These are the six simple steps that will help you achieve any goal. I don't care what the goal is. These are the steps that you need to follow. These are the steps that work. I'm taking a decade of life and business experience, and I'm jamming it into this conversation. Any goal, there is somebody who's already done it. There is a formula. The reason why there are formulas is because they work, and I want you to steal it. You're going to realize, Oh, yeah, this is how you achieve Everything. Thanks, Mel. You're welcome. Let's jump into it. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so thrilled to be here with you today. I cannot wait to share everything that we're going to talk about today regarding the research around goals and achieving goals and the six simple steps that I followed. This is a formula that I have developed over the course of a decade of business and health and life changes. These are the six simple steps that will help you achieve any goal. I don't care what the goal is. These are the steps that you need to follow.

These are the steps that work. I want to tell you, it is always such an honor to be able to spend some time together with you, but I am particularly excited because what I'm about to teach you today, it works. These are simple steps. If you follow them, I don't care how ambitious your goals are, you can achieve your goals. I know that this is going to be an episode that so many of you share with the people in your life that you deeply care about. You share with your colleagues at work, you share with your adult kids, you share with your siblings, everybody. Everybody needs to know these six simple steps. I also want to take a minute before we jump in and I empack each one of these six steps to welcome you. If you're brand new, if this is the first episode you've ever listened to on the Mel Robbins podcast, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. This is a winner of an episode because I'm taking a decade of life life and business experience, and I'm jamming it into this conversation so that you don't have to learn this stuff the hard way.

You can go straight to the front of the line. You are going to have the cheat code and the proven shortcut to achieving your goals in six simple steps. I want to thank you for pressing play on an episode and taking the time to listen to something that will truly help you change your life. This is one of those episodes you want to bookmark because you're going to want to come back to this over and over and over again. As I unpack each one of these six simple steps to achieving your goals, you're going to realize, Oh, yeah, this is how you achieve anything. This makes so much sense. Thanks, Mel. You're welcome. All right, let's jump into it. The first step to achieving any goal is going to sound super obvious, but what I find is that everybody skips the thing that's obvious, and you don't realize how important it is. I brought so many notes. If you can see me on YouTube, you see that I have all of these highlighted pages. You're going to hear me rustling pages as you're listening. That's because I brought a lot of research, and I have questions from your fellow listeners around the world related to some of these steps.

But the first step, you have to decide what you want. I'll say that again. You have to take the time and decide what you want. Most people don't take the time to even do that, to define the goal, and to determine whether or not the thing that you want even is a goal. That brings me to one of the first nuances of step one, decide what you want. You got to understand the difference between a dream and a goal. Critical distinction. A dream is something that if you close your eyes and you imagine this dream of yours. Let's just take something that is on a lot of people's bucket lists, that you dream of being an author, you dream of publishing a book, you dream of writing a book, whether it's a memoir or a cookbook of your family's recipes or the next fantasy trilogy novel, that deep in your heart, you have this dream that you have written a book, you're a published author. Let me talk about what it feels like to dream. If When you close your eyes and you imagine the dream of being a published author, of a dream of writing a book, you can feel it, can't you?

You can also imagine it. If I were to walk you through an exercise where I guide you through your senses and I say, Okay, your dream has come true. You've written the book, you're a published author, you've sold the movie rights. I mean, how amazing. If I were to walk through your day, what are the sounds that you What does your life look like? You can imagine it in your mind. That's the key difference between a dream and a goal. See, a dream is something you can imagine. A goal is something you achieve. Big difference. Because one is in the thinking, that's the dreaming and the feeling. A goal is in the doing. I want you to just consider the difference between these two sentences, I dream of writing a book versus I have a goal of writing a book this year. Do you feel the difference between those two things? See, a dream is infinite. A dream only exists in your heart and your mind. A dream is trapped inside your soul and your brain. But a goal, a goal is something you do. More importantly, when would you know that a dream is realized?

I don't know. I mean, it's like a dream is realized when you close your eyes and you imagine it. You dream of being healthier. You dream of someday being healthy enough to run a 5K or a marathon versus, I have a goal this year of getting in shape and training and running a 5K or a marathon. Do you feel how different they are? It's because one exists in your mind and the other exists in the world. This is critical. You have to have step one. You have to decide what you want. When you do this, I want you to think about this as I'm asking you this question for step one, decide what you want. It could be anything. I want to drink more water. Another goal could be, I want to start a YouTube channel this year. Another goal might be, I want to go back and earn my degree in nursing. Another goal might be, I want to get out of debt and create financial freedom. Great. That's you deciding what you want and speaking it in the language of a goal. Now, I'm going to take it a step further. Here's a question I want you to ask yourself, because we're not moving to step two of achieving your goals until we get step one on lock, okay?

Here's the question I want you to ask yourself. How are you going to know that you've achieved it? How are you going to know? Let's take the example of financial freedom. You'll know you're out of debt because your credit cards are paid off. Great goal. How am I going to know you're financially free? What's the number in the bank? How are you going to know it? How are you going to measure it? This is critically important because if you can't measure it, it's not a goal. It's just a wish, a want, or a dream. We got to get specific because you got to not only step one, decide what you want, you got to be able to answer the question, how are you going to know you actually achieved it? Because goals are not things you think about. Goals are things you do. When I think about the goals that I've achieved, I've gotten myself out of financial freefall. I mean, many of you know I was 800 grand in debt just 15 years ago and facing bankruptcy. I have gotten myself into a healthier place and have a consistent exercise routine. That was a goal because my hormones went all over the place, and then I started to gain weight, and so I made it a goal.

What do I want? I want to understand my hormones, and I want to develop an exercise routine that makes me feel healthy again, which means I can fit into a size 28 pair of pants. That was my goal. I can measure it. I can measure that. That's a goal. What's another one? I want to drink more water. For me, that means I want to drink two I think these are quart size. I drink two quart size, you can hear the ice, Mason jars every day. That's my goal. That's how I know that I've achieved it. What's another one? I want to be a published author. How do I know that I'm a published author? The only way that I know is I got a book in my hands. That's how I know I'm a published author. I can dream about it all day long, but I know I've achieved it if I can define the terms and conditions under which I'm going to check the box and I did that. In everything that I do, whether it's launching a podcast or it's getting out of debt, or it's getting healthy and in shape in the middle of big hormone shifts, every single one of these things is just defining a goal, deciding what I want, determining how I'm going to measure that I've actually achieved the thing.

And that's step one. And so whatever it is that you have, you do step one, and now we're going to move to step two. You ready? Good. Step two. Write it down. Write it down. I know you're thinking, Okay, Mel, this is pretty basic stuff here. I know. I bet you haven't even written down your goals. This is a major mistake, and it's a major mistake for two reasons. One has to do with the physical act of taking your goal out of your brain, which is basically a dream or a wish or a want, and grounding it in the real world on physical paper. This is an extremely important act for you to do. It's almost like an act of defiance. If you're somebody that struggled with your weight and you're going to stop dreaming about being healthier and you're going to create a goal and exactly what you want. I want to lose 50 pounds. Write it on a piece of paper. Write down the weight. Write down how you know you're going to achieve it. If you've been struggling for a while and you have the audacity and the courage and the clarity to write down what you want in the face of where you've been, you, my friend, are on your way to achieving it.

I pulled some of the research on this, and there's two benefits, and it has to do with something called external storage. I know it's like a fancy word for something really simple and obvious once I explain it to you. But when you write it down on a piece of paper, and let's just take the thing I'm going to keep talking about, you want to be a I want to write a book. When you say, I want to write a book, that's what I'm doing this year. I'm going to know that I have written a book when it's actually physically printed. When you write that down on a piece of paper, that's step two, write it down. That piece of paper is something researchers call external storage. Now, this is where it gets cool. That paper and the fact that you've written it down reminds you of the goal. Then you're going to tack it up somewhere. Why? Because you're going to see it every day, and it's going to remind you that this is something that's important to you. Then what starts to happen is what researchers call encoding. Encoding is when your brain sees something, something as basic as the goal and the thing that you want written down on a piece of paper with clarity.

When your brain sees it, the information, check this out, gets transferred to the hippocampus for analysis. This part of the brain is This is where the brain decides, well, what's important to store in the long term memory and what can we throw out? This is the process of your brain encoding the goal. Why? Because you're telling your brain every day through this piece of paper, this matters to you. Now, why is that important, Mel? I'll tell you why writing it down, step two, is so important. Because when you encode your brain with the thing that matters to you, whether it's getting healthy or it's being in a loving relationship or it's making $100,000 this year or it's getting into nursing school. When you see that every day, here's what's going on. See, your brain all day long has to filter all kinds of information from social media to stuff at work, to things going on with your family, to text messages, to emails. But guess what? If you've written this down, this goal that you have, and your brain sees it every day, as your brain is busy going through the day and it's filtering out information, guess what you've done?

You've encoded this little checklist in your brain. So suddenly you're going to start to notice, Oh, wow, there's an article about writing a book. Oh, wow, there's an exercise routine that can be done in 15 It's interesting. Why am I starting to see things related to my goal? I'll tell you why. This is so well-researched. I'm not even going to take the time to explain all of the studies and research that explains this. You're basically telling your brain what matters to You're telling your brain, this is important, and I want you to remember it, brain, because as you're looking around the world, if you see something that I've encoded, like writing a book or losing weight, then I want you to bring it to my attention. I can explain how this works with a simple example. Have you ever bought a car or just been interested in a car? Then all of a sudden, you're interested in the new Ford Bronco, they're everywhere. Why? Because when you saw the Bronco and you said yourself, Oh, my God, I love the Bronco, and Then you look at it in the marketing materials, Oh, my gosh, I love the Bronco.

Then you see it on social media, Oh, my gosh, I love the Bronco. Then you see your neighbor has one, Oh, my gosh, I'm jealous because I like the Bronco. You're telling your brain it's important to you. You are encoding this interest in your mind. Now your brain is going to go to work. What do you see everywhere? Broncos. That's just the basic way that your brain works to take what's important or what your brain thinks is important to you and to filter the world in a way to help you see more of it. Isn't that cool? That's one reason why you have to write your goal down. I'm going to publish a book by the end of the year. That's my goal. You're going to be shocked at what you start to see. Because if you see this thing written down by your computer every single day or on the home screen of your phone, you're going to start to notice, Oh, my gosh, this thing that I'm interested in, it's everywhere. And that's going to help you. It's going to help you a lot. Now, there's a second reason why I want you to write the goal down and be brave and be specific and claim that thing that you want.

This is research that shows that when you write things down, you're actually more likely to achieve it. There's a number of reasons why. One of the reasons why has to do with what I just explained to you about how your brain now knows it's important, so it's going to filter the world in a way to help you see more opportunities to advance the goal. The second reason why this matters is because it's going to help you remember to do it, and it's going to remind you on those days where you're not motivated or you feel a little down, Oh, yeah, this thing is important to me, and that's going to make it a little easier, which we're going to get to in some of the later steps. The third reason why is because it will help you tremendously when it comes to you pushing yourself on the days that you don't feel like doing it. We're going to come back to step two and writing it down because I'm going to help you find motivation by writing something down a little bit later. I promise you we're going to come back to it. Step number three is find the formula.

Find the formula. You've decided what you want, you've made it very specific so you know what it's going to take. You have answered the question, How am I going to know I've achieved it? You've got this level of specificity. You've written it down. Now, here's your assignment. Go find the formula. For whatever it is that you've written down, the goal that you want to achieve could be getting into a loving relationship after heartbreak or divorce or losing someone you love. It might be creating a new chapter of your life. It could be writing a book. It could be starting a business. It could be getting in shape. It might be learning a new language in five weeks flat. It could be mastering fostering, giving a toast at somebody's wedding. Any goal that you can state and write down for yourself, there is somebody who's already done it. For everything that somebody's already done, there is a formula. For example, there is a formula for how you build a successful real estate business. There just is. There is a formula for how you become a motivational speaker. There's a formula for how you write and publish a book, whether you do it with a publisher or you self-publish or you use hybrid publishing.

There's a formula. There's a formula for how to launch a podcast. In fact, before I started the Mel Robbins podcast, you know what I was doing for the two years before I started this podcast? I was researching the podcast industry and I was looking for the formulas. Do people publish episodes once a week or twice a week or three times a week or five times a week or once a month? And what's the difference? What are people saying about the equipment? What are people What do people say about how long the episode should be? What do people say about advertisers? There's a formula. One of the things that I've noticed over the years is that most people screw this up because you want to do it your way. You think you're copying being. You think that if you do it the same way everybody else did it, then somehow you're stealing somebody else's idea. Do you want to know some? The reason why there are formulas is because they work. The six steps that I'm teaching I'm calling you today to achieve your goals, it's a formula for achieving your goals. I want you to steal it because formulas work.

I have seen too many people waste years of their lives saying, I'm not going to try keto because my sister-in-law is doing it, and I don't want her to think that I'm copying her. I need to do it my way. Screw that. Are you kidding me? If you know what you want, and you know what it's going to look like if you've achieved it, and you have the bravery and clarity to write it down? I want you to find every formula you can, and then I want you to use it. I say this because I screwed myself over. I robbed myself of the opportunity to achieve a goal at a time when I desperately that you're currently needed to achieve a goal. I want you to go out and find the formula for whatever it is, whether it's weight loss or putting yourself out there or gaining confidence or making a million dollars or learning how to be an affiliate marketer online or learning how people are making so much money as influencers. There's a formula. Find it and follow it because every day that you don't, you're wasting time, you're wasting energy, and you're the one that's standing in the way of you achieving your goals.

Because the formula is how you do it. Here's the other thing I'm going to say about it. You're a unique human being. So even if you do exactly what everybody else does, and you follow the formula, and you follow the formula for getting to the real estate business or launching that skincare company. You're still going to do it your own way because you're your own person. You still have to prep the meals, even though you're going to follow the recipes that somebody else is telling you worked for them to balance their hormones. You're still going to put your own spin on it because you can't do anything in life without making it your own because you're going to put your own personal touch on it. I feel so passionate about this because I see too many of you wasting years of your lives sitting around, knowing exactly what you need to be doing or knowing what other people did and telling yourself you can't. Let them think you copied them because you did. Let them think you followed the formula because you did. Let them say you're not that original. So what? You got the goal achieved.

Who cares? Let them say, Oh, well, she just did great. Yes, I did. Let them say whatever the heck they want because you have big, amazing, awesome goals that you're trying to achieve here. So find the formula. I've got a question here from Elise who says, Mel, I'm so excited to start my new business, and the business is giving singing lessons to teenage kids who want to be on Broadway. Now, let me ask you a question, because you probably don't have a goal, like Elise does, of launching a business to give singing lessons to teenage kids who want to be on Broadway. But between you and me, do you think there's somebody on the planet who has launched a business teaching kids how to break into Broadway? I'd venture to guess that there's a bunch of them. I'd also venture to guess that these businesses also have Instagram channels, and they've done podcast episodes where they've talked about their business, or somebody's written a blog article about it. There might even be a book about this, like How to break into Broadway. Even though you and I don't want to do this business, can you see that if we had to, if our life depended upon it, we could find the formula that other people followed.

We could see what we needed to be doing on Instagram and social media. We could see how you market this business and what services you need to offer because you can just look at everybody else's website. That's what I'm talking about when I say a formula. And that's why there's nothing stopping you. In fact, the roadmap is right there. And so Elise continues to write, But as soon as I think about my big, amazing goal, I get paralyzed. I have no idea where to start. I've been sold for years. She's making a couple of mistakes that all get solved by steps one, two, and three. She has decided what she wants. She wants to start a business that helps kids break into Broadway. Okay? Clear. How will you know that you've achieved that goal? Well, Elise is going to have to answer, and you're going to have to answer for yourself, but I would say that I have achieved that goal if I have five paying clients, and I have gotten at least one of my clients an audition for an actual show that is on Broadway or off Broadway. I would count that. That's how I would know I am officially in the business of doing this, and I have achieved my goal.

Now, why would I define it that way? Well, because then I know I've done it. I've got paying clients, so if money is coming in, it sounds like I'm running business. If I'm getting my clients to be able to have an audition, sounds like I'm pretty good at my job. Great. Then I've achieved it. Now I'm going to write it down, and I'm going to write that down, and this is what a lease needs to do. It's five clients, One person has an audition, this is what the business is. Great. Now she's got it in front of her, because one of the reasons why you get paralyzed is if it's a dream, it stays in your head. If it's a goal, it goes down on paper. If it's a dream, it stays locked in your soul as a wish. If it is a goal, it is on paper in front of your face as something to do. Now we know step three, which is find the formula. Elise is paralyzed because A, it's not on paper, and B, she's looking at everybody else around her as people that have already done it. She's too late.

I don't know what to do. No, no, no. Other people do not block your way. They lead the way. Find the formula. I I feel so adamant about this because I didn't follow this advice. This is how I figured out that find the formula is step three in achieving any goal because I didn't do this for a long time, and I literally screwed myself over. What was my goal at the time? Well, 10 years ago, I was miserably in debt. I desperately needed to pay bills. I needed to put groceries on the table. I need to fill up my gas tank with gas. I needed to pay for the town's soccer fee so my kids could play town soccer. I was very motivated. My goal was to figure out how I could become a person that was paid to give motivational speeches. I had started giving speeches. It all just happened organically. I'll tell you that story at a different time. But as people started to ask me more and more to come to small events or speak in church basements or go to companies and talk at brown bag lunches, I started to think, How can I make money doing this?

I didn't know anybody who made money doing this. This was 10 years ago, and so I didn't know who to ask. But one day I went to an event, and there were some other speakers there that looked way more professional than me. They had really fancy PowerPoint presentations, and they were on the big stages. I was just in the backrooms on the panels. I went up to one of them and I asked for advice. This is something you can do because this is how you find a formula. You can either research and stalk people legally online and figure it out for yourself and listen to podcast episodes and do your research, or heck, put it into AI and ask them, What are the 10 steps to doing this goal that I have? You'll be shocked because you'll get the formula. I go up to somebody and I write about this in my new book, The Let Them Theory. In fact, I write about it on page 82, and I want to read to you about this. I asked these experienced speakers at this event, What do I do? They They told me there are three things to do, and it's the same three things everybody does.

Everybody who launches a real estate business, same three things. Everybody that tries to get into nursing school, same three things. Everybody that launches a YouTube channel, same three things. Everybody that becomes an influencer or loses weight, same things, everyone. There's no mystery here. There's just a formula. Here's what they told me to do. They said, Mel, build a simple website photos of you on a stage, plus a description of your keynote and the main takeaways. Second, they said, Mel, get testimonials from a few event planners at past events that you've spoken at. Put them on the website. Easy. Then they said, The third and most important part of the formula. If you want to be paid to give a speech mail, you better start posting about speaking online. You have to turn your social media into your marketing. Post photos from events, post content related to your post photos with the event planners that hire you. Social media is how people find you. Social media demonstrates that you're a player in this industry. Social media is what will lead people to that one-page website where you have testimonials from event planners so they can book you.

That's the formula. Follow it and you'll start getting paid as a motivational speaker. So armed with that advice, this was 10 years ago, I knew exactly what I needed to do. Plus, the stakes were really high. I needed the money to get my family out of debt. So I was very clear about what I needed to do. Now, here's what's interesting about goals. I knew what I wanted. I was highly motivated, and I even knew what I needed to do. I had the formula. Did I follow the formula? Not really. If you're honest with yourself, I bet you're where I am right there. You know what you need to do to lose the weight or to put yourself out there or to convert the bedroom that's been empty for a number of years into an office or a craft studio. You know, you're just not doing it. I hear you. We're going to get to those other three steps in a minute. Yes, I created a website. Yes, I asked for testimonials, and I put them on the website. But did I post on social media? No. Mm-mm. You sitting there going, Guilty Mel. I really want to market my business, but I just don't do it online.

I really want to make money, but I'm not taking that course that teaches me how. See, at the time, my social media was personal. It was filled with photos of my kids, pictures from family trips and selfies with friends. All of my followers were my friends, my former classmates and family members. I'd never posted anything about my desire to become a motivational speaker or the fact that I'd been doing speeches for free for over a year. If you've ever wanted to use social media to launch a business or promote some new aspect of your life or share your art, you know what I'm talking about. You know how hard it is to look at that account that only has photos of your personal life and then make a decision that you're going to turn this into a marketing channel. Now, I'm reading on page 83 of the Let Them Theory book right now. It took me two years to start posting about my business on social media. Why? Because I was afraid of what people would think. If you're sitting there going, Who are you afraid of, Mel? Simple. I was afraid of my friends.

I was worried that if I stopped posting photos of my kids and pictures from barbecues and get-togethers with extended family, and I started posting photos of me speaking at conferences, that people would judge me. Who does I think she is. I mean, who the heck is hiring her to speak? What does she possibly have to say? I mean, do you know what a train wreck her life is? Do you know that her husband's restaurants are closed? What a phony. Now look, I tried to post, but I would thumb through my photos from the event and select one or two, and then what would happen? The fear would kick in. As I would draft the caption, I'd start to feel worried about people's opinions, and I'd start to talk to myself. Do you ever do this as you're about to post something? Does this sound too arrogant? How's this photo? Is this caption professional enough? If I post this, are people going to unfollow me? Are my friends going to think I'm full of myself? Should I just start a separate account from scratch? I went around and around and around and around. I had the formula.

I would then I convinced myself, Oh, it's not worth it to post. You want to know why? Because I had burned through so much energy trying to craft the perfect, most compelling, marketable image and caption, something that would promote me, but it would also ensure that nobody would have a negative thought or unfollow me or think that I'm being too self-centered, that I was literally exhausting myself. If you have a goal of actually trying to lose weight, you probably do this before you go to the gym, and then you have no motivation to go to the gym. If your goal is to get out of debt, I bet you work yourself up as you look at the pile of bills and you think about the budget you need to create and you get so worked up in your mind with all of the stress and drama that, Oh, I'll just do it tomorrow. You have the formula, you're not following it. I literally created hundreds of draft posts, and they just sat there in my drafts for two years. You know what would happen when I did get the jolt of confidence to post? Oh, my gosh.

I would put it up and then I'd be like, and then I would check it obsessively. If in five minutes, it didn't have enough hearts or enough comments, or I felt like, Uh-oh, I would just delete it. I really want you to embrace this because if you know the formula that you could be following, you're You're the one holding yourself back, just like I did. This stupid fear kept me from marketing my business. This is something I wanted to make my full-time career. I was giving other people's opinions more weight and importance than my own ability to get out of debt, to achieve a goal, to get ahead in my life. I mean, talk about giving your power away. When I look back at myself now and I think, my God, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew how I would measure it because I felt that I would achieve that goal if I received a single paycheck. One paycheck means I'm getting paid to give a speech, and now I'm legit. I had the formula. I stopped myself from following it. You will never achieve your goals if you only get to step three, ever.

What is it that you want? Because there is no doubt in my mind, If you follow these six steps, you will achieve it. May not happen this year, but you will achieve it if you follow these six steps. Whether your goal is to launch a successful business or sell your art or publish your music or go on tour or have your videos get a million views or just post a photo of yourself in a bathing suit because it means you accept yourself as you are. If you're censoring yourself in any way, it's because you're afraid of other people's opinions. Me too. I mean, that's why we do it. That's why the tool for following the formula is my let them theory. You have to say, let them. Let them think, say, and feel however they're going to feel. Because my life is my responsibility, and I got to focus on what I can control. I got to say the second part of the let them theory, which is, let me. Let me do the things that I need to do to achieve that goal. Let me put myself out there. Let me act in a way that makes me feel proud of myself.

Because when you start to feel proud of yourself, you're not going to care what anybody thinks because you know the facts, you know the truth, you know who you are. Most advice on this topic, I'm just going to come right out and say it. It sucks. It sucks. Because most people are going to tell you, just stop caring about whatever people think. But nobody tells you how. I'm telling you how. I'm telling you, give people the freedom to think whatever they want. Like, Let them. Let them judge, let them have negative thoughts, let them unfollow you, let them do and feel and think whatever they want to do because you have goals. If you want to achieve your goals, you have to let other people have their opinions about it because you got to take your time and energy back and stop managing that and worrying about it and holding yourself back because you need that time and energy to do step four. Let's move on to step four, because step four is the really irritating, boring, and unglamorous part of achieving your goals. I I call it doing the reps. It took me a long time to figure out this formula, and I want you to feel my conviction about it.

I've tried to make it as simple and as un boring as possible, but step four is super boring. There is absolutely nothing glamorous about achieving your goals. Nothing. Nothing. The faster you get that into your brain, the more successful you're going to be at achieving your goals. Full stop. What is doing the reps. So this comes from my buddy, best-selling author Jeff Walker. Look him up. Fantastic guy, phenomenal business coach. And Jeff said in a meeting that I was in once, he said, I've been asked over the years What is the secret to success? He said, it's doing the reps. The reps are the boring, tedious, annoying actions that you take every day. Just like going to the gym. You want a bigger bicep, you got to do the reps. Is doing reps fun? Nope. Is walking into the gym with your headphones on and picking up a 45-pound weight? That's not what I pick up. I pick out the 3-5-8 pounder, depending upon the exercise. But is that exciting? No. It's tedious. That's how you achieve a goal. There are no big leaps. There's small gains. That's it. I'm going to come back to this over and over and over again.

I'm going to keep saying, the reps are boring because I want you to expect it to be boring. What separates people who achieve their goals from people who do not is simple. People who achieve their goals understand the power of showing up every day and just doing the boring, tedious stuff. That's where greatness is made. It's in the things that aren't fun. It's in the stuff that nobody wants to do. Because let's face it, if it were easy and fun and thrilling to get yourself out of financial debt, everybody would do it. Everybody would have a million dollars in the bank. If it were easy and fun and thrilling to have six-pack abs, everybody would have them. No. That's the thing most people don't talk about. Goals are boring. Goals are tedious. Goals are super annoying. You know how awful it is to write a book? Truly awful. You literally have to sit your butt in a chair. Especially on the days where you got nothing to say and you feel stupid and you think your book idea is dumb, you got to sit there and write. Does that sound fun to you? No. That's why most of us don't do it.

You know how hard it is to lose 100 pounds or to lower your cholesterol? That's no joke. That is a very important goal. You being healthy and vibrant and having a long and amazing life and your health is a huge part of that, that is an enormously worthy and important goal. But step four, don't you dare gaslate yourself into thinking it's going to be fun? There is nothing easy or exciting about achieving a goal. It's a giant pain in the ass, honestly. That's why I'm saying step four is the reps. It is you showing showing up on the days that you don't feel like it. I want to come back to step two. Remember where I said write it down? Because I'm going to give you a couple small things that are going to help you show up and do the tedious thing that you need to do so you can achieve your goal. The first thing is you can use this written exercise that's been researched a lot. Researchers call this an implementation intention. Very fancy term, implementation intention. It's just a simple sentence that you can write down. You're ready? It literally is a formula, and you can put it right underneath the goal that you've written down.

Here's what I want, here's how I know I will have achieved it, and now you're going to write down this statement of intention. I will, and then insert whatever the rep is, I will exercise at, and then you do the time, and then you do the place. That's it. For me, writing the book, I will write for 30 minutes at 9:00 AM in my office. I will do a Pilates mat class at 7:00 AM in my bedroom. I will drink a Mason jar of water at 6:00 AM standing in front of the coffee maker. Writing down this statement, I will do the rep at a certain time in a certain place. God, it sounds so dreadful, doesn't it? No wonder you and I have not achieved our goals. We've been thinking it was supposed to be fun and sexy. We went out and bought all the new sneakers and got all excited about this thing and got a new planner and bought the books. Wait, we have to write a boring sentence about our intention? Mel, I have to make a plan for my reps? Well, you might want to because research shows that when you actually make a plan, 91% of people do the plan.

I'm going to say that again. I'm going to get my research out so I get this right because this is no joke. They did this study with people that wanted to exercise as a goal. You've written down, you know what you want, you've written it down, and they've asked people, Group One had to track if they exercised. That The first group is just tracking exercise in their brain. The second group read a little motivational thing about why exercising matters, like it's important for your body, so now you know why. Now you're going to track whether or not you do it. The third group had to write down a plan, meaning I will exercise at 10:00 in the morning in my neighborhood by walking around the block. 91% of the people that wrote down the plan, I will do the rep at a certain time in a certain place, did it. That's double the amount of people that completed the goal than the people who just thought about it or knew why they should do it. Writing down a plan matters because it helps you do the rep. Because I am going to tell you right now, you're not going to want to.

You're not going to want to exercise. You're not going to want to drink your water. You're not going to want to have the mocktail instead of the alcohol. You're not going to want to make a budget. You're not going to want to clean out your closet. You're not going to want to eat the kale instead of the macaroni and cheese. I don't either. I don't either. You're not going to want to spend time filming videos of yourself and seeing yourself on camera, and then you're not going to want to post it online. That's coming. That's step four. We got to see what you're made of. Are you willing to do the boring, tedious stuff? See, I don't think there's anything special about people that achieve the things that you want, they're just willing to do what you won't do. They get up on the days they don't feel like it, and they literally go do the thing no matter what they feel like. So first things first, write down the plan. I'm going to do the rep at a certain time and in a certain place, and stick it in front of your face. Because based on the research, it's going to make you more likely to do it.

Second thing that you can do, use my five-second rule. In those moments where you don't feel like doing it, so the motivation is not there. Of course, it's not there. Why? Reps are boring. Tedious. Dumb. We hate them. You're not going to see progress right away, which means you're going to hate it even more. Why am I even doing this stupid exercise stuff? I'm still in the same pants for crying out loud. I still can't do a pull-up. I'm working on trying to do a pull-up. You know what stage I'm in? For two weeks, I've been working on hanging. Hanging? I can't even pop my shoulders a quarter inch. I'm working on hanging. This is awful. But this brings me to the five-second roll. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, count backwards, move. It's a little brain hack, tested by research and proven to work for millions of people around the world that will help you push through that feeling of not doing it. I'm going to give you one more. This comes from Dr. Okay, who is a fantastic psychiatrist that has appeared on this podcast a number of times. I'll link to his episode so you can listen to him explain this.

But the basic neuroscience around motivation is we are hardwired to move away from things that feel painful, which is a problem when it comes to step four for achieving your goals, because doing the reps every day is very painful. It's tedious, it's boring, it's annoying, you're not going to see results, it's going to feel pointless. That doesn't feel like fun. When you're presented with two options, should I sit on the couch and shove these chips in my mouth, or should I drag myself out the door and go for a run? You're naturally hardwired to resist the thing that feels hard, which means what? You're You're going to resist the reps. This is why you don't do the formula. Do you see how all this is building? This is where so many of you get stuck. It's where I got stuck. I know what I want. I know why I want it. I know how to measure if I'm doing it. I even know the formula, but I'm not doing it? Well, let's break that. Here's Dr. K's research. When it's time to do that boring thing that you don't want to do because it's 10:00 in the morning and now you're sitting in your kitchen and you said that you were going to pay your bills at this time.

You're just going to say, this is going to sound so dumb, but it works. I know I don't want to do this, but I'm doing it anyway. I know it's going to be hard to go hang from the pull-up bar, Mel, for 60 seconds, but you're going to go do it anyway. When you acknowledge that you don't want to do it, and you acknowledge that it's going to suck, and you acknowledge that it's going to be hard, something interesting happens. Your resistance to it lowers. See, your brain wiring is trying to move you away from the thing that's hard, and that's why you're losing the battle of willpower. You don't need willpower. You can use these little hacks. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. You can also say, I know it's going to be difficult. I've expected this. The fact that it's tedious and boring and annoying means it's working, and I'm going to go do it. And then you're going to see the resistance disappears. That's step number 4. Do the reps over and over and over and over again. That's the game. You want to achieve goals, do the reps. All those people you admire that have what you want, you know what they're doing?

They're doing the reps. If you've ever looked at somebody who becomes an overnight sensation, I want you to look at their actual story because they were doing the reps in the dark for a decade while nobody was paying attention. It's all those mornings where you get up and you don't feel like it that help you achieve your goals. That's how you do it. There is no other way. If you can't get past step four, you might as well cross that goal off your list because this is how it's done. There is no shortcut here, period. No shortcut at all. You do not get to pass any of these steps. That brings me to step number five. This is an important one because I know I'm like, only because I want you to achieve your goals. I don't want to just fluff you up and send you out and then set you up to fail. I want you to understand that you're in for it and you're capable of doing this. Maybe nobody's told you that, that you can do this, but you got to accept this is going to suck for a while. I'm willing to do the things that are difficult because I really want my life to be easy and amazing in the long run.

That's what happens. Do the hard things now, things are easier later. When you constantly opt for what's easy now, your life gets harder and harder and harder. That brings me to step number five, and I love this. So once you start doing the reps and you're like, All right, this is going to blow, but I'm going to do it anyway. This is tedious, and I'm not seeing results, and I'm still hanging here, and I can't even do the shoulder crunch. God forbid, a pull-up doesn't even seem like it's ever going to be in my future, but I'm just going to keep doing the steps, how can you make it fun and easy? That's step number five. Step number five is once you are starting to just show up, and you keep showing up, and you keep taking the walk, or you keep drinking your water, or you keep sitting down and writing, even though what you're writing is just complete garbage that you wouldn't even... You don't even want to read it. That's how bad it is. This is where you take a step back and you ask yourself, Well, how could this be easier and more fun?

Because I've accepted the reality and the truth that it's going to be tedious and boring for a long time, and I'm not going to see results for a long time, and I just got to keep my head down, and I got to keep focusing on the reps. Even on the days where I don't do it, I got to get back to the reps the next day, which is why I love this tip from my buddy Jeff Walker. I say, Just do the reps all the time. My team will tell that. My kids will tell you that. I know, Mom, got to do the reps. We even have in our family group chat, occasionally, one of the kids will say something like, Yep, just putting in the reps today on something that they're working on, which is code for doing the hard work. It's cool. But at some point, and I'd say about a week into consistently doing this, now you get to step above this and say, How can I make this fun and easy? There's three different categories that I want you to think about. Number one is I love visual reminders. How can you take any of the decision making or any of the effort out by having visual reminders?

For example, I love setting alarms on my phone that go off and say, Reminder, you got to go for your walk in 10 minutes. We're having a post-it note where I work that reminds me of the thing that I said that I was going to do because now I don't have to remember it. Here's another way that I do this. I lay out my exercise clothes first thing in the Why? Well, because when I step into my closet, they're laying there like a giant middle finger telling me that it's time to get dressed and go to the gym, which I don't want to do. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to wrestle with a decision. I don't have to overcome my feelings in the closet. I've made it easier because it's right there. Here's another way I've made exercise easier for me, because it's a goal of mine to move my body every day. This is going to sound like the dumbest thing, but I'm telling you, this has changed my life. I figure the exercise workouts I'm going to watch because I like to have an exercise class on Sunday nights.

I know what I'm going to watch on Monday. I know what class I'm going to take on Tuesday. I know what class I'm going to take on Wednesday. Because have you ever gone to the gym and you're like, What am I supposed to do here? I guess I'll just walk on the treadmill for a little bit. Maybe I'll do the arm thing. I was going to do the leg rotation, but there's some guys talking over there by the quad machine, so I guess I'll just go get a latte. That's how it used to work for me. I've made it fun and easy by planning ahead and removing decisions. Here's another way that I make things fun and easy. Instead of having to remember to drink water, I fill up the water the night before, and it's sitting in front of the coffee maker so that when I roll out of bed in the morning, I army-crawled to the coffee maker. If this Mason jar were not sitting in front of the coffee maker, I would start making coffee. But because the Mason jar is out there, I've made it easy to do the thing. What are some other ways you can make it fun?

You can make playlists, you can get somebody to do it with you, you can join an online community, You can take a class. There are so many ways, and this is a fun way for you to go, Okay, how can I set myself up for success to make this easier? One of the things that I love about a particular habit researcher, I'm sure you His name is James Claire. He wrote Atomic Habits. It's the book that synthesizes everybody's research on habits. One of the things that I love about his philosophy is that you will rise or fall to the level of your systems. If you're having trouble staying with the reps, you either have an issue where you don't realize it's boring and hard and tedious and you're not going to see results, and that's the game. You can resolve it by saying, This is going to be hard. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I'm doing it anyway. The fact that it's hard means it's working, I'm going. The second thing that you can do, and this comes from James Clear, is how can I set up my environment or what systems can I create to make this something that's easier or more obvious to do.

Again, I've covered a bunch. You can put up visual reminders. You can plan the night before so things are laid out. If you want to write, have your notebook there or your laptop right by where the coffee maker is and plan to write first thing in the morning You can ask a friend to do it with you. You can sign up for a class or an online community that helps you stay accountable. These are all things that make it easier. Why wouldn't you make it easier on yourself? Because achieving your goals is hard and tedious and boring, but you can do it. That brings me to the final, the sixth step. The sixth step, don't quit. Don't quit. You You already know because step one required you to answer the question, how do I know if I've achieved this goal? For me, I want to publish a book this year, I got to have the physical book in my hands. I'm holding the Let Them Theory book right now. That's how I knew I would achieve the goal. Step one, you already know what success looks like because you've defined it. You've gone through and written it down, and you have found the formula, and you've been busy doing the boring, tedious work.

You've taken steps to make it easy. Now the only thing you need to do is don't quit. I'm just going to say something because now that I have this puppy in my hands and I've actually achieved the goal, Do you want to know how many times I wanted to stop? Oh, my gosh. When I first sat down to write this and was like, Wait a minute. Why is this simple idea let me so hard to write a book about? When I was on version number 2, version number 3, version number 5, version number 7, version number 9. Version number 11 of the manuscript, I wanted to stop. When the publisher came back and was like, Oh, well, I think this. I'm like, Oh, my God, I don't have the energy. I wanted to stop then. And over and over and over again, you're also going to want to stop. And if I had quit at any of those moments, I wouldn't be holding this book. And you wouldn't be able to walk into a bookstore and grab it and read it and feel it and learn from it and understand why the let them theory is something that literally creates instant freedom and power in your life.

There were so many times where I was sitting here above my garage in Southern Vermont, just piles and piles and piles of manuscripts and papers around me thinking, I'm never going to get this done. That's why Why? You have to remind yourself, just don't quit. See, I've come to believe that the secret to success is just not giving up, that life is constantly testing you. That there are going to be days where you don't do the reps. There are going to be weeks where you don't do the reps. There might even be months that you don't do the reps. That's okay. Because what defines your success is not the days where you do it. I actually think it's the days where you come back after you didn't do it. The day that was really hard at work or the week that you were really sick and you couldn't do the reps every day, the small tedious stuff, you couldn't get out for your walk, you couldn't sit down and write, you started start drinking again, whatever it is. It's the day that you return. That defines success because it means you didn't quit. It means that even though things got hard or life derailed you or you just stopped following this system and you let life take over.

You're human. That's okay. It's going to happen. Happens to me, too. Absolutely happens to me, too. You can always come back to this formula. If it is day 37, you have not eaten the way you said you would, you have spent a ridiculous amount of money, even though your goal is to get out of debt, You just didn't do what you said you were going to do. You didn't write, you didn't make a video, you didn't work on the budget, you didn't meditate. 37 days, how about seven months have gone by? You see that little note where you wrote down your goal? It's okay. It's still there. You going and doing the rep defines your success. That's always in your power. The reason why I don't quit is because if you look at anybody's story, it's almost always one of perseverance. Whether you want to talk about Michael Jordan who got cut from his high school team or anybody, honestly. Everybody who is successful has a story of rejection and almost quitting, and the one thing they didn't do is they didn't quit. If you're on the verge of quitting, I've got a question here from Pilar, Mel I've been pouring my heart into starting my online bakery, but nothing's going the way I hoped.

Orders are slow. I'm exhausted. I feel like maybe I'm not cut out for this. I'm at such a low point. I just want to give up. How do I keep going when it feels like everything is falling falling apart. I still relate to this question. What's so amazing about these six steps to achieving your goals is you just go back to step one. If you're at a point where you're questioning whether or not something is working, the answer is actually in the formula I just gave you, which is go back and ask yourself the question, decide what I want. What do I really want? Do I want this to be successful? Or do I want to cut my losses and learn from this and move on? You have to answer that question because you have to define a new goal. That's what I love about these six steps. It's for any goal. The goal might be closing down this business and moving on. The goal might be, No, I'm not giving up. Okay, great. If you're not giving up, write it down. How are you going to know that you're successful? Then find the formula because I'm going to tell you something, Do you think there's a bakery somewhere that was on the verge of closing and then figured something out and all of a sudden had a breakthrough?

Of course there is. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there's probably about 2,000 of them, and they've put their story online. And there was a moment where they thought their bakery business was going under, and then they figured out something unbelievable, and it changed everything. And if it's a formula, it's out there because it works, and you can find it. And then what do you do? You just do the rips. And then what do you do? You just make it easy, however you can. And then what do you do? You don't quit. And you just keep coming back over and over and over and over again. See, you should define what you want, and you need to define how you're going to know that you've achieved it, But you have to throw the timeline out the window. You have to. Because you only have in your control what you're willing to show up and do every day. Your attitude, your feelings, the actions, the reps, you not quitting, that's all within your control. How long it takes to achieve this thing, I actually think that's up to forces that are way beyond you and me.

But all you need to do is to keep trusting that if you keep showing up, if you keep doing the reps, if you keep this front and center, that one of these days, you're going to wake up and realize you not only achieved your goal, it turned out so much more extraordinary than you could have even dreamt it would be. That is what happens when you do this. I want to read one final thing to you from the Let Them Theory book. Because anything that you want to change in your life, just turn it into a goal. And then follow these six steps and keep in mind that it's not going to be fun. This is page 10 of the Let Them Theory Book. Changing my life wasn't glamorous, it was grueling. I didn't achieve success or financial freedom because of some secret. I did it because I was willing to do what most people won't. I woke up every day, and regardless of how I felt, I kept slowly chipping sitting away at my goals for over a decade. It is a painstakingly slow process. Some days, all I focused on was just trying to be a little better than I was the day before.

Often, that's all you need to do. I'm not special or different or gifted or lucky. I just found the tools that worked for me and I used them. Today, my entire career in life's purpose is sharing those tools with you. The six steps that I just walked you through, this is my formula for success. This is how I achieve absolutely every single goal, whether it's personal, whether it's something with a relationship, whether it is creating new friendships, whether it's making more money, whether it's launching a new business, anything. This is my formula, and I want you to steal it. The five-second rule is going to help you push through all of these internal obstacles and take action when you don't feel motivated to do so. You're never going to You're never going to feel ready to change your life. One day, you just get tired of your own BS and you force yourself to do it. You're never going to feel like going to the gym. One day, you just make yourself go. You're never going to feel like having that hard conversation. One day, you just get sick of avoiding it and you force yourself to have it.

You're never going to feel like looking for a better job. One day, you just push yourself to start looking. Every single change that you want to make in your life comes down to defining it as a goal and using the six steps that I just laid out to help you achieve it. I'm telling you this, and I'm so excited for you because you have no idea what you're capable of, and neither did I. But I promise you this, you follow these six steps over and over and over again, and through these simple actions, you will achieve some extraordinary things in your life. I can say that because I just gave you the formula for doing it. You define what you want, you write it down, you find the formula, you do the reps, you find simple ways to try to make it more fun and easy, and you just don't quit until you achieve it. You do that over and over and over again, and you will be astonished by the things that you accomplish in your life. All righty, I'll be waiting for you in the very next episode as soon as you hit play.

For you, thank you, thank you, thank you for watching all the way to the end. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. You're going to want to save this video because this is the formula. This works. You're going to want to come back to it over and over and over again, and I can't wait to hear what you achieve using it. One more thing, it is a goal of mine to have 50% of the people who watch this YouTube channel be subscribers. I'm 7% away from achieving that goal. If you could just hit subscribe, it would mean the world to me. It's free. It means you'll never miss a video. It also means that you're telling us that you really appreciate the content that we're putting out and the world-class experts that we bring you for free every day. All right. I know you're hot on goals and you got some big audacious goals, and so you're probably thinking, Mel, Mel, Mel, what can I watch next? Well, I'll tell you, I would head straight to this video and I'll be waiting for you in it as soon as you hit play.

I'll see you there.