve the impossible goal.
But Johnny, that that doesn't make sense to me. What do you mean? Well, here's what I. The first marathon that I ever finished. My goal initially was my impossible goal. This was a ridiculous goal. When I look back on it, my goal was to run a sub four hour marathon. The first marathon I ever ran, a sub four hour marathon on trails.
That was the goal. I had never ran more than six miles before. I have asthma and uh, I hated running. And my goal is to run a sub four hour marathon. Well, if I never set that goal, then I would've never have ran double digit mileage. There would've been no reason for me to, but by setting that goal, I not only ran 10 miles, [00:14:00] 12 miles, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, and ultimately 26.2 miles.
Now it took me six and a half hours to do it. But the point is, if I didn't set that goal of run a sub four hour marathon, I may have never ran a marathon. So the why is we set the goal to change how we make decisions and take action in the present. This is. The true reason that we set goals and why you need to set an impossible goal, don't set an achievable goal.
If I was to set an achievable goal, my goal would've been, well, it'd be great if I could run 10 miles someday. Well, if that was my goal, I may have never have done it. You see, you see how this works. We need to stretch ourselves. Because when we do that, we create new pathways in our mind to think through achieving the thing.
So for me, I started with, Hey, I'd like to serve a million dollars worth of [00:15:00] clients in a year. And then I was like, well, really, that really isn't that big of a jump from where I currently am. It's about a three x jump. What if? What if I changed that to six months and my brain started thinking a bit more, but I still wasn't making different decisions in my mind.
So I finally decided that 90 days was what I needed to do. And once I came up with, okay, I'm going to serve a million dollars worth of customers worth of clients where the students in 90 days, everything changed. My focus changed how I serve, changed, how I build partnerships changed. And while I didn't serve a million dollars worth of customers in 90 days, in a hundred days, I built two of the best.
Partnerships I have ever built in my entire life with companies who are changing the world. And that occurred because of my [00:16:00] impossible goal and another impossible goal I set, which is to serve a hundred million students, a hundred million learners, a hundred million people worldwide by partnering with mission-driven organizations to empower them to change the world.
With learning by doing that completely changed my business. And ultimately my life. So this is the why. Put your ego aside. You may not achieve your impossible goal, but you are going to achieve amazing things on your way there. Now it's really interesting because I set my goal, my impossible goal in the first place to be monetarily driven.
'cause I didn't know what else to set. But once I set that goal and I put a ridiculous timeframe on it, I started coming up with. Other measurements, other things that were more important to me. Well, if I'm gonna serve a million dollars worth of customers, I want them to be customers that I am extremely passionate about and that I know that I can help.
I want to [00:17:00] serve people all around the world to change their lives. So I started coming up with different ways to measure success, and that's really the second reframe here, is to change how. We measure success because one of my amazing mentors, Graham Cochrane, has always said, if you have a monetary goal or a goal with your business, but you have to sacrifice your life, sacrifice time with your family, your friends to get there, why would you even try to get there?
And that was kinda where I was at with my goal. Is, yes, I want my company to make X amount of money in 90 days, X amount of money a year. But if I'm doing it working with clients that I don't like, then what are we doing here? If I'm doing it working a hundred hour weeks? Then what are we doing here? If I'm doing it, not making the global impact that I want to do, that I want to make, then what is the point in the first place?
So what you need to do is [00:18:00] once you set that impossible goal and you start working towards it, you may realize that you don't actually want the goal. And that's what I realized is I realized that instead of having this goal of serving a million dollars worth of customers in 90 days, I came up with I want to create three powerful partnerships with organizations in the next 90 days.
So I reframed my goal and I changed how I measured success. And by doing that, I actually, my goal was. Three partnerships in 90 days, and guess what? I didn't get the three, but I got two and I didn't do it in 90 days. I did it in a hundred days. The two partnerships are with the. Best clients that I've ever worked with because of the missions that we are supporting together.
So this is how I measure success, even though I didn't achieve my initial impossible goal. Same [00:19:00] thing for you when you were. Setting your impossible goal. Look at what you did achieve, what progress did you make? How did your impossible goal change? How did you reframe it over time, and what were the results of that?
Reframing? The results for me is partnering with my buddy Mario and. Sell Isol working on haling, the global suicide rate in the next three years by empowering organizations with our support over suicide program to support people to create connection in the world. Once again, sell aol. Wellbeing for all and partnering with my friends over at kir, bringing medical grade, the highest quality medical grade C, B, D to providers, to medical providers worldwide and educating them so they can support and serve their patients in new and powerful ways.
And number three. Make sure you celebrate all of the wins you have achieved along the [00:20:00] way. Now I do this daily now, and this is a practice from the Gap in the game. We're at the end of every single day. I write down my three biggest, uh. Wins. This only takes a couple of minutes, so I start by writing down my three biggest wins for the day, and then I write down the three biggest wins that I want for tomorrow.
By doing this, I celebrate all of the wins. Along the way, and now that I've been doing this for four or five months now, the three wins has transformed into seven or eight, but I always make sure that I write down at least three, and I'm grateful for every single win that I achieve. Well, the reason why I'm able to create so many wins is because of my impossible goals.
And you can too. So remember, the next time that you fail to achieve your goal, you have made massive. Progress. Thanks for being here today with me. If you want to [00:21:00] learn how we can work together, how me and my team can support you and your goals with your organization. I have links to my coaching programs, my Enterprise Learning Accelerator partnership program, even have a free masterclass for you to really help you along the way so that you don't fall into the trap of focusing on the wrong.
Online course, the wrong E-Learning program in your business. I'd also love to hear from you and invite you to leave a comment below, sharing your story about what your impossible goal is and what you have done because of it. What have you done because of your impossible goal? Now if you are listening to this as a podcast, you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
Just search for me, Johnny ha on LinkedIn, and send me a connection request and a message. I want to hear from you as well. What is your impossible goal and what have you done because of it? I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to Learning Transformed [00:22:00] Now, if you're designing a transformational learning experience and wanna skip the overwhelm of trial and error. Check out our e-learning platform finder. Just answer a few simple questions and we'll match you with the right platform plus an extended free trial.
And as a bonus, you'll get free access to a course that walks you through building your learning experience on your matched platform. Click on the link in the show notes or go to www.elearningpartners.com/elearning-platform-finder. I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or drop a comment on our YouTube channel.
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:23:00] AI is rising and so are.
