The Mindset Forge
In Season Five, The Mindset Forge focuses on helping men between 40 - 60 years old maximized this chapter of life by building strength, discipline, purpose and a proactive mindset.
During Season's one through four, you will fantastic content focused mainly on successful athletes and performing artists who've learned how to show up for the big moments of sports, performance and life.
The Mindset Forge
Episode 100!! And How to "Not Suck" at Achieving Goals!
Embark on a transformative journey of self-improvement as we unveil the secrets to crafting effective and adaptable goals in the latest episode of our podcast. This celebration isn't just about hitting the 100th-episode mark; it's a testament to the power of individualized fitness and nutrition coaching. Thank you, our devoted listeners, for walking this path with us, sharing your insights, and shaping our collective quest towards optimizing health, mindset, and performance. Hear how one client's tailored coaching experience became their blueprint for success, and let it inspire you to conquer your own health objectives.
January's promise of a fresh start brings the art of goal setting into the spotlight, and we're sharing strategies that ensure your resolutions aren't just castles in the air. Discover the wisdom of creating goal ranges, like aiming for a body fat percentage with a little wiggle room, to maintain momentum through the chaos of life. Listen closely as we delve into the energizing effects of committing to a challenge, such as a bodybuilding competition, and learn the importance of sharing your dreams with the right people. Your aspirations are not just fleeting thoughts; they're stepping stones to a stronger, more fulfilled you.
Email: Barton@bartonguybryan.com
Website: http://bartonguybryan.com
Use this link to get a 30 minute discovery call scheduled with Barton regarding the Team Bryan Wellness Concierge Fitness Program
https://calendly.com/bartbryan/conciergecoachingcall
My 3 Top Episodes of the first 100:
7 Essentials to Building Muscle after 40
3x Olympic Gold Medalist Brendan Hansen
MMA Strength and Conditioning Coach Phil Daru
Here we are, the Mindset Forge podcast in its episode 1-0-0. That's at 100 episodes. This is my 100th. I'm super excited about it and you know it's interesting from the podcast space. There's millions and millions of podcasts out there. Most of them don't get past episode 25. They just don't have the consistency of the focus, the purpose to get past 25 episodes and then 50 episodes. It drops off considerably after that and it's about 2% of all podcasts that make it to 100 episodes.
Speaker 1:And so, as I do this episode today, I'm grateful and just enjoying the process.
Speaker 1:I'm enjoying the fact that I made it to 100 episodes and I'm getting back from you guys in terms of listenership and what you like about it and just the direction we're going.
Speaker 1:And, of course, I'd love to hear from you what's something you want to see or hear more about, or somebody even you want me to interview over the next 100 episodes. I've got several interviews with some experts in the field of mindset, some doctors, people talking about longevity, sleep, optimizing for performance in life, health and sports and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of cool stuff coming up. But if you want to hear about something specific, shoot me an email or set up a call with me. I'd love to hear more from you, give me feedback on what you're loving and where you'd like to see this go. So with that, I wanted to give an opportunity to play a testimonial from a client of mine, tiffany, who I've been training her and her husband Hayden for several months now, and she's talking about the experience working with me, and so this is my little commercial here, so enjoy this two minute clip.
Speaker 2:So my husband and I inquired with Bart about the concierge fitness services because we needed the whole package to kind of tie in the accountability what to do with strength training, nutrition, protein intake, lifestyle changes and we feel so cradled and held by Bart in this process we didn't know what to do as we age.
Speaker 2:And there's this thing about perimenopause that I just didn't understand. How were things slipping so badly? And Bart is catching me there too and helping me understand how to age gracefully and work out hard and really strength train and know what to do in the gym, which is huge for me. I don't like walking into a gym and feeling clueless when do I go, what do I do, what weight do I put on, how many reps? Bart's got it. He sets me up well, even when I'm traveling, which I appreciate. There's a spreadsheet to do, there's accountability, there's check-in, there's constant monitoring in a positive, encouraging way.
Speaker 2:And this thing about semi-glutides is you can lose weight fast and steadily but if you're not keeping the strength up and really combating that weight loss with muscle gain and I learned about that with Bart because I did a DEXA scan to understand what lean muscle mass I had and where I could lose weight in just pure fat. And I don't wanna be skinny, I wanna be fit, I wanna be strong and I feel like my goals are aligned with Bart perfectly. So my husband has his own set of goals, I have my own set. I get to work with Bart myself in our gym a couple times a week and then we check in a lot more. So bottom line is I am on my way to the results that we both set in the beginning of our contract. We signed up for that and Bart's got me.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in this episode I wanted to take a deeper dive into goal setting, because it is January, it is 2024, and most of us, hopefully, have set some sort of goals that we're trying to shoot for in 2024, whether it's a health goal, a mindset goal, maybe just an overall recovery or well-being goal, something like that. Maybe you signed up for a marathon or a bodybuilding contest, whatever it is. You've probably, at this point, two weeks into the year, have some sort of goal that you're thinking about, that you're shooting for, and that's cool, right? This is the season to set a goal and to really kinda lean into something. What I've learned, though, in just the process of setting goals, and why some people are able to achieve their goals and get that success and really not just achieve the goal, but whatever it takes to achieve the goal, becomes a habit, like that's the beauty of a goal. It's not necessarily what that goal is, because it's like anything.
Speaker 1:The journey to the goal is oftentimes what it's all about. Right, and take away lost goal, for instance. So let's say, my goal is to get down to, you know, 210 pounds. All right, I wanna lose, you know, 10 pounds of body fat. So I'm gonna set a goal, I'm gonna try to work my way to getting there, maybe three months. Now here's the challenge I get to that goal. Cool, I'm at 210 pounds. Maybe I'm at 9% body fat at that point, fantastic high five me right. That's great.
Speaker 1:But what's next, and what I want you to learn is the journey to get there and what is learned along the way the habits, the discipline, the mindset that allows you to not just get to that goal, but will allow you to be able to get to any goal you set, whether it's a fitness goal, a life goal, a relationship goal, whatever More effectively, because you'll know yourself, you'll know what buttons to push and you'll know that journey better and better. And that's really why you see people who seem to be able to put a new discipline or add a new thing into their life and not fall off and others have such a hard time with, just like cutting back on alcohol or cutting back on fast food. It's because those people that are just goal oriented have so many more reps and experience and taking a goal and Putting themselves to it, understanding that the give and take and the the ebbs and flows of any type of progression towards a goal, but know how they they can get there, know the tools, the buttons to push to get them to that goal, and so they're much better at adding little habits into their life. Because I think a goal is just a way to get a habit. You know, unless you're specifically in a sport or something where you're like, hey, have a goal to run, you know a half marathon in an hour and 40 minutes, so great, okay, great goal. That's a very specific goal. You know. What is it gonna teach you along the way? Discipline it's gonna make you a better runner. You're probably gonna like get healthier in the process, maybe develop some like important Habits around, like daily scheduling and prioritization around fitness, health, nutrition, recovery. Those are all things are gonna happen.
Speaker 1:So If you take your goal, whatever you set this year and I want to take a bit of a step back, because here's why people fail so we have a certain amount of stress in our life and the reality is is during the holidays we probably have less stress, unless some of us have like a tyrannical Mother-in-law or somebody like that who's like around in the holidays and that makes us more stress. Most of us are less stress, right. Most of us are, you know, kind of relaxed for enjoying the holidays or family. Maybe work is pulled back, or maybe you're off completely and you're thinking to yourself, hey, what do I want to achieve? So you're in this state of kind of optimism. The New Year comes around, you think what, what I want to add into my life? And that's a great space to think big.
Speaker 1:But sometimes what happens is is we think too big and we put a goal out there that's too big and too rigid and it doesn't allow for the expansion and kind of contraction of stress. So let's say, just to use kind of a spherical concept, let's say your stress level at the beginning of the year is pretty small, right? So this small sphere if you're watching this on YouTube you can see when my hands are we have a small circle and that's our life, that's our stress level and our kind of breaking point for stress is maybe Three times that big. Right? So a bigger sphere and but, and if we get past that, in terms of our stress and our anxiety and our and our and just life's chaos, things fall apart and you probably have experienced that where it's like you know you were doing so good, I was on my goals, and then, like my car broke down, or like I had my, my boss told me I had this big project had to do, or my kid got sick, or you know all the life things, and all of a sudden You're in panic mode, you're in fight or flight and in all those habits that aren't just like a part of your being, they fall away because you just don't have the space to handle anything other than what you're dealing with.
Speaker 1:So when you set a goal, you have to think about what's that kind of panic, or event horizon, if you want to use like a black hole terminology. What's that event horizon where, if I'm this stress, if I'm way out here in that kind of panic mode, I'm still going to be able to keep focused on the, the new goal, right? So we don't want to make a goal. It's so big that it just kind of makes it impossible for us to handle once life gets stressful. Now, we can't always know when life is going to get stressful, but if you don't create some sort of a buffer for yourself Uh, you're, you're probably going to hit that, and then that's what we really fail Is you know when you're tired, when you're you know, just stress, and that's when we overeat, that's when we drink more, that's when we just don't sleep as well, and those things compile into making bad choices. And then the choice to get up early to go for a run or go to the gym or any of those things those things are quickly erased.
Speaker 1:So when I, when you're thinking about your goal, think about okay, how do I make that goal achievable within the context of the stress that comes and goes in your life? Because if the goal is too big and stress happens and something goes down that you didn't expect, that goal's probably out the window, and so that's a concept that I want you to stay focused on. I'm gonna give you a tool here on how you can actually create a buffer for that. So the first thing I would do is I would say, okay, shrink your goal by a little bit, and instead of just like making it less fun to achieve the goal, I'm gonna say give yourself a range. So what I mean by that is I mentioned a half marathon and I don't run half marathon, so I'm gonna throw out some numbers. That may or may not be fast at all, it doesn't really matter, but you'll get the point.
Speaker 1:So let's say I had a goal at the beginning of the year to run the Austin half marathon in an hour and 40 minutes and that like I've only ever run it in two hours and that's a big leap like to take 20 minutes off my half marathon time. So that's gonna be my goal. I make it a goal, I'm gonna commit to that. But it's very rigid and at the moment we start feeling like we're not gonna achieve that. That's the easy time to quit. So instead of giving yourself a rigid, hard goal of like I'm gonna lose 15 pounds or I'm gonna run the half marathon in an hour and 40. Give yourself a range, refocus that goal and say, hey, you know what, I wanna run this half marathon between an hour and 40 and an hour and 50. Both of those are better than you've ever done, but one's much more manageable and one's much more challenging. And so anywhere in that, within the space of that of that window of success, you're gonna feel successful. And it also gives you some flexibility in case life gets a little crazy and maybe you have a week where it just all goes to hell. You can still get back on the horse and continue down that road and not feel like okay, maybe I won't get to 140 or an hour and 40, but I still got a good shot at getting an hour and 50 on this marathon right, and so you can kind of play around and maybe just not lose focus.
Speaker 1:And I listened to Mel Robbins. She had a really great podcast on goal setting and this is a concept that I got from her and I've used it before in my life and I just didn't realize it was some scientifically backed principles behind this. But when you have that range and let's take weight loss too so instead of saying I wanna lose, let's say so. I'm 220,. So let's say I wanna say I wanna lose 10 pounds in three months of body fat, right. So 10 pounds in three months doable, right. But maybe what I really wanna say is hey, you know what I wanna be at 208 to 213. So instead of being 210 being this rigid goal, I'm gonna say, hey, most challenging number would be 208. A little bit easier to be 213. That gives me a window of five pounds.
Speaker 1:Now I would also for me, if that was one of my goals, I would check my. You know I do a dexa scan. I would wanna see where my body fat, body composition is. And then I'd wanna check it, because I do not care about the weight on the scale, I actually care about the body fat versus body muscle. But you get the idea. Most people are like, looking at a scale, wondering like, is that good or bad? So let's use a scale, right? If I'm 220 and I want to lose body fat, then I wanna create a range of 208 to 213. Or if I'm actually measuring body fat, I might say, okay, how do I say that? 12.5% body fat? I want to get down to somewhere between 8% and 10% body fat, which for me would be about 4 to 4.5 to 5 pounds of buffer in there in terms of total body fat. These are just ways that allow you to have a much more flexible picture of your goal and therefore, when life gets hard, when stress levels pick up, when things come about that you didn't expect, you have a little bit of flexibility in terms of pivoting, maybe solving it and getting through that hard time and still getting back on the horse and still having a range that you can attain and not fall off the horse, because when we feel like something's too far, it's out of reach, we quit. Generally right, we quit.
Speaker 1:One of the best things I did last year and this is a personal story is I signed up for a bodybuilding show, but I signed up for it as soon as possible. I was signed up for it in December. The show wasn't until April. So once I signed up, I paid that money, I got my NPC card, I had all the things. I was locked in, I had a coach hired. I paid that coach for the three and a half months it was going to take to get to the bodybuilding show and I was financially bought in. But I was also mentally and physically and emotionally all bought into this journey. I was going to go on Because I didn't want a back out. I didn't want a way that quitting was an option. I wanted to be able to say, hey, I was doing this and I was going to just one day at a time. But I knew that I had already paid, I had already signed up, I was already committed, I had already told my friends and family it was going to happen. And that became a really great motivator because I had a no quit mindset and that's a part of that.
Speaker 1:If you have a goal that is like, hey, participation could be a good goal. It was my first bodybuilding show, so that was a great opportunity. I wasn't saying I'm going to get first place. I just said I'm going to show up at my best and do this bodybuilding show and that was motivation enough. So you got to look at what the goal is, how it resonates with your life, who you are, what you want to achieve in your life, and that's really where a coach can help to. If you've got a coach, talk with them, bring them into your experience. If you need a coach, obviously you can hire me to do that type of stuff, or one of my trainers that works with people all over the country. So these are things you can do if you want to get some clarity around it.
Speaker 1:But my recommendation is, of course, create a range. You want to be happy anywhere inside that range. Let's be clear on that. If you set a goal to lose five to 15 pounds, that's your range, but if you lost five, you wouldn't be happy at all. Then don't make it five. Make the first number like the easier number. Make that something that you still would be happy about. Yeah, some achievable but also rewarding number or goal to reach Right. So you got to play around with that. But if you have that window, I guarantee the experience is going to be more fun because you're going to have a little bit more flexibility. And that's how life works. I mean, good Lord If we had. If everything has to be determined by hitting a specific number, that's a lot of just unneeded pressure to put on yourself. And if you use this kind of range creates flexibility, it creates improvisation, it creates creativity in the way that you attack it and it also lets you fall down once or twice, still get back up and achieve a part of the goal that you were hoping to achieve. So big deal there.
Speaker 1:Now let's think about one other thing, and I talked about it a little bit. But, like sharing the goal with people, I am not a big fan of posting on social media your big goal, right, if that works for you. I'm not shaming you for doing it. But, like, sometimes we think accountability, we think we're going to be more accountable if we like yell from the rooftops. This is my goal, hey guys, hey listen, this is my goal, this is what I want, and I get the impulse. But I think when you really look at your goal, you wanna own 100% of it.
Speaker 1:So you only wanna tell the people that matter. You know, a spouse, maybe, kids, a coach, if you have one, a best friend, just a small cohort of people that are gonna root you on, that are gonna and that probably are gonna be affected by the change of your habits right, if your best friend doesn't know, and he keeps asking you to go have a beer with them and watch the football game, you keep saying no, I don't, I'm good buddy, and he doesn't know that you have this big goal, he might think you're rejecting him and all the while like, hey, I'm just getting ready for the half marathon. And he was like, oh well, you didn't tell me, right? So share it with the people that matter, because that matters in your social life that, a, you want them cheering you on. B, you want them to understand why you're doing these things and that it matters. And then, c, it's somebody you can check in with and share an update, or you know, or even maybe let them help you kind of get back on the horse a little bit if you feel like you've fallen off. But when you share it with too many people, it becomes a little bit of like you're doing it for the external validation of saying you did it and trying to validate yourself to people that don't matter, right? So you gotta kind of be careful about that aspect of social media. So share it with the people that matter. Let them know it matters to you.
Speaker 1:Create that buffer right, that range that you're gonna kind of use to target towards right. Anything in that range is a success. You know optimal is, you did everything right and you got to that best number or that best end of the range. But hey, you know life happened this and that boom, boom. All these things can happen All of a sudden. You know you fell off your goals a little bit, but you can still get back on them and achieve, you know, somewhere in that range of what you want. So try that and you can take the goal you've already set and just modify it slightly by adding that range. And, trust me, when you do that and you start going back into the focus of that goal, it's gonna feel different.
Speaker 1:The last piece of that is proactivity is one of the biggest factors in terms of people who have that habits and the discipline we see. People go oh man, that person's so disciplined, that person's so focused, that person has an easy time at showing up the gym or working out or just hitting goals. You know what they do. I promise you every single person you feel that way about. They plan their week. They think about when they're working out Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday what they're doing. Saturday and Sunday. They might be planning family activities on Saturday morning.
Speaker 1:You got to figure out how you're gonna get your things done within the context of your family and with the context of your life, because that's the complicated part about being an adult, especially an adult 40 to 60. You're not retired yet. You're probably responsible for a lot of people your family, other employees, perhaps a team, in my case, a lot of clients and things like that and so there's a lot of things to juggle. And so you've got to be able to plan out your week and make it the best, and it may not happen exactly the way you planned it out, but it sure as hell gonna be closer to that. So do that. Sunday, friday, saturday, whenever that day is, plan the week. Get your workouts written in there. Make them as important as meeting with your boss or as important as all the other things that you would expect to show up for in your day, all right.
Speaker 1:So that's the main thrust of this and I think the last piece is like in the first couple of weeks of re-engaging that goal, make sure you're focused on effort and showing up, versus hitting a number. So if it's running, if it's going to the gym, whatever, just make it about effort. I showed up, I worked hard, I feel good, I showed up, I did the thing. I felt good, right, like, because effort is going to be the determining factor of like. The more effort you put in, the more the results are going to show up. If you start chasing a number too early, you know, let's say you're trying to, you know, catch your mile time or get up, get a PR on your mile time and you don't get it in the first couple of weeks, you might get discouraged. Focus on effort in those first couple of weeks. Specifically create that range. Tell your best friends and family, make sure they're bought in and go get it All right now, last but not least, send me an email, share with me your goal.
Speaker 1:I want to hear from you. What's your goal? What do you? What do you focus on? What's that range? What did you build out? How did this help you understand your goal. Give me a little information on it. I'd love to read up on that. I'd love to hear from you, and if you want to set up a call with me just to talk through about this goal and find out how I might be able to support you on this, I'd love that too. That's all I got for today. Again, 100th episode. Thanks for being a part of this journey. If you're watching this on YouTube or listening to any of the podcast apps, I just honor you, your journey, your participation in this experience for me and hopefully, you're getting massive value and you're and you're taking these little nuggets, putting this your day to day life and being a better version of yourself every single day. Shout out to y'all Thanks so much for everything and here's to 100 more episodes.
