درسنامه تفسیری

Commit – Commentary

Hello this is AJ and welcome to this months’ commentary. And, by the way, Happy New Year!

Commit, commitment, action. Commitment is connected to action. So, our interactive lessons this month and then our main lessons they’re connected, because when you commit to something, when you make that decision and you fully commit, you decide, what are you deciding? You’re deciding to do something. Without the action there’s no commitment. You don’t commit just to think about something. You don’t commit just to talk about something. You don’t commit just to believe something. You commit to do, to do.

Now, of course, the beginning of every year lots of people around the world set their goals. They decide on their goals… what will I do this year? What will I accomplish this year? In English we call these New Year’s resolutions; resolutions which comes from the verb to resolve, to resolve, which means to do or to solve a problem. It’s a solution. So a resolution, it’s a decision to do something, a goal.

Now also every year around the world, most people fail to achieve their goals. They decide, this year I will lose weight. This year I will be healthier. This year I will start my business. This year… on and on and on and then it doesn’t happen or they try a little bit and then they stop. And I believe there’s a few reasons for this, there are a few reasons for this. Let’s discuss them so that when you make your resolution, your decision it doesn’t matter New Year’s or in the middle of the year, at any time, that you do it with commitment and that you therefore achieve success.

You get the results you’re wanting, which most people don’t. Most people simply don’t.

So what’s the difference, how do you do this? How do you make a goal, a resolution, a commitment in a way that will be successful, that is more likely to be successful? There’s no guarantee. We can always fail, failures happen, but we want to achieve the highest level of possibility, the highest potential for success. So how do we do it?

First, when you make a goal or resolution you’re making a commitment. You’re deciding, I will do this. Not I want to do this, not maybe, not it would be nice, no; I will do this 100% certainty.

You have to have that emotional feeling of certainty behind it. That’s number one, you must have that. You must not be doubtful or maybe. Don’t use any words like that, maybe, probably, I hope, I wish, I want… no, no, no, no… you say, I will 100%. I will do this.

Second, I recommend you only do one. See, I think people they make too many goals. I’ve done this myself. I’ve made this mistake many, many times in my life where I’ll decide on three goals or four goals or five goals. These five goals these are my goals for this year or for this month, but the problem is then it divides my attention so that instead of fully committing 100% to one thing, the most important thing, instead I divide my commitment… okay, 25% for this, 25% for this, because it divides your focus.

Focus gives power. If you focus on one thing you’re putting all your energy and power on that one thing, you’re much more likely to succeed. If you focus on five things, well now you’re only putting 20% of your energy and power into each one. You’re much less likely to achieve success with any of them.

Now I know all of us have different parts of our life that are important. We all have several things that are important. You want to be healthy, for example. You also need to make money or to have your family make money. You also want to have good relationships, so of course you always have several things, but I think you need to decide what’s the most important one right now? Of course you’re not going to forget about everything else. Maybe you decide health, health is the most important thing. You know my health’s not good, I’m overweight, I’m not feeling good; health’s number one for me right now. Does that mean you forget about your wife or husband? Does it mean you forget about your job? No, of course not, you continue to work on those things and do those things. But it means you put all your extra energy, all your extra time, all your extra focus on just that one thing that’s most important. You get that one thing solved. And then, after you get that one thing solved, the most important one then you can maybe start to divide again.

So, when you make a New Year’s resolution or at any time when you’re making a full commitment to something, ask yourself and decide, what is the number one most important thing? What’s most important now, right now? It can change with time. Next year something else might be more important, but what’s most important right now? This will force you to prioritize. To prioritize means to make priorities. Priorities is what’s most important. It’s ranking.

You have to rank. When we prioritize we rank things. This one’s number one. This one’s number two. This one’s number three. It can be hard right, oh, what’s most important my job and career or my health?

Sometimes that’s a hard decision to make. It can depend on your age. It depends on how you’re feeling. How healthy are you right now? What’s your financial situation right now or your career situation right now? Which one’s causing the most suffering? Which one will give you the most happiness? I can’t answer that question only you can answer that question. But it’s good to ask the question, it’s good to think about it, to decide what’s most important to me right now or this year? And you’re going to commit to making just that one area of your life great.

The next step, I think we’re on number three now, step number three you’re going to make a total commitment in this area, in this most important area, total commitment. It means you decide you will achieve something, you will do something and you will not even consider failure.

You will not even consider another option.

Let’s talk about health, health is a common one, like losing weight. That’s a very common one for lots of people, so let’s focus on it because it’s also simple; we can all understand it. So let’s say you decide, I’m going to lose 20 pounds or 10 kilos this year, of fat. You should be specific.

You’re going to lose 10 kilograms or 20 pounds of fat, you don’t want to lose 20 pounds of muscle that’s not good. Or, if you want to be even more specific you could decide, you could measure your waist. You’ll say I will lose fat so that my waist is 32 inches around. That’s another example.

Once you decide that you focus all your extra energy, all your free energy onto that one thing and you decide you will do this and you will not even think about failure, not even think about anything else.

And this brings us to step number four, which I think is very, very important. I’ve talked about parts of this step before, but I wanna put it all together for you, because I believe step four is really the key to achieving your goals with success and people who don’t do it correctly typically fail and most people don’t do this correctly, most people just don’t. Your goals need to have two parts. Always, always, always you need to have two parts to your goal. Any goal you have in life.

I’ll call this the result part and the process part. The result part and the process part and you have to have both to achieve what you want, to have success. If you’re missing one then you’re much more likely to fail, so let’s talk about this.

The result part is obvious, most people just do the result part and they forget to do the process part. The result part is, what do you want to happen eventually? I want to lose 20 pounds that is my goal, I will lose 20 pounds. It’s even better if you put a date on it, like make it really specific… I will lose 20 pounds of fat by August 1 of this year. So it’s specific, it has a timeline, it’s measurable, you can actually measure it. It’s very clear, very specific. That’s the best kind of result goal. Very good.

But you also need a process part and this is the part a lot of people forget. So they kinda have this goal, I’m gonna lose 20 pounds. I’m gonna lose 20 pounds by this date and then what happens? They do nothing. The next day they do nothing, they just think about it. They just talk about it all the time, talk-talk-talk-talk-talk. Most fat people I know in my life this is what they do, they just talk about it. They just fucking talk about losing weight constantly, talking-talkingtalking-talking about it and yeah they set goals, I’m gonna lose 20 pounds this year, and talk and talk.

There’s no one better at talking about health than somebody who’s unhealthy. There’s nobody better at talking about fitness and losing weight than someone who’s fat and hasn’t lost weight.

They’re experts at talking, they can talk to you for hours about it. What they’re not good at is doing and this is the problem with just setting a result goal, it’s too easy just to talk. You can just talk and talk and talk and delay and not really do anything. I’ll start my diet next week. Oh, I’ll lose weight… six months’ from now I will lose 20 pounds. Great, what are you gonna do today?

This is the process part, the second part of any goal that you must have. It’s, what daily action are you going to do? This is a commitment. What daily action do you commit to doing, absolutely 100%? I will do this daily action. This is the how. This is the how you’re gonna do it.

So I will lose 20 pounds by August 1st. That’s the what and the when but you need the how. You must have a daily commitment, that’s how you know if you’re making progress or not. Without the how, without the process part it’s just talk, talk, talk. No, you need a daily action so then every day you know did I do the action or did I not?

So, for example, if you want to lose 20 pounds you say okay, every day I’m going to walk two hours, a little walk for two hours. Every single day I will go for a two hour walk or more, or one hour whatever, you decide of course. But then you know if you say one hour, you say every day I’m gonna walk for one hour, well, that’s clear. That is action. That is doing. And it’s daily so you know if you did it. Tomorrow you get up. Did you walk at the end of the day? Did you walk an hour or did you not? It’s an instant feedback, whether you’re making progress or not. You can’t pretend about that. You can pretend about your result goal, oh yeah I’m getting closer. I’m doing okay. I’m eating a little better.

You can kinda lie to yourself about it and talk about it too much, but if you have a clear daily process goal as part of your goal you can’t lie to yourself really, you can’t lie to other people.

You walked one hour or you didn’t. Did you do it or not? And if you didn’t than you know that you’re not really working towards that goal, you’re failing. You know it instantly. You get instant feedback every single day if you’re failing or making progress.

Same with English right? So like, a lot of people, I will speak English fluently. I will sound like a native speaker. I will get a great score on the TOEFL exam, all these result goals. That’s fine, but then lots and lots and lots of English learners failed to make the process goal also, part B.

And so they talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about all their great English goals, but they never actually do them. So the process goal would be, I will listen to my Effortless English audios two hours every day or more. I will listen to the VIP lesson audios two hours a day or more every single, no exceptions.

That’s a powerful commitment and you know, every day you know at the end of the day, did you do it or did you not? You can’t lie to yourself. You can’t pretend. You can’t play little games. You know, I’m doing it or I’m not doing it. I’m failing or I’m succeeding. If you did two hours today hey, I succeeded today. Fantastic! It feels great, keeps you going. And if you didn’t do it you’re like, I didn’t do it today, I failed today. I need to kick my butt. I need to get more motivated. I need to take action. You know it gives you instant feedback.

Now I do this, I’m almost 50 years old, I’ll be 50 years old in a few months and pretty much all my life I’ve been fairly thin, fairly fit, because I’ve always, always, always exercised and I very rarely, not often, I very rarely have a result goal for fitness. Sometimes I do like, usually it’s some kind of athletic performance, like I want to run in a race so I will run in a marathon this year. That might be an example of a result goal or I will fight in a Jiu Jitsu tournament this year. I did that last year that was my goal last year. So it’s that kind of a goal usually, but I always, always, always have process goals for my fitness… walking an hour every day, doing calisthenics like push-ups and pull-ups every day, things like that.

That’s what has kept me thin most of my life, that and eating better as well. Eating less food or trying to avoid sugar, those kinds of things. But, I achieve success with my own weight by focusing mostly on the process goals. Yes, I do have the result goals sometimes, usually some event I want to do, but most of my energy, most of my focus is on the daily actions I want to take for fitness. Every day I will do 50 push-ups or every day I will do 20 pull-ups and 50 push-ups and walk for an hour, for example.

So you need both, both-both-both-both-both, and the key commitment is to action not words. A lot of gurus out there, Tony Robbins, lots of guys they focus a lot of energy on those result goals. Like they tell you how to make a goal, be specific, make sure you can measure it, have a specific date and deadline. All of that’s good and fine, but I think most people who talk about goals, they forget to talk about the process part, the daily action part and I think that’s where most of the power is. When you combine them together, then you’ve got a lot of power. Then you’ve got a lot of power, because then each one helps the other.

So, if you’ve got your goal, your big result goal, lose 20 pounds and then you have a daily goal, walk an hour a day, well, every day you get feedback right? Did I walk or not? And you have some success, but then you start weighing yourself and maybe after two month’s you’re still not losing any weight, so then you might think, then you can adjust your daily goal, your process goal, your process. You can say well, you know what, this walking one hour, I feel better but I’m not losing weight. I’m not making process towards my result, my end result, so maybe I need to adjust my daily goal and maybe you’ll change something.

Maybe you’ll realize, oh well, I’ve also got to change how I eat, so every day I will whatever.

Every day I will only eat 50grams of carbohydrates, for example. You might add another daily process goal. So they both work together, right? If you only have the process goal, only the daily stuff, well then, you don’t get the big feedback. Are you moving towards what you want or not?

You might keep walking one hour every day, but you’re eating terribly and then you stay fat.

That doesn’t work. On the other hand, if you just have the goal of, I will lose 20 pounds by August but you don’t have the daily goal, then what happens? Then you get distracted. Then you just talk and talk and talk and you never actually do it. Then August comes and you failed.

So each one alone doesn’t really work, but when you combine them together they sort of reinforce each other. They make each other stronger.

So that’s what I want you to do. Guess what? Guess what you’re gonna do this month? If you’re listening to this in January, I want you to decide this year, what is the most important goal?

What is the number one thing you must achieve? What is the number one most important area in your life that will make you happier, your family happier, your life better? What is it? Think about it, decide your top priority.

Number two, make a result goal for that priority. Specific, measurable with a timeline, a deadline.

Number three, make a process or more than one process goals for that area. What will you do every single day?

That’s it, you can tell me about it online on Twitter or wherever, if you want to. My Twitter is my name- AJHoge. Tell me about your goals. Good luck, you will achieve them this year. You must fully commit 100% to this one thing, you will do it.

I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.