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041: Solo Episode | New Year Goals Fail for THIS Brutal Reason | The Matt King Show
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Every year I watch very capable people do the exact same thing. They set really big goals, they have the best of intentions, but they have the same damn habits. From my perspective, that is not ambition, that is delusion. So today we're back in the saddle and I'm going to share with you my five part framework that I use every year to put a bow on the year prior and to really kickstart the year. Now we're sitting here today and it's almost the end of the year and for those of you watching, you are probably still living in 2025, but for me, I start every single year on December 1st. The bad news is it's too late for you to get a jumpstart on 2026 like I do. But the good news is it's not too late for you to still kick 2026 ass. What I have found through the last 13 years of goal setting, visioning and being extremely accountable to myself, my word and what I set out to accomplish is that the main differentiator between those people who say what they want to do and those people who actually do it boils down to one thing. And that one thing is having a crystal clear plan and a crystal clear path for their year ahead. In these next 30 minutes, I'm going to take you through exactly what I do. I'm going to show you exactly how I do it, and I'm going to probably challenge the way that you think or have thought about goals. I'm only sharing with you my perspective, but my perspective is R, indeed, from somebody extremely successful, a master at goal setting. And for me, R and D is ripped off and duplicated. If it works for somebody else, it sure as well heck work for me. And I'm telling you right now, if this framework, if these five steps work for me, a college dropout, a kid who has been counted down and counted out his entire life, there is no doubt in my mind that they will work for you. The first thing you have to do before you start a new year is you have to look back and reflect on all of the amazing things that happened last year. Most people forget all the amazing moments from the year. They go by in a flash and they get to the end of the year and they go, wow, what did I do in the last 12 months? So from my perspective, we have to start with positivity. We have to start with gratitude. And that means we have to look back on all the amazing moments from the year we just had. Most people will do this just from memory, but I'M not smart enough and I don't have a good enough memory to do that. So my hack is go through your camera roll on your iPhone or your Android device, sit down for 30 minutes and commit to starting January 1, 2025 and do a slow scroll through the year you just had. Look at the moments, enjoy the memories, and pay attention to how you feel when you're seeing those things. Did you and your family go to Disney? Did you have an amazing experience on vacation? Did you do something incredibly hard, incredibly challenging and celebrate at the finish line of a hundred mile race or a marathon or a 5K? Did you do a turkey trot with your family? Did every everybody come together for the holidays? What did you do to celebrate the kickoff, kickoff of summer for your children? What did you do to celebrate Back to school. What did those back to school photos look like? Sit there for 30 minutes, 30 minutes, that's it. And reflect on the amazing year you just had so that from the beginning you are grounded in gratitude and appreciation and praise, respect for you, yourself and all the amazing shit you've done. I even like to take this a step further and I'll sit with my journal after I go through my camera roll and I'll just kind of let the words flow onto the piece of paper. How did last year feel? What were the highlights? What did I enjoy the most? What am I most grateful for? Did I get my health in check? Is my family closer than ever? Did we have an amazing experience that the children will never forget? Just, just take some time to reflect on it. Put yourself in the mindset of gratitude, in the mindset of appreciation. Most people, I think, are actually sleepwalking through life because they don't spend time reflecting on how truly epic their life is. Even the small, most minutia type things, whether it's the holiday concert your kid just did, where rather than singing, they're sitting on stage and picking their nose the entire time, or that smile and the wave you got on the first day of school, or the big bear hug you got when you came home from a work trip. Those little moments, those are the precious moments that truly matter. And if we don't stop and embrace those moments, they pass us by and we forget about them. And then we lose sight of what truly matters, which is the moments. And if we lose sight of what truly matters, what happens then is we lose our desire and our ambition to do the things we truly desire because we're chasing a false narrative. We don't have a true purpose. So. So for Me. Step one, get grounded in gratitude, appreciation, praise for the year you just had. Sit with it, feel it, embrace it, enjoy it. Don't be afraid to reminisce, even with others about it. Remember when we blank. I remember this year when I was doing this. I was sitting there talking to Melissa and she was talking about how we hadn't done a ton of family trips. Well, sure enough, as I went through the camera roll, we identified so many moments we had on family trips in 2025 that we had both forgotten about. One of them was a trip to Disney with a VIP experience for our family and our friends over our kids spring break where we stayed in a giant Airbnb with another couple families, where the kids had a giant water park to play at every single day, where we went to two different parks on that trip. Such an incredible moment. But we sat there in November and we forgot it. We forgot it happened in 25. We had both thought that it had happened in 2024. So if you're truly willing to sit with it, that phone, that camera roll, and go through that slow scroll to find the moments, I believe you will start planning for your next year from a place of gratitude, from a place of appreciation, and from my perspective, the only way we can actually water seeds that we desire to grow is if we truly sit with the gratitude. Once we get that done, it's on to step two. Now. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the hard truth start to happen. You have to sit there and tell the truth on the year you just lived. Great. Step one was we looked at all the beautiful moments. That was incredible. That was amazing. But now let's get real. Regardless of all the incredible moments, how did we truly live in 2025? Where did we choose comfort over growth? Where did we choose to accept the status quo? What did we say we wanted to do, but we allowed life to get in the way and we didn't end up doing it. My favorite question to ask is, what did I tolerate in 2025 that my future self will be annoyed by? All of us are tolerating stuff in our lives that we don't truly want, that we don't truly desire, but we're too damn lazy to actually change. For many of us, it's our health. For some of us, it's our job and our profession. For others of us, it's the amount of time we spend on the screens. Some of us, it's the amount of time we spend watching Stranger Things or the Ozarks or Peaky Blinders. We get lost in other people's visions for our life because we're too afraid to sit there with our own thoughts and face ourselves and our integrity of are we living in alignment with our word and our actions? So step two, after we've sat with the gratitude, after we've sat with the praise, is where we truly get to audit. Last year, how did things go? What would I do different? Because guess what? 2026, you get a redo. 2025 is done. That ship has sailed. It's over. Now 2026 is yours to create, yours to build, yours to manifest, and yours to truly create the life that you desire. All the old habits, they're not gone, but you have the ability to choose to let them go. All the new habits, you have the power to choose to accept them and build them into your practice of life. But you can't do that unless you get brutally honest with yourself. For me, the most powerful book I ever read around this concept is Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy. Because as you sit there and reflect on the year, you are going to feel your ego take over and want to say, hey, Matt, you're doing a great job. Hey Matt. But you couldn't get fit because you ruptured your Achilles. Hey, Matt, you couldn't eat well because you were trying to make dinner for three kids. And the macaroni and cheese with the craft noodles was just too damn good. Hey, Matt, it's okay. You looked at your phone a lot. You had really long, really busy days. The ego wants to defend ourselves and make excuses for the decisions that we made and try to justify our existence for living in the status quo. Ryan Holiday's book talks about how if you can leave ego at the door and leave that behind, how you can truly create change and transformation. Living a life of curiosity, not a life of. Of judgment, of resentment, but living truly in the question of what is the truth. Also, I love to separate progress from pride, and this ties directly to this concept. Ego is the enemy. A lot of times we will overlook the lack of progress we made in our lives because we're too damn prideful to be honest with ourselves. We want to justify why it is okay that we missed the target that, that we had set. And look, there are many times in your life where it is okay. It's truly okay. And there are more times in your life where it is not okay. And if you let pride sneak in and start to justify your lack of progress, five years from now you will be sitting in the same damn seat you're listening to now, hopefully listening to the same damn person you're listening to now, asking yourself, what do I have to do to truly change? For me, it's get rid of the ego. It's be brutally honest with yourself. What's going well, where am I failing? Where could I do better? So we've sat in the gratitude. Then we've reflected and had the honest, hard conversations with ourselves. Radically candid. Step three for me is now we're going to start planning next year. What I do every year is I set a theme for my year. Most people think this is cliche, but if you look at any big brand, any big organizations, all of them have a mission statement, a one liner, a slogan. One of the most famous ones is Nike. Just do it. Now, if you think about that concept of just do it, most people think of it as like, oh, cool, it's a cool little tagline. It looks good on shirts, looks good on shoes, not bad on a backpack, maybe slick on a hat. But just do it, I believe was actually a filter by which Phil Knight ran every decision for Nike through. I'm afraid to sign Michael Jordan's deal. Just do it. I'm afraid to take that risk and enter into the golf market. Just do it. I'm afraid to challenge the status quo and come out with these crazy colored shoes. Just do it. So if it works for big brands, if it works for big corporations to have a mission statement or a slogan or a tagline, then why the hell wouldn't it work for you in your life? For me, that's what my theme is. What is my theme of 2026? This is the sentence, the word, the one line, the two lines that every decision in my life is going to be run through. For me, 2026 is all about for the brand. For the brand of Matt King, for the brand of Gobundance. For the brand of Matt King as a dad. For the brand of Matt King as a. For the brand of Matt King as being the best version of himself that he can be each and every day, regardless of how bad he is at branding cattle. For me, for the brand is my theme for 2026. And it's the filter that I will run every single decision through in my life. Now, this filter is very important for me when I'm setting goals because this filter has to be in alignment with the goals. If I'm doing something that contradicts the theme, then I have to ask myself, do I truly want this? Do I truly need this, do I truly desire this? And if the answer is yes, then I have to be honest with myself and say, is the theme then, right? What is your theme for 2026? And if you struggle with coming up with this theme, I would challenge you to go to chat GPT and asking just a simple prompt, knowing what you know about me, what would you suggest my theme be for 2026? Now, I just did this practice, just out of curiosity, to see what happened. And it didn't say the exact words for the brand, but it gave a very long sentence that talked about my mission, who I stand for, how I live my life, all being about 2026, fully encompassing that, fully accepting that and fully embracing that for the betterment of the brand. The brand of everything I see, everything I do, everything I touch. And so for you, ChatGPT might have a different theme. Maybe it's just say no. Maybe it's commit to the plan. Maybe it's to find a new tribe. Maybe it's to change your environment. Maybe it's to do the same damn thing because you're on the right path. The theme doesn't have to be dramatic. It can just be simple. But the theme, I believe, is the filter that we run every decision through, every goal through, every choice through, every meeting through. And if it is not in alignment with the theme, then our answer can easily be no. And one of the coolest things about no that I learned in 2025 when I did some studying on it, is, believe it or not, no is a complete sentence. There is something inside of us that struggles with understanding. We don't have to justify the no. With our children, in business, with friends, with loved ones, we feel like we have to say no because I don't feel well. No, because I'm really tired, no because I'm really busy. You don't have to justify it, because oftentimes what follows the no, at least from my perspective, is bullshit. It's a lie. It's not true. So why don't we just stop at no, put a period there and be done with it. It's not disrespectful, it's not rude, it is direct, it is blunt. And if the person who you say no to has questions, they can follow up and ask, well, why don't you want to come? Why don't you want to do that thing? And then you have the power to choose if you want to respond to that or not. But no, no is a complete sentence. And for our theme, it is a filter by which Everything can be run through, and if it is in alignment with the theme, it's an easy yes. And if it's out of alignment with the theme, from my perspective, it's an easy no. Period. Nothing more and nothing less. Now, once we have our theme, this is where I think the fun begins. And I think it's really important that you focus on this one key aspect when you're doing this. There's this concept called the cathedral effect. And what the cathedral effect says is that the higher the ceilings, the less constraints on ourselves, the more creative and free we can think of. So when you're doing step number four, which is all about dreaming, for 2026, I would challenge you to look at the environment in which you're dreaming. Are you doing it in your closet because the kids are loud and there's a lot of noise? Or are you doing it in a pasture surrounded by animals? Are you doing it in a big, open industrial building where there's no actual ceilings and there's just the air ducts running? Or are you doing it in an office in between meetings with the door closed because you don't want your boss to know that you're miserable and you're trying to plan for 2026? So when you're dreaming about 2026, I would challenge you to find a place with no ceilings or very high ceilings, because the. The effect is real. And if we truly want to dream and create for 2026, then we sure as hell better be excited, better be inspired, but better not be limited by what our environment looks like in that moment. The other key to dreaming, Eliminate all distractions. Turn your phone off. Go away from the family. Take a solo weekend. Do something where you have zero distractions. Because what I found in my life is that our mind, our body, our spirit, if you will, is really good at finding the easy way out. And when we start dreaming, it sometimes can be scary. It can be scary because we ask ourselves, well, what happens if this doesn't come true? Well, what if people don't like the fact that I want to do that thing? What if people make fun of me? What if my family judges me? What if I'm called a jerk or an asshole? And so all of a sudden, we start to get uncomfortable in the dream. And the first thing we do, we pick up our phone, we talk to the kids, we have a conversation with our spouse. So eliminate the distractions and then take a blank piece of paper. Again, no distractions on a blank piece of paper. No lines, no nothing. Just purely A blank piece of paper and a pen and write this for me is very important to start with a super open ended question, not defined, not limited, not guiding, but like as wide open as we possibly can. So for me, every year I start off with what has to be true. Such that 12 months from now I'll be sitting here saying to myself, damn, that was epic. What has to be true? Not who do I need to become, not what does my body look like, not what does my relationships look like, not where do I live, but what has to be true? And just asking that open ended question, what has to be true allows our mind to go down all those different paths. And as things pop into your mind, just start writing. Maybe it's going to start with your health, maybe it's going to start with your family, maybe it's going to start with a career change, but just start writing. Don't worry about what it looks like, don't worry about what it sounds like, just get it all out on a piece of paper. What we're starting to do is we're starting to engage our reticular, activating system to say, this is what I truly want to see in the world. This is what I truly want to discover in the world. I let's get it down on a piece of paper so that our subconscious and our conscious minds can see that and start to become more aware of what we truly want, truly desire. It's almost like you have pencil diarrhea. Like you just keep writing, you just keep going. For some people this exercise will take 10 minutes. For some people it'll take 30 minutes. There are some times when I've done this part of my five step process that it's taken me an hour to get everything out of my mind and onto the piece of paper. Because as I start to write, I start to dream. And when I start to dream, I start to get more specific and the more specific I get, the more inspired I get. And again, being in an open environment, there's no boundaries, there's no limits, there's no ceiling. And so the creativity just continues to flow. We have to have a dream what has to be true, such that 12 months from now I can sit here and say, damn, that was epic. Holy shit, that was amazing. I never thought I would have, I never thought I could have again. Remove the limitations, remove the boundaries, remove the noise and just dream. Once we've got the dream, now we gotta actually do some work. The fun kind of is over. We've gotta actually create a plan. So step Number five is all about goal setting, which is one of my favorite things to talk about. And it goes back to when I was 23 years old, the first time I truly learned about what goal setting was. We were living in Baltimore, Maryland at the time, and I was working for this guy named Pat Hyben, who became a mentor, a dear friend, and a business partner. And at the time, I was a college dropout, still am to this day. And I was a little lost, a little wandering. I knew kind of the results I wanted from my life, but I didn't understand my life's purpose, my life's mission, or who I truly was at my core. And so I sat a lot of the times in judgment, in resentment, in anger. And one day Pat came to me and he said, hey, tomorrow we're going to go to this class. My friend's in town from Texas and he's going to teach goal setting. And I remember sitting there and my first internal thought, my first internal dialogue was, dude, I don't want to go to a class. I already dropped out of college. I have no desire to sit and listen to somebody lecture me about goal setting. I was an athlete growing up at a pretty high level. I know about goals. I know about what it looks like to want to win a state championship. I know what it looks like to want to cut weight for wrestling. Like, I don't. I don't need somebody to teach me about goals. But for some reason, something inside of me, or maybe it was just the fact that Pat was signing my paycheck, I was like, all right, fuck it, I'll go. And so I remember going to this class that was taught by David Osborne, who another guy has become an amazing mentor, a friend, a business partner, a guy who married my wife. And I like, just somebody who has truly changed the trajectory of my life and my family tree. And he started talking about goal setting. And I was sitting there taking notes, trying to pay attention, trying to listen, trying to be aware. And he started talking about the power of goal setting, the power of actually using the subconscious mind to go to work for us in our lives. And I sat there and I heard all that he had accomplished, all that he had achieved, but more importantly, who he had become on the mission and on the journey because of his goals. And I thought to myself, shit, if that worked for that guy standing in the front of the room holding a purple journal with sunglasses hanging around his neck and a short sleeve, button down shirt, damn it sure as well, better work for me. And so I literally Wrote on my piece of paper on my legal pad that I had in that meeting, buy a purple journal, have a vision for my life and set goals. And I remember going home that day and talking to Melissa. At the time, she was just my girlfriend, and telling her, like, I gotta set goals. I gotta have a vision for my life. She's like, what does that mean? What does that mean? And I started reading some books to learn a little bit more about this, because what I recognized was my mind was the only thing holding me back from the life I desired. So I dove into two books. Two books that I would arguably, arguably say changed my life forever. The first one was given to me by Pat. I still read it every year to this day. It's called As a Man Thinketh. It's a hard read. It's written in very, very old English. But on every single page, almost in every single line, there is a nugget that if you truly sit with it, will shake you to your core. It's all about weeding the garden of our mind. It compares our mind to a garden. And if you look at a garden outside your window, there's always weeds growing. What do you have to do? You have to go spray weed killer. You have to go yank those weeds. It's amazing. We live here in Texas, and we won't get rain for three months, but somehow grass won't grow. The weeds, damn, they find a way to keep growing. Wrap themselves around a tree, grow thorns, grow thistles. Like, it's. Like it blows my mind. And also I recognize that my mind is the same damn way. We have been programmed our entire lives to think from one perspective, to view life one way. And we've taken all of that information in from our family, from our friends, from our teachers, from our peers, from social media. And we have used that to create a definition for us on how to think and how to act. The crazy part about it is what I've discovered is most of the things on our mind are actually weeds. And if we can get rid of those weeds, we truly can eliminate all limitations on our life and see what's truly possible for ourselves. And I went home and read that book. And then the next book I read, which is another sort of tough read, if you will, but it was a book called Think and Grow Rich. The. The interesting thing about it was when I picked up that book, I thought I was going to be taught how to think and then grow rich with money. But really what I was taught by reading that book was how to think and Live an abundant life. And that's what true wealth is. And living into abundance is not just about money. It's about your health, it's about your relationships, it's about your contribution, it's about your spirituality, it's about the whole life, you being the best version of you you can possibly be. Truly sitting, sleeping at night and recognizing that you are living in integrity with your word. Your words and your actions are in alignment. If you can do that, you truly are wealthy. It doesn't matter how many zeros or commas are on your bank statement. If you can truly live in alignment with your word, you can fix the bank statement. You can build as much wealth as you want because you have taught and trained your mind, your body, your being, your subconscious. That what I say I am going to do. And once you do that, now it's just about saying the right things with regards to money, saying the right things with regards to your health, saying the right things with regards to your relationships and your contribution and your family. We have to weed the garden of our mind. And, and David went on to talk about goal setting and he talked about a lot of things that still to this day I hold near and dear to my heart. But I'm going to give you how I set the goals. I take that dream and I reread it. And then I go back to sophomore year in high school when we were taught how to write a five paragraph essay. What I was taught, at least in the small schools in Wisconsin, was you do a mind map. So in the center of the piece of paper you draw a circle. What is this five paragraph essay about? Well, this five paragraph essay is about 2026. So in the middle of my circle I write 2026. Underneath that, almost like a sub headline, I write my theme for the year again. I want to keep that front and center and I want to constantly be run decision for my life through that. Then I just start throwing spokes off of it. So for me it's actually not a five paragraph essay, it's a seven paragraph essay. Because there are seven gardens for my goals. The first one is family, friends and relationships. So I draw a line off that center circle, make another bubble. Family, friends, relationships. And then I start jotting down what has to happen in that garden of my life to live in alignment with the dream that I just wrote down. Again, I'm not getting super specific here, I'm being kind of vague and on most of these things I'm writing down intentions and not goals. Have a better relationship. See Grandma more. Play golf with dad, enjoy the kids, spend more time one on one with the children. Like, it's, it's just kind of like getting it out, getting it on paper. More from an intention perspective. Now, the difference between an intention and a goal, this is very important because most people set intentions, thinking they're setting goals, and then are disappointed that they don't achieve what they wanted. But the thing about intentions is you can't actually achieve them intentions. And the success around intentions is a hundred percent driven by judgment. Because the intention is get healthier. The intention is have a better relationship. Well, guess what? Going back to that ego concept, when we sit there, the ego kicks in and says, yeah, you were healthier. Even though the scale might say differently. The ego says, yeah, you have a better relationship, even though your wife hates you. The intention might say, yeah, you're a good dad, even though your kids are like, we haven't seen you in three weeks. And so you have to make sure that through this next part of the process, even though on this mind map we're throwing down some intentions, we're eventually going to convert those into goals. So we take 20, 26, and we start throwing off those bubbles. And I'll give you my seven gardens. The first one I already talked about, but it's family, friends and relationships. The second one for me is physical nutrition and health. Now, the reason those two are at the top of my list is because they don't come naturally to me. I'm not proud to admit that. I don't think it's good to admit I wish it were different. But here's the reality. When I go back to step number two and I tell the truth about myself and my life, I recognize that I will sometimes put my family, my friends, and my relationship on the back burner. And because when I'm telling the truth to myself and recognizing that, I then have the ability to see how I feel because of it, and I don't feel good. I don't feel proud. So guess what? Let's put that damn thing front and center so that we focus on it. So that's at the top. What's the next thing that doesn't come natural? Physical nutrition and health. Yes, I've always been an athlete. Yes, I've always enjoyed working out, but I've also loved sweets. And so, for some reason, I have really enjoyed living a life of a chunky monkey, let's call it. Two years ago, I made a choice. I was done doing that, and I moved my physical nutrition and Health up in my goal setting template, I moved it to second in line and I started putting it almost front and center in everything I did. What happened for me when I did that was I actually started making the changes I wanted to. I went from 185 to 143. I went from barely being able to run three miles to running a marathon, then another marathon, then doing 29.029, then doing another 29.029. And now in 2026, I've got some crazy physical nutrition goals planned. And because I live a prepared life, I actually don't have to spend as much time preparing for the thing because I'm always prepared. So in February, I'm running a hundred mile race that I have not trained for because I don't think I need to train for it. Generally, I stay pretty fit. And I also recognize that the hundred miles is less physical and more mental. And I know that my mind has already been weeded. There are no weeds in the mind. There will be weeds that pop up. But I understand how to weed the garden of my mind as I'm going through that journey. So for me, number two is physical nutrition and health. After that, spiritual and contribution. What am I doing from a spiritual perspective and what am I doing from a contribution perspective? Then we dive to intellectual and education. How am I learning? How am I growing? How am I evolving as a human being? After that, lifestyle and adventure? The sixth garden for me, environment and tribe. This is a tough one for a lot of people because they like environment. What do you define as environment? Well, your environment is where are you spending your time? Like, let's look at the environment as your car. If you have a 40 minute commute to work every day, what does your car look like? Are there healthy snacks in the glove box? Is there trash everywhere? McDonald's wrappers or receipts thrown on the ground? Is there music on the radio or is it podcasts? Is your vision on your visor or is it just receipts from McDonald's? What does your environment look like? Because you have the power to actually change that environment. You have the power to actually choose. For a lot of people, if you go into their snack pantry, what you're going to see? And you'll see the same thing in ours because we got kids. You'll see chips, you'll see candy bars, you'll see cookies, you'll see junk. Well, guess what? That environment is actually nurturing your outcomes with regards to your physical, your nutrition and your health. So we've got to Change our environment and then we look at our tribe. What is your tribe? Your tribe is the people you spend the most time with outside of your friends, your family and your loved ones. Even your friends, I would say can fall into tribe. But your tribe is who are you surrounded by? Because at the end of the day, we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with. Whether you want to believe that to be true or not to be true, I'm telling you the studies are there, the research is there, the data is there. My life is living proof of it. So who are we spending time with? And if we don't like that, we got to change our tribe. Are we going to get an accountability group? Are we going to start going to men's group at church? Are we going to join the family ministries? Like, what are we going to do to improve our tribe? And then the last one which is the one that comes most natural to me is personal financial goals. So that's at the bottom of the list. That's what do I want to do from a financial perspective this year? Once I create that mind map and I throw some intentions, just some, like thoughts underneath each of those categories and I feel like that is all in alignment with the dream I had for 2026. Then I go back and I refine that and I say, okay, cool. How can we take my goal setting template, very similar to David Osborne's goal setting template, very similar to Pat Hyben's goal setting template, very similar to the goal setting template that all of the gobundance members use. And how do I take those intentions and boil them down into goals? For me, the best way to do that is to put a number by everything. Now on my goals there are still a couple intentions. And my challenge to you would be when you're setting goals for 2026, try to be about 85% goals and about 15% intentions. If you're 90% goals, 10 intentions, that's great. If you're 95, 5, that's great. If you'm 100 0, that's great. But try not to have more than 15% of your goals be intentions because again, intentions are not able to be tracked. They're not able to be measured. And so how can we truly understand if we're making progress and achieving what we said we wanted to do? So we take those intentions and we get them onto our goal setting Cheat. The get healthier looks like 313 workouts. The have a better relationships. Looks like 15 date nights, three overnight date nights and one international trip with just Melissa. The have a better relationship with dad, looks like nine rounds of golf. The see grandma more time means take grandma to lunch three times by myself. All of them are specific. Now, a lot of people have the tendency to hear this and go, okay, cool. I pray every day. So pray 365 times. 365 times of prayer is great. But what's not great is pray 365 days. And this is going to piss some people off when they hear this, especially the very big spiritual ones. But there is going to be a day in 2026 where you forget to pray. Not because you didn't want to, not because you didn't intend to, but because life just got busy and you forgot to. And if on our goals we have pray 365 days and we miss one, by definition we have failed for the entire year. And once our subconscious mind sees that, that's when the bad habits start to compound. That's where the one miss day turns to two and the two turns to three, and the three turns to five and the five turns to nine. And before you know it, you're sitting there in June 1st going like, I'm never going to do this again. This year I'll revisit it January 1st, that's right around the corner. So you have to make sure you set yourself up for success. David Osborne talked about you have to leave oil in the system. Why is there oil in an engine of a car? There's oil in an engine of a car so that there is something between the gears that can allow things to move slightly but still function properly. So put some oil in your life if you want to work out every day. That's an incredible intention, but I guarantee you you will miss a day. So put on there 350 workouts. And if you end up missing 15 days and it's December 1st and you follow the normal calendar like normal humans, not like me. You can do some two a days in December and still hit that number. You have some space for life to happen and for you still to achieve what you desire. Now why is this important? What I have found is that this goal setting template is the number one way to train your subconscious mind. So it is crucial for you to achieve what you put down on that piece of paper. Not required, but crucial. So we want to set ourselves up for success. And if you haven't set goals before, now is the time to start. But don't try to go like, I want to run a marathon, but I Haven't ever run a. A 5k and set the goal to run a marathon. Set yourself up for success. Build this muscle, build this momentum of your life. And David and I are going to talk about this in the book we're coming out with called More More Mentum. Like, you have the power to actually choose and create the momentum in your life. So why not do it? If you haven't worked out at all in 2025, leave that in 2025. No. No judgment, no resentment, no anger. Just acknowledgement, recognition, and truth. I didn't work out in 2025. I don't like that. That doesn't feel good. So how many times are you going to work out in 2026? Well, if you worked out zero in 2025, and there's 52 weeks in a year in 2026, my challenge to you would be 50 workouts. Now, somebody listening to this might go, well, that's still weak. Well, shit, that's 50 times what you did in 2025. How is that week? And it's not even once a week. You're giving yourself the ability to skip two weeks when you're in Cabo or in Mexico or on spring break. You're giving yourself the ability to miss three weeks and then one week, do two workouts. Set yourself up for success. Build some momentum, because nothing will stop you faster on the path towards living the life you desire than setting goals that aren't achievable for your current habits or your current state or your current mindset or that current garden of your mind. So set yourself up for success in each of these gardens. If in 2025 you had three goals total, my challenge to you would be for 2025, can you have one goal in each of those seven gardens? If in 2025 you had no goals, my challenge to you would be find the three most important gardens for you to move your needle forward towards the dream you like and just have One goal for three of them. Three goals. Three goals for 2026. Write them on your damn mirror and lipstick. Look at them every day when you brush your teeth. Put tally marks next to it. Every single time you achieve it, get that little hit of dopamine. Remind the subconscious, this is where we're going. This is what we want to do. This is what we want to achieve. Have goals for your life. Because if you don't have a vision for your life, if you don't have goals for your life, the first person you meet every day will give you theirs. And most often, the first person we meet every day is through our phones. And even more shockingly, the first person we meet every day is in some sort of an ad. And so what I'm telling you is if you don't have goals for your life, and if you don't have a vision for your life, that Candy Crush game with the pop up notifications has a vision for you and it will suck you in and keep you there. And once it takes all your money from buying the extra little coin things or whatever they do in Candy Crush, it will spit you out and go find the next victim. So have goals for your life. Have a plan for your life. And recognize that five years from now, you will be a totally different human in all of the best ways. And you will have accomplished far more than you ever thought possible. Because you also recognized that if you're not careful, you will overestimate what you can do in one. Set yourself up for success. Build some momentum. Build some confidence. Because with confidence will come competence. And once we're confident and competent around goal setting and our subconscious mind understands that what we read on that damn piece of paper we're going to achieve, then you can start having some fun. Then you can start putting some stretch goals in it. Now, there's three tricks that I use when setting goals. The first one, you have to review your goals a certain number of times every year. If last year you didn't have goals, can you review your goals 12 times? I just gave you one. One goal. Review your goals 12 times. If you reviewed your goals 12 times, can you do 50? If you did 50, can you do 70? That's trick number one. Trick number two, find what Cassidy Phillips, an incredible entrepreneur and a friend of mine, calls your spirit drivers and make that a goal. Find something in 2026 that inspires you, that excites you, that brings you a ton of joy, and put it on your goals. Maybe it's play Augusta. Probably not achievable for most, but hey, if you have a way to do it, put it on there. Maybe it's play golf with your dad. Maybe it's go on a family vacation. Maybe it's take that trip to Mexico. Maybe it's just get a damn passport because you don't have a passport. Maybe it's a girl's weekend. Maybe it's buy a Longhorn. Maybe it's by a zebra. Maybe it's by a draft. Whatever it is, find a spirit driver and set that as one of your goals. Because what that will do is remind your body and you're subconscious that when life gets hard, there are rewards on the other side. It's no different than when we have kids and we say if you're in the Happy Plate Club or the Clean Plate club, you can have dessert. Dessert is the spirit driver to eat the green beans that maybe the kid doesn't want to eat or to eat the watermelon that they maybe say they don't like. Do the same for yourself. Have a spirit driver. And number three. Number three is do something every year that scares the living out of you. For me, in 2026, I'm doing two things that scare the living out of me. One of them I can talk about and one of them you're going to hear about very soon. The one I can talk about in February I'm running a hundred mile race without training. It scares the living out of me, especially after watching Stranger Things to run through the woods of some state park in Texas and in the middle of the frickin night. Because I have 32 hours to complete 100 miles, most likely I'm going to have to stay up the entire time to make sure that I actually get it done. I'll probably average 1515 minute miles, which means it will probably take me somewhere around 25, 26 ish hours to get it done. That means for 26 hours I am going to be constantly moving, not sleeping and eating whatever food I can find at the aid stations, drinking whatever water I can find at the aid stations and praying to God that my headlamp works through the night. Because this national park is full of rocks and roots and I've ruptured my Achilles tendon twice. I don't want to do it a third time. And I never tie my shoes when I'm running. So it scares the living out of me. And guess what happens on the other side of it when we achieve it, when we do the thing, we realize that the business deal we've been wanting to do isn't that bad. We realized that the house we wanted to buy isn't that scary. We realized that leaving the W2 we've wanted to leave isn't that bad. Writing the book we want wanted to write isn't that bad. Because if we could run a 100 mile race without training and get it done, what else can we do? A couple years ago one of my things was ride a bull. And I'll tell you what, after sitting on the back of a bull, almost a 2,000 pound animal that literally wants nothing more than to get you off its back and kill you. Everything else becomes easy and irrelevant. When you're sitting in the chute waiting for them to open it and you can feel the heartbeat of the bull racing on your calves, you realize what fear truly is. And so then what happens when you go to submit an loi and a deal you want to buy, or you go to buy an asset, or you go to negotiate a business deal, or you go to have a hard conversation with your kids or your wife or your boss, it's not nearly as scary. Because if you could ride a bull that wanted to kill you, well, your boss isn't that scary. Hopefully you don't have to sit on their back. Hopefully they don't weigh 2,000 pounds. So do something every year that scares the living shit out of yourself. Some people, it can be simple. Go skydiving. For other people, it can be simple. Talk about my weight loss publicly. For others, it can be really hard and really challenging. Run 100 miles or ride a bull, but just do something that scares you. For everybody, it's going to look a little different. Once we have our goals, we can truly achieve whatever we desire in 2026, so long as we pay attention to what we put on that piece of paper and we track it. So for me, I print it off. I go back to arts and crafts class from kindergarten. I. I take a scissors. I cut out my goals. I take a glue stick, although I like to use rubber cement because it doesn't fold as much or wrinkle as much. But take glue, paste glue on the back of that piece of paper and slap it into the back of a journal and take that journal with you everywhere you go. When you're bored, don't look at TikTok. Look at your goals. When you're tired and defeated, don't look at your phone, look at your goals. Remind yourself of your theme for the year. Remind yourself of the dream you had for the year. And then actually track what you're doing. Every time you work out, put a tally mark next to your workouts. Every time you go on date night, put a tally mark next to your date nights. Actually work with, play with, engage with your goals. Because if you do that, you will recognize the little hit of dopamine you get every time you check something off. And that little dopamine hit will build more momentum in your life. And that momentum will translate to actual results that you can see, feel, and touch. And what that will mean is you can actually start living the dream you had for 2026. Most people, myself included, at some point throughout the year will lose momentum. Motivation will, will leave. They'll feel drained, they'll feel tired, they'll feel defeated. Life will kick them in the teeth. Life will try to keep them down because they're already knocked down. The thing to recognize is the only difference between a rut and a grave is how long you choose to stay there. If it's been two weeks since you've engaged with your goals, don't make it three. And don't judge yourself for not looking at it for two weeks. Give yourself some space and give yourself some grace. Pick up the journal and start looking at your goals. If it's been a month, space, grace, pick up the journal, look at your goals. If it's been two months, space, grace, pick up the journal, look at your goals. And one thing David Osborne taught me is there's only two reasons we don't achieve the goals we put on that piece of paper. The first one, and God, I hope this doesn't come true for you or for me, is we die. We no longer have an opportunity to achieve those goals. The second one, we change our mind. There's a lot of times where you're going to set goals leading up to January 1st, if that's your year, that come August 1st, no longer align with you. Like, let's use this idea of running a marathon. Maybe you've always had a goal of running a marathon and you're 40 and you've put it off forever, but you're like, damn, I listen to this. This year is my year. I'm going to run a marathon. And you start training and you get a 10, you get tendonitis in your Achilles tendon, and then your calf gets strained. You might have to change your mind that 2026 is not the year of the marathon. That's okay. You just take white out, you cross off, run a marathon, and you put something in its place. But what's not okay is to change your mind because it was hard or to change your mind because it's going to require too much effort or too much energy. You don't change your mind because of that. You change your mind because your body or your environment or your mind is not allowing you to actually do that where it will bring you joy, most importantly, where it will get you closer to the vision you have for your life. And maybe even the most important, it is no longer in alignment with the theme you have for your year. So regardless of what 2025 looked like, regardless of what 2024 looked like, I Believe that you don't have to be a stat in 2026. You don't have to be the person that falls off the New Year's resolution bandwagon. You don't have to be the person that is incredibly capable to do epic shit, but allows your old habits to get in the way to not achieving them. And instead of living a life of ambition or inspiration, you're living a life of delusion. I truly think that every single person, myself included, is only one year away from living a life they only once dreamed of. One year, 12 months, 365 days, 365 nights you put your head on a pillow. Anybody can commit to something for 365 days if they want it bad enough. And if you're truly one year away from living a life you only once dreamed of, then why the hell wouldn't you do it? Because what I've recognized is somebody's going to live an epic life. Somebody's going to live an abundant life. Somebody's going to have it all, whatever their definition of all is. So why the hell wouldn't it be you? Regardless of where you're at, regardless of what you're doing, regardless of where you came from, I truly think these five steps can change your life. And I'm not saying it in some poetic, guru way. I truly believe that because these five steps have changed my life. And if they can change my life to allow me to live a life that I would identify as the diary of a college dropout, they sure as hell are going to work for you. I'm not the biggest, I'm not the brightest, I'm not the most intelligent. But these five steps, these simple five steps have truly changed my life. They've changed my family's life. They've changed my friend's life. If it works for us, it's going to work for you. Don't skip these steps. Don't jump to the goals, because that sounds exciting. Don't brush over the truth. And step number two, don't skip the reflection, because you already live a life of gratitude. Commit to these five steps. You can do them all in one day. Probably would take you three hours, max. All of us have three hours. I know. I sure as well have three hours. I just watched over three hours of Stranger Things. Damn, I could have watched three more hours of it. We all have the ability to find time for ourselves and actually build the life we want on a piece of paper and then live it into existence day in and day out through our goals. Through our habits and through our actions, I'm telling y' all goals. Having a vision, dreaming. Getting clear on where you've come from, why celebrating where you've been will change your life. And if you're listening to this and you're like, man, I really want that goal setting template, just drop me a DM on Instagram @King ATX. I'll send you the exact template I used. If you need help with a goal, just drop me a DM on Instagram. I'll give you my thoughts and my perspectives. If you need help reframing an intention into a goal, just shoot me a message. I'm here to help. I'm here to serve. Not because I know it all. Not because I'm some master, but because I have been practicing this for 13 years. And so I might have a little bit more experience around some of this than you do. So why not use me? Why not take advantage of me? Take advantage of that experience. The other thing I'll tell you is I dare you to share this with a friend who has been stuck, who has complained, and who you're annoyed by. Yeah, that sounds mean, but we all got that friend. Every time we see them, they got the same damn excuses, the same damn complaints. And at some point in the conversation, we start to get annoyed of like, yeah, I've heard this story four times, five times, six times, seven times. Share this with them so at the end of the episode, they can hear that and they can go, damn. That's why they sent it to me. Look, this is my perspective. This is my framework. This is what's worked for me. But I'm telling you, it can work for you too, if you really try it. I love the start of a new year. There is nothing better than a blank calendar and a blank slate. I think Steve Jobs said it best when he said, we can only connect the dots looking backward. We can never connect the dots looking forward. But what he failed to say is, we can choose what dots we're going to connect looking forward. So when we look backward, it's way freaking better. Appreciate you all being back in the saddle. Hope you crush 2026. If you have any questions, need any help on goals, shoot me a message. Happy to help. Happy to serve. Make 2026 the best year ever. That's what I'm doing, Sam.