Your Best Year Ever, Chapter 1: Your Beliefs Shape Your Reality

0:01Hey there, Michael Hyatt here. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome to something I think is going to be truly special and something we've never done before. We're embarking on a journey, chapter by chapter, through my best-selling, newly revised book, Your Best Year Ever. Now, in case you don't know me, I'm a New York Times best-selling author, I'm the founder and chair of Full Focus, and I'm the creator of the best-selling Full Focus Planner. And my passion is all around helping you achieve your biggest dreams, whether those are personal or professional. A bit about Your Best Year Ever.

0:36At the time of this recording, it's received an overwhelming response. It's my best-selling book ever. It sold over a quarter of a million copies. We got over 2 ,100 reviews on Amazon. I think the average is like 4.6, 1 ,500 reviews on Audible. But the book truly was a labor of love, something I care about deeply. And I spent a ton of time ensuring that it provides real, tangible value to its readers. I've tried to bring in the latest in goal-achievement research on the one hand, but super practical steps so that you can apply it and get the transformation you're after. So I hope that as you listen, you find actionable insights, a spark of motivation, and a blueprint to design the life you've always envisioned.

1:22Now, I know the excitement of starting a new book, and I don't want you to miss a beat. So I want to encourage you to subscribe to this podcast. We're going to be doing all of the book on this podcast. We'll be releasing just a few chapters at a time and subscribing ensures that you're right here with us every step of the way. Finally, as you immerse yourself in these episodes, I hope you carry forward the essence, the strategies, and the vision that I share. So here's to making this year, this next year, and every year after your best year ever. Chapter one, your beliefs shape your reality. We live by what we believe, not by what we see.

2:06Angela Aarons What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Rabah Alamadine Several years ago, my wife Gail and I had an English setter named Nelson. He was gentle, patient, and great with the grandkids. He only had one fault. Whenever the front door would open, he would bolt like a prison escapee. It could take 20 minutes to chase him down and bring him home. The scariest thing was watching him narrowly escape an oncoming car. We didn't know what to do until we discovered invisible fence. It was the breakthrough we needed. It works by pairing an underground perimeter wire to an electronic collar.

2:50If Nelson approached the boundary, his collar delivered a warning vibration to stay back. With some additional training, he quickly learned where the line was and avoided it. No more bolting out the door. We could actually leave him in the yard without fear he would run away. But here's what's interesting. After a while, we realized the collar was no longer necessary. If we stood on the other side of the barrier and called, he wouldn't come. If the kids tried to entice him with a treat, he wouldn't budge. The barrier had moved from the external world of an electronic device to the internal world of Nelson's head.

3:27The Power of Beliefs Our beliefs play a massive part in how we approach life. Why? We tend to experience what we expect, and we've known this for a long time. If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences, sociologist William I. Thomas said in 1928. Reflecting on the Thomas theorem, 20 years later, sociologist Robin K. Merton coined the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy. In 1957, philosopher Karl Popper labeled it the Yodipus effect, after the mythic hero whose life fulfilled a tragic prophecy. More recently, science writer David Robson has described what he calls the expectation effect, diving deep into the impact of mindset and perspective on the results we experience.

4:16As Chris Burdick, another science writer, says in his book Mind Over Mind, our real world is in many ways an expected world. What we see, hear, taste, feel, and experience is produced from the top down as much as it is from the bottom up. Our minds organize chaos. We fill in blanks with well-learned forms, patterns, and assumptions. Our predictions for the near and distant future bend reality. How? It's not fantasy, nor is it related to any supposed law of attraction, as some might think. It's actually far simpler than that. Because our expectations shape what we believe is possible, they shape our perceptions and actions.

4:57That means they also shape the outcomes. And that means they shape our reality. Remember the old Tiger Woods, the pre-meltdown Woods who burnt up the record books year after year? Some of his clutch shots are legendary. At the 2003 President's Cup in South Africa, for example, he sunk a 15-foot putt in the near dark. It seemed like an impossible shot. Everyone thought so, but not Woods. Listen to what his teammate Mike Weir said about that shot. He knew he was going to make it. That's probably what separated him more than anything else, his belief. Do you hear what Weir is saying? Many other golfers had the skill to make those shots, but they lacked the belief they could pull it off.

5:42That's true for a lot of us. Our expectations come from our mindset. According to Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, there are two primary orientations, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. We can have a mix of both, depending on our circumstances. It's probably safe to say that neither is inherently good or bad, but a growth mindset has been shown to better serve goal achievement. Building on this idea, psychologist Kelly McGonigal says that changing our minds can be a catalyst for all the other changes we want to make in our lives. But the trick is that we first need to convince ourselves that such change is possible.

6:21We need to believe that we can pull it off. The problem with doubts. What's one of the biggest reasons we don't succeed with our goals? We simply doubt we can. We believe they're out of reach. When pollsters asked respondents to an Economist YouGov survey how confident they were about sticking to their New Year's resolutions, only 37 % said very confident. Six in 10 were only somewhat confident, not very confident, or not at all confident. Is it any wonder we struggle to make progress? Polls show the percentage of people in their 20s who achieve their New Year's resolutions is far greater than those over 50.

7:02In fact, while 8 in 10 millennials set resolutions, almost 7 in 10 adults over 65 say setting resolutions is a waste of time, according to a Harris poll. Why? It's sad, but the greater the number of setbacks we've experienced in life, the less likely we are to believe we can prevail. Doubt is a gold toxin. To shield ourselves from future disappointment, we develop a cynical, self-protective attitude toward life. We're like my dog, Nelson. We've tried to step out in the past and have been zapped. We're far worse. Maybe it was only once, or maybe it was several times. Regardless, now we stand still even when there is no actual barrier.

7:44The one in our heads is strong enough to keep us stuck. You know what this looks like. You say, I need to apply for that new job. But then you think, there's no way. I don't have enough experience or enough education. A friend says, hey, you and Bill should go to that marriage retreat this weekend. And you think, are you kidding me? I can't get him off the couch for an evening, let alone a whole weekend. Somebody says, I think it would be awesome to run a 5K. And you think, maybe I should. But then the cynicism sets in. I'm 40 pounds overweight, you think. I've got a bum knee. There's no way I could possibly run a 5K.

8:21One thing these three examples have in common, doubt. Another thing, subsequent inaction. Take any idea that might take you to the next chapter of your story, apply some doubt, and the whole thing just withers and dies. Some doubt comes from self-protection. It's hard to get your hopes dashed if you never get them up to begin with. You can see this sort of thing in the numbers. When asked how they think a new year would compare with the prior one, only 38 % of poll respondents said they think their life would improve. 62 % said their life would either stay the same or even get worse. Think about that.

8:59The majority of the population expects either stasis or decline. That kind of attitude poisons our souls and sabotages our results. Our beliefs about what's possible have a direct impact on our behavior in the present and the reality we experience in the future. But what if you could change your sense of what's possible? A different frame. Triple-A baseball pitcher Steve Murrah was starting one night in an away game, but he almost lost before leaving the dugout. Why? I could never win on this mound, he told his pitching coach, Harvey Dorfman. Dorfman didn't buy that for a second, but he could see Murrah was already preparing to lose, so Dorfman pushed Murrah to explain his belief.

9:45The pitcher said the angle of the mound was wrong, and for Murrah, that settled it. But not for his coach. It was just a jumping-off point. Dorfman asked what kind of adjustments he could make. Sounds simple, I know, but it was like a switch. That one suggestion created a new sense of possibility. Before the game, Mura came up with a new strategy to deal with the unfriendly slope of the mountain. There is a difference, Dorfman told Mura, between I have not won and I cannot win. The past didn't determine the future, unless Mura's belief led him to act like it did. You don't think about strategies when you think that outcome is inevitable, Dorfman said.

10:26But by changing his belief, Mura was able to change his strategy and the outcome. He pitched an almost perfect game that night, just two hits and no runs. Mura faced a major challenge, but like Nelson, it was in his mind, not on the field. I find that's true for almost all areas of life. Many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us, says Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances, and new pathways come into view. Changing your thinking is like flipping a switch.

11:05It creates a new sense of possibility, along with different results. There's a popular story about a shoemaker who sent two salesmen to Africa to size up the market. The first reported back, No one here wears shoes. There's no market. But the second said, No one here wears shoes. Huge opportunity. Send inventory. Facts are facts. But we can look at them in different ways. I'm about 99.9 % certain that story is made up. But there's a real version of that tale that demonstrates the same point. In 1999, Nick Swinburne thought he could sell shoes online. But investors thought it would never fly. Too many logistical and customer service challenges.

11:48And the opportunity seemed minuscule at the time. The nearest comparison was mail-order shoe sales, which was a measly 5 % of the market. Not surprisingly, most investors wouldn't return his calls. One investor, however, heard something in Swin Martin's pitch that made his ears perk. The mail-order business was only 5 % of the market, but that market was$40 billion. dollars. If catalog sales were already$2 billion, the logistical and customer service challenges must not have been that big a deal. The market was potentially massive. And just like that, Zappos was born. Amazon purchased the company a decade later for$1.2 billion.

12:32Investors all heard the same original pitch. Only one brought a different sense of possibility to the facts. History is full of similar stories. What's amazing is that once people realize something is possible, others quickly come behind and duplicate or even best the feat. We started the book with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's achievement at Everest. As of this writing, more than 6 ,000 others have also now done the once impossible and summited Everest. Pilots once thought it was impossible to fly faster than 768 miles an hour. the speed of sound, at sea level. But Chuck Yeager figured he could do it and officially broke the sound barrier on October the 14th, 1947.

13:17Planes have only advanced since then, and pilots regularly fly two, four, even six times the speed of sound. Before 1954, runners assumed it was impossible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Then Roger Bannister ran it in three minutes, 59 seconds, and change, a record that has since been beaten by other runners. For a long time, the idea of running a marathon in under two hours seemed impossible. But in 2019, Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge showed the world by breaking the two-hour barrier in an unsanctioned exhibition marathon. He finished in one hour, 59 minutes, and 40 seconds. That doesn't count for the record, but it's ridiculously fast regardless.

14:00When it comes to sanctioned races, Kipchoge is faster than anyone else in the world. In September 2022, Kipchoge ran the Berlin Marathon in two hours, one minute, and nine seconds. The distance between Kipchoge's official record and his doing the supposedly impossible is about half the time it should take you to brush your teeth each morning. What's his secret? He credits his thinking. As he told one reporter in 2017, the difference only is thinking. You think it's impossible? I think it's possible. He told Runner's World, personally, I don't believe in limits. Nor does he stop. Kipchoge uses his mindset to continually outdo his own performances.

14:44Kipchoge's outlook empowers him to achieve the extraordinary. And the same outlook has empowered countless others to attain the impossible in their lives, too. Here's another example. People have dreamt about human-powered flight for millennia. But it always seemed like the stuff of fantasy. Then in 1977, someone developed an engine-less plane capable of sustained, controlled flight. That was just the start. In 1988, Greek cycling champion Karelos Kanalopoulos flew more than 70 miles over open sea all by pedal power. And he's not the only one. Building and flying people-powered aircraft is a weekend hobby for some nowadays.

15:25In the mid-1980s, skateboarder Mike McGill did the first ever 540-degree aerial turn in his sport. That's a full rotation and a half. No one thought it could be done. But once McGill finally did the McTwist, others began doing it too, pushing it further still. Tony Hawk did the first ever 720-degree turn, then in 900. And then in 2012, Tom Scherer, at just 12 years old, did the first ever 1080. that's three full rotations in the air. As Scherer told ESPN, it was the hardest trick I've ever done, but, and get this, it was easier than I thought. Amazingly, in 2019, Mitchie Brusco bested the record doing the first 1260.

16:13It's true that beliefs are not enough on their own. Skills are required, of course. Writing about athletes pursuing the heights of personal performance, Alex Hutchison puts it this way, training is the cake, And belief is the icing. But sometimes the thin smear of frosting makes all the difference. Pair equally matched athletes in a competition, the one with the edge is the one with the better head game. The impossible only seems so on the front end. Jaeger, Bannister, Canelopoulos, McGill, Hawk, and Scheer, they showed the rest of us that more was attainable than we previously believed. The greatest developments in history are the result of someone wanting something that did not yet exist, says Luke Burgess, and helping others to want more than they thought wantable.

17:00That can be you. Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along and do it, said jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. Will you be the next Kipchoge or Brusco and take it even further? Will you inspire others to do the same? A Failure of Imagination The first key difference between an unmet goal and personal success is the belief that it can be achieved. Listen to what famed futurist, sci-fi author, and inventor Arthur C. Clarke says. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

17:42As Clarke says, it's a failure of imagination. And it's not just scientists. The failure of imagination affects athletes, parents, leaders, managers, teachers, and the rest of us to one degree or another. We need to start with shifting our mindsets. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to look at life. One leads directly to the failure of imagination, but the other can revive and amplify our sense of possibility. We'll look at the difference next.

18:15Hey there. First of all, thanks for listening. There's one thing I know about you already, You have a bigger and brighter future ahead of you than what's behind you. And I'd be willing to bet there's other people in your life you feel the same way about. If you found this book helpful so far, would you do me a favor and take just a couple of seconds and share it with your spouse, a friend, somebody else in your life that you think could benefit? All you got to do is take a second, hit the share button now. That would mean the world to me. Your sharing means that we can help more people achieve their goals and have a better future than their past.

18:52I really appreciate it.