270: The 7 Key Principles For Fulfilling Your Vision In The New Year with Light Watkins

In this special solo episode, Light Watkins delivers an empowering blueprint for achieving your vision in the new year. Drawing from decades of teaching meditation and coaching others, Light dives into the seven foundational principles that will help you break free from the cycle of unfulfilled resolutions and finally turn your intentions into lasting habits.

Why do we start the year with big dreams only to watch them fade by February? Light addresses this universal challenge with grounded insights on how to plan for busy days, stop relying on motivation, and build consistency. He shares practical strategies to confront old habits that derail progress and explains why understanding your "why" is key to staying on track.

With relatable stories and actionable steps, Light provides a roadmap for shifting your mindset, embracing choicelessness, and becoming your own greatest accountability partner. Whether your goals include improving your health, building new habits, or simply staying true to your commitments, this episode offers the tools to transform your intentions into achievements.

If you’re tired of making empty promises to yourself and ready to embrace a more sustainable approach to growth, this episode is for you. Tune in and let Light guide you toward creating the most fulfilling year of your life.

Transcript

LW: “People who succeed in fulfilling their vision don't rely on motivation. They don't rely on motivation. Amateurs 100 percent rely on motivation, right? And again, that's why they like to wait till January 1st because everyone else is talking about what they're going to do. And you have all these New Year, New You programs and coaching things online and books. And you get hit from every angle by people trying to entice you to join something that's going to help you improve yourself. So I get it. It's a part of the society as part of the culture, but the real people who actually succeed at this stuff. They start when it's crickets and nobody's talking about this stuff, right? And they start with self motivation because they know that on your average busy day, your average day, right? We're talking 365 days out of the year, probably 300 of those days, maybe more. You're not going to feel like doing the thing that you said you want it to do. You're just not going to feel like it. That's just life.”

[INTRODUCTION]
 
 

[00:01:02] Today, I have a solo episode for you. This is my 18th solo episode, and I'm going to walk you through the seven key principles for fulfilling your vision in the new year. Most of us start January with big dreams, but by February or March, those resolutions start to fade. And today I'm going to share with you practical strategies that I've learned throughout the years of teaching meditation and coaching others that are going to help you turn your vision into reality. I hope you find it useful. Let's dive in.

[00:01:34] Hello there. We are back with another solo podcast episode. This one is going to be about what it takes to fulfill your vision in the new year. So I'm recording this just before the holiday season. It's going to air during the holiday season. And I think this is a relevant theme right now because we're going into a new year.

[00:01:59] And usually when we start to think about our past year and we're doing the whole forensic analysis of how we started the year out versus how the year ended. What did we do that was in alignment with what we said we wanted to do at the beginning of the current year? A lot of times there are some incongruencies there.

[00:02:24] And look, let's be honest. The intention is always good. We always have the best of intentions. I'm going to get into the best shape of my life. I'm finally going to get rid of this belly fat. I'm going to scale back on sugar, on alcohol. I want to build more muscle. I want to start meditating every single day. I want to get outside more, all the things we've all said, I want to learn a new language. 

[00:02:48] And yet, the same pattern continues to perpetuate year after year where we may start off relatively strong but then of course life catches up to our resolutions and we end up excusing ourselves from following through and we get six months into the year and life is just as busy as it's always been, and we just don't foresee an opportunity to pick back up where we left off. And so we just say to ourselves, okay next year will be the year. And we just keep kicking the can down the road to the next January 1st and the next one and the next one and the next one. And then next thing you know, we look up and spend 10, 12, 15 years and we haven't learned that new language.

[00:03:37] We haven't gotten rid of the belly fat. In fact, we've gotten even more belly fat. We're more addicted to caffeine and alcohol than we have ever been. And so what is the issue here? Is it an issue with the goal? Is it an issue with the plan? Is it an issue with the intention? And so that's what I want to break down because I've got some ideas about this.

[00:03:59] I've been relatively successful with most of the things that I've said I wanted to do during a given year. And so I want to just talk about what I think necessities are when it comes to creating successful plan to fulfill your vision for yourself. 

[00:04:18] Like anything that I talk about, you can take what you find to be useful and then you can leave the rest behind.

[00:04:24] All right. So let's just get right into it. I want you to spend a moment just thinking about this past year, and what are the things that you said you wanted to do at the beginning of the year? And are you still working on those things? Are you still doing, or did you achieve them? Did you already check those boxes?

[00:04:43] Okay. And if not, then ask yourself, honestly why was that not the case? Why didn't you do the thing that you said you were going to do? So usually when we're being honest with ourselves, with that question, we may find areas where we haven't quite been telling ourselves the truth of whatever was going on around us.

[00:05:08] And generally speaking the truth is that we are more committed to the things that we were doing before than we were to the new things that we said we wanted to do. And what I mean by that is if you haven't been going to the gym, right? That's a very common one. I'm going to start going to the gym every three times a week, four times a week. Whatever was happening prior to you making that commitment, maybe you were sitting on your couch those three or four times a week. Maybe you were going around to bars, whatever you were doing when you weren't going to the gym, that was your commitment. And so. if you found going to the gym, very difficult, so difficult that you just didn't go, then what that tells us from an objective point of view is that you were more committed to sitting on the couch or going to the bar or watching TV or whatever you were doing, talking on the phone, then you were to going to the gym.

[00:06:16] And so when people start, meditating because I teach these meditation trainings, been doing it for decades now. When people start meditating, I always remind them, I said, the reason why meditation feels hard is not because it is hard. Actually, meditation is quite easy to do because you're not really doing much, right? I say what's hard is breaking the habit of not meditating. And usually that habit of not meditating involves distracting yourself with something. Whether it's scrolling, whether it's watching TV, whether it's looking through magazines, you're doing something. And so when you're sitting down to meditate you're ceasing to do something and you're practicing being, but that doesn't mean that you haven't habituated toward doing something.

[00:07:05] And that habituation is not going to then feel very distracting to your process of practicing being. So when you feel like your mind is all over the place, what your mind is doing is it saying to itself, where's the, where's Instagram? Let's scroll through Instagram. Where's the television. We should be looking at television right now, right?

[00:07:26] Because that's what it's used to doing. And so as you're breaking down the old habit, You're also building up this new habit and you need consistency to build up the new habit. And then once you get to that threshold of consistency, it flips. It flips where you actually find yourself getting quite settled in meditation and those other thoughts are still there about, what's going on social media, what's going on television, and all the other things you could be doing.

[00:07:57] but they're no longer dominating your experience. And this is not something that we can intellectualize. We can't put this on our vision board or write the affirmations out and then close her eyes and expect that the distraction habit is going to just evaporate with from nothingness.

[00:08:16] We can't expect that the distraction habit is just going to go away on its own. We have to displace it with the consistency of doing the thing that we said we wanted to do. Okay, so that can also be applied to pretty much every other habit that we want to build. There's the habit that you want to build, okay, where everyone's clear about that.

[00:08:36] The thing that we tend to undervalue or underestimate, is the existing habit that's been stopping you from wanting to do the new thing, right? So if you want to get rid of belly fat, the belly fat is there because you may have a habit of eating a lot of fried foods, eating a lot of sugary stuff, right?

[00:09:00] Not really getting enough protein and not sleeping well. So you have a multitude of very undesirable habits for the goal that you say you have, and you're going to be, you're going to be tempted by those other habits to betray the new habit that you say you want because your body is used to you following through on the old habits.

[00:09:27] So it's not like you can't be consistent because, you can't stay off the sugar as long as you think you should, you're already being consistent. You've been consistent with the fried foods. You've been consistent with the lack of protein. You've been consistent with the alcohol and with the rocky nights of sleeping.

[00:09:48] So the consistency is not really the problem. The problem, if we have to identify a problem, the problem is usually our inability to understand the habits that are already in place and to respect them. That's what really has to happen. We have to respect these habits because they're strong. They're deeply entrenched.

[00:10:09] They're tied to our emotional states. We've been doing them for decades. Some of them. And they're like religions. So just stopping some of these other habits that are contributing to the type of body, mind, spirit emotional states that we don't want to have anymore. It's like stopping a religion that you've believed in deeply for your whole life.

[00:10:34] So it's not an overnight process is my point. And you want to give it that same level of respect. Thanks. By following these seven steps. Okay. So I'm going to outline seven steps that you can follow to show respect for those deeply rooted, entrenched habits that are stopping you from doing the thing that you've been saying you want to do every year, January 1st.

[00:11:01] Okay. Step number one is don't wait until January 1st. Don't wait until January 1st. And this, again, this can apply to any year at any time. But waiting until January 1st to make a change is like waiting until Mother's Day to tell your mom that you love her. or waiting till Valentine's day to tell your partner how you feel about them, or waiting till Thanksgiving to show gratitude for something, right?

[00:11:31] Sure. Everyone, is excited about the beginning of the year. And I guess you got to start the year at some point, but why not make your January 1st tomorrow? Why not make it today? Why not start soon? Because here's the thing about starting something. You're going to have kinks, you're going to make mistakes.

[00:11:54] You're going to have to figure things out. And that may require you to get equipment for stuff. It may require you to hire coaches for stuff. It may require you to join, memberships for stuff. And 1st, You're putting yourself in a line of people unnecessarily because that's what everybody and their mother's doing.

[00:12:17] Everybody's waiting until January 1st to hire a trainer. So guess what? Trainers are going to charge a lot more money January 1st than they're going to charge on December 17th. And if you're waiting to join a gym or some other kind of facility to help you cultivate this new habit, You're going to start when everyone and their mother's in that place, and you're going to be waiting in line to use the equipment.

[00:12:43] Right or to get your question answered, but if you start in mid November or mid December, or it's any other time really, then you're going to have 1st dibs on everything. You're going to have people around that can help you and support you because they're not that busy, right? So it's much better to start on off times than it is to start when everybody else is wanting to start.

[00:13:09] It's like trying to get a restaurant reservation on Valentine's night. It's amateur hour. Everyone and their mothers out there with their date on Valentine's day, they jack up the prices. The food isn't that great because they have to mass produce this food. So they get it out to people's tables as quickly as possible.

[00:13:26] It's like making a reservation for lunch for your mom on mother's day. Everyone and their mother is literally out getting lunch. And again, they jack up the prices. The food's not that great. You have to wait a long time. It's just not, it's not a great time to start the best time to start. is when nobody else is thinking about starting when everybody else is just, busy indulging in those unsustainable habits that they don't like, that they want to do something about.

[00:13:57] And if you zag when everybody else zigs and you start working out the kinks and you get your questions answered and you make your initial mistakes, Then by the time January 1st eventually comes around, guess what you're in stride, why everybody else is lacing up their shoes and that level of momentum can give you the edge when everybody else is starting to give up because you've already had plenty of reps and that's what you really need in order to get that momentum.

[00:14:30] It's not about watching, motivational videos and all that stuff. It's literally about just getting reps. In other words, repetitions. Getting enough exposure to the activity, the new activity, while the stakes are very low, so that you get to the point where your body starts to look for it. Your body starts to become accustomed to it and hopefully, at some point, your body starts to become dependent on it. 

[00:14:58] Now, the biggest excuse that people make when it comes to starting before the new year is, but I'm so busy and people are coming into town and I'm traveling and I'm not, I'm going to be, my mom's going to be making this her cake that she likes to make every year.

[00:15:15] And if I go off sugar now, we'll get it, get a chance to taste her cake and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. I get it. But here's the thing that you may be discounting. Okay, sure. You're going to be busy, right? That's just how life is. There are going to be periods of time where you're very busy. So why not plan to figure out how you're going to do your new habit while you're busy, right?

[00:15:45] Instead of doing what most people do, where they plan for the perfectly non busy day, right? Oh, I'm going to wake up at six o'clock and then I'm going to meal prep. And then I'm going to, go to the gym before I go to work. And then after work, I'm going to walk 10, 000 steps and listen to a podcast.

[00:16:06] And, this is good in theory, but let's be honest again, Is that how your average day is going to go? Are you going to feel rested by 6 a. m. in the morning in order to wake up early and meal prep and do all that stuff? If you don't know, just think back to your history. Think back to the last 30 days, right?

[00:16:27] On average, what time did you wake up? If it was 7 30, then you're doing yourself a disservice by suggesting that you're going to somehow magically start waking up at six o'clock in the morning. Probably you're not, probably you're going to wake up around seven 30. your alarm may go off at six o'clock and then you're going to start bartering and negotiating with yourself.

[00:16:50] Oh, just 10 more minutes. Hit the snooze, right? And then before you know it, it's seven 40 because you woke yourself up an hour and a half earlier. You got to get 10 extra minutes of sleep. So you're not waking up a little bit later. Now you're rushing. Oh, I don't have time to meal prep. I'm just going to eat my fruit loops and run out the door and now I'm running late to work and I didn't get a chance to finish everything.

[00:17:11] So now I can't go do these 10, 000 steps. I'll just do 2000 steps, but that's not a time to listen to a podcast because I got to pick up the kids. And so you know how it is, right? So instead of setting yourself up to fail and then feeling horrible about yourself, because why can't I'm so stupid? I can't seem to do anything right now.

[00:17:29] I'm just, I'm not worthy. And then I got to go to my therapist and talk about it. Why not take an honest assessment of how you actually move through the day and then break the new habit down into the minimum viable Product. That's what they, when you're starting a new business and you're trying to launch a product, they say, create a minimum viable product.

[00:17:51] That means don't invest too much into it initially. Just see if it works. See if it's something that you can scale. See if it's something that you can do on a consistent basis. 000 steps, you aim for 2000 steps. That's one mile. Maybe instead of meal prepping that, every day you carve some time out on Sunday and you do some meal prepping on Sunday for the whole week.

[00:18:19] And maybe instead of listening to a podcast that's an hour long, you listen to a podcast that's 15 minutes long, right? And that way you allow yourself to gradually introduce these new habits and you build up some momentum through consistency, you get your reps and then from there you can start incrementally increasing the amount of exposure that you're doing for your new habits based on your consistency.

[00:18:49] If you are consistently walking 2000 steps a day, which is only 20 minutes of walking a day, then the next week or maybe the next month, if you really want to take it slow, you add another 2000 steps onto it. And you can break it up 500 steps a week. So it's very gradual, right? In other words, you plan for your busiest day, your average busy day.

[00:19:17] And that way you set yourself up for success instead of setting yourself up for failure. And then you break the year down into months. So if you're adding on 2000 steps every month, then it's only going to take you five or six months to get to those 10, 000 steps. And you've done so very gradually instead of saying, Oh, I'm going to walk 10, 000 steps every day.

[00:19:41] And you live in Boston and it's, blizzards. There's a nor'easter that comes in for three weeks and it completely throws you off your whole schedule and you haven't worked figured out any workarounds because you waited until January 1st to start and the gym was too crowded and you didn't know where else you could go and, It's just there's no upside to waiting for January 1st and planning for your average perfect day. So don't do that. 

[00:20:06] So number three, people who succeed in fulfilling their vision, don't rely on motivation. They don't rely on motivation. Amateurs. 100 percent rely on motivation, right? And again, that's why they like to wait till January 1st because everyone else is talking about what they're going to do.

[00:20:25] And you have all these new year, new you programs and coaching things online and books. And you get, you're getting hit from every angle with people trying to entice you to join something that's going to help you improve yourself. So I get it. It's a part of the society as part of the culture, but the real people who actually succeed at this stuff, They start when it's crickets and nobody's talking about this stuff, right?

[00:20:50] And they start with self motivation because they know that on your average busy day, your average day, right? We're talking 365 days out of the year, Probably 300 of those days, maybe more. You're not going to feel like doing the thing that you said you want it to do. You're just not going to feel like it.

[00:21:10] That's just life, right? If you try to stop eating sugar and you have some Twinkies in your pantry and it gets to be 10 30 at night and you got busy and you didn't get a chance to eat a proper dinner and you could either go in your kitchen and make, a salad, or you could just go and wolf down a couple of those Twinkies.

[00:21:32] What do you think you're going to do? You're probably going to start justifying using very important sounding excuses. Oh, I just got to get to bed. I can't stay up. It's too much of a hassle to make the salad. Oh, I'm out of tomatoes. So I can't make a proper salad. Let me just have the Twinkies. You're going to justify eating the Twinkies.

[00:21:50] You know, You're going to do it, right? We all do it. That's just a part of our condition. We use confirmation bias. We use cognitive dissonance. That's a part of the human condition to justify pretty much anything that we've already decided that we want to do. Plus the excuse that, Oh, I'm just tired. I'm too tired to make something that's healthy, right?

[00:22:09] Nobody goes in their kitchen past 10 o'clock at night to eat anything that's healthy. So my point is, If you have Twinkies in your pantry, you are going to eat them. You're going to eat them. And if you're relying on motivation not to eat them, then you're just lying to yourself. You're setting yourself up for failure.

[00:22:27] So you may be thinking, okay, like this is starting to get a little rigid, right? But here's the thing. When you use that word rigid, what are you comparing yourself to? When you're using the word rigid, you're comparing yourself to quotes, normal people and normal people are anything but rigid. But guess what?

[00:22:47] Normal people are also addicted to alcohol. Normal people are addicted to caffeine. Normal people are depressed. Normal people are unmotivated, they're tired and they're uninspired. So if you want to be normal, then yeah, it's too rigid. But if you don't want to be normal anymore. Then you have to do what normal people aren't willing to do.

[00:23:11] So just get rid of that word rigid and just understand that I have to do what I have to do in order to keep myself honest. In order to stop lying to myself because that's the real reason why I haven't followed through on my resolutions. I keep lying to myself. I keep setting myself up for failure by not being honest with myself.

[00:23:35] And so one way you can be honest with yourself is to admit it. I will eat a Twinkie if it's in my pantry. I will get to that point. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be next week, but give me a couple of months. And if I get tired and I'm sad, because my partner wants to break up and whatever the excuse is, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to eat that Twinkie.

[00:23:56] Okay. So what you want to do now is you want to go into the pantry and you want to clean it out. You want to go into the cupboard and you want to clean it out, get out anything that you don't want to indulge in. That is a line with your resolution. That is a line with your vision for yourself, right? If you have all this alcohol stored up underneath some, bar or some cabinet somewhere, donate it to one of your friends who, doesn't mind drinking all that alcohol.

[00:24:28] Or just say, look, I'm doing this thing during January. I'm not going to be drinking. So I just need you to hold this for me until February. And if I ask you for it, then just tell me it's not February yet. And again, just, you know how you are. So, you know you have a tendency to make up excuses about why you need to get the alcohol back and all this stuff. So anticipate that and then build in a guardrail by telling your friend. No matter what you say, no matter how convincing you sound, they are not to give you the alcohol back or whatever the thing is that you're trying to do. You could also institute some sort of, of fine system. If you say you want to go to the gym, And you know that history shows that you will make up excuses about why you can't go to the gym.

[00:25:21] You're too tired. You're too. They say hadn't eaten yet, blah, blah, blah, go to your friend and say, Hey, I know I'm probably going to run out of motivation at some point. If I don't go to the gym X number of times a week. then I'm going to pay you a hundred dollars per instance. I'm going to, I'm going to cash app PayPal you a hundred dollars on the spot and you are not to use that money for anything that has anything to do with me.

[00:25:51] You can use it for yourself. Okay. But that's my commitment to making sure that I go to the gym. I guarantee you if you make that commitment, motivation, not motivated, You are not going to skip on what you say you want to do now. A lot of people won't go that far. They won't make that kind of commitment because they lie to themselves and they know they lie to themselves and they don't want to deal with the fact that they lie to themselves.

[00:26:18] And again, I'm sure you're noticing a theme. That's the real reason why you haven't fulfilled your vision. You are a. Liar. You are in compulsive liar to yourself. And I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm not saying this to demotivate you from starting. I'm just calling a spade. And how do I know?

[00:26:38] Because I've been a compulsive liar to myself. I've acted like an amateur when it came to the things that I said I wanted to do. And something that really helped me, Turn that around is when I read Steven Pressfield's book, The War of Art. When I'd been trying to write my first book, The Inner Gym, one year went by, two years went by, still no book, three years went by, had some manuscripts and stuff, but still no finished product.

[00:27:05] And then I read that book and he talked about the impact of resistance on the things that we say we want to do and how we allow resistance to stop us and that resistance can show up in relationship arguments. It can show up in just hitting the snooze button, all the little things that we use as reasons not to follow through.

[00:27:27] Basically he says, that's resistance. And you're either an amateur where you do things because you feel like doing them, or you are professional. You do things because you said that's what you were going to do. And you make a plan. When I read that book within about six months. I got that book out and it took me sending a check for 4, 000 to my, one of my good friends and saying, Hey, this is the deadline.

[00:27:50] This is the date. This book is going to be published. If I don't get it published by that date, you have to take this check for 4, 000 cash it and use it for something that has nothing to do with me. And I had him sign it and everything. And I signed the contract. And after I did that. All this free time opened up and I happily did what I had to do to make that thing happen.

[00:28:12] And so I've been using that same sort of model with other visions that I've wanted to fulfill, and I've seen the difference for myself. You literally go from being a compulsive liar with yourself overnight to being honest with yourself. And honesty for you may not be, okay, I'm going to give up all sugar overnight because you know that's just not possible and that's going to take away from your mood and all the things.

[00:28:39] So maybe you just do, Monday to Friday, I'm not going to have any refined sugar, but I'll still have fruit. I'll still have honey. I'll still have, natural sources of sugar. And on the weekends I'll go crazy because I know that I like to go crazy still. So you're giving yourself purposely you're giving yourself a more incremental path to the thing that you say you want to do.

[00:28:59] And then if you are successful in doing it for a month, then you say, okay, Monday to Thursday, no sugar. Friday to Sunday. Yes, sugar. And then the next month, Monday to Friday and then Monday to Saturday. And so you have one day where you can have sugar. And then eventually after a handful of months, then you're going 30 days with no sugar at all.

[00:29:24] And then after that, you can decide how you want to proceed. Maybe I'll just have sugar on Wednesdays. Maybe I'll just give myself one dessert a week. And I get to decide what day that dessert is. So you can be creative about it. Okay. But the point is don't expect to be motivated not to do the thing because that's just a big fat lie that we tell ourselves that, Oh, I'm going to, stay motivated. And that, that, no, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. So far. We've talked about don't wait till January 1st. We talked about planning for your average busy day and we just talked about don't rely on motivation.

[00:30:01] Okay, 4th principle for being successful in fulfilling your vision for the new year. You're going to tell your friends that what you are wanting to do. Some of your friends are going to say, Oh, I've always wanted to do that too. I've always wanted to lose my belly fat. I've always wanted to get my diet in order.

[00:30:19] And you're going to think to yourself, Wow, I have company now. I don't have to do this on my own. I have someone to hold me accountable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Look, everybody's intentions are good, as we stated at the very beginning of this. If your friend wants to do the thing that you want to do, that's fine.

[00:30:39] They can structure their own plan for themselves, okay? You structure your own plan for yourself, meaning your plan cannot be dependent on them following through on their plan. Because what typically happens is somebody drops off. Somebody is not going to do is not going to follow through to the same degree that you may be preparing to follow through.

[00:31:08] And if you're expecting them to follow through when you follow through and. Be there when you're there and show up when you show up, then you may lose the willpower to follow through on what you said you wanted to do. You may figure well, yes, I was having these thoughts to of losing motivation.

[00:31:29] And so maybe this maybe it's just not meant to be. Or what's worse, you start judging your friend for not following through. You have all this judgment. All they're just this, that, the other. I knew it. I knew that they look, the average person lies to themselves. The average person loses motivation.

[00:31:47] The average person plans for the perfect day. The average person. Waits till January 1st to do things. Okay. So just understand that's how we all are. I'm like that. You're like that. And they're like that. There's nothing wrong with them. Don't judge what they didn't do instead celebrate what they did do.

[00:32:12] Okay, so think about it in terms of, I don't know, a hundred mile race, right? What you're saying you want to do essentially by losing your belly fat, by cutting sugar, you want to run a hundred mile race. You want to run a hundred mile race, and let's say you have a year to do it. You have a year to go all 100 miles, okay?

[00:32:33] Everybody else has something going on. They may have been your friend for a long time and that's fine, but maybe as motivated as they are when they hear your goals, maybe they're only meant to run with you five of those 100 miles. Beautiful. You had company for five miles, but you're prepared to run all 100 miles by yourself.

[00:32:57] Okay. So you don't project that same goal onto other people, even if they say that's what they want to do. And then guess what? If they ended up going 50 miles with you or 75 miles with you, or if they go all 100 miles with you, you're pleasantly surprised instead of deeply disappointed. Okay. People are people.

[00:33:20] We, we, our eyes are bigger than our willpower. Okay. And you are probably really good at selling these goals to other people. So that's really more of a reflection of you being able to enroll them, which is a good thing than them being a horrible person because they couldn't follow through with you.

[00:33:37] So all that to say, we're Embrace what people want to do with you. Don't depend on them. Don't give them the keys to the car of your habit and the thing that you say you want to do. What typically happens is you follow through all the way. You go all 100 miles. You have the transformation. And then they drop off after 10 miles, but then they look at you on the other side of the transformation.

[00:34:01] And then that inspires them to do their own 100 mile race. because that's really what it takes. People have to want to do it. Not because you're doing it, but because they want to do it for themselves. Okay. So that's the thing that's going to get them across the line. All right. So number five, and this kind of piggybacks on the one we just talked about number four, which is don't wait for people.

[00:34:27] Number five is you don't want to rely on external validation from other people. Okay. Because all of your friends are going to be excited about the things you say you want to do initially. Everyone's going to be cheering you on. Oh, that's fantastic. But after a few days or maybe a couple of weeks, people are going to get busy.

[00:34:49] They're not going to care about your field reports. And again, we have a tendency to get a little bit disgruntled when that happens. What's wrong with them? They're not my real friend. They're not being very supportive right now. They know how hard this is for me. I can't believe they're not going to come out and support my run or whatever it is that I said I wanted to do.

[00:35:11] Oh, I can't believe I went to a gathering at their house and they didn't have any vegetarian food. And I told them I was going to try to be vegetarian this year, or I can't believe that they suggested we go to Chuck E. Cheese. And I told him I didn't want to have pizza anymore. Look, people aren't thinking about you.

[00:35:26] They're really not. People aren't thinking about you. They're not. Chris Voss, the hostage negotiator guy, he's got a masterclass. He's all over social media. He said something really profound that I'll never forget. He said, people aren't against you. What they are is they're for themselves.

[00:35:43] And that just perfectly encapsulates how average people are there for themselves, which means all they're thinking about is themselves. They're thinking about what they need, what their goals are, what their problems are, right? They're not going to remember that you said you were going to write a book or what the book was about.

[00:36:04] And so if you start talking about it and they look like, what are you talking about? Don't get offended with them. Don't get offended by them not remembering every little detail of your goal. Okay? Because they're not doing it to punish you. They're just busy. They're just doing their thing. And what you want more than anything is you want to preserve your relationships and your friendships.

[00:36:27] because you never know. When it's going to come in handy when you launch the book and you start to have your book launch party, or you need, you want somebody to do an Instagram live with you and all this kind of stuff. Which a lot of people will happily do because they'll be inspired that you actually follow through on the thing you said you're going to do.

[00:36:47] But if you piss everybody off in the process, because they don't remember the thing that you said you wanted to do. By the time the thing gets complete, you're not going to have any friends, because everybody is absorbed in their own world. People are busy. People have lots of problems you don't even know about.

[00:37:09] So if they don't remember, that's fine. You don't need validation from them anyway. You'll take the support when it's there. If it's not there, then you'll just keep moving forward, okay? Because that's what you do. That's what professionals do. Amateurs sit around. They wait for people to clap and cheer and throw a parade for them for every little progress they make professionals.

[00:37:30] They do it when nobody is watching. And that's what you need to be as a professional in order to fulfill your vision this year. 

[00:37:38] Okay, point number six, which also ties to not waiting for other people and not seeking validation. You want to spend some time thinking about your why. Why are you doing this thing?

[00:37:52] Why are you doing it? If you want to lose the belly fat, you want to stop eating sugar, you want to cycle off of caffeine. Why? Why? How is it going to help you?

[00:38:03] Okay, so in order to figure out your why, what's going to be really helpful for this is you want to think about your personal mission statement. What is your personal mission statement? So mission is something that you are here to fulfill. You're here to see through. Ultimately it's your commitment to making your corner of the world a better place.

[00:38:26] Okay. So how are you going to do that? You're going to do it through creating community. Are you going to do it by bringing people together and getting people connected? You're going to do it through raising awareness. your kids and raising them to be productive citizens of the world. You're going to do it through writing books so that you can inspire people.

[00:38:47] So that you can inform people, educate people, get people more involved in in politics or whatever the thing is, but just spend some time thinking about your mission and your mission can serve as your why. So then let's say your mission is to leave the world more inspired than you found it.

[00:39:06] Okay. And the way you want to do that is you want to create videos. You want to create inspirational videos. You want to post those videos on YouTube. Fine. Does going to the gym align with that mission? Does drinking lots of water align with that mission? Does eating healthier? Does walking more and moving more align with that mission?

[00:39:26] Obviously, the answer is yes. Why? Because all those things allow you to feel healthy and strong. And when you're healthy and strong, you sleep better at night. When you sleep better at night, you wake up earlier during the day and you have a lot more clarity during the day. When you have a lot more clarity, you can prioritize a lot better.

[00:39:45] And as you prioritize, even though you're busy like everybody else, you can find ways to fit in a little bit extra time to write the script for your YouTube video and to figure out how you're going to record the video and then to publish the video. If you're tired all the time, then you are going to constantly excuse yourself from following through on the thing that you said you were going to do, right?

[00:40:11] If you're halfway drunk or buzzed half the time. Again, it's easy to talk yourself out of doing things you said you wanted to do, and you're not sleeping well at night, which means you're waking up exhausted. I posted something on social media the other day. It said the rested version of you is much more courageous, optimistic and hopeful than the tired version of you.

[00:40:33] That's why you can wake up inspired to take the leap of faith. But then you can dismiss it as unrealistic by the afternoon. It's not courage that you're lacking, but rest. If you prioritize rest, your leap of faith may not sound crazy after all. And so being on your mission can in itself be exhausting, right?

[00:40:57] Because again, life is not going to slow down. to give you all this time and space to follow through on your mission. You're still gonna have to pay your bills. So you got to take care of your kids. Still got to deal with the landlord. Still got to deal with traffic. Still got to deal with weather and all the things.

[00:41:15] And so you have to just become a busy person that does a little bit extra on a consistent basis so that you can start to fulfill your mission on top of all of your daily obligations and responsibilities. Otherwise, if you're tired and uninspired all the time, it's super easy to talk yourself into giving up.

[00:41:35] And that's what normal people do all the time. Everybody has great intentions. Everybody has, amazing goals. The difference in the people who actually follow through on those goals and the people who give up is the people who give up are talking themselves out all the time and they think that it's because there's something wrong with them.

[00:41:55] A lot of times it's just because you're tired. You're just tired all the time. And that's the exhaustion talking. That's not your heart that initially gave you the idea to take that leap of faith. That's your exhaustion talking. Okay. So feeling the desire to give up on yourself is a sign that you just need more rest.

[00:42:14] You need more rest. And so you want to definitely prioritize practices like meditation, which I talk about, all the time, meditate every day, at least for 10 minutes first thing in the morning, not because the meditation is somehow magically better in the morning, but because you need that little extra rest in the morning to subsidize mediocre sleep, which is what most people are getting on a daily basis.

[00:42:39] And that keeps you connected to your why. And the stronger your why is, and the more your why stays in the back of your mind, the healthier your choices are going to be throughout the day. And the more you're going to be able to reassure yourself that this path that you've taken, this mission focused path you've taken is indeed a good use of your time. Okay. 

[00:43:03] It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Again, you're not going to be motivated. People are not going to be following every single move you make. Life is going to get super busy and all of that, but these are ways that you can keep yourself on your own track and put your own guardrails in place.

[00:43:20] All right. Now, last but not least, principle number seven, You want to give yourself the freedom of choicelessness. I talk about this in travel light, which is my most recent book. You want to give yourself the freedom of choicelessness, which basically means you want to apply restrictions to yourself.

[00:43:42] This is something that quotes normal people do not do. They do not apply restrictions to themselves. Okay. People who don't want to be normal anymore. You have to Apply restrictions. That's what makes you not normal is you are someone who's willing to apply restrictions. So one restriction may be every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whether I feel like it or not, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to stay in that gym for at least 20 minutes.

[00:44:07] So I want you to get specific in that way. because you will try to talk yourself out of it and we've all been there where you're all optimistic when you're walking into the gym and you've said, okay, I'm going to run five miles on the treadmill and then I'm going to do a hundred reps of this and then I'm going to do, 5, 000 reps of that and you get on that treadmill and you start running and it's just taking a long time and you're tired and you're achy and what do you do?

[00:44:31] You start saying to yourself. You know what? Five miles is too extreme. I'm just going to run a mile and a half. That's good enough, right? You get into just get by mode. And what I want you to do by giving yourself the freedom of choicelessness is I want you to,

[00:44:50] Want you to commit to what you say you're going to do when you're feeling great. Okay. I want you to honor the commitment that you make to yourself when you're feeling great. And I want you to treat your commitments like children. When you tell a child something and the child is like, Oh, you said you were going to take us to the toy store today.

[00:45:11] Or you said, you're going to take us to the park today. And you start to, and you did say that you said it when you woke up and you felt great and all that, but then you got a headache later in the day and you're thinking how the last place I want to go is to the park or to the toy store. But you told the child that you were going to take them to the park.

[00:45:27] And look, maybe the child understands that you have a migraine and the child says okay, that's fine. You know, they're a little disappointed. But if you keep lying to the child, if you keep saying, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And you don't follow through eventually, you're going to have problems in that relationship with that child.

[00:45:47] They're not going to trust you anymore. Okay. And they're going to grow up with all kinds of mental stuff going on and all healthy, balanced parents know this. And so healthy, balanced parent. It's going to try to fulfill on the thing that they say they're going to do. Otherwise, they don't say they're going to do it.

[00:46:05] They may wake up in the morning and say, you know what, if the day unfolds in a certain way, maybe we'll go to the park. Okay. It's not guaranteed. So don't hold me to that, but maybe we'll do that. And so what they're doing there is they're getting honest. They're being honest. with that relationship and you have a relationship with your own commitments.

[00:46:27] And I want you to treat it the same way. If you tell yourself you're going to do something, I want you to do it. I don't want you lying to yourself because then you're betraying yourself and you're betraying your heart. Okay. And if you tell yourself something and you follow through on it and it's hard, guess what?

[00:46:44] The next time. Next time you're going to tone it down a little bit. If you know with a hundred percent surgenty that you're going to follow through on the things that you say, it's better to tone it down a little bit and to exceed that commitment than it is to lie to yourself and fall short every single time.

[00:47:02] So this is a mindset thing, right? And we want to, we need to reestablish trust with ourselves because a lot of us have very much been lying to ourselves for a long time. And it shows up everywhere, right? You're on the phone and something happens and you got to go and you tell your friend, I'm going to call you right back.

[00:47:21] And you never call back. And you don't even think twice about it. You just don't because you're so used to lying to yourself that you don't think about following through on the thing you said. And when you make commitments and you follow through on those commitments and that in and of itself is a commitment, the commitment to follow through on your commitments.

[00:47:38] It's a little bit interesting because initially you start to realize all of the ways that you've been saying you're going to do something and you just don't do it. And it actually makes you feel like, Oh my God, I'm so out of integrity. But this is where it starts. The process of coming back into integrity starts with you getting honest with yourself.

[00:48:00] with your own commitments and then you start to speak more mindfully to other people about the things that, that you say you're going to do. And this is how you start to create, strong and long lasting relationships. So that's what I mean by give yourself the freedom of choicelessness.

[00:48:21] Give yourself some restrictions, clean out that pantry, clean out the cupboard. Tell your friend you're going to pay him a certain amount of money if you don't follow through on the thing you say you're going to do hire a coach or trainer or something like that. That is another great way to hold yourself accountable and pay them for the entire 12 week sessions up front.

[00:48:42] because you're going to get tired. You're going to be tempted to cancel, but then if you've already paid for it, you're going to think to yourself I don't want that 200 to go to waste. So I'm going to show up. That's a great way to get really honest with yourself. I have a sense that if you do all 7 of these, you don't wait till January 1st. You plan to do it while you're busy. You don't rely on any motivation or inspiration. You don't wait for other people to join you. You don't rely on other people's validation and you create a why for yourself, write out that mission statement and you give yourself the freedom of choicelessness.

[00:49:18] And you go for just relative consistency, not absolute perfection, because there are going to be moments where it just doesn't happen. But if it doesn't happen one day, let's say you commit to walking 2000 steps, right? And one day it's just I don't know, just the perfect storm, right? Everything that could go wrong goes wrong. It doesn't mean that you're not going to walk those 2000 steps. It just means that the next day you're going to walk 4000 steps. Okay. Okay. So in other words, you owe yourself 2000 steps. It just doesn't evaporate because you didn't do it that day. So instead of looking at it as a daily thing, because things do come up and it's fine, you want to start to look at these commitments as a weekly thing.

[00:49:59] So I'm going to go to the gym three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, fine. Monday, you're in the hospital. because the kid broke his ankle or something, you just couldn't make it to the gym. doesn't mean you just skip the gym. You move it to Tuesday. So now you work out Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday.

[00:50:12] If you can't make it Tuesday, then you work out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. If you can't make it Wednesday, you work out Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? You give yourself flexibility to fit it in however you can, but your main plan is the main plan. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 2000 steps a day or whatever the case is.

[00:50:31] And so that's what I mean by relative consistency. You're going to stay consistent. You owe your body. The thing that you said you were going to do, but you don't have to be rigidly attached to doing it at that particular time or that particular day. And this is not going to last for very long. This will be an every now and again, occasional thing.

[00:50:48] And that's totally fine. Okay. But if you follow these seven principles, I'm putting my money on you to actually fulfill the vision that you say you have for yourself this year, this is going to be the year. And then ultimately you're building the habit of building habits because you can apply the same model, the same template to anything else you want to do.

[00:51:10] You don't wait until the beginning of the year. You don't wait till your birthday. You start that thing right away so you can start making your mistakes so you can get those reps and so that you can learn how to find workarounds for those moments when you're going to be busy, which is going to be most of the time.

[00:51:26] And you don't rely on motivation. You don't rely on inspiration. You know that the important sounding excuses are coming and you're just going to have to find evidence to the contrary. And your friends are going to get excited. They're going to want to join you. They're going to be lying to themselves for the most part.

[00:51:41] You're going to expect that and you're going to celebrate the things that they do with you, but you're not going to feel disappointed when they eventually fall off. You're not going to look for their validation. It's going to be crickets. Most of the time, no one's going to be paying attention at all.

[00:51:54] It doesn't matter. Your commitment is not to them. Your commitment is to yourself and you're going to have that Y nice and strong, even memorized if possible. Write out that mission statement, my mission statement to lead the world more inspired. Boom. Very simple, very easy to remember. So everything I do and I'm on the fence, should I do it?

[00:52:12] Should I do it? I run it through the filter of my mission statement. Is it going to help me lead the world more inspired? If so, then fantastic. We're doing it. If it's not, if it's going to cut back on my sleep, if it's going to compromise relationship, then it's not worth it. And then giving yourself the freedom of choicelessness is a real secret.

[00:52:30] It's not about having as many options as possible. Success comes from limiting your options. So you have no choice, but to work on the things that you said you were going to work on in spite of the fact that everybody else is out partying and having fun and Sunday fun day and going to brunch and doing all the things that look so fun.

[00:52:45] But if you look closely. They're not doing anything new to move their lives forward. They're doing the same old thing every year. They're lying to themselves every year. And if you want to be more like them, then you do what they do. If you don't want to be more like them, it's going to require a sacrifice.

[00:53:05] And a friend of mine used to say a principle is not a principle unless it costs you something. There's going to be a temporary cost in the short term, but it's going to be a wonderful dividend in the longterm. And that's what you are playing this game for. So keep me posted and don't forget, I have a community called The Happiness Insiders, which is all about doing inner work and personal growth.

[00:53:28] Got 108 day meditation challenge. We've got 108 day movement challenge. We have 108 day healthy eating challenge and a bunch of other challenges and master classes for helping you become the best version of yourself. So if you want to start your year off. with three months of accountability and support and instruction, whether it's resting squat, walking mindful triathlon, no complaining, gratitude, how to stop overthinking, find your purpose, manifesting abundance, overcoming fear, accessing your potential, becoming more radically authentic, creating better boundaries, how to move on from a breakup.

[00:54:08] I got you covered. Just go to lightwatkins. com, online courses, and you'll see it all there. And I'm in there every day, giving feedback, offering support and helping to guide people along their journey in in personal growth. And every single course and challenge comes with a seven day meditation kickstart, which helps you get your meditation practice up and running because that's going to be an important part of creating the foundation for those principles that we talked about. All right. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next week with the next long form conversation on the podcast.

[END]

[00:54:43] Thank you for tuning in to today's solo podcast episode. If you enjoyed this deep dive into fulfilling your vision. I highly recommend checking out my other solo episodes, particularly number 10, which is episode 184, where I explore what it truly means to live a more fulfilled, more successful life.

[00:55:00] And to help you overcome any obstacles along the way, dive into my solo episode number 228, where I break down the five proven ways to get unstuck in life. And please take a few seconds to rate and review this podcast. I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me, just like you, taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose. And until then keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep taking those leaps of faith. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you. I believe in you. Thank you and have a great day.