Time Stamps for “What Do You Do When Goals Don’t Work?”
1:01– Play with your imagination
3:13– This one thing made him lose
6:05– The life you imagine
9:24– Use your imagination
12:26– The secret to YOUR success?
15:28– Appreciate life
18:07– Common pitfall
22:09– The art of allowing…
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Transcription:
William Wood: So, you’re focus is first to get people totally and completely grounded into the present moment to move them out of their head and into their heart or their belly and then you’re helping them to play with their imagination and imagine, are you having them imagine the game? Or the sales call? What are you having them play once you get that far?
Matt Furey: It depends on the person and how they’re wired. I will go on record as saying something is probably shocking to a lot of people who are in the, who study self-improvement and all that. That is that for a good many people, goals don’t work or goal setting isn’t helpful to them.
The reason why is because, well there’s a number of reasons why but it’s one of the main ones is that they can’t focus on what they have to do in the present to get them there. They sit around and fret and worry and get tense about whether or not they can achieve the goal that they’ve set. So with this type of person, I actually put them on what I call a goal fast. You have no goals now. It seems like, well how can someone succeed? Well we still have a goal, the goal is no goals. No long terms, all the goals are daily. What are we going to do today to make you a better person? To make you a better athlete?
To make you a better golfer or martial artist, musician and so on. The goal is to focus on the journey rather than I want to play in Carnegie Hall and it hasn’t happened yet, what’s wrong with me, etc., etc. Alright so it really depends, now then there are the people who can do both. They’re really good at it. They can have their long term goal and so on, yet they don’t lose sight of hey…the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step and continues with the next step and continues onward with the next step and so on. They don’t lose sight of that so you’ve got a potential champ in there.
But, the New York Yankees in baseball, they won27 world championships. World Series Championships. After they won the 27th, the manager who wore number 27 changed his number to 28, well how did they sense that? They didn’t want number 28.
My coach at Iowa, my wrestling coach Dan Gabel, they won 9 straight NCAA titles. somebody came up with the idea to put roman numeral 10 on the uniform, on all the marketing material and so on before it had become a fact. Like it’s a forgone conclusion. Well they didn’t win either, that year they lost.
So some people will go you’re being positive. No, no. I have a different take on it. I believe in goals, but I also believe very strongly that in certain endeavors, yours going to make more progress if you focus on the process rather than the goal. Some people, I’ve had people who you work with them, you visualize goals etc., etc. They don’t make any progress but as soon as I put them on the journey, on the step by step, on making improvements each day, they start making quantum leaps. So, this is where I say the Harvard study that they had the 3% of the people had written goal and they accomplished more than the other 97% combined. Well we don’t know what the other 97% were doing or not doing. I don’t have the details on that. Whether somebody…
You can contact Matt Furey at http://www.psycho-cybernetics.com
William Wood: That’s actually a really interesting thing, that study wasn’t actually a study. Somebody actually for one of their Masters thesis, a year or two ago, a few years back, they went and tried to hunt down the origin to that story and it turns out that that story is a myth.
Matt Furey: That’s good to know because I always believed it was a myth. I just always had trouble wrapping my mind around it but getting back to the Yankees, this is a huge one. I know a lot of people don’t play baseball so please don’t miss the metaphor here. Please catch the message here even if you hate baseball.
There are two players, they have all these players that had their own hall of fame and center field and they put up plaques and they immortalize them and so on. Derrick Jeeter finished last year and he had a book, it was his last year last year and he retired. One of the, he had an autobiographical book put out after they won, I believe their fourth world series and it was called the life you imagine. In that book basically he says everything I ever imagined and set as a goal I made it happen.
He was 8 years old and he told his parents he was going to play for the New York Yankees. Was going to be the short stop, he got a Yankees jersey and uniform and cap and he hung them on the back of door in his bedroom every night before he went to bed he would look at these and he would imagine and he became a short stop for the New York Yankees in the future hall of fame. The Yankees also have a player who retired I guess about 10 years ago. His name is Bernie Williams.
When they interviewed Bernie, who just had his plaque put up in the outfield at Yankees stadium, when you ask him can you believe any of this happened? Did you ever imagine any of this? He’ll say no. He just said I still can’t believe it. I never thought I was going to be a major league baseball player. I never thought I was going to play for the Yankees my entire career, retire here and that I’d be honored by having my plaque put up.
So how can you invalidate that? When I hear those two different kinds of stories you have to say to yourself okay. Huh. There’s the guy who was a real goal oriented guy, he wrote everything down and he made it happen and then you have another guy who is, I can’t say he’s equally successful but he’s pretty amazingly good. Alright, will he make the Coopers Town hall of fame? But he made the hall of fame at the Yankees and that’s enough. But there’s a lot of people like this.
A Thai chi master that I train with, who is in his 70’s we asked him this question. He gets up everyday, he practiced devotedly, religiously. Every single day for hours in the day and for 65 years and has written books. Has DVD’s. Goes all over the world giving seminars and so on. So I told my students when we had him at my home for a seminar last month, let’s ask him if he’s ever set any goals. So we asked him and he said [mao, shemido mao] in Chinese means no, I never had done that. I never set a goal on anything. I never had a goal to come to the United States. I never had a goal to become a Thai chi master, I never had a goal to write books, create DVD’s etc., etc.
So how did it happen then? Well, he’s on the journey. His goals is really to lock in on the process and to just, everyday make an improvement. One small little improvement everyday, you do that everyday for a year or 5 years, 10 years, you’re going to create a success in anything, I don’t care what it is.
William Wood: Sure, it sounds like the bulk of your approach is to get people grounded and rooted in the present moment and focused in on what’s right in front of them.
Matt Furey: That’s definitely a large part of it, right. But all depends too. But think about, when you use your imagination and you visualize something that you’d like in the future, you have to do it in the present. So when you do it correctly, you’re imagining that the future is right now. That you’re already there, that you’ve already achieved the goal that you’ve already scored the winning basket. You already made the million dollars. You imagined you’re already there.
So if that’s the case then the present is really where it is. Then again it isn’t because as soon as we had the present it’s gone. I guess to go further with what you said is, it’s correct. I would just add that the focus is to get people to have no…get them to a point where they have no concept of time. That is where it is. Where you are so involved in what you’re doing, you’re so passionate that hours could go by and you have no idea. It seems like 10 or 15 minutes but it’s 4 or 5 hours. All of us have those experiences, those peak experiences. To me that’s where it is. To get people to the peak experience in the so called present moment that is gone as soon as it’s present.
William Wood: Sure, so tell me Matt. We have people listening for a bunch of different reasons. Bunch of people are listening for business applications, some people are listening for personal and self-development. What’s one thing that you could…again, I know it’d be a lot better if you knew who they were and what their situation was. Is there something that you could give him right now that they could apply before the sun sets tonight, to help them improve their own mind, improve their own success.
Matt Furey: What would it be? It would be to look at their greatest success they’ve ever had and to begin to ask questions about it. By success, I don’t even mean success because that word can throw people off as well. Oh I never really had any successes, yes but you’re a doctor. Yes but that doesn’t count…I talk to people like this all the time. Talk to people all the time.
I built my own house isn’t that a success? No not really because I already knew how to do it…so those are just head bangers. Happy moments, you think of your happiest moments in your life. What was your process? If you were to give me recipe for what you were doing in that successful or happy moment, what led you to it?
Once you can isolate what those factors are, you’re way ahead of the game. Most people never take the time to sift through their actions, their thinking. What they’re picturing, how they’re breathing and so on. To create a repeatable ritual that will help you get similar results over and over again. I believe that ritual is very powerful and if you have a happiness or a success ritual, then you’re going to be able to on command bring it forth over and over again.
So that is one of the big ones and of course knowing also know with your failure ritual is as well. When you get into a negative rut, when you put yourself into a negative rut how are you doing it? Well I don’t know…well if you don’t know, how are you going to recognize when it’s happening to you so you can stop it? The answer I don’t know, is really I haven’t bothered to think about it and I don’t want to. Why don’t we do so, because it’s going to be some very good information. Then with that’s it’s really learning to center yourself like you said and get grounded and the deep breathing to me is a huge part of that. But it’s not the only thing. It’s what’s missing from almost everyone’s life. Is that.
I put out a quote last week on this that we take our first breath and come into this world and then we gasp for our last one. Most of the breathes in-between are ignored and you need to begin to appreciate your life. The glorious thing it is to be alive and to be able to do so much. When you want to know, okay well how do I appreciate things? How do I show that I appreciate my life? Well I can sit down and do affirmations. I appreciate this, I appreciate that… or I can tune into my breathing and when you tune into your breathing and you inhale, all the way down to your lower belly and hold it and then you exhale and you repeat that, you’re really sending a signal or a message to yourself and to the universe that you appreciate life because you’re acknowledging or paying attention to your breathe.
That to me is the most important thing, if you can just get people to follow their breathe, not follow their nose like the froot loops commercial, follow their breathe and all things will get better. There’s one more thing too, the quote I sent out last week as well to my list. Comes from the [Inaudible [00:38:54.15]], couple thousand years ago in China, but it gets back to this winners state I was talking about earlier. It goes like this, when you’re betting for stones in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim.
When you’re betting for real goal, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases, but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside concerns weigh on your mind. He looks to hard at the outside, get’s [Inaudible [00:39:36.11]] on the inside. So when I go with people, I ask them what are your fancy belt buckles? What is your real goal? When we can…well I want to get a scholarship or I want to become a millionaire, I want to this and I want to that. Okay, that’s good. Nothing wrong with that, those are worth while goals.
If you approach them, psychophysically with a body full of tension and so on, now you’re not able to perform because you’re not betting for stones anymore, you’re betting for a million dollars. You’re betting on being number one etc., etc. It’s to play the game no mater what that game is as if it’s nothing but betting for stones.
William Wood: Super, super profound. Love that quote.
Matt Furey: Thank you yes. Wish I wrote it myself.
William Wood: Yeah I know. This is amazing, I know you told me today you had about 40 minutes and I don’t want to keep you too much longer but if I can ask you one more question, maybe two with a quick one here. If you could talk maybe for one minute or two minutes, common pitfalls that people experience as they’re just getting started on the journey of success.
Matt Furey: Common pitfall is having their eye too much on the long term goal instead of what they’ve got to do right now. Ultimately right now is all I can control. So if I’m making myself miserable in the present because I’m not where I want to be, that’s a huge pitfall.
The not being aware of your breathe, a lot of people don’t understand how that’s a pitfall or how that’s a drawback. The only thing I can say is let me demonstrate it to you sometime and you’ll know, you’ll really know it’s a huge thing. It’s huge, because your breath is how you bring in power, it’s how you release tension.
So you’ve got both there. So it’s a double benefit. When it comes to visualization itself, one of the biggest pitfalls it that people, they tend to judge themselves and judge the process. I’m not able to see it clearly, well what do you mean? Well I can’t see, I’m looking outside right now at all these trees, when I visualize it I don’t see it that clearly.
So what? Well I don’t see it…you know in full color? So. I don’t, they have an idea in their head, that people who are good at visualization see everything as crystal clear as if they’re watching HD TV. I don’t know about you but that’s not my experience of it. Sometimes I just have a good silhouette, sort of outline of what I’m working towards and that’s enough. The real key is the emotion. So those are some different pitfalls I see people getting into frequently.
William Wood: Amazing, thank you. If people want to get in contact with you. If they want to learn more, how should they do that?
Matt Furey: Well, I have a number of websites. Most famous one over time has been Mattfurey.com. But when it comes to the personal growth, self improvement, psycho [Inaudible [00:44:07.16]], visualization, imagination and so on, that would be easier to contact me through sopyschocybernetics.com, you can find my email through there. I also had products and so on. Nightingale Conats Theatre of the mind, we did it about a year ago, it’s an awesome product. I mean truly, truly is an awesome product. There’s other things as well.
William Wood: Amazing, we’ll make sure we put a link up on the website.
Matt Furey: That would be good to connect with people on this call who really enjoyed the info and would like more, I’d love to connect with them.
William Wood: Absolutely. We’ll make sure that there’s a link on the website that sends people back in your direction and we’ll send them to thepyschocybernetics.com or the psycho hyphen cypbernetics.com website. Matt, any last thoughts before we wind up today?
Matt Furey: Last thoughts…I don’t like last thoughts. Another thought…another thought is to have this idea of what I call people get into so many fights and arguments and there’s so much ranker and debate and arguing and so on that I see on Facebook and internet and personal lives. It seems like everything is about fighting. Not even just physically just somebody doesn’t agree with my point of view, let’s start a fight.
Let’s be contentious about it. One of the principles I like to use that’s really felt me and continually working on it is this idea of non-contentiousness. That somebody has a view that I don’t share, I don’t have to give my opinion back. I can just listen. If somebody had a political view or whatever that I don’t share, which is easy because I don’t have many political opinions. To me it’s a lot of time wasted. It’s a lot of energy drain and there’s so many people that have goals and things they want to achieve and they say they don’t have time to work on achieving it or practicing what they love to do, yet you see them on the internet fighting all the time about stuff.
So, I’m not talking stop the fighting violence wise, I’m saying just stop all the arguing and fighting and contentiousness that you have on stuff that doesn’t even matter. It’s a huge energy drain and when you can eliminate that habit, for the most part from your life. Say you can cut it down by half or 80%, then if you want to go further than that, okay. But I think your energy will go way up and your productivity and your ability to achieve what you want in your life will go up as well. So that is a final thought or another thought from today.
William Wood: It’s an amazing another thought. Matt it’s been amazing to have you on the show, it’s been a pleasure. I know that I’ve learned some things and the challenge I’d like to turn around and give to everyone who is listening today is simply this. Take one idea, something that struck you from the interview today and go out and implement it, apply it to your life before the sun sets and watch how things begin to unfold for you. So Matt you’re welcome back anytime and I’ll make sure that your info is up there and it’s certainly been a pleasure to have you on the show.
Matt Furey: It’s been mine as well, thank you very much.
You can contact Matt Furey at http://www.psycho-cybernetics.com