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Build with Leila Hormozi
The A4 Method: Awareness, Affiliations, Aptitude, Autonomy | Ep. 379
00:09:14
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How much confidence have you lost due to goals that you have not achieved? I understand how frustrating it is to set a goal and then miss it year after year after year. I get it because I've been there. It took me five years of failing before I actually lost £100. It took me two and a half years of barely making rent before I actually made it in business. It was not until I realized that I was focusing on the wrong things and I was getting the wrong outcomes. I want this to be the last video you ever watch on how to reach your goals. The A4 method. This is really a method that brings awareness to what you do. The A4 method integrates four pillars into cohesive strategy based on self awareness for achieving goals. I remember there was a night I was sitting at my desk and I was staring at my Asana dashboard, which is a project management tool that I use to organize all my stuff. And I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks demanding my attention. It was late, and again, one of my friends had called me and she'd asked me if could I go to dinner and meet this person. And I was like, I can't be because I'm just too fucking busy. And then my phone buzzed and it was another message. It was in a department head asking for approval on something that I thought they'd already handled themselves. And I remember in that moment, I felt so frustrated. And it hit me. I was solving everyone else's problems instead of focusing on the bigger picture. They were afraid to make decisions on their own. They weren't failing. I was. Because I had unknowingly created a culture where my need for control had. Had become a bottleneck for my entire team. And I realized that my team's dependency wasn't their fault. It was mine. So what I did is I decided to track my behaviors for the next two weeks. How often did I step in? How often did I make decisions? How often did I delegate? It was obviously uncomfortable to admit, but becoming aware that I was the problem and what the problem was, was the first step towards fixing it. Because if I wanted to lead a team of empowered leaders, I had to start with myself first. Which brings me to the first piece of step two, which is awareness. Awareness is about recognizing and understanding your current behaviors, habits and patterns. Okay? This is the foundation for change, because you cannot fix what you do not notice. How do we figure out how we're getting in our own way? First is we want to track our actions and the results so that we can gather data about ourselves. Basically, we want to identify triggers, identify habits, and identify routines that either support us or hinder us from our goals. So for example, if your goal is that you want to lose weight, we would start by monitoring our food intake, monitoring when we work out, monitoring all these things without judgment. So basically what you do is you want to become an observer of yourself rather than the one going through the motions. What I had to do to become aware was to detach from my own self in the moment, to get above myself, to say, what am I doing that's preventing me from hitting my goals, what habits, what routines? And then I wrote all those things down. So it's almost like putting together an awareness diary. The thing is, is that most of the time we're so critical of ourselves that it's painful to observe ourselves in that way. But it can either be painful observing yourself or it can be painful remaining stuck. Only one of them moves you forward. The second piece of the framework is affiliations. This is really your social environment. How do you apply this concept is you want to align yourself with people who are supportive, people who are ambitious, people who share or encourage your goals. And then you want to distance yourself from people who might undermine your efforts. For example, when I was first losing £100, I was in a house with five other people who did not support my efforts. They made fun of the fact that I was cooking healthy food. They made fun of the fact that I was trying to lose weight. They tried to diminish my self esteem, not help me. So, so what did I do? I moved out of the house. I didn't try to change them, I didn't try to have conversations with them. I didn't try to get them to see it my way. They don't have the same values as me. And so the question you have to ask yourself is, do you have people or do you have environments that make it harder to hit your goals, not easier? The third A is aptitude. This is about acquiring the skills, knowledge and abilities necessary to overcome challenges and solve problems effectively. Okay, we want to invest time in, in learning and developing tools that we need to succeed and then practicing new skills consistently to increase our competence. For example, if you're working on public speaking and your goal is that you want to be a public speaker, you're going to take a class, you're going to practice regularly, and then you're going to seek feedback to improve your technique. Most people really want to hit their goals, but really wanting to hit your goals doesn't equate to hitting Your goals, you have to have aptitude, AKA skills. And so what we're identifying here is what skills do we need to accomplish our goals? If I'm trying to lose weight, but I notice that I'm constantly overeating, I lack the skill of discipline, I lack the skill of being able to control myself from overeating in certain situations. And so the skill deficit is that I have to learn how to have self discipline in those situations. This can apply to any goal that you're trying to hit. And I want you to think about it like this. It's not that you need to want it more, it's that you need more skills. And now the fourth A in the framework is autonomy means that you take ownership of your choices and actions. It's about cultivating self reliance and a sense of accountability with yourself. So how do we apply this? We're going to make decisions based on our values and goals rather than relying on external validation and direction. Understand that while others can guide or support you, while only you can take the necessary actions, only you are responsible for your inputs. And only you are with yourself at the end of the day every day. And so make sure that you're the one picking your goals. If you spend all this effort and you apply this framework to achieve goals that are not your own, you will feel just as bad as you do now. When we switch from output focused goals to input focused goals, we take ownership over the input goals. So when I talk about autonomy, it means that you are in control of these things. And if you're not able to accomplish those inputs, it's because either you have unrealistic expectations or you don't have a skill. If you're like, you know what my inputs are? That I'm going to work out every day for two hours. Well, two hours is a long time. Plus you got to drive to the gym, you got to have an outfit for the gym, you're going to be at the gym. Is that realistic? On the other side, you set an input goal and you're like, I'm going to get to the gym every day at 6am no matter what. But then you realize that on the days you're tired, you keep hitting snooze. That is on you and nobody else. And there's also nothing wrong with it. It just means you have a skill deficit, which means you go back to aptitude. Now we've got to go ahead and change it. We don't need to blame anybody. We don't need to say it's too hard we don't need to make excuses that our life is different, special. But here's the thing. We're not. And so that's why autonomy is so important paired with aptitude. So here are some pro tips. First off, we want to start with facts, not feelings. What and when you do things that interfere with your goals is more important than why. The fact that people made fun of you when you were a kid for being chubby. It's not that it doesn't matter. It's that you don't need to figure out why to change what. For example, when I was trying to lose weight my entire childhood, people told me I was fat and that they would make fun of me. Oh, you're going to break that if you sit on it. But me, when I was 19, seeking to lose £100, who had capability, who. Who had the ability to acquire skills, and who was able to make their own decisions as a functioning adult in society. And so I said, it doesn't matter why I became overweight or what people said to me in the past. All that matters is that I start with the facts, which is, I'm overweight. I'm eating too much. I'm not exercising enough. No matter what happened to me in the past that made me the way I am. Me exercising more and eating less would result in what I wanted. It doesn't matter how I got there. All that matters is what I do today. I love focusing on inputs because we're focusing on things that we can control and that happen in the present and the future. We're not thinking about the past and things that we can't control. I can't control the fact that somebody made fun of me when I was a kid. I can change what I do today to then make a better future. The second pro tip is that we want to make tiny tweaks, okay? Rather than trying to become a competitive athlete tomorrow, focus on making tiny changes that over one to three years will build you into the person you wish to be. When I first set off to lose 100 pounds, I did not say I wanted to lose 100 pounds. I said, I would like to lose 30 pounds. And then when I lost 30, I said, what about another 30? And then I lost that 30. I said, what about another 25? And then when I lost 25, I said, you know what would be cool? Is to compete in a bikini competition. I just made tiny tweaks over time, and those tiny tweaks add up. You have to be able to delay the reward long enough to see them through. If I could sum up this entire method of setting goals and achieving your goals in one single sentence sentence, it would be this Success is not a singular act, but a process. It is not one thing you do. It is a thousand little things you do that add up. So here's what I would ask you to reflect on. What is it that you've been trying to achieve? And if a goal comes to mind, then I want you to apply this framework and I want you to go from focusing on the goal to focusing on the inputs. I promise you, if you focus on that for the new year, you will have a 10 times more likely chance of hitting your goals than if you focus on the goal itself.