How to Reach IMPOSSIBLE Goals with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

23:14But I want to get there. One thing I'll say though, one of the things that they say in the research, which I agree with, and this fits with your idea of disruption. So in the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins, famous book, He talks about the idea of BHAG. BHAG is a goal that... Hold on, let's define BHAG. Yeah, I will. The acronym. Big, hairy, audacious goal. BHAG. BHAG, big, hairy, audacious goal. Basically, it's an impossible goal. Let's get to the moon in 10 years. BHAG, right? No clue how to do it, but it's measurable, it's powerful, it's impossible, and we don't know how to do it, so let's figure it out.

23:48That's a BHAG, 10 years to 30 years is what they say. And Jim Collins is very specific. He says the only purpose for setting a goal this big is because it disrupts your company in the present. That's the point. That's the point. The goal is so big, so inconceivable, that it forces a lot more honesty on the business right now and says, fetch. Almost nothing we're doing right now is going to get us that BHAG. So to the idea of Caleb, going pro, what are the few things that might get us there? Let's start exploring those. It leads to exploration and learning of things. As an example, if a company wanted to genuinely 10x in a year, and I do have some fun stories about that, even 10xing in 60 days.

24:30I've got some fun stories. I know. I was like, I'm a bad guy. But the fun thing here is that its purpose is actually what it says in the literature, which I love, is it creates a crisis in the present. Because you don't know how to do it, and then you start to really analyze everything going on in the current business from the goal, rather than toward it. This is key. You always want to come, the future is what determines the present, not the present shaping the future. So you want the arrow to come backwards from the future. So you always want to operate from the future. And so because it's so big, so it's so impossible, like Caleb going pro, it's like, okay, let's just look at everything on the table, right?

25:09Let's be honest. Most of this stuff absolutely wouldn't get us there. And so that's what it does. But then it leads you to a lot of unique learning. You know, the learning and exploration of, let's start looking for information and ideas that are closer in that ballpark that I would never have been looking for or filtering for. You would never have been looking for that stuff without the goal. And so it leads you on an exploration and on a learning process. And that's one of the main reasons you said an impossible goal is it leads you to learning unique, interesting things that other people aren't learning because they're not going for the goal.

25:37Think about Elon Musk going for Mars. How many things does he have to learn and solve to even attempt that goal that he wouldn't be learning if he was going for some other goal? And so it leads to unique learning and the building of knowledge, resources, et cetera. On that note of resources, and then I want to go back to reframing the past because I don't think that we can actually move towards the future if we don't reframe the past. Would you agree? It helps massively. It helps massively. I agree. Okay. So as we're defining that 10X goal and we don't know how to do it, what if you get to a point to where you realize that there's a couple of things that you could start cutting away and then start doing to achieve the 10X goal, but you realize that you can't cut away some of the stuff that's funding where you are right now?

26:19Great question. Was that clear enough? No, it was. It was. No, no, no. You guys got it. This is a perfect question, and I'm going to dog tag it because there's two or three common questions when we start talking about this. One is, well, how do we actually fund it when we're going to have to strip away? Maybe we don't even have the resources, period, right? Maybe we don't even have the resources to build a rocket, right? Or maybe we don't have the resource. but also if we're going to start letting go of things that are no longer relevant to the goal, those things are actually creating our current funding.

26:52And again, sometimes you don't purely eliminate them. Sometimes you can sell them. As just one example, I was talking, so do the idea of BHAG. There's a lady named Shannon Susco. She has a whole process called metronomics. I love it, but she has a concept she calls 3HAG. She kind of, but it's taking your BHAG and then pulling backwards and saying, based on that, what's the most important things we can accomplish in three years? my belief using time as a tool is just take your BHAG, which you think is 10, 20 years away, and turn it into your 3HAG, right? Because time's a tool. It's not a reality.

27:25So let's just take your, the vision you think is going to take you 20 years, and let's just actually go for it in 3, because by going for it in 3, we're going to have to let go of at least 80 % of what we thought was required to achieve it. It's going to force a lot of the cutting of fat on, you know, and Elon Musk talks about, like the very first thing you want to do is you always want to question your assumptions, question your requirements. Because he says most people are optimizing a thing that shouldn't exist. What I mean by that is we're spending a lot of time growing something that shouldn't exist because it actually, and I'll call that the 80%, it actually isn't helping us get to our real goal.

27:58And so when you make a goal that impossible, whether it's so big or whether it's so close, it actually allows you to let go of things that shouldn't exist, that you're spending a lot of time growing. I'll just give myself as an example. I actually was growing a YouTube channel. And I'm not against YouTube, I actually think YouTube's a phenomenal tool. But for me, when I got really clear about my 10x, my future self, I was pouring a lot of energy into YouTube and I realized this is something that actually shouldn't exist. It should exist for a lot of businesses and for a lot of people. But for me and my goals, my path is gonna be very different.

28:29So it allows you to strip away things you thought were required to achieve your goal. But how did you figure that out? How did you say, oh, YouTube isn't for me? What were the questions you asked? Yeah, yeah, pause this and I'm actually going to just talk about the past. Just because I have to, but this is perfect. No, no, no. Benchmark this. Benchmark this. Just because I want to get to this. So we're going to talk about resources, risks, and how did you figure it out? Resources, risks, and how did you figure it out? Because that was your question. I just want to quickly say with these ideas in mind that the impossible goal sets this really high floor.

29:04Really high floor. And the floor is the dictator of what you say yes and no to. And for an impossible goal the floor is so high because almost nothing will work right most coaches for caleb won't get him to pro so the floor is really high most of those are no so we got to look for and find the ones that might get us there again it's still a very impossible goal but when you start looking for and finding those new knowledge or resources right then then that's really where you want to build your mastery by the way one of the ways i look at it is is that your system is your floor. They're the same thing.

29:36It's what you can do consistently. It's what you're really good at. When you raise the floor really high, you're not good at it. But let me just give this example because I think just helping organize the past and then we'll go truly. This company that I'm working with, they had an impossible goal, which we're going for in 2024. We then had a team meeting. I trained their leadership. I started with, and they've read the gap and the gain, so they're like, all right, let's start with wins. Let's start with our progress. But because we're not actually trending towards the goal for the year, their top leader basically said, all right, here's where we're at.

30:12We're nowhere near our goal in terms of trending. We're not trending towards the goal at all. So Q1 was a disaster. Q2 better be a lot better. That's how we started the meeting. And I'm like, all right that is a very bad past we just created yes like this is not going to help us create a foundation that's going to help us go for impossible goals in q2 and so i said let's we actually took and often in meetings people like to start with wins and stuff but truly they spend like two minutes and they're like all right let's get to the future and say all right that's cool we like the future but i'm like we're spending an hour on this because i really want to know what the heck happened in Q1.

30:54I want to know about it. I want to understand it and I want you to better understand it. I want you to better see it. Because if I can better understand your Q1, we can 10x what happened in Q1 in Q2 effectively. But I first want to know what truly happened. And right now is all I hear is we're nowhere near the goal. It was a bad quarter. So I gave them some time to think about it. What was the most important things we learned? What were the most important forms of progress? One of the things that happened with this company is that that they are so much clearer on the floor for their company, what that means and how to actually start achieving it.

31:30It would be equivalent to Caleb finding that coach, and now he's learning how to work with that coach. We are now learning what's required above where they're trying to go, and if they master that, they're going to be a billion-dollar company in three years. So one of the things that they do, this is a franchise company. It's a flooring franchise company. So within this company, there are 300 franchisees all throughout the United States. And so these franchisees, they sell flooring, could be carpet, could be other things. And the average franchisee has a business doing about$700 ,000 a year. $700 ,000.

32:00So I'll call that their floor, since that's their average. They're really good at creating that. And so 14 of their franchisees are above$2 million. One of them is$10 million. So we said in order to actually achieve the billion dollars in three years, their new floor has to be$2 million. Rather than the average being$700 ,000, it's got to be$2 million. And so then we have to ask, well, what's the difference between these two groups? The ones that are$2 million and above always have at least one phenomenal salesperson in their business. We call them a beast. But this is a salesperson who can get at least$1 million of sales by themselves.

32:38The difference between the$700 person and the$2 million is that the$700 person, this is like a who-not-how question, they do not want to hire that beast because they're a lot more expensive. And if they hire that really good salesperson, then their role shifts the franchisee and they've got to put more into marketing and feed the beast. This is what I call it. This is my language. And so they hire bad salespeople and then that turns them into micromanagers. Whereas if you hire a really phenomenal person, then you shift from manager to leader because they don't want to be managed. You just give them an impossible goal.

33:12And as a leader, you've helped them achieve the impossible, but you've got to feed the beast. And I'm only explaining to the difference because in Q1 of this year, because they're now clarifying this, they're actually learning what's required to master above the floor. They never were doing that before because they only had 14 out of 300. They actually weren't good at creating franchisees or entrepreneurs at that level. They were really good at creating managers. And so we learned, no, you got to set the floor and we got to get good at getting all of these people up there or getting rid of them and finding new franchisees that will get there.

33:42and so again reverse engineering this and learning the big difference is that the people to get to 2 million you've got to invest in this epic who and I honestly believe this is true of every business if you want to go 10x and even there's a great book on it called the 80-20 individual but you really need to bring in elite people and B players will not hire A players so here's just the big idea is that in Q1 we looked at it and because they're really focusing on this they helped 15 of their franchisees add one of these beasts. We know that if they do that and if they help that franchisee focus and grow, all 15 of those are going to be$2 million plus companies this year.

34:25They're not there yet, so we're not trending yet. And you need the on-ramp to get the salesperson fed and all of that stuff before they're actually closing. But just the really simple idea here is, I then ask them these questions. These are really good for helping them frame the past. So I said, okay, so you just added 15. And we know that this is the crucial lever. This is the 20 % that's going to get you above that floor. And so I said, before Q1, so at the beginning of the year, how many of these beasts or these amazing salespeople did you have throughout all these franchisees? They said, 21.

34:57This is a business that's been around for 50 years. So I said, let me get this straight. In all those 50 years, you had 21 of these amazing salespeople in the whole business, and now in Q1 alone, you just added 15? I'm like that to me sounds like you made the right progress but also last one is this I said this and this is a really important framing question I said if we were to go all the way back to 2023 and if your 2023 self at January were to hear about what you just accomplished in Q1 what would they think? And they said we would have never thought it was possible because we would have never seen how to do that we would have never even known how to look Again, because they were so muddled in their own 80 % and so muddled in, but because the goal was so high and it forced clarity around that floor and then it forced us to say we're only doing things above that and that helped us find, okay, the difference is we need to get a lot of these salespeople.

35:50Now we're building a system around that new floor, which is getting a lot of these people. So the amount of progress that they actually made was more progress in that quarter than I'd say they've made in terms of learning, growth, potential, and what's going to set them up. Probably more growth in that quarter than they've had in the last five or ten years. but again remember what the leader said at the beginning we're not trending it was a horrible quarter and so that's how you properly frame your past is you actually look for what is the most effective things we actually learned another beautiful question is how am I different from who I was they could say how are we different from who we were at the beginning of the year I could also ask just in a simple way how am I different from who I was last week what do I now know how am I different from my past self the reason this is beautiful is because it helps me realize I'm not my past self.

36:35I'm not attached to that same identity. I'm not that person. And again, remember, it's the present that creates the past. And so by actually thinking about that, it's just like gratitude. I'm looking for what I'm happy for. If I'm looking for how am I different, how am I better? I'm now creating a past that shows me how much I've grown in the past week. And now I can see, wow, I'm massively different from my past self. This is really useful foundation for creating a future self that's massively different than your present self. So this is just, I think, one useful way. I know that was a long, and I'm really, I hope that wasn't too much.

37:08Actually, it wasn't enough. I just feel like so much gratitude. I feel so much gratitude. I feel like I could be nice to myself. Man, when I think about what happened in the past year. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. When I think about, because I feel like it's not happening fast enough, whatever it is. Sure. It's not happening fast enough. And I think to myself that I led leading up until 30 seconds ago, looking back and saying, Wasn't good enough. Wasn't good enough, guys. When, dang. Like, there was a former version of me who would look at what I did in my year and be like, I can't believe you just did that.

37:44But for me, I'm the leader who says, it's not enough. Let's go to the future. And I just have not given myself the grace to say, who have I become? What have I learned? And what am I letting go of? And I just feel so free. I feel so good. It's like, Ben, you took us to church. And we talked about reframing. We talked about reframing. Then we were going to talk about resources. Yeah. But Amy, I didn't want to cut off. I also want to go somewhere, and we'll get there. I want to talk about some of the myths that come up around success when you're going through this process. Because I'm assuming a lot of myths, a lot of challenges, a lot of limiting beliefs will stop you from any of this happening.

38:21Just like Jasmine had said, like, oh my gosh, I need to give myself grace. So I do want to explore that as well. But where should we go? Well, I really like this idea that we were focused on reframing and then we were going to focus on resources. And then we had talked about building. And so in my mind, I wanted a third R. So I would just say restructuring, but we could come up with a different R if we think that that's... Well, risk is a big one. Oh, that was risk. Yeah, because people always... Can I just add one thing to you real quick? I don't think, because you said a version of your past self, the beautiful part is you can just keep going back.

38:54But some version of your past selves would look at what you've done in the last year, or even in Q1 of 2024, as we're speaking. Amen. And some version of your past self would look at it, and it would blow their minds because the things you're doing were way outside the reference of what they were even thinking was possible. And so what I'm arguing, though, is this. That version of your past self isn't very far back. I used them at the beginning of 2023 as the example. I could have used them halfway through 2023 as the example, just less than a year ago. And even if that version of them looked ahead, they still wouldn't believe what had just happened.

39:32That's me. It can happen fast. Yeah, it does happen fast. And I will even argue, you can get so good at this, call it squeezing the juice out of the past, that even a week ago, my pass-off a week ago, could look at this week, say it's a Friday, and I'm just reviewing the week. If I go back to the beginning of the month, the beginning of April, right, And I'm just thinking about myself at the beginning of April looking at my week. There are things that did happen and things that are happening that even myself a month ago wasn't even able to comprehend. And so you get really good at this. But that's a pass now that they can use to say, all right, we got 15 beasts.

40:10What's the impossible goal? Because we know that's the 20%. We ultimately did set the impossible goal for Q2 to get 50. And even if we just did 15, 15, 15 and got 60, we'd be on track for hitting the billion in three years, but now they're going for 50. And they're, again, using that as the filter for determining what they say yes and no to as a team. So anyways. I feel like I just, I feel like, can we have a moment of silence? I want 15 minutes and I'm going to write. Because it's like we talk about squeezing the time for what it's worth. Me yesterday, me yesterday couldn't imagine. Your past self yesterday.

40:42My past self yesterday. 100%. Couldn't imagine all the goodness that has transpired and how I feel fundamentally energetically changed. So thank you. Now let's go into, I'm still tapping here, the resources. Because somebody's listening and saying the 10x, I'm a million dollars, I want to do 10 million by next year, but what would be required of me to let go to hit the 10 million is the thing that's currently funding me right now. Yep, yep, yep. So this is a really awesome question. It's common. So let's look at it. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that the future is a tool.

41:14This is important to realize. The future is a tool. As an example, Caleb thinking about the future of going pro to generate pathways. But the future is also actually oddly the source of the resources. It's weird. I think I need to admit it. The future is a source of resources. It is. How so? Think about it. You've heard of the concept of supply and demand. You have certain supply and that generates demand. If there's low supply in stuff, it might have high demand. So psychologically, it's actually the opposite. Psychologically, it's demand that creates resources. So you've probably heard it said when the why is strong enough, you will find the how.

41:59Or also you'll find who. And so that why and the depth of it and even the specificity of it is what creates the how. It's also what creates the resources. And so if there's a reason, as an example, if there's a reason that I've got to make$10 million in the next 30 days, that's a future that's now demanding of me to find that$10 million that I otherwise wouldn't have needed to even look for, figure out, or solve had I not had that future. And so the future determines what resources are needed. Elon Musk, I apologize to use him twice, but he needs to figure out billions of dollars of funding and even rocket technology and innovation to achieve his goal.

42:39All of that's coming from his goal. All of the creation. Can I give you an example? I'll give you an example and this is someone who actually almost 10x'd in 60 days so this is a really fun example so this is a guy in South Carolina who has a property management company so he has another business as well but this is a property management company so if you own two or three houses and you don't want to deal with the renters you let them manage your company you let them manage the houses they handle the whole thing so when I met him so I did a challenge at the end of 2023 So it was for the last 60 days of 2023, November and December.

43:16And so it started on November 1st and it ended January 1st. So we had 60 days. He came in and at that time his property management company had two employees, phenomenal employees. Again, this is a smaller business. It was doing probably low six figures, but they had 60 properties under management. And it would have taken them two years to get there. And so they probably had 20 or 30 clients. Some of them had one house, some of them had three or four. And so he meets, he joins the challenge. He learns some of these ideas I'm sharing that the future is what determines the present. And basically I say, set an impossible goal for the next 60 days.

43:51And then let that be the determining factor of what you say yes and no to and go find those better pathways, right? And so he was listening to this, thinking about it, and ultimately he set the goal of having 500 properties under management by the end of the year. So going from 60 to 500, almost to 10x. That feels impossible. It is impossible, yeah. But again, the idea of impossible is that it's impossible, again, from the context of your current self. And so based on your current knowledge, resources, based on your current knowledge team, et cetera, and you don't know how to do it. And so he went to his team of two and he said, here's the goal.

44:30We're going to have 500 in the next 60 days. I don't know how we're going to do it, but let's start strategizing again from the goal. Let's You always strategize from the future. Because if you're strategizing from your current situation, that's, again, what we call 2X. They couldn't actually achieve the 500 by approaching it the same way they did to get to 60 because we just didn't have time to get it by 1s and 2s. And so ultimately they started looking at their Rolodex, looking at things, and even, again, to the idea that the impossible goals lead to exploration of new solutions or ideas or knowledge that you wouldn't have been looking for had you didn't have the goal.

45:12So ultimately, of course, they started looking for people with hundreds of houses. Just the strategy, the idea that came from that, and then beginning to look for where these kind of people are. How do we get in touch with these kind of people? Ultimately, and he also added two team members. So basically, when you have an impossible goal, it's going to be a fundamentally different level of commitment than you've ever committed to. Because the goal is so big, you're going to have to commit, and a big part of commitment is investment. You're going to have to be committed more than you've ever been committed to.

45:41This is what scares people. This is the idea of risk as well as resources. Where do we get the resources to make this investment, right? So anyways, he did add two team members because he was so committed to the goal. He's like, I know we can't do it with just you two. So he added two A-plus players. And basically, this is a really big difference between leadership and management, is that managers manage the process, whereas leaders give a very, I'll call it impossible goal. And so leaders help people achieve things that they didn't think were possible. And they show them how. They support them in doing it.

46:10That's pretty much the definition of a transformational leader. And so he gave them the impossible goal, and he said, you guys figure this out. Solve it. I'm here to support. I'm going to be trying to solve it too. And so he didn't give them the how. Because the how, they didn't know. But he gave them the goal, and it was inspirational. And ultimately, they ended the year with 320. So they didn't finish the year with the 500, but they did find way new, amazing ways of finding people that they weren't deploying before. They did find one person with$160, they found someone with$75, whatever it was.

46:45They found three or four big clients that took them to$320. In those two months, they over-5xed their business. That's huge. I have a question about this. Would you say it's fair to say that, because one of my questions was, I'm a little bit of a Debbie Downer with this question, but what happens when you don't hit that goal? So they had 500. What do you say? What do you feel? What goes on there? But I think I'm learning that they hit 300 and something. I'm going to guess here. They had 320. They are different people. They are a different business. And they are way ahead of where they would have been if they tried to 2X it.

47:21So maybe the goal is not necessarily to absolutely hit the 500, but it's who you become along the way. Am I on the right track? I think you're on the track. So remember this, and this is something that always hits people. The past and the future are tools. Past and the future are tools. They're tools. And so if they 5X'd their business in 60 days, and because they didn't hit the target that they were using as the filter for their present. Remember, the future is just a tool for operating in the present. So they use the future as a tool. It's not a reality. So there is no reality of them with 500.

47:57Okay. There is no reality of them with 500. That's a tool. That's a lot better tool than if they were going to go for 100, which would have been more their trajectory. The 500 is a tool. They hit 320. Now it's their choice in the present how they frame that. The present determines the past, and the past is a tool. And so if I feel like a loser and I frame it that way, that the last 60 days were awful because we didn't hit our tool of an idea of a future that never existed, it was just an idea that I'm using to shape my decisions in the present. And so, yeah, this is one of the things that people often say is, okay, if I'm going to go for impossible goals, what happens if I don't hit it?

48:35It's like, what does that have to do with anything? The past and the future don't exist. They're tools. Literally, they are tools. So if you and I were having a conversation, and we probably will because it's life and business in the future, and you love, girl, you love big goals, like huge goals, as do I. But if in the future, for some reason, you don't happen to hit a goal, even though everybody knows Amy Porterfield Taylor's goals. If for some reason there is a goal that you do not hit and you're trying to be optimistic and you're saying, but it's who I became in the process. Number one, I would be like, that's great.

49:05Continue watching the Hallmark channel. I love that. That's like your higher self. I would also say in December, you did more in December than you had done in the previous 11 months in December because you had landed those people. So it's like, okay, sorry you didn't hit it, but you just did more in one month than you had done all year. So I was just like, yes, we can be thankful for who we are, but we can also be like, look at those commas and zeros that probably would not have existed had you not been struck us. See, you and I are very tactile. We like being warm and fuzzy, but we also be like, mama likes money, too.

49:35Yeah, I need to land it, and I think that's what landed it. You just hit 320. You would have never done that if you did not go for it. If you had gone for it. No, you wouldn't have. They'd be probably like 65. Yes. And they wouldn't have had the two new team members and all of the new knowledge and capability to grow. So yes, yes, and yes. But this is similar to even how the big company that I was talking about, the franchise company, would have framed their paths. They were not trending, and so they didn't actually analyze and didn't see that they had actually added those 15 beasts. So they didn't realize how much growth and development.

50:09Now with this one, they had added one client with 170. That one client alone was almost 3x their business. And so think about the capability of being able to do that. And so, but think about it again, similar to what I was saying with the prior one. If we went back, so say it's right at the end, right on January 1st, and they're at 320, and they get to choose how they frame it. Yes. Right. Okay, how are we going to think about this? We didn't hit the 500. All right, well, let's go back to your past selves back in October before you even thought about this and before you set this goal. If we had talked to your October self.

50:45They would say, hey, just, you know, so we're at their January 1st self, and we're sending a letter back to their pass off, which is in October and saying, hey, just so you know, we're going to have 320 in this business. This person with 60 would have been like, they wouldn't have believed it, right? But now we're calling it a failure because we didn't hit 500. Stop preaching. Let's all can't take it. Let's all can't take it. That is powerful. So when we go through all of this and people are listening as a parting thing, because the books that Amy and I have listened to and read have led us to a point where it's kind of like coming into another pinnacle, like another peak of your career.

51:25And so you have a book coming out and here's the thing, people like Amy and I, Amy and I have told Amy, I don't want, I don't like when people come on the podcast for like what we call, what I call, nobody else calls, what I call like the book podcast train. Cause everybody has like the same conversations, but you and I had a conversation and you're dropping a book in October and it's a culmination of a lot of work that you've done. And talk to us about the book. Talk to us about achieving impossible goals. And then a parting takeaway for somebody who's listening and being like, I'm scared and I'm not quite sure that I believe that this impossible goal is possible.

52:00But if we can tap there for a second in closing. Sure. Yeah, so Rapid Transformation is the title of the book. The subtitle is actually The Science of Achieving Impossible Goals. See, this is where I, the science of it. Don't give me the science. Give me the science. I can't even wait. Yeah, I know. But yeah, And I honestly am, I'm here on a, what, Wednesday in Nashville. I flew here. You flew here. He flew here. He flew here. We're months from that. And honestly, like I find out about, you know, this opportunity. I'm hopping on a plane. I'm flying home right after. I'm having a blast. Like, and so I'm happy to be here and hang out with you.

52:36But it's largely what we've been talking about. You know, this past, present, future model, or I'll call it the holistic time model. That model, I had a lot of that understanding when I wrote, call it gap in the gain in 10x, but I didn't actually lay out that model of, you know, call it the past, present, future, all exist here and now. I've learned that. I didn't create that. You know, there's, but just to the idea that future determines the present and the present determines the past, right? I don't think, honestly, I'm sharing with you, I don't think that that idea has been encapsulated in any of psychology, purely and simply.

53:07And psychology as a discipline is very scattered, very fragmented. and there's even a lot of interesting ideas nowadays that a lot of psychology actually makes people worse. Of course, you can use it as an amazing tool. Basically, as I'm saying, the future determines the present and when you go for impossible goals and you get better and better at this, just like gratitude, you get better and better at thinking about an impossible goal, getting really honest about what you most want. I will say from my view, without an impossible goal, and anyone who's listening to this, but also you two thinking about it, you guys have done it many times where you went for something and you didn't know how to do it and it was big and you didn't, you know, but you had that, that faith, that commitment, that desire, and you figured it out.

53:46And the goal did force you to let go of a lot of the things that then existed in your life. And so, you know, when you use the future as, as the goal and as the filter, it does require letting things go. And so one thing I'll just add is, have any of you guys read, think again, Adam Grant? Have you ever, okay, you gotta read that one. Just because what he lays out in that book, which I think is beautiful, is think again, is all about the psychology of unlearning, right and so it's to that quote that i shared at the beginning by mark twain where he said it's not what you don't know that hurts you it's what you know for sure that just ain't so and so just as important as going for an impossible goal and learning how to actually do it and letting go of you know just as much as learning how to achieve something that's impossible it could be a person who wants to start a business they don't know how to do that right or it could be wanting to write a book whatever their goal is they don't know how to do it and so just as important as actually learning how to do that is letting go of the old identity, the old story, even the old commitments that are making up your current life.

54:45Letting go or unlearning even of old models. Actually, this is one of the things that it says in a lot of the research on going from possible goals is because, you know, to the idea of the BHAG, the BHAG disrupts, creates that identity crisis. Because the goal is so big, it forces you to unlearn a lot of your current ideas about yourself, about success, about how to succeed and achieve. If I'm going for an impossible goal, it's going to force me to let go of a lot of what I thought writing a book was. And so that's the beauty of it, is it forces you to let go of outdated models, outdated frames and perspectives and ideas.

55:19And honestly, the goal forces you to go and find new and better ones. And so it allows you to learn things you would have never otherwise learned. It's just a beautiful tool. One parting thing I'll just say is there's a really, really beautiful idea that I love in psychology called psychological flexibility. And I think when you really understand time as a tool, it creates that flexibility. Even with what you were saying, Amy, about he doesn't hit the 500, and so now he's rigid about how he feels about it. It takes massive flexibility to immediately just create a past that is really powerful. And so the ability to set new goals and then think from those goals and be willing to look at your current situation, my son Caleb and saying, this academy no longer works based on that goal.

56:05To strategize from the goal and look for new pathways, even a new identity takes a lot of flexibility, but also the flexibility of continuously creating the past in such a way that it's benefiting you in the present. Even if things appear to be falling apart, even if things didn't go well. Yesterday, dealing with four teenagers, which I have, often our life looks like a mess, right? On a daily basis. And it's like, okay, how am I going to decide what yesterday means? It takes a lot of flexibility for me not to say this is exactly what it means and this is what it always means and this person's wrong and I'm right.

56:43It's like, no. There's a different way. Flexibility. Yeah. And so I think that this creates a huge amount of flexibility because yes, you need to adopt a new identity to achieve future goals. But at the same time, you have to eventually let go of that identity to then pursue the ones beyond them. And so, you know, as an example, me writing these three books with Dan, like I went all in and I was excited about those books because they were completely different from the books I was writing before. And so they led me to different forms of knowledge, understanding and learning that I wouldn't have had had I not gone for those.

57:14But while writing those, my future, you know, dramatically elevated such that that collaboration became below the new floor. And so I had to let go of that, including all of the benefits of being there. And that's not my identity anymore. You know, but I'm very grateful for my past. I'm grateful for what I learned. But the letting go of old ideas, old stories is a super skill. And it's super important. And I will just say to the idea of risk real quick, you sure? It's not that risky. Like genuinely, like me letting go of that collaboration. A lot of people told me not to do it, but it was actually my future self that got me into that situation.

57:51It's my future self that got me out, my next level future self. And so there's, it's just not as risky as people think. One of the things that humans do, and this is just one of the core, what they call cognitive biases, is we inflate loss. We inflate the downsides. We inflate the risks, you know? And so as an example, that guy in the little business that I was talking about, him hiring those two people, there's risk there because honestly, his business wasn't that big. But how risky is it? He's hiring people above the floor. He's hiring people that are better than he's ever hired before. It might not work out, but what's the absolute worst case scenario?

58:29Maybe he just makes a little bit more money than he did before. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's a little backwards, but now he's got a lot of learning. The main point is that when you let things go that you think are your resource, by letting it go, you open that space to actually go and find and solve the stuff above the floor. Finding and figuring out the new solutions, and because you're operating from the future, you're going to be fine. I'll be honest. In the last six months, I let go of what was my core business because I got really connected to that future self. I got rid of my core marketing strategy, my YouTube team.

59:07The system that I'm now creating to achieve the new goal is fundamentally different than the system that was my business before. My business was around coaching and a YouTube channel and X, Y, and Z, whereas now it's very different. It's a lot more simple. I had to let go of that. One of my favorite quotes, by the way, is the system is designed to defend the system. And so whenever you're operating from the future, the system doesn't want you to break it. The team didn't want me to let them go. They wanted to stay. But in letting go of my business, over 50 % of my income, my income's now, and I didn't know how I would do it, but my income's already going to be way bigger than it was before.

59:41but I would have never known that had I not let it go. So you do figure things out, and the letting things go is just as much a part of the commitment as the investing in the bigger future. And so it's very powerful. One just last example, I'm sorry I'm going off, but I share this idea with someone who is ready to start a new business. He's had a business in the UK for 15, 20 years. He's wanting to create this new business, and he has this one in the UK, and his plan was just to keep it for 10 years. and I said, my man, your 10-year goal, let's achieve it in one. Again, time's a tool. And he said, well, if I'm going to achieve it in one, then I've got to sell that business now.

1:00:18He said, I was thinking about keeping that business in the UK, but now if I'm going to do this one in one year, it makes absolutely no sense to keep this. I've got to sell it and I'm going to use that resource to do this. And so I think that you know when you're on to a good idea because it starts weeding out a lot of what you're currently doing. Sorry if that was a bit long-winded. So good, Ben. So, I just, a ton of gratitude. Amy, like we could not have, I mean, I was going to say we could not have picked a better guest, but I didn't do any of the picking. You did. So, you could not have picked a better guest.

1:00:51Thank you for that. Ladies and gentlemen, listening to the Jasmine Starr Show always means that you take an action. So, the first action that you can start doing today is to let go. Let go of what isn't serving you. Let go of what your future self hasn't ordained as yours. and then go and ask yourself, what goal do I have? And can I 10X it? What does that actually look like? And then the last piece of action, because we covered a lot of stuff you got to do after this episode, is to actually go back and reframe yourself a year ago. Not the childhood stuff that I'm sorry you happened to go through.

1:01:25Not the elementary bullying that I'm sorry you had to go through. Not through the failed relationships or the miscommunication, but who you were a year ago. Could you imagine where you were today? I don't think so. Why? Why? I'm emotional. I'm talking to myself. I make this show for me. Thank you for the therapy. I'll send you a check. This is the thing I needed to do. And when I am on a flight home, dang, my yesterday self is going to thank my today self. What is wrong with me? Your yesterday self is blown away by your today self. They have no idea. They are blown away. That girl was like, girl, girl.

1:01:53Yeah, they don't even know what the heck you're up to. Okay. The Jasmine Star Show to connect with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. You can find him at his website. You can pre-order his book, Rapid Transformation. That is what I am going to be doing. I am like president of your fan club. Amy will probably like arm wrestle me for that. And I'm like, you're vice president. I've already. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can I be president? Yeah, Amy, it's obvious. She's the queen and she's, yeah, so fine. Fine, I'll be the vice president. You can definitely connect with him on Instagram and on YouTube. He has so many free resources for you to redefine who you were so that you could step into who you are going to become.

1:02:29May we let go of the past and step into that future. Thank you for listening to The Jasmine Starr Show.