How to ACTUALLY Reach Your Goals [5 Steps]

if you are not able to reach your goals and you are not able to stick with the habits that Propel you towards the future that you want I promise you that by the end of this video you're going to know the five tactical steps that you can take to make consistency your superpower if you don't know who I am my name is Leila horos I'm the CEO and founder of acquisition. I built scaled and sold three businesses by the age of 28 leading to a $100 million net worth and now I run acquisition. comom which

is a portfolio of businesses valued at over $500 million and the one thing that has allowed me to do all of that is consistency consistency is making a commitment and seeing it through it's pairing your words with actions over a long time Horizon it is not a complicated concept but it is a challenging one and so I want to break consistency down into five practical steps that I use to be consistent in my workouts in my diet in my marriage in my business and in my relationships because if there's one thing that I do believe

I have done well over the last 15 years it's consistency the first step for being consistent is setting your goals half the time people don't even have a goal they don't even know what the goal is what's the vision for your business what's the vision for your body what's the vision for your marriage it is very hard to be consistent if you don't know what you're working towards cuz you could be consistent in the wrong direction so from a qualitative measure who do you want to be and what does that look like I'll tell you

a secret of the vision that I have for myself that I don't tell anybody I don't even think I've told my husband I have a vision of myself sitting in a chair on one of the world's most well-known talk shows talking about how I am one of the top five women on the Forbes list this is me 15 years from now I know what I look like I know how I sound I know what kind of confidence I exude and I know what I'm talking about I'm talking about how I built a company through praise

and not punishment and how I've helped change the workplace and the workforce through my content and through the example I've set by building that company when I show up I look good I'm slim I'm in shape I have good hair good makeup good skin and I'm happy I'm confident and there this snapshot that I hold on to on the days when I'm like I don't know if I want to do this but I anchor myself to that snapshot and so the question is once you know what's your snapshot of your future where do you want

to end up how do you want to feel how do you want to show up what do you want to look like then the next question from that is how do we reverse engineer that into qualitative and quantitative goals that can put us in the right direction so that we know when we are being consistent we know what it's building towards a vision without a plan is Just a Dream right and if we want to make our dreams a reality then we turn them into plans and so what I do is I break my plans

down into yearly monthly weekly daily when I was trying to lose a 100 lb it felt like oh my gosh this is a lot of weight to lose and so I didn't just create a vision board I created two boards I had a vision board and then I created a goals board what's my goal for the year what's my goal for each month what's my goal for the week and what's my goal every day it broke it down so simply that I knew every day I had to drink this much water I need to work

out exercise strength trained this many times and over a monthly it looked like being able to increase my weights in the gym being able to wear certain clothes it made it that much more easy to believe that I could accomplish that Vision that I had for myself because I broke it down into daily steps and the thing is is that often times what people do is they have this amazing dream and vision you haven't done the work of taking that vision and that dream and breaking it down into actionable steps and if you're watching this

video I want you to take that future self that you see I want you to pull it with all your might into the present the second practice is that once you have goals you need to choose supporting behaviors okay most of us are consistent with behaviors that work against arals I have been in that place I was consistent I was consistently drinking I was consistently doing drugs I was consistently off watching Netflix right so I was consistent in the wrong direction from my goals you might be watching this thinking oh I'm consistent consistently ad dict

to my team consistently not showing up on time consistently getting distracted so it's not you're not consistent you're consistent on the wrong things what I have found to be the simplest thing to do for myself is when I'm trying to change Behavior I ask myself what do I need to start to propel me towards my goals what do I need to stop doing that's deterring me from my goals or interfering with my goals and what do I continue doing that is absolutely helping me achieve my goals right now I'm at a place in my career

where I need to level up I'm recognizing that as the CEO I know that I can be the bottleneck for the entire company and we're in a place where growing really fast and so I recognize that I need to change the way that I do things in the company which also means changing personal habits and things that I've done for a long time and so what I did is I talked to friends of mine who have companies that I aspire to have of that size or that kind of impact and they have built amazing companies

with amazing teams and I said can I see your calendar because when I break down what are the habits that I need to have as a CEO I think about my calendar I think about where my time goes right because where time goes attention goes and where your attention goes in the company is what's going to grow and where money is going to come from I asked to see their calendars and what did I see one if I look at my calendar I look one of their calendars I had hourlong meetings they had 15minute meetings

that was the biggest difference that I saw and so it's not like they took more hours of meetings a day it's not that it's that they were getting more from the hours they had and so I said to myself that's a lot of things I'm going to have to change I'm going to have to learn how to have 15-minute meetings rather than hour meetings and so what I decided to do was one no hourong meetings those removed from my calendar two any meeting that gets requested is a 10 to 15 minute by default no more

no less and then three one thing I'm going to continue doing is I'm going to continue having 30 minute 101s because I recognize something which is what has been working for me and continues to work despite all the ABS and flows in the business for me that's investing in my people when I grow my people the business grows and so it's important to me to spend time with the people who report to me and even don't report to me and to put more time into them than any little task that comes up and so the

question for you is right now you've anchored with that vision of yourself say you even started thinking of here are the goals I have what do you need to stop doing that's up you from hitting your goals what do you need to start doing that's going to propel you in that direction and what can you continue doing that's not detering you maybe it's not propelling you but it's neutral the third practice that I have in being consistent is you have to make it easy you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to

the level of your environment and what you have engineered your environment to be how can you create an environment that makes it easy to start the behaviors that Propel you to your goals and makes it easy to stop the behaviors that interfere from you hitting your goals the first time that I ever did this when I started gym launch and it was 2017 I tend to be very expressive like I have emotions written on my face and something that I've had to work on is in the moment when I'm on meetings when I'm talking to

people people will say things that piss me off that I feel stressed about maybe I'm super excited about but what I've realized is that that Split Second reaction dictates a lot about what that person's going to tell me next time and so something I recognized in myself was that something that was interfering with me being a leader that people could tell anything to was reacting quickly to what people said with my face right because I might not say it my face would show it and so I put this sticky note on my computer and the

sticky note just said be neutral it sounds crazy but that sticky note changed changed how I showed up for my entire team for the next 6 years because all I thought about was when I'm receiving news whether it's bad frustrating stressful Etc be neutral because the likelihood that this is going to end the business and create this giant Whirlwind of effect and and ruin my life is so low it's probably just inconvenient and frustrating and if I show that when somebody delivers me the news it interferes with my goals of being someone they can come

to because it punishes them in a way because they feel like they've upset me with news but in reality for me to be the right CEO for this business I need to know everything I need to have more context than anybody to make the right decisions I recognized that that was a key for my growth and all I had to do is put a sticky note on my computer the research shows that it takes about 66 days for a new Behavior to become automatic meaning you don't have to think about it so for example if

you've been reaching for the ice cream every night for a year it might take 66 days for you to not reach for the ice cream and that is why we fall to the level of our environment because if we don't set ourselves up for success by having engineered our environments to remind us of these things before it's automatic it's going to be tough the fourth practice I have in being consistent is rewarding yourself for consistent progress what I have seen is that when you want a behavior to happen more more frequently and more consistently is

you want to reinforce it positively whether that be you or somebody else now I will say this is if you can recruit somebody else to reinforce your consistent Behavior you will be far more likely to succeed which is why if you look at the most effective exercise nutrition Behavior change programs there's a third party it could be a friend it could be a family member it could be a therapist it could be a coach that person is constantly there to reinforce the new behaviors so that you're constantly focused on the future and what you're doing

well and forgetting about the fact that you've dumped all these behaviors over here that aren't helping an example of this would be when Alex wrote his book $100 million do leads it took him a long time of writing every day for six to eight hours he got no reinforcement from that writing in the beginning to get started what I knew is it's hard to be consistent when you get zero feedback and so what I did instead is I constantly positively reinforced him for the work he was putting in on the book because I knew how

punishing it might feel and how it's much harder to be consistent when you don't get that kind of reinforcement from somebody say you don't have somebody else to reinforce you or reward you something I do is I set up my schedule in a way that I reward myself if I am consistent with the things that are the highest priority if me getting certain things with work done was my number one priority then I would say that if I get my to-do list for the day done that is when I get to workout for the day

and so what it means is that the workout actually becomes a reward that I put in place for myself if I don't get those things done the reward is not there and so there's also ways that you can reinforce and reward yourself for things and the fifth practice of being consistent is that when in doubt stick with the plan the plan is working it's often that either one you're being impatient with the plan and you just don't recognize how long it actually takes two lie to yourself about if you're really sticking with the plan I

can't tell you the amount of times that people have come to me and they've said Lea I'm trying to lose weight I'm eating 1100 calories a day but I just can't seem to lose weight and I was like okay well are you tracking it can I see they like well no I was like mhm so I'll tell you I thought recently even because I like oh I want to lose 6 lb I thought that I was eating like 1,400 calories a day so I said you know what it I'm not going to change what I'm

eating but I'm going to start measuring it oh my God I was eating 2,300 calories a day you don't even realize how things add up when you don't track them and the thing is about a plan and about being consistent is if you don't track and you don't measure you don't manage it so a lot of the times the first thing I realize is that people aren't sticking to the plan of being consistent because they're actually just not confronting the fact that they're not doing it to the best of their ability like I knew that

I should have been tracking and guess what I'm tracking now my weight's going down if it's business it's like people are like oh I'm trying to make more money are you measuring how much money you're making are you doing your financials did you get a bookkeeper it's not that the plan doesn't work it's that often times we lie to ourselves about the fact that we're actually not doing it that well most people are just really impatient there's so much immediate gratification nowadays that when we see that we have not lost 20 lbs in a week

our business hasn't blown up overnight all these things we think oh it must must not be working we just want to look for Progress that's it look at progress on a weekly monthly quarterly or yearly scale that's something that I've learned to do in my business with myself a lot of the times when you decide to be consistent with something to change a behavior and to be consistent in a Direction that's going to propel you towards your goals the results you're getting today and even a week in and even maybe sometimes two weeks in are

the results from work you did 3 6 12 months ago and so if you're wondering why is it not happening yet momentum takes time to change and to turn into the opposite direction so you might still be incurring the costs and receiving the result from the habits and the things that you were doing for the last 3 6 12 months and it might even be that you have started these new habits and these things are happening when you've already cemented these new habits into your routine I'll give you an example of this we had a

portfolio company and they realized that they did not have great leadership on the team and so they said we really need to turn it around and we said cool you know the best way to do that is let's hire these two people and then we're going to do consistent leadership trainings we're going to put this quarterly performance review in place and we're going to have consistent one-on ons with our teams they started doing that they were about a month in two people quit why did they quit lack of leadership why is that because those two

people that one month wasn't enough for them yet they were thinking about the 12 months prior where there was all this terrible leadership there was chaos and there was no organization and so then they said to me like what do we need to do we need to do this we no no no you don't need to do jack you need to stick with the plan the results you're getting right now are from things you did three six 12 months ago and so ask yourself if you're watching this video and you're like I've been consistent I'm

not seeing the fruits of my labor have you really waited long enough or are you just paying the price for bad decisions that you made 3 6 12 months ago studies show that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master so when somebody tells me I'm not that great at business yet I'm not a great leader yet I'm not good at making content yet have you put in 10,000 hours I think about that for myself that I'm pretty good at business I've put in 10,000 hours there have I put in 10,000 hours

to content I don't think so so it would make sense that I'm better at business than I am making content but it's catching up and So eventually I will see the fruits of my labor you can't believe everything you think you got to stick with the plan here's the thing if the plan has worked for more people than it hasn't it's probably you not the plan most people are one year of consistency away from a completely different version of themselves but they can't get past the fact that the first three months are the slowest when

your mind is telling you don't stick with the plan change the plan we need a new plan remember this a lot of people think that our minds have immense influence over our behaviors but in fact the opposite is true which is our behaviors have immense influence over our minds and feelings if you're struggling to be consistent and you're struggling to stick with the plan get out of your head head and let your body do the talking let your body guide you into new beliefs I don't believe it's going to work do it anyways and see

what happens consider an experiment you know people come to me and they say Lea I want to be a great leader but I don't know where to start I feel like I don't I don't give a about my team I don't care I don't here's what I want you to do smile at your team ask them how they're doing tell me how you feel in 2 weeks the more times you do it the faster you'll start feeling that way a lot of people think Lea I don't believe in myself I don't think that I'm going

to be capable of doing it whether it's losing weight starting a business being a great leader you know whatever it is that you have that's that goal for yourself and the thing is is that I have rarely ever believed or had my mind work for me or my feelings work for me to get me to achieve some massive goal and take those steps every single day in fact what I've realized is that I don't need to believe anything I just need to take the actions but I promise you that you can create thoughts and feels

Feelings by your actions you don't have to believe that you can be consistent to win you just have to take the actions of being consistent and eventually you will long-term consistency will beat short-term intensity every freaking time it's easy to muster up the energy to do something once and do it great and do it with intensity what's hard is doing it day in and day out especially when you're doubting if the path even works stop trying to achieve your goals stop start trying to be consistent and if you can be consistent you can achieve your

goals