Transcription
Oh, you see that? We’re good at breaking out the chart! What’s up, guys? I want to talk to you today about how you can design your dream life. Now, most people overcomplicate the hell out of this, or worse, they design it based on their past and the momentum. If you want to create a future, the best way to do it is to wipe the slate clean. If you could start over today, what would your dream life look like? Moreover, how can you get excited and have fun with this?
Right? I think we get so serious about having a vision and you’ve got one life to live that we forget these processes are supposed to be fun and enjoyable. When I did exercises like this 10 years ago, I thought it was crazy the stuff I was putting down. I put things like, “I want to be a rock star and tour the world. I want to have a YouTube channel that reaches millions of people. I want to have a seven-figure business,” even though I was 30 grand in debt in my mom's basement. All of those and more came true, and I’d say conservatively 70% of everything I put down in this exercise has come true.
I’m not saying that to brag or that I have some superhero ability that you don’t have. I’m saying that because I want you to wipe the slate clean of what you think is possible. I want you to just channel excitement, a beginner's mind, and really, most importantly, do this exercise.
Now, this exercise has three steps for you, and we have three different graphics I’ll walk you through. That’s it!
**Step One: Reimagining What’s Possible for You.** You’re going to ask yourself the simple question: What is the most badass life I can think of for me? Right? Like, what is the “Holy crap, I can’t believe this is my life” version of where you want to be? This is what I call reverse goal setting. What do I mean? It’s thinking with the end in mind, not thinking from where you are today. Go from the outside in. In other words, what do you want someday, and how does that break down into your 5-3-1 month goals?
When you do this, this is what people mean by having a vision for your life. Some alternative angles of this are: What excites you? Like, what do you say, “Oh man, I can’t wait to…”? When I answered this, it was things like, “Well, I would be free from a 9 to 5, like someone breathing down my neck telling me what to do. There wouldn’t be any ceiling to the amount of money I could make. I’d have creative freedom. I love to teach, so I would be learning and getting paid to share, learn, grow, and help people.”
Uh, freedom from a schedule! Like, if I have a daughter, I can go to her softball game on Wednesday at 2 p.m. I’m there! I don’t have to ask for permission to get that off. So, like, those were the kinds of things I put in here.
Now, if you’re like, “Clark, I’m stuck. I don’t know what the most exciting life is,” another angle is: Who has the most badass life you can think of? This is what we call modeling. Businesses model after other business models. Athletes model after professionals who have it all figured out. Similarly, you can model yourself after what other people who inspire you are doing. You see role models everywhere online when you’re consuming content in your life at work. Look at what these people are doing and say, “Why do I like that? Who has something I already want?”
When I did this, I saw people that had online fitness businesses—people like Vince Del Monte, Sean Croxton. And again, this is early 2010, like before internet marketing and content creation was huge, so it was very unique. I’m saying, “Wow, these people aren’t speaking one-to-one; they’re speaking one-to-many. They have the freedom, the lifestyle—everything that checked off that I told you I wanted earlier.”
Then I realized I couldn’t stick to a diet, and that’s a pretty hard gig to have if you’ve got a binge eating problem. I pivoted to something more that I loved, which is what we’re doing now.
So many people get jealous, and this is something I never understood. When they see people successful, instead of getting inspired, they say, “Oh man, they have XYZ advantages,” or “They’re only successful because of their looks.” That’s a loser mindset! Okay? Do not ever say that. Wipe that slate clean. When you see someone in a better position than you, I want you to flip it to getting inspired.
I used to say, “Why not me?” I would see someone—like I was in my mom's basement, I was 30 grand in debt, it sucked—and I would see someone who wasn’t or was crushing it, and I’d be like, “Man, why not me?” As soon as I flipped that question with the intention behind it to not “Why not me?” victim, but to “Why the not me?” creator mindset, inspired mindset—like, “Wow, that’s proof that it’s possible.” Same question, different intention.
**Step Number Two: Reject.** Not to be confused with my nickname in high school! I get that this can be hard to think about what you want, so an easier way to do this—a kind of hack—is to go negative. What is your idea of hell? Like, you wake up five years from now and you’re thinking, “Oh my God, I cannot believe I let it get this bad.” I’m giving you permission to go crazy there! What do you not want?
A bit of a story on this: I had a buddy who I’m friends with now who, after college, got a job in corporate. He goes in, and in the first week, he meets this guy who’s been working there for 40 years. The only thing he wanted to talk to him about was his college experience. He’s like, “Oh man, you just graduated college? No way! College is the best days, man! And now you’re here? You get to do this for the rest of your life!” That was the tone of every comment he said. He said it was the most depressing thing—like, this guy who’s 40 years ahead of me keeps talking about what I just went through and how much he misses it.
That was when he woke up to saying, “Oh man, that’s me in 40 years if I don’t change something.” I’m not putting this in here saying you have to be an entrepreneur; corporate can be fine for a lot of people. There’s a lot of structure in there. But for him, that was his idea of saying, “What do I not want?” Well, he just encountered it, and he said, “I can’t do that.”
Here’s where you are, and you’re looking out and saying, “Whoa, if it got to there, I would not be satisfied. I would be like, ‘We are in trouble!’”
Now, let’s add a little theory from psychology here. There are two primary goals that you can set. The first is approach goals, and that’s what we just did—like, “What do I want? What’s exciting? I want a promotion at work. I want to find someone to share my life with in a relationship. I want more energy to play with my kids.” Those are all approach goals. Those are very good.
But then there’s a second type, equally as motivational: avoid goals. So, what are you running from? “I don’t want to be broke. I don’t want to die early from chronic health problems. I don’t want to end up alone.” You’re like, “Oh, that’s heavy!” But that’s what’s in our subconscious, and we’re not making either of these—approach or avoid—wrong. That’s silly because we all have both of these. We’re tapping into the motivation from each, and if you can really do this, that’s where you get what I call your authentic drive.
So many times with goal setting, I see this a lot where people will put on their sheet of paper things that sound really, really good and altruistic, but they don’t have any juice behind them. “I’m going to disrupt the blood diamond industry. I’m going to free every orca in captivity.” That sounds good; we’re all on the same page. But if it’s not deeply authentic to you, we’re just adding fluff to our goals.
Now, when you look at a list, they’re not going to inspire you. My point is that the authentic drive is using both approach and avoid goals. So, like, if really in your bones you feel that you do not want to be enslaved to a corporate system and you dread going into work for someone else, that’s a better goal to find motivation from, even though it’s quote-unquote negative. It’s authentic.
If your goal is to get shredded to have more energy, great! But if it’s to get shredded to impress the opposite sex and increase your dating life, that’s going to motivate you ten times more than a nice fluffy goal like, “I want to get my cholesterol levels down.” That’s what we’re talking about here, okay?
So, we’re not judging you; you’re not judging yourself. You’re saying, “What’s authentic?” And that’s why we’re doing approach and avoid goals.
Now, here’s the thing: obviously, you could make the argument, “Oh, well, you know, avoid goals are lower vibration, and I’m a high-conscious being. Why would I suit myself down?” The point is that as you evolve and get closer to it, your goals evolve and change as well. There are many things I thought I wanted someday that, you know, five years into it, I’m like, “Oh, maybe I don’t actually want that.” A lot of these are around money and finances.
The point is that the things you want evolve as you evolve. If you want 11 questions that really help with this, I’ll link down below our free guide for YouTube subs. These are my favorite 11 journaling questions to change your life. It’s what I asked when I was in my mom's basement, and I put them in a nice document that you can fill out and answer. You’ll also be on our email list to get all the cool updates and whatnot.
**Now, Step Number Three:** and we’ll fill in some of these together. This one has a lot more of a conceptual concept: it’s to reframe this process. What is the closest win for you? What is the closest next thing that you can do to bridge yourself out to your vision that you created?
So, I’ll break this down for you. Up here, we have what I call the 1.0 You, and then where you want to be is the 2.0 You. Okay? So, this is you 50 lbs out of shape. This is you shredded with your dream body. This is you unfulfilled at a job. This is you working for yourself, waking up every day super excited and energized. Whatever that state is for you, got it?
Most people go wrong because they think, “Okay, here’s where I am; there’s where I want to be.” Move you! You hear people talk like, “Well, I’m trying to lose 50 lbs.” “Oh yeah, I’m going to lose 20 lbs.” Or, “Oh, I’m going to work for myself so I can be a millionaire.” So, we set the bar so far out that we forget that you’re not losing 50 lbs; you’re losing 10, 20, 30, 40, and then you arrive at 50. Every step along the way is a goal: 1, 2, 3, 4, and then where you want to be.
This is called chunking, and I love this because everything you can break down into two steps. Referencing our chart, we have the now—well, that’s a series of one month, one year, three, five—and then where you want to be. That’s the chunking down.
Personal story on this: I found it in my 2016 journal. I was starting on YouTube, and I said I wanted to get 10,000 subscribers. I broke down that goal every single hundred. I wrote the next one and checked it off. So, I chunked my big goal into smaller goals, and you check it off along the way. Anything has the steps that you can break into.
You want to run an Ironman? Well, you probably don’t just start from day one training for an Ironman if you’re out of shape. Maybe your sub-goals are: I want to run a 5k, then a half, then a full marathon, then a triathlon, and then an Ironman. I know this might sound small—like, “Oh, you’re just going to chunk down”—but when I trace back how I was able to maintain motivation over 14 years of making YouTube videos and being in an online business, it was this: it was knowing where I wanted to end up but chunking it down to what’s the next immediate thing I need to get there.
Now, for this next part, I want to go over tips because you might be thinking, “Okay, well, I know what I want. I’m doing that. I know what I don’t want. Maybe I’ve chunked it down. How can I reduce friction to where I am to where I want to be?”
The first is, again, back to psychology. There’s a concept called goal competition. When you have a goal that takes a lot of your energy—like building a business—that’s a massive goal. That’s pretty much all-consuming, right? Entrepreneurs can get obsessive, and I have stories of this. I have friends like this; it’s all you think of, and that’s obsessive.
Well, it’s very hard for you to have three or four different goals because they’re competing for that same bandwidth. In the same way that if you’re in a house with one Wi-Fi router, right? You ever had like 10 people plugged into it or 10 devices? It slows the whole thing down, doesn’t it?
Then if you just have one, in other words, this is what most people do: they say, “Okay, dream life! I’m going to have like 15 goals that I’m pursuing at once to get there.” But this is the right way to do it: focus on one goal at a time.
And ideally, this is—you ever heard the concept of a keystone habit? It’s like the habit that unlocks other habits. So, an example here: if you have a drinking problem and you’re trying to lose weight, well, the reason you binge is because you drink, and then you get the hangries, and you’re hungover, and so that throws off your diet. So, if you quit drinking, all the other habits are easier to maintain because you sleep in, you can be consistent, you go to the gym, etc. So, quitting drinking is a keystone habit.
I find you have a keystone goal. So, for me, that was content and marketing and building, you know, getting attention and creating videos. That has always been my highest priority—making sure the lifeblood of your business is sharing valuable content. It’s like a heartbeat; you know, it circulates everything. If you stop making videos, then the whole circulation of your entire business goes flatline, and you die.
The second tip I want to talk to you about is habits. People can overcomplicate habits like they have to have these systems and they have to do all these rituals and move things around in their life. It comes down to this: asking yourself, “Why wouldn’t this work?” Okay? Why wouldn’t I be successful if I was doing this? And that’s usually like one or two big things that we’re avoiding, and some of the other habits can get in the way of that.
You want to be a music producer playing festivals? Why wouldn’t it work? Well, your habits probably. Okay, if I can just produce the best songs I can and release one every month, that’s going to motivate me to actually learn, and I’m on the hook for something. Every day before my job, for two hours, I’m watching tutorials, I’m rebuilding songs of my favorite artists, I’m trying to get it to sound exactly like them, and learning all the skills.
Like, why wouldn’t it work? You want to lose weight? Okay, I’m going to track everything I put in my mouth. I’m going to get 10,000 steps a day, no matter what. Why wouldn’t that work? You want to be a writer? Okay, I’m going to commit to posting one blog post a week and make it the best I can and love what I do. Why wouldn’t that work? That’s the question.
So, habits are great, but I think we can get lost in the sauce with the processes behind them. You’re really just trying to have the actions that answer the question, “Why wouldn’t this work?”
So, let’s review. For you to design your dream life, it’s three steps: reimagine, reject, and reframe. You’re going to ask yourself, “What’s the most badass life I can think of?” You don’t do what most people do, which is just think small—like where I am now and where I want to be in one month or one year. That’s okay, but it’s better to begin with the end in mind and work your way backwards.
If you’re stuck, you can ask the easy question: “What do I not want? What do you want to reject?” There are approach goals and avoid goals; both are important to source that authentic drive and motivation.
And the last point is that you reframe: What is the closest win I can have? What are the chunks in between where I am and where I want to be? And if you’re stuck, you just pursue the next one. Those, if planned out, will build on each other. It’s also easier to produce one big win than to go after five at once.
And remember to keep the time frames inspiring but not demoralizing. You’re going after your first couple of big wins, and also, more importantly, allow your goals to change as you evolve. They grow into something deeper.
Thanks so much! Love you! See you in the next one. Stop settling, start living. Peace!