The Jordan Syatt Podcast

The Science of Goal Setting (How to Achieve Your Goals in 2025)

In this episode of The Jordan Syatt Mini-Podcast, I explain the science of goal setting as well as the exact goal-setting process I've used every year for the last decade so you can use it to make the most out of your 2025.

I also share the story of how and when I decided I wanted to Deadlift 4x my bodyweight.

I explain what happened when I completely stopped lifting for 3 months straight as I traveled around Europe and The Middle East.

And I share the [slightly embarrassing] story of when I thought I was having a heart attack in Israel and freaked out on my cab driver.

I hope you enjoy this episode and, if you do, please leave a 5-star review on iTunes and Spotify (huge thank you to everyone who has written one so far).

Finally, if you've been thinking about joining The Inner Circle but haven't yet... we have hundreds of home and bodyweight workouts for you and you can get them all here: www.sfinnercircle.com.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 29 Dec 2024
Audio Format:: other

Hello, and welcome back to the Jordan Cyat mini podcast. Thank you so much for listening. This is Tony Jordan's podcast producer for select solo and conversational episodes. Today, we are going to repost an episode from 2021 about goal setting. This is one of my all-time favorite episodes. Jordan tells me this is one of his all-time favorite episodes. And it's also one of his most popular episodes. So if you haven't heard it, pull up a chair, take a listen. If you have heard it, it's definitely worth listening again, especially in the new year. If you are thinking about your goals, thinking about goals you'd like to achieve, thinking about goals that you haven't yet been able to achieve, this is the episode to listen to. Check it out. Please leave a five star review. And without further ado, the great Jordan Cyat. Welcome back to the Jordan Cyat mini podcast. Thank you so much for listening and happy new year. It's 2021, which is very crazy for me to say, but it is. I'm wicked excited about it. And in this episode, what I'll be doing is using the new year as a way to segue into talking about what I call the science of goal setting. And specifically, I'm going to give you an inside look at the methods I've used over the last decade or so to set and achieve new goals every year. So hopefully by the end of this episode, whether you have fitness goals, health goals, fat loss goals, muscle gain goals, strength gain goals, business goals, whatever goals you might have, hopefully this is going to help you understand how to organize them better so you can attack one by one a little bit more efficiently. Before I get into this episode, there are two quick things I have to say. The first one, I have to say this because I promised to Instagram this morning that I would do it. If you don't follow me on Instagram, you can do it @sci@fitness@syattfitness I saw a ridiculously funny mean today. Maybe you might not find it funny. I thought it was hilarious. Basically, it was a mean that said something to the effect of on the top of it. It was like when you feel a random pain in your chest and then the picture was at the sky just basically saying like, my time has come. And I remembered vividly this time when I was younger, in which I thought I was having a heart attack and I went to the hospital. It turned out that it was just I had been bench pressing the day before and I had a sword chest that was that I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm going to tell you the full story in a second because I was living in Israel. It was a whole mess of a story before I tell you that story. Quick announcement that the next calorie cycling challenge is officially open for registration. We're starting on January 11th. In previous years, I've started challenges and coaching programs like the first couple of days of January. And that's always been a it's been a poor idea because the first couple of days, you know, people are still hung over, still drunk, still partying, whatever it is. So the next calorie cycling challenge begins on January 11th. I'm going to put a link in the description in the show notes if you want to sign up. It's just Jordan Siett.com at the end of every challenge. We choose three people who will win $1,000 and just to be very clear, this is not a I want to lose as much weight as quickly as possible challenge. That's not what it is. It's a 30 day challenge. But my goal with this challenge is to help you build a better relationship with food. That's the purpose of it. The vast majority of people they lose weight as well, but the $1,000 winners don't win $1,000 because they lost the most amount of weight. In fact, if we see people who lose too much too quickly, they don't they don't win. And it's be we do not want to glorify or put rapid weight loss on a pedestal. The whole purpose of this is in this coming year and for the rest of your life, we want you to have a better relationship with food. We want you to enjoy your favorite foods in moderation while still being able to lose body fat, being able to lose weight, have an overall healthy life without eliminating everything. So if that's something that you are interested in, if you want more structure with your nutrition and your workouts, everything is included in the calorie cycling challenge. You also get a free month in the inner circle when you do join. So link in the show notes if you want to do that, if not totally fine. But I think this is going to be a really, really good one. We've done about six or seven calorie cycling challenges over the last year and a half and they've all been a massive success. So I think you're going to like it a lot. Now, as for the heart attack story, I promised. If you have no interest in this, you can just skip right ahead to the, to the goal setting later in the episode. But I was in my early twenties and I had just moved to Israel. Now my Hebrew was, it was okay. It wasn't fluent. There's no way I could have a legitimate conversation. Like I could go to a restaurant and order whatever I wanted to order. I could go to the grocery store and be totally fine. I could be in a cab and be totally fine. But if I had a legitimate in depth conversation, I was, my Hebrew was not good enough for that. So I just moved to Israel early twenties and I was living in an apartment, which was actually, it was an Airbnb. So I got an Airbnb in the middle of Tel Aviv and my roommate, his name was Schmulik. And he was an engineer and nice guy, but a little bit odd. So I didn't really know anybody. I was just okay with the language. And I remember I was in my apartment, Schmulik was out at work. And I started to feel this like shooting pain in my left pack a little bit closer towards the collarbone, but this shooting pain. And I was like, what is going on? So of course I Google it. And then of course, the very first result that I come up with is, you know, you're having a heart attack, go to the hospital immediately. So I freak out. I'm in a foreign country, barely know the language, and I'm convinced I'm having a heart attack. So I try to calm myself down, like I try and relax and say, Jordan, you're fine. It's not a big deal. But then I start to feel these like pulsing pains down my left arm. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I must have made them up. Like I feel like I legitimately felt them, but I think it was my brain. Just, I think brain is absolutely ridiculously smart. And it like sort of created those pulses going into my arm. And I was like, that's it. I'm having a heart attack, my heart rate rapidly increased. I could feel like it was going to just burst out of my chest. And I was convinced I was having a heart attack. The issue is I'm in a brand new city, barely know the language. I have no idea where the nearest hospital is. I don't have a car and my roommate is at work. So I have no idea what to do. So basically I was living in Tel Aviv and a lot of people don't know what Tel Aviv or Israel looks like. Imagine Miami is probably the best way for me to describe Tel Aviv. It's, it's a busy city. I'd say it's a little bit busier than Miami. It's not as spread out as Miami is, but a very busy city on the beach. It's beautiful. So I run out of my, my Airbnb and I flag down a cab. Now, again, my Hebrew is okay. I could be fine in a cab, tell them where I want to go. So I have no issue getting the cab and saying, take me to the nearest hospital. The issue is I thought I knew how to say heart attack. Because I knew the word for heart and I knew the word for attack. The word for heart in Hebrew is live and the word for attack in Hebrew is pegua. So I get in the cab and in Hebrew, I say, take me to the, to the nearest hospital. I'm having a heart attack. All right, I thought that's what I said. The cab driver, I would have expected in that moment for him to be like, okay, let's go hit the gas and just speed away. What actually happened was he put the car in park, put his arm over the path, the front passenger seat and looked back at me. Smiling, but like with this like pitting type of smile, like he was, he was pitying me. He felt sad for me. And I was freaking out. You have to like, I am freaking out. My heart rate is going crazy. My chest is hurting. I'm convinced I'm going to die in the next 10 minutes. And I was like, what are you doing? Take me to the hospital. I'm having a heart attack and he can see I'm freaking out. So he starts to look a little bit confused based on what I'm saying and what he thinks he should do. So that's when I just freak out. I just speak full. I just go English. I don't know if he understood what I said, but I was like, take me to the hospital. I'm having a heart attack. I said it in English. He didn't say a word back, but he took me to the hospital. So long story short, I go to the hospital. I go in, I wait a couple of hours. We figure out that it was because I was bench pressing the day before it wasn't a heart attack and I was like, phew, okay, everything's fine. So I go back to my Airbnb and Schmülick was like, Hey, what's up, man? How is your day? And I was like, you will not believe what just happened to me. And this is over the course of many hours. This was not like a half hour ordeal. This was like a five or six hour ordeal. And I told him, I told him I thought I was having a heart attack and I'm telling him this and this is in English. And I'm telling him that I had a heart attack and I thought I was having a heart attack and I went to the hospital, turned out it was totally fine. But after I had told him everything, I was like, why did the cab driver not go to the hospital right away? Why did he look at me? Like, why was he smiling? And he was like, well, what'd you say? So I told Schmülick what I said in Hebrew. I said, pigua live, which is what directly translates to heart attack. And Schmülick, engineer, nice guy, but a little bit goofy. He lost his breath, laughing so hard. When I said that I told the cab driver, I was having a pigua live. And I was, I was like, why are you laughing? I don't, I don't get why that's funny. It's literally heart attack directly translated. And Schmülick goes, no, no, no, what you told him, you said, go to the hospital. I have a broken heart as though somebody had just broken up with you. So when you directly translate heart attack from English into Hebrew, the word for heart attack actually translates into broken heart. And there's a whole separate phrase, head kef Lev for, for actually a heart attack, the medical condition. So I got into the cab freaking out, yelling at the cab driver to take me to the hospital because I told him I had a broken heart. And that's why he was looking at me very sad and like, are you okay? And he wasn't sure what to do and why I was screaming at him to go to the hospital. So I've always wished I could go back and apologize to that cab driver for freaking out, but such is life. So now let's talk about goal setting now that we're about 10 minutes in. If you're actually still listening to this far, thank you so much. It blows my mind that people actually listen to these stories. Sometimes I think I'm just talking to nobody, but the messages that I've gotten on, on Instagram and the reviews that people have been leaving on, on the podcast on iTunes have been incredible. So thank you to everyone who's been doing that. And as long as you like the stories, I'll keep telling them. So let's talk about the science of goal setting and achievement. First things first. And I have like a whole list of things that I want to cover here. I've said this before in the podcast. I'm going to say it again. One of my favorite quotes is something to the effect of most people radically overestimate what they can do in one year. And dramatically underestimate what they can do in seven. I'm going to say that one more time. Most people radically overestimate what they can do in one year and dramatically underestimate what they can do in seven. The reason I want to start off this podcast with that quote is because we all or many of us tend to set new goals every year, which is great. I'm a huge fan of New Year's resolutions and setting new goals. The issue or one of the issues I've found with when people do this is they expect to achieve that goal by the end of the year. And if they don't think that they will achieve that goal by the end of the year, then they quit, right? And if you follow me on Instagram or follow me on YouTube or this podcast, you know how often I say, you can't screw this up. You can't F this up, right? And the reason I talk about that so much is because when people think they screwed up or when they, when they think they failed, that's when they quit. Now, when you're setting new goals for this new year, for 2021, or setting new goals at any time, but especially in the beginning of a new year, you have to be prepared to understand that this goal might take you three, four, five, six, seven years to achieve. So sure, set it now, but don't expect to accomplish it by January 1st, 2022. That's just more than likely not going to happen. And if you, if you believe that it should happen within that timeframe, you're almost guaranteed setting yourself up for failure. So remember, most people radically overestimate what they can do in one year and dramatically underestimate what you can do in seven. So keep that in mind as you're setting these goals. Now, in terms of the system that I use, the first aspect of this system that I do is I analyze my goals twice a year. So I always analyze my goals at the beginning of every new year within the first week of the new year. So usually between Jan one to Jan seven is when I take about an hour of my time alone, if it's a nice weather, I'll go sit outside at a coffee shop or whatever it is or on a park bench and I'll bring, I have a notebook. I have a notebook that I have all my goals in since the early, since about 2010, 2011 is just my, it's my goal notebook. There's nothing else written in there except for my annual goals, which is really cool for me to go back and look at every year or every six months. So in the beginning of January and then my birthday is May 8th. So it's about, about halfway through the year. So every six months or so, about every six months, I reanalyze my goals. I really, really like doing this. And it's very lucky that it just so happened that way. Um, I take an hour in the beginning of January and I take an hour on my birthday. Every year, just take, sit by myself and just literally write down what my goals are for the next six months. Now, the reason I like doing this is because number one, it's, it's great just to write them down. I think we've all heard that sort of cliche saying, you know, just don't just think about it, write it down. It's true, but also what I like about every six months is number one, it reminds you, right? So maybe you got off track a little bit. Maybe you weren't as consistent as you should have been. So sitting down every six months, like it forces you to sit down and remind yourself of what it is you're trying to achieve, sort of reinvigorates you. The other aspect of this that I really like is it allows you to analyze whether or not it's important to you anymore. And I can't begin to tell you how many times I've sat down to review my goals. And I've realized this goal is no longer important to me. And that's so, so important because if it's no longer important to you or you have a goal that is now significantly more important to you, now you know what to devote your time to. So I strongly recommend sitting two different points throughout the year, maybe early January and the news, maybe July 4th, what, if that's really important to you or just literally maybe January 1 and then July 1 or January 1 and June 1, whatever it is, set a time about six months apart to write your goals down and analyze the goals from before. I think it's super, super important. Now, the next aspect, and you'll see there are several aspects to my goal setting approach. I have that aspect of it. I have understanding the difference between objective and action-based goals. I have a whole section on goal stacking, which we'll get to. I think that is arguably the most important part of all this, but that'll come later in this podcast. When you're writing your goals down every six months or so, it's critical to understand the difference between an objective-based goal and an action-based goal. They're both equally important, but most people only do objective-based goals. And they sort of butcher those and we'll get into detail about the objective. But the difference between an objective versus an action-based goal is objective is it's what you want to achieve. That is your goal. I want to get stronger. I want to lose weight. I want to be healthier. Now, those are sort of shitty goals, not because those goals are not worthy, but because you haven't specified very much. And I'll get into that in a second. So the objective is what you want to achieve, right? The action-based goal is what will you do every day in order to achieve that objective? So the objective-based goal is, you know, you sort of put it on a pedestal. This is what I want to achieve. The action-based goal, essentially what it boils down to is it looks like a to-do list on a daily, weekly basis. Like this is what you have to check off the box. This is what you must accomplish on a daily basis. The objective-based goals look nice. They sound nice. They're exciting. The action-based goals, they're the monotony. They're the things that people aren't really excited about. They're the things that get really boring, but those are they're critical because without the actions, the objective is not achievable, right? So from here, actually, I'll give you a quick example. An objective-based goal could be lose weight. And I'll talk about why that's a stupid or it's not a stupid goal in and of itself, but it's not specific enough. Objective-based goal, lose weight. Action-based goal hit your calories and protein at least 80% of the time, right? So that is the difference between objective and action. An objective-based goal could be get stronger. Action-based goal, strength train at least three to four times a week, right? So you have your objective-based goal. I want to get stronger. I want to lose weight. You can write that down in your notebook, but on a day-to-day basis on your to-do list, your action, did you go to the gym? Did you hit your calories? Did you hit your protein? And as you do each thing every day, check it off, check it off. Then from there, you'll see at the end of every six months, wow, I've actually made a ton of progress. I've, I've put 50 pounds on my deadlift since January 1. Okay. And that makes sense because I've been 94% consistent with my strength training and nutrition or you can get to six months later and be like, my goal was to lose weight, but I've actually gained four pounds. And that's because I literally only hit my calories for the first week of January. And then I gave up. So this is, it allows you to be very specific with your plan of action and what you want to achieve. And it also gives you a way to hold yourself accountable throughout the year. Now, specificity is absolutely critical. It is essential. It is a must when you're creating your goals. It's funny on Instagram. I wanted to see how most people define their goals. So the other day I did an Instagram Q and A and I just asked, I said, what are your goals for 2021? And I got thousands of replies. People telling me what their goals are. The vast majority of them just being like, I want to lose weight. I want to be healthy. I want to prioritize myself. I want to some people, like I just want to be better these goals. Well, they're, they're, they're good. They're valid. They actually suck because it will cool. You want to lose weight. Cool. You want to get stronger. Well, how much weight do you want to lose? How much stronger do you want to get? What lift, what movement do you want to get stronger in? You want to get healthier? Cool. What, what marker of health you want to improve your blood pressure? Do you want to improve your endurance? Do you want to improve how quickly you can walk a mile? Do you want to make sure you're hitting 10,000 steps a day? What specifically do you want to do? You need to have this specificity. It is absolutely essential. It is probably the most critical part of all of this. I think this is one of the major reasons why so many people don't achieve their, their goals is because they've never taken the time to really think about specifically. What do you want to do? It's not just lose weight. It's not just get stronger. It's not just be more confident. It's not just make more money. It's not just be a better listener. You have to be specific. And this is hard. This is very difficult to do. It takes time. This is why I said earlier, I take an hour out of my day, January 1 and May 8 to sit down and be very specific that the goals I want to achieve. If you're not specific, you've got nothing. Not only do you not really have a goal to achieve, but you don't have any attachment to it. It's just, I want to get stronger. Cool. Now what stronger on what? How much stronger? How, what are you lifting now? Do you want to deadlift one times your body weight? You want to deadlift four times your body weight. Do you want to do more chin ups? Do you want to do X amount of push ups? Do you want to run a mile faster? Do you want to hit your handstand? Let's get specific. Come on, ladies and gentlemen, let's get specific here. Enough nonsense goals. What is your objective specifically? Imagine if in the army, the Navy, the Air Force, whatever it is, the Marines, their objective is like, all right, the objective is to beat the enemy. And that's all the general or the tenant said, right? And I don't know the names of, I don't know those names. I apologize, huge supporter of our troops. So thank you to anyone and everyone who's served. But imagine if that's what the order was, defeat the enemy. Well, thanks, thanks general, but I don't know how, which enemy are we doing an airstrike? Are we going by foot? What do you want us to do? Like, are we going to like, I don't know, defeat the enemy? Well, yeah, no shit. Lose weight. Yeah, obviously you've said you wanted to lose weight the last 10 years, but you've done nothing about it. How much weight, by what date, what specifically are you going to do to achieve it? Are you going to do my calorie cycling challenge? I think you should link in the show notes if you want to join the January 11th calorie cycling challenge. If you don't want to do the calorie cycling challenge, fine. Do something else, but be specific with what you want to achieve and how you're going to achieve it. It's absolutely essential. Now, I'll say something else about this. Actually, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait for the goal stacking part. The goal stacking is very, very important and it will sort of carry on from this. I'm going to interrupt this discussion with a story about one of the first goals that I ever made for myself, the first serious goals that I ever made for myself, just to get an important message across. And, you know, because I love telling stories and I love rambling and hopefully you enjoy them. So I'm going to tell you the story about when I first set my goal to deadlift four times my body weight. So I was living in Israel. Most of my most of my stories take place in Israel. I was living in Israel. I was 18 years old and I was. I was really just getting into powerlifting. So from eight to 18 years old all the way through high school, I was a wrestler. I was obsessed with wrestling when I was 14. I got an internship at a gym because I wanted to get stronger. And I started using kettlebells and barbells and by the time I graduated high school, I was obsessed with strength and strength training and lifting and getting stronger. So when I moved to Israel and stopped wrestling, I was like, okay, I want to focus on my strength. And I was, I remember I was reading articles on strength and I was looking for strength standards. Sort of, well, what is it? What is a strong lift? What's a good bench press? What's a good squat? What's a good deadlift? And for me, deadlift was always my favorite lift. And I found that for men, a three times bodyweight deadlift was considered advanced. And at that point in my life, I had never tested my, my deadlift one rep max. Your one rep max just means how much you can lift for a single rep. Like the absolute maximum amount of weight you can get off the ground for your deadlift. So I was like, okay, three times my bodyweight is considered advanced for a deadlift. So I want to deadlift four times my bodyweight. I remember and as cocky and as arrogant as that sounds, like that's, it's oftentimes how I think. Okay. So if three times is advanced, I'm going to do four. And I set that goal when I was 18 and I was obsessed with that goal. Now, as many of you, if not all of you know, by the time I was 25, I did that. I did lifted four times my bodyweight. I did lifted 530 pounds, weighing 132 pounds. But at this point in my life, I was 18. I had no idea that was actually going to happen, but I was like, I want to deadlift four times my bodyweight because three times is advanced. And I want to, I want to be better than that. I want to make all of the people who think they're advanced. I want them to be like, Oh, damn, that guy is really strong. So I was 18 living in Israel and powerlifting was not. It still really isn't a big thing in Israel. It's a much bigger thing in the United States. It's very big in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. It's pretty big. It's in Israel for whatever reason, it's just, it's really not that big of a thing. And it's getting a little bit bigger, but they don't really care about that very much. They're big, huge on bodyweight, gymnastics, calisthenics. They love, they love the TRX in Israel, which is very interesting to me. Anytime you go to a park, you always see people just pulling out their TRX straps and hanging around a tree and doing that. But anyway, I was living in Israel and the gym that I belong to, it didn't have that much weight. Like there wasn't like that. They're at a barbell and weights, but it wasn't like you go to a gold gym or a crunch or a blink or an LA fitness or a lifetime. Boston Sports Club, New York Sports Club, whatever it is, you go there. They've got a lot of weights there. This gym didn't have that many. So I remember I was like, I'm going to go see how much I can deadlift now. And I was slowly worked up. I worked up. I was like 135, 165, 185, 205. And I worked up and I remember I took almost, it wasn't all of the weights, but I had taken almost all of the weights in the gym and I put on and I had 290 pounds on the bar. Now, keep in mind, again, I was 18, very young. I was at the time I thought I was very well versed in strength training. I was an idiot. I did not know what I was talking about and my technique was awful. And when I tell you I grinded through this 290 pound deadlift, I mean, it was probably about a 12 second lift. It was like from the moment I initiated the lift off the floor until the moment I locked it out, it took 12 seconds of me just shaking, shaking. My back was rounded like a scared cat. My spine was about to explode out of my back. It was a really terrible awful disgusting lift, but I did it. And I was ecstatic. I was like, I just did 290 pounds. I couldn't believe it. And from that moment, I was like, all right. And I think at that time in my life, I was about 100 and I think I was like 125 pounds at that time. So I was like, OK, so I've got a deadlift, a little over 500. And so that was my goal. From that point forward, I was like, I've got a deadlift four times my body weight. And then almost a decade later, about seven or eight years later, I deadlifted four times my body weight. What's interesting about this is the whole most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in seven. This was about a seven to eight year journey where I went from 290 pounds to 530 pounds. Now, an interesting aspect of this is this whole process took about seven to eight years. But I wasn't consistent for those whole seven to eight years. By and large, I was consistent, but there were periods of times. And I don't just mean days or weeks. I mean, there were periods of months where sometimes I didn't lift for months. And I want to tell you this because I think a lot of times we'll get off track for, I don't know, you get a cold or you go on vacation or whatever it is, or you're just not motivated for a week or two, whatever it is. Maybe you have you lose a family member, God forbid or your child sick or your dog, who knows? Life throws us all sorts of curveballs where you can't work out or you can't focus on your nutrition for a day, a week, two weeks, a month, whatever it is. And you think you're going to lose all your progress and you're going to ruin everything. So that 290 pound grinder of an awful deadlift was when I was 18 years old. When I was 20, I don't know if I was 21 or 22, I forget, 21 or 22 years old. I think it was 21. I was 21 years old. I was a tour guide in Israel. I was a tour guide. I did this whole program where I took a group of 43 16 year old kids. It was me as part of a program. I was a tour guide with a small group of one other American and four other Israelis. And we were tour guides and we took a group of 43 16 year old kids from America. First, we brought them to Prague. And the reason we brought them to Prague was because there's a sector, a Jewish sector. That is kept perfect. It's kept exactly as it was pre Holocaust. The reasoning that it's actually it's one of the only, if not the only areas in which the Jewish quarter is kept exactly as it is is because when Hitler started everything, he wanted to have like one area that would act as sort of a museum, right? So he wanted to get rid of all the Jews. So he wanted to have one area in which he could show people. Look, this is what the Jews used to live like. So he preserved. He made sure that this area in Prague, this Jewish quarter was kept preserved 100%. So we took these, these kids, these 43 kids to Prague and then we were in Prague for a couple of days, then we took them to Poland and he went through Auschwitz and the Warsaw ghetto and all of that. And then from there, we went to Israel and he spent six weeks in Israel going all the way from the south to the north. It was a tremendous trip and I loved it. It was really an amazing experience for me. I very much wanted to, to become a history professor at that time. And I almost did. But anyway, throughout that whole trip. I was a tour guide and we were traveling all over. And I didn't lift weights one time for several months over this entire trip. Now, in the moment, I was very worried. I was very worried that I was losing all my progress, that I would never hit my four times bodyweight goal, that I, that all the strength that I'd built over the last three or so years was just gone for good. Then once the trip was over and I got back to my regular workout schedule after taking several months off of strength training, I got right back on track and kept making progress. Now, of course, when I got back to the gym after several months away from not lifting weights, I was weaker. Of course, I just didn't lift for several months. I did like some bodyweight work and band work. My body fat was a little bit higher. My muscle mass was down and I was weaker when I got back to the gym. But it didn't take long to get back to right where I left off. And then that was when I was 21 and I did lifted four times my bodyweight at 25. This is why it's so important to understand that you are probably radically overestimating what you can do in a year and dramatically underestimating what you can do in seven, not just the physiological aspect of whatever it is you want to achieve, whether it's fat loss or strength gain or muscle gain, or whether it's building a business or whatever you want to do. Nevermind, like just the physical aspects of it. But you also have to take into account life, life throws curveballs. Things never go the way you expect them to go or in the timeframe that you expect them to take. You have to take that into account. Could you imagine like lifting four times my bodyweight? I'm literally one of less than 10 people in the world to have ever done that. Could you imagine if because I went on that trip when I was a tour guy for several months that I just, I decided to quit altogether, a huge part of my history, a huge part of who I am and what I've accomplished, it would never have happened because a couple of months away, get out of here. And again, I tell you this story because whatever you have going on in your life, someone gets sick, God forbid you get sick, something happens with your work or with your business, or I don't know, a global pandemic that keeps you out of the gym, right? It's like, things are going to happen. Things are going to get in the way of you achieving your goals, but just because they get in the way doesn't mean that you can't achieve it. It doesn't mean that they're preventing you from doing it. It just means that something's in the way. So either you're going to wait and then continue once it gets out of the way or you're going to find a way around it. Either one of those in both are fine. For me, during those three months that I was a tour guide, it wasn't a find another way around it. It was, I'm going to wait until this is over. And I took several months away from lifting, got right back on track and I was fine. So as you're setting your goals, really think about that and understand it's, it's probably going to take longer than a year and that's okay. Now, this segue is nicely into the goal stacking portion of science-based goal setting, of my methodology, of setting a goal. And what I mean by that is a lot of people, when they set goals, they, especially annual goals, like New Year's resolutions, oftentimes they'll, they'll make a list of like 20 things, 30 things, 10 things, whatever it is, a long list of things and they don't accomplish any of them. And every year, the list looks so similar. It's the same thing as every year. Again, they're not specific with it. I want to make more money. I want to lose weight. I want to be healthier. I want to get up earlier. I want to floss, all this, whatever it is. Flossing is actually very specific, but, and definitely please make sure you're flossing super important for your health. Actually, very, very important for your health. Anyway, if you're making a huge list of things and you're not achieving any of them, you're wasting your time. The method that I use, I call it goal stacking. And I didn't realize this until about three or four years ago. Someone had asked me like, what is your method? Like, what do you do? You've accomplished so many things. And I, and I sort of analyzed my behavior. This wasn't done on purpose. Like this wasn't a methodology when I was 18 or 21 or even 25. This, I just kept doing it consistently and now looking back almost 30. I can realize that it did something called goal stacking, where essentially every year I would have about one or two goals. One, and I guess it wasn't only one or two goals. It was one or two focuses. It's probably a better way to put it. So what happened is every year, so for example, when I was 18 or when I was, uh, yeah, when I was 18, I set this goal of a four times bodyweight deadlift. I knew that I wanted to be in the fitness industry at that time. I knew I wanted to be a coach, but I, I Instagram didn't exist at that time. Facebook was very, very new at that time. Online coaching wasn't a thing. Like I was in my mind. I was like, I just want to be a personal trainer and that's it. But my main goal is a four times bodyweight deadlift. And that was a main goal of mine for literally years. So here I'll explain sort of my growth over the last decade, which will boil down into, I have a written down here, one, two, three, four, five, six, six things. My growth from, uh, as a lifter and fitness professional over the last decade, I've broken down into about six bullet points and it starts with powerlifting. Okay. Powerlifting was my main goal for the better part of, of essentially five or six years. It was my main goal, actually longer than that. I just wanted to get strong. Now it started off with a goal of a four times bodyweight deadlift. Just because I saw three times bodyweight was advanced and I wanted to do four times. What it turned into was I want to be a competitive power lifter. And I want to make a name for myself as a competitive power lifter. And I want to show people that a five foot 432 pound kid can be stronger than 200, 250 pound dudes. And then I want to help other people do the same thing. I want to help other people get strong. And that's what it morphed into. But my main goal was powerlifting and strength. And I was able to meticulously focus on my own training and my own nutrition and focusing on my own professional powerlifting career and my own strength, doing that for literally years, just focusing on that as my main focus is what helped me get to a point in which I could actually make a name for myself in the fitness industry. And I did other things along those times. Like I was making some posts on Facebook on my personal page and I was also going to school, but my main focus was powerlifting. That was my number one goal, right? And that's basically all I focused on. Everything else I did, I did good enough just to pass, just to pass school. I was not magna cum laude. I was not incredible in any sense of the word. I was not making a name for myself on Facebook or on any social media. Powerlifting was where I focused. It was the one thing, everything else. I just did good enough, but no one worked harder than I did for powerlifting. Once I got to that point, once I, once I was, I was really competitive in powerlifting, I was making a name for myself, then I added another goal. I stacked another goal on top of what I'd already accomplished, that goal being my business, more specifically, my website. This is in 2011, in July of 2011, I started my website and I was like, I'm going to write at least one article a week every single week for my website. I did that from 2011 to 2015. Now it worked out well because I ended up deadlifting four times my bodyweight in January of 2015, but I could stack the website on top of it because I'd already never once started to make a name for myself. I'd already built those habits. I had my training down. I had my nutrition down. Cool. So it wasn't taking up an outrageous amount of time or mental energy because I knew what I had to do. I could already do it relatively easily without taking too much time or energy. So I added my website on top of it, just one article a week every week. I did that every single week for three years. Now I also did a little bit of social media. I also did some Facebook. I did a little bit of YouTube. But my main focus was my website, just my website. That was my one goal, my website, it was my one focus. I had other goals, but my main focus was that. So here's two things over the course of about five to seven years. Here's two major focuses that I had, powerlifting and website. Next in about 2000, it was 2016, I believe late 2016, early 2017. My email list. I was, I want to focus on building my email list. Now, if you're not in the business world, it doesn't matter. It's just important for you to understand. This was my next goal that I stacked on top. So I had powerlifting down, I had my website down, and I want to grow my email list. Super, super important for your business. And I wanted to get better at what's known as copywriting, specifically sales copy. So I spent about two years doing that. This is, this was in 2016. Then from there, I went to Instagram and I spent about a year, almost solely focused on Instagram posting three times a day, every single day. Then from there, following year, YouTube, doing at least one video every single week, at least one. Then from there, the following year, my podcast, what you're listening to right now. So over the course of a decade. Powerlifting, website, email list, Instagram, YouTube podcast. I've accomplished other things along the way, but these were my main focuses. Sometimes just focusing on one of them for several years at a time. Literally, my website was for three years. And the cool thing about this is if you look at this, again, it's a list of one, two, three, four, five, six things over about a decade. Six, six accomplishments doesn't seem like that much, but when you look at the magnitude of these accomplishments, when you look at how much each one really matters, in terms of to me, to my business, to the people I'm impacting, they're huge. Each one is tremendous. And if someone had told me in 2011, you're only going to focus on your website from 2011 to 2015, and that's going to benefit you, I probably would have been like, get out of here. That makes no sense. I'm only going to focus on my website. But luckily it's just what I did. It's what happened. I wasn't focused on trying to make money really quickly. I wasn't focused on trying to make more sales or build a six-figure business as quickly as possible. It wasn't what I was trying to do in the same way when I was trying to do it. The four times my body weight, it wasn't like, I need to do it today. I need to do it this year. It was, no, no, I'm just going to do it in my life. I'm going to make it happen. And when you have that sort of wide scoped view on things, this wide camera lens on life that it just, it doesn't have to be accomplished now or tomorrow or next week or this year, but you're going to focus on this one thing for several years. Well, then a decade goes by and you've done a lot. You have done a lot. And the coolest part about this is a lot of people now, they look at me. They're like, okay, you do Instagram, you do YouTube, you do your podcast, you have your website, you do this, you have the inner circle. You have your mentorship, like, how do you do it all? Well, if I had tried to do all of this when I first started, I would, I would have failed miserably. And I did fail and I failed over and over and over again. I think you fail your way to success, but I wouldn't have been able to do it all when I first started because I didn't know anything. I didn't have the habits down. I didn't have the consistency down. I didn't have the knowledge. I didn't have the know how. So when you, but when you focus on one thing for a considerable period of time, well, then it becomes to the point where you've mastered it or you've gotten very close to mastering it. One of my really good friends, Pat Flint, he was telling me something about this. I think he was talking about this in 2017 to me where getting from complete beginner to decently good, to very good at something, it's, it's a pretty quick time frame, my quick, pretty quick. I mean, maybe about a year to two years from complete beginner to pretty good, a year to two years of really focusing on something after that year to two years. And this is for any skill, the rate at which you grow diminishes and oftentimes the, the benefits diminish to it, to a certain extent, right? So I am by no means the best power lifter to ever live, but I was good enough to really make a difference and to show people that they can get strong too. I am by, I don't, I don't have the most popular website in the world at all. But I spent enough time writing articles and enough time working on it to get to a point where it's a, it's a pretty popular website. I don't have the biggest Instagram at all, nowhere close, but it's a pretty big Instagram and with a really good engagement and an incredibly loyal following that I love more than words can begin to express. And what I'm saying here is it's, I spent a year or two years, three years on each thing, give or take when you spend a tremendous amount of time on one thing. And you sort of forego other things in other goals. You put them off, you build up this ability to stack up, not only stack goals on top of goals on top of goals. So at the end of a decade, 15, 20 years, you've accomplished a lot, but you also stack skills. You accrue the skills and the know how and the habits and the consistency to then take on a tremendous load without it seeming overwhelming or overbearing. And this is my whole philosophy for everything, for fitness. It's my, my everything I do when I work with clients, inner circle members, it's focus on one thing at a time. Get your calories and check. Why do I beat the calorie drum so damn hard? Because it's one thing to focus on. Just focus on calories for a year. You don't have to be in a calorie deficit for a year, but just track your calories, just just your calories. Guarantee you from that you will become masterful at tracking them. You'll never need to do it again if you don't want to for the rest of your life. And you'll always have that managed. Then from there, you can move on to something else. When you approach your goals in life with this mindset, it's going to take many years of focusing on one thing. It's like a year, two years, three years, just this one focus. Well, maybe by the end of one or two or three years, you haven't accomplished that much, but by the end of 10 years, you're a completely different person with a completely different life. You've accomplished more in those 10 years than most people ever accomplish in their entire life. So my purpose here is to really get you thinking very, very hard about what you want to accomplish and boil it down to one or two things in a year. And then a couple of years later, change it. And again, you can reevaluate it every six months. Like I said, I reevaluate my goals every six months. There have been times where I was like, okay, I want to focus on this. And then six months later, I'm like, no, no interest in that. Not serving me, not good for me right now. There were times where early on you could go back to my YouTube, like 2012, 2013, where I was like, all right, I'm going to focus on this instead of my website. Then I reevaluate it. I was like, this isn't worth it right now. So even though in 2012, 2013, I was like, I want to do my YouTube. I put it on the back burner and then I started going hard on 2019 on my YouTube. And then it really grew once I had a lot of the know-how and the consistency and the habits and the understanding of social media. So this is a long rant, but if you get one thing from this podcast for the coming year, focus on one thing. It's not sexy. It's not like, oh, that sounds like so fun and exciting. It's not. It's way more fun and exciting to make a list of 50 things you want to accomplish. But when you get to 2022, when you look back at that list and you haven't accomplished any of it, it's like, well, that sucks. And this whole big list, I didn't do anything. If you have one thing or two things on your list of what you want to accomplish, very specific things with a clear action plan of how you're going to achieve it. Well, now you're actually making it possible. And when you look back in 10 years and the notebook that you have that's purely for your annual goals, it'll be very cool to look back at what you've accomplished over that decade. Now, I know this is getting a little bit long. I'm going to try and wrap this up in a second. The thing that'll end on is this. Use challenges to your advantage. Short term challenges to help you achieve a goal. So, for example, my 30 day Big Mac challenge, this was arguably the most popular video I've ever made and not just popular, but most impactful. If you haven't seen my 30 day Big Mac challenge, go to my YouTube. It's the featured video. I put everything else on hold for that. I stopped going to jujitsu for about a month and a half. I put almost everything else in my life on hold. I did the bare minimum and everything else just for this. Now, this was in a year that my main focus was YouTube. YouTube was my main focus in 2019. That was all I wanted to focus on. That was the one thing I really wanted to build. So 30 day Big Mac challenge, I'm going to do a 30 day challenge. It's going to hopefully this video will change the course of my YouTube forever. And it did. Now, I also had a goal that I wanted to get my Brazilian jujitsu bluebell. But my main focus at that point in my life was my YouTube. So I put other goals on hold, knowing there would be time later in life to focus on them. And I had to prioritize. So my YouTube, that's what I did. I'm a huge fan of challenges and one of the best things about them is doing something a little bit unsustainably. It's something that's unsustainable for a brief period of time to really immerse yourself in it. This is what I did with Instagram. This is how my Instagram blew up. I took a challenge to post three times a day every day on Instagram. Now I expected that challenge to be very short lived. It ended up going much longer because I saw the benefits just paying off. So, so, so much hand over fist. But initially I was expecting that to be like a 30 to 90 day challenge where I post on Instagram three times a day. It became such an ingrained part of my habits at that time. And I saw the benefits coming in so quickly that I was like, okay, I'm going to keep this going. But oftentimes a really short term challenge, 14, 21, 30 day challenge where you are required to do something, it can, it can take you further than most people will get in a year. Now it doesn't have to be an intense. It doesn't have to be a, like for example, doesn't have to be a 30 day rapid fat loss program where you eat 500 calories a day. That would be stupid. But if you're struggling with your calories, what if you 30 days, you give yourself a challenge to hit your calories? No BS, no excuses. You hit your calories for 30 days. Guarantee you by the time those 30 days are over, you will have a much better idea of how much you're eating, what you need to do to make progress. And then you can be a little bit more, more lenient with your calories going forward because you were just 100% consistent for 30 days. Going down to 80% from that, it's like, this is easy. This isn't a problem at all. So of course, now I'm going to push my calorie cycling challenge again. My 30 day calorie cycling challenge, I didn't even plan that. It's just a perfect segue into it. If you are thinking, if you don't know what you're going to do this year, if you don't know specifically what your plan is and you're struggling with your nutrition, you're struggling with your weight, you're struggling with your exercise. Go to the description of this, of this episode, go to the show notes. Go to JordanSciat.com, click the link and join the calorie cycling challenge. This one challenge is 30 day challenge could completely change your life, not in the fact that not that you're going to completely change your bot in these 30 days. That's not going to happen. That's not the goal. The goal is to do something now that will set these habits in stone so that over the next year, two years, three years, you can have a healthy relationship with food, you can love the way you look, you can be stronger, you can be happier, and you can be more confident. So whether it's the calorie cycling challenge or whether it's another challenge you make up on your own, sometimes doing something for a brief period of time where you are required to be consistent with it for that 14, 21, 30, 60, 90 days can make huge differences in your annual goals year over year over year. So with all that being said, I'm going to repeat a couple of things. Number one, reanalyze your goals twice a year, set a date and put it in your calendar, can be Jan one and June one, whatever it is, put in your calendar two days in which you're going to set aside an hour to take a notebook and write down your goals, both your objective based goal, specifically your objective and your action based goals. Action based goals should be your to do list every day. If you want to put it on your fridge, you want to put it on your phone, I have a separate notebook for my action based goals right down every morning. This is what I'm going to do today. Oftentimes my action based goals, three to five things. That's it. All right, I'm going to post on Instagram. I'm going to make a podcast and I'm going to get my work out in three things. Boom, boom, boom, done. Doesn't look like much. It's not like an impressive thing to look at, but you do that for three years. You better believe there's going to be some serious progress. So analyze your goals twice a year, make sure you write down your objective based goals and your action based goals. We'll really consider goal stacking one thing to focus on for a year. One thing, think about it. If you have 27 things you want to focus on, that's fine. But what's the one thing that is most important to you this year? What do you want to achieve? Think about that. And at the end of 10 years, you could have accomplished three, four, five, six big, big things that completely change your life forever. And on that note, again, remember, most people dramatically overestimate what they can do in a year and radically underestimate what they can do in seven. So by all means, set whatever goals you want to in the beginning of 2021. But keep in mind, you might not achieve it until 2025. And that's totally fine. That's all I've got for you today. Happy new year. Let's crush it. If you have any questions, please let me know. And again, if you want to join the 30 day calorie cycling challenge, the link is in the show notes. I would love to have you talk to you soon. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]

I also share the story of how and when I decided I wanted to Deadlift 4x my bodyweight.

I explain what happened when I completely stopped lifting for 3 months straight as I traveled around Europe and The Middle East.

And I share the [slightly embarrassing] story of when I thought I was having a heart attack in Israel and freaked out on my cab driver.

I hope you enjoy this episode and, if you do, please leave a 5-star review on iTunes and Spotify (huge thank you to everyone who has written one so far).

Finally, if you've been thinking about joining The Inner Circle but haven't yet... we have hundreds of home and bodyweight workouts for you and you can get them all here: www.sfinnercircle.com.