Clear The Field Before You Aim

How are you? Come on in here, man. It's going to be a fun week. I'm so happy you're here today. We're talking goals because everybody likes talking about goals, of course.

Well, not really. I mean, this is a different take on goals this week. And if you didn't hear yesterday's show, you need to go listen to it. All right.

But today, how to clear the field before you aim. Okay, it is The Daily Boost from MotivationToBoom.com. I'm on vacation this week. It doesn't matter to you because I'm here for you today.

So I hope you binged. I hope you download it, right? Good to have you. My name is Scott Sweet. You're a strange trend over the years. This is weird. Can I share something with you?

Yeah, I've done this so long now, almost 20 years, and this show very enthusiastically most of the time, although... Yeah, sometimes not so, but mostly pretty good. I'm pretty happy. I love what I do, so I just walk in here and just kind of do it.

But over the years, we noticed something. Back in the old days, a long time ago, we launched these shows like we release at midnight. And on Monday and Tuesday, man, we just got, or actually Sunday night, people downloaded my stuff like crazy.

And then it was like this thing from Sunday night through Wednesday, people downloaded. And then it kind of stretched out throughout the week. In the past six months, I don't know what happened.

We're hitting downloads about every 10 days. So I kind of figured it out. I figured you guys are not doing daily stuff so much anymore, but you're binging, you're loading up, and then you're doing the daily. You're kind of showing up, you're downloading a bunch of stuff, you wait about 10 days, you can see what I put out there, and then you start picking and choosing as you want to listen.

Kind of interesting, though, just to show you, listening patterns, right? Let's move on with the show today because we're talking goals, basically talking freedom, all centered around the freedom of the Independence Day holiday. We are kind of in the middle of celebrating really right now. Started last week at the Peaceful Base because my absolute belief that if you don't have peace in your life, some steady foundation, the rest is kind of hard to build.

And I know that's really the boring part, but also it's the part that's most important. And it's the part that once you get it done, you're like, man, look at this.

That's the goal of most people. So we did that all last week long, but you can't have that without the aspirational part of it because, you know, we want stuff. We want to aspire to things.

That's goal setting. Goal setting is a solid thing. It works well. It's built into you. It's not some motivational thing. It's who you are. But it's been overworked over the years.

I mean, people like me have talked about it endlessly ever since Brian Tracy did the science of goal setting. And we're like, yeah, whatever. So I'm going to say it like this. You know what works with goals.

If you're really young, maybe you don't. You got to learn the stuff. Most people been there, done that, goals don't work, they do work, whatever happens, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not even going to go there today.

But we are going to use it as a metaphor to get through the week. So we started out yesterday basically saying it's all about using it as a freedom tool and not a to-do list.

So I'm a pilot. I want to go to Mars, right? That's what I want to do. Elon's got a plan. I'm going to try to get on and do that. I'm a pilot. As a pilot, I know something.

I know that I need to pre-flight my airplane. That's why you walk around the airplane. You make sure it's all good. There's a lot of things you do on the outside and the inside to make sure the plane is ready to fly.

Why do you pre-flight it? Well, I know you jump in your car. I know you jump on your motorcycle. I know you jump in your motorhome and you don't pre-flight that, although you probably ought to depending on what you're in.

But you know, for the most part, if something happens, it's not catastrophic. But if you're in an airplane, it's kind of catastrophic, isn't it? So you don't fire the engines of an airplane or a rocket ship or, well, let's be an airplane, if you're on the runway, right?

If you were to sit in your airplane, you do a pre-flight, you look out the front window of the airplane, the goal where you're going to head down that runway, right? And it's covered with junk and stuff on the runway. What would you do?

What would you do if clutter is on the ground? Well, I'll tell you what's going to happen. If clutter is on the ground, a crash is going to happen in the air.

Minimum is going to happen. It may happen on the ground. So we pre-flight, we start getting ready to pay attention. We're clearing the field before we aim where we're heading.

Now, the real reason for goals and the real reason why they don't stick most of the time, it's not willpower, by the way. Willpower is fleeting. It's not discipline. Some people say it's discipline.

I agree. Discipline is how you get stuff done, right? But that's not the real reason. Too many things are pulling at once. You cannot point at one when you're carrying 40 or 50 or 100 things.

If you think you're so disciplined that you have so much willpower that you can say, well, I've got 72 things going on right now. I'm going to do them all at the same time. You are foolish.

I'll say it as it is. And if you told me that and say, Scott, could you help me reach my 72 things? I'll say, no, you're foolish. And I don't work with foolish people because that makes me foolish.

And I'm going to fail. More is on the other side of less. That dropped out of my mouth probably two years ago. More is on the other side of less. More of life, more money, more everything.

It's on the other side of less. What's that? Less complexity, more sophistication, less stuff on the ground. Plainly said, it's subtraction. That's what you do.

Nobody ever wants to do that. Because they feel like quitting is kind of what it comes down to. When I ask people to subtract some things from your life, they feel like, I can't quit. I'm invested.

This is what I've always done. You're not doing that. You're not subtracting, taking yourself away. You're aiming. You're aiming at your goal. I have a test for you.

You have a lot on your plate, right? I'm doing this because it fits. That's what I should be saying. Or because I can. If it fits, cool. Because I can is how you stay stuck.

Doing just really good stuff. Because you can and you do. I mean, you can do anything. But as I said a couple of weeks ago, that's your problem. So it's a simple test.

Whatever goal you're setting today, are you doing it because it fits you and how you feel and where you want to go and what you want to build, the freedom you want to go after? Is that why you're setting it and why you're trying to aim it in the right direction? Or are you doing it because you can?

That is how you really get stuck. And listen, I get stuck in that all the time. I can do lots of things really, really well. Ask anybody who knows me really well.

It's amazing this stuff. I know how to do well. Oh, yes, I do really lots of things crappy, too. I usually admit to that. I know what I can't do, but man, I can do a lot really, really well.

It's a trap for me. Man, you know, when I think about my aiming, I've often said I'm a good quitter and you should be too. Because clearing the field for takeoff, clearing the deck is what successful people do.

I've dropped a lot of roles I used to play. I dropped them every day. Today I'm dropping three roles when I get done with this podcast. I dropped them afterwards because if I dropped them before, I would have been so thrilled.

You couldn't, you couldn't have stand in my energy. Projects fully capable of running good ideas. I'm not going to say anything about where they're being dropped because they may listen to the podcast, but they're personal people, they're organizations.

There are things I had planned in and been in. I've worked really hard at. I'm dropping them because they were bad. Because they were drowning in noise.

The signal that I was looking for was not there. Signal, that word I never said until like, I don't know, a year ago and suddenly everybody was saying signal.

But it's true. It's like, what was I thinking goal? As I clear the field and get ready to go toward my goal and aim toward my goal, I got to look at the things that we need to get out of the way. More is on the other side of the less.

And most people I work with, and I do it a lot, I'm going to say 80% of my conversations are about me simply saying, get rid of that. And they don't even see it coming. I don't see it coming either.

I mean, it takes a while for me to kind of see what's really in the way. It's part of the coaching thing. I kind of pay attention to what's going on and say, oh, by the way, why are you doing that for? That's stopping you.

Finally, clearing the field, it gets kind of loud sometimes. If you have a big goal that's trying to get your attention and you have a lot of stuff around you, you're not going to hear it. You're not going to see it.

It's just going to be meshed in everything. So we talk like a mission to Mars. I'm going to take my little airplane, turn it into a rocket ship. I'm going to go to Mars.

The problem is it's not going to get there as long as there's so much stuff just around it. It's little things that really cause the problem. So we're pushing you more and more and more to decide that big thing you want to do. We'll get on that tomorrow a little bit.

We call it a Mars mission. It used to be called a moonshot, but then Eli was born, or Elon was born. Eli's my grandson. So hang on for the ride, because we're going to take you through.

If you didn't catch Monday's show, make sure you listen to it. It is set up today's, and of course, today's sets up tomorrow's.