About the Episode :
Rick Jordan explains today why he hates the question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Why would you continue to forecast into the future, when the future is set on what you do today. Learn how he has applied this to his real life.
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You’re either going to love this episode or you might actually hate it because this is going to be a bit of a wake up call for a lot of people out there. Why do I know that? Because when I first started grasping these concepts, it was a wake up call for me and it’s something that I almost have to set my metaphorical alarm to wake myself up every now and then, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Today, we’re going to talk about doing the hard things. Who likes to do hard things? There was a time in my life, to push myself further and further, where I would intentionally place complicated, disgusting, hard-ass stuff in front of me, to help push myself further. I would almost like to create these impossible scenarios in business, in life to help myself overcome and learn new skill sets and push through and keep moving on.
That was something that I created by myself, to be able to do these things. There’s a concept that I learned from this, that it generated momentum for me. It helped pull myself forward, and let me discern that a bit, between pulling me forward and how I see pushing yourself forward.
I wouldn’t depend on something to push me forward, because pushing yourself I see as sitting in the gym. I lift and it is like saying to yourself you’re going to bump up the dumbbells another five pounds a day and I’m really gonna push my muscles to the point of failure. It’s like a present thing, it’s in the present tense, pushing yourself right there in that moment, whatever you’re doing, whatever you want to make hard for you in the moment, to help move you to the next level. Pushing yourself is right at the moment.
What I’m talking about, as far as doing the hard things, is taking a look at six months or a year down the road and thinking, “Where do I want to be? What do I feel that I want to be sitting in or doing at that moment when it comes to that point?” At that point it’s going to be present tense and I can push myself, but when I do that and I put things out in the future, I start to put things in place, like targets and goals and saying, “This is what I want to create for myself.”
Then with that being out there saying, “This is something that I’m visualizing, and I think it’s an important exercise.” For me, I kind of do it, and for me if I don’t quite literally see myself in that scenario, then I know it’s not right for me. But if I close my eyes, and I can see myself standing with the surroundings, the people, the success, then I know that that’s the direction that I need to go. That’s what works for me. When I create these scenarios that are actually in the future, these goals, these targets, they become something that then pulls me forward. It’s almost as if I’m setting this up and I tethered myself to that six month to a year mark in the future. I don’t really predict five years, I’m just going to be straight up with that. I was doing an interview the other day and was asked a question I hate, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” My response was, “That’s the dumbest thing because who even knows what five days from now is?”
I think you can set yourself up for success. I know you can. Six months to a year out, and say this is what I want to create for myself this year, within the next six months. Here’s where I want to be, this is what I want surrounding me, this is the environment I want to have. In order to get there, there’s gonna be some hard shit that I’m going to have to do. It’s just gonna be that way. Let me clarify what I mean by doing the hard things because there’s one specific thing that we’ll talk about today, where it’s the hardest, the most difficult thing to do for yourself.
I create these scenarios and then it pulls me forward. I create this environment and put things in motion to where momentum builds, and that target, that goal begins to pull me forward. If you can’t right now, imagine, just close your eyes and imagine where you want to be. Imagine sitting back in your chair, or in the gym, if you’re losing weight, right now just imagine yourself sitting there on a bench or on a peloton, and you might be 20 pounds heavier right now but imagine yourself sitting on that peloton, lifting those weights, or eating healthy foods, and you’re sitting there and you’re 20 pounds lighter, imagine that right now.
Can you feel it? Now you’ve got the image. Or imagine yourself freed from a toxic relationship. You’re surrounded with nothing but happiness and joy, because that energy sucks are not around you anymore. Imagine yourself sitting there, or maybe it’s a new house or maybe it’s a big move across the country. Imagine yourself in that new city, in that new house right now. With your eyes closed. Feels pretty good doesn’t it?
Now since you’ve done that, this is something that can pull you forward. There’s some hard things in your way. Let’s talk about those, because if you say you don’t necessarily want to do the hard things, a lot of people don’t. Here’s what you’re saying, “I don’t want to do the hard things.” But that’s like saying, “I don’t want to accomplish what I want. I don’t want to create what I want.” Is that really what you’re saying? When you say, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to get stronger. I don’t want to have a healthy relationship. I don’t want to make more money. I don’t want to lose weight.”
Stop making an excuse, because that’s actually not the hard part. Actually doing the work sometimes doesn’t have to be the hard part. Here’s the hard part: opening your eyes and realizing your reality, actually recognizing and do you hear that opening your eyes in realizing your reality, accepting your reality right now.
The hard part is not keeping those blinders on, not putting a blindfold on, and opening your eyes to say “This is what’s really going on.” Not blocking out all the stuff you’re going through right now and saying “Someday I’m going to change.” You don’t have that target in front of you, you don’t have that reality that you want to create, that vision of six months in a year out, to help pull you forward. If you can stop for a minute and see yourself there in that place, creating what you want, then that’s what’s going to bring you forward. Stop where you’re at right now, close your eyes and imagine yourself in what you want to create. Then open your eyes and look around.
Does your environment look like where you just were six months out? Do the people that you’re surrounding yourself look like the people, where you saw yourself and what you created six months out?Iis what you’re doing, does that look like what you were doing in that visualization, six months out? I’m gonna guess no. That’s usually the case because it’s difficult to see where you’re at right now and accept your reality. If you don’t actually picture what you want to create. That’s what you have to fix your mind on is what you want to create. The hardest part is coming back and being like, “Oh, damn, what’s around me right now does not look like what I just saw in my head.”
That’s the toughest part. If you don’t want to sit here and be like, “Oh, I’m not going to sit and look out in the future, and figure out what I actually want to create or even think about that because you know what I just got too much stuff going on right now and my life is too hard.”
Is that what you want to portray to your friends, to a partner, to your kids? To say that I’m just going to sit in a place to avoid my reality right now? People say things are hard as if it’s not a reason to do so. That’s bullshit.
Hard things are what makes us stronger, hard things which is opening your eyes and accepting your reality, and recognizing that what you see around you right now, the people, what you’re doing, where you’re living is not what you saw in your head that you want to create six months to a year out from now. We can’t get stronger and we can’t take that first step, if we don’t do this one hard thing of opening our eyes right now in the present and seeing and accepting that what’s around us is not what we want or desire right now.
There’s a coach of mine that’s a Navy Seal, and in a funk of mine, I started looking at all these things because I had already visualized this stuff out there. I already said this is where I want to be, I see myself. I’ve created this in my head, I can visualize this six to twelve months out from now. He asked the question, “What would be possible for you if the road between here and six months out from now, was actually easy.”
Hello, wake up call.
The actual steps that I need to take, to put that into motion because it’s literally pulling me towards it, are actually easy. I felt, “You know, now that I think about it, the stuff that I actually have to do to get there, is actually not that daunting. It’s not difficult because I can see myself doing those things.” The place where I was stuck, was looking around me at the current problems and not accepting where I was at, and saying, “I’m not where I want to be.” If you can’t open your eyes now there’s no way that you’re ever going to be able to create what you want. That’s the brutal reality.
Stop trying to make it easy. Easy is closing your eyes. Easy is avoiding. Easy is pretending like the people, and where you’re living, and all of these other things and what you’re doing, are not reality. You are disassociating yourself from reality by closing your eyes. You will never be where you want to be in what you create six months out from now.
If I gave you a pill right now, to give you that would like to transport you into the future, into six months into what you want to create. That immediate transformation would not do you any good either, because you would create the same turmoil six months out from now and blow that visualization straight to hell, because you didn’t actually have to overcome the ability right now to open up your eyes, and realize that where you are right now is not where you want to be. The people that you have around you now, are not the people that will be around you, what you are doing right now is not what you’re going to be doing necessarily six months out from now, in what you want to create.
The hardest thing in yourself growth in creating what you want is accepting where you are right now. So do the hard thing, and open your eyes.
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