The Heartbreaking Reality I Learned From Making My Goals 10x Larger

Up until just a few months ago my dreams were very small, I lacked any form of self confidence and as a result I never believed my large dreams were achievable. But around August of this year that all changed, thanks to the guidance from entrepreneurs like Grant Cardone the author of “ The 10X Rule”, Andy Frisella one of the founders of 1st Phorm and the creator of the #LiveHard program, and Tom Bilyeu the co-founder of Quest Nutrition and founder of Impact Theory, I was able to realize a fact that completely changed how I view myself and the world.

This was the fact that myself and most people around me/in general were extremely limiting our ability to have large dreams we believe can be reality. Talking to many people in real life and listening to many people talk on talk shows such as “Ask Gary V.” I realized that many people’s dreams are extremely limited to what they believe is possible in the moment with their current abilities and fail to make dreams that you will need to put effort into achieving.

To give an example I have a close friend of mine who happens to very passionate about photography, for years I have heard them talk about being a photographer, how amazing traveling for photography would be and how they dream to take pictures that will appear on magazines, however there is one large part of this equation that has been constantly missing. Never once have I seen them go out and take any pictures in fact I’m not even sure if they own a camera besides their phone. Instead of pursuing this very blatant passion they have that is something they talk about every time we go online and see a picture, they tend to focus their time on complaining about their job that they hate and put in hours of work everyday to please their boss that they have told me many times that they hate “his stupid ugly face doesn’t and he doesn’t’ know anything he’s doing.” 

Whenever I ask them why they don’t go out and start a website or portfolio to get their name around I usually get a response like “I’m not good enough to actually take pictures like that” without even trying to find a class to help learn or just go out and learn through trial and error, another is “I don’t have the time” while they spend 4-5 hours everyday on their PlayStation and 2-3 hours on YouTube and Facebook or “I can’t leave my job I need the money” when I know their parents and they could move back in with them paying no rent, and the fact they spend spend copious amounts of money on fast food, and the newest video game, meaning they could leave their job for a part time job and have all that time for photography if they would just stop wasting all their money. I’m not sure what breaks my heart more when talking to them the fact that they have a face of a soulless human being most of the time, or the fact that they won’t even attempt to make their situation more appealing to them by pursuing the goal that would truly fulfill them all due to self limiting beliefs.

Now let me talk about myself and how my goals have been “multiplied 10X” as Grant Cardone writes in the book “The 10X Rule.” My goal for the past ~5 years was to just win a large Esports tournament, I would play in online tournaments every weekend with the goal of winning a Large scale event that usually pays out $20K+ for first place. Now this isn’t the smallest goal I suppose but winning these tournaments can be extremely difficult and the $20k prize pools aren’t something that can really change my financial status. But as I look at it now it’s very clear to me that I wasn’t putting in any effort towards being more than mediocre and as such always performing poorly and never improving despite the large amount of time spent. This caused me a lot of doubt, self loathing, and causing me to lower my bar for what was capable in my life. 

But as I mentioned around August of this year I had 3 of my idols post really powerful posts in a small timeframe that really made me take it all in and give a sober look at myself and see if I was dreaming big enough and doing the actions to follow up. And to my dismay I realized not only am I not dreaming big but my dreams were getting smaller and smaller with each failure. I was very unhappy with my life and I was ready to start growing so this gave me a giant surge of drive to start finding what my goals should be and making sure they were big enough to scare me with how large they were compared to things I thought about before.

Now this may not happen for everyone because I was very ready to stop living the life that I was living, I had been way too aware of the depression that the work force and self limiting beliefs caused. I knew that I didn’t want to end up like these people I used to look up to who are in their late 30s-40s and are still working the same jobs they did in their 20s with the same pay and same hatred for the work. 

So I instantly started dropping everything that didn’t push me towards my goals such as: I deleted all social media off of my phone besides Instagram to use it for brand growth but to make sure it wasn’t a distraction I unfollowed everyone that wasn’t an idol of mine living a dream the size of the dream I want to live. I stopped playing video games besides VGC as it was still a major goal to me and I didn’t see it as a distraction, but as a means to and end for my goals.

And the crazy part is I don’t miss any of those at all, none of these things were crucial to my life in fact I very quickly found that they are nothing but time sinks and distractions that many people who know the brain have designed to keep you hooked as much as possible with consistent dopamine drops.

I have lots of clear goals now that I have written down as far as personal, professional, financial etc. but I will share with you my 2 goals now that I believe are 10X of my old goals which cause me to 10X my action.

 My first goal still resides in Esports and that is to become the World Champion of VGC. I have always looked up to the people who are the very best at what they do regardless of their field, and have always dreamed to be at the top of my chosen field and before I drop competing I set myself this goal. The best part is this is a goal that even my close friends who see me as a skilled player laugh at when I tell them I’m aiming for this goal. 

My other goal is to become a personal trainer and not only help everyday people who are looking to change their life but I want to make a giant impact on the Esports scene and help make being healthy common. Now turning a whole global group of gamers who are right now sucking down Mountain Dew and Cheetos, and making them healthy, fit and happy people is a goal that is so large I haven’t figured out how to fully get there yet. But this blog was my first step, by making a blog that is primarily focused towards VGC players but has lots of content to get you healthier. I am hoping to introduce healthy habits 1 player at a time.

Coming up next month there will be a very large VGC tournament that I will be playing in, I will be putting in full effort for this tournament as I know if I can win it, that it will spread my name around and I can use this to capitalize and spread around my articles to more people.

This is not the peak of my goal, I believe I can’t even comprehend the size of my true goal yet and how large it can become so this will be a goal that grows as my knowledge and brand grows. 

The self limiting belief we have had instilled in us by our school system and friends/family is literally killing millions of people by draining them of any joy in their life causing them to adopt many vices such as smoking, drinking and fast food not to name any potential hard drugs that can be introduced.

“Your dreams should scare you, If people aren’t telling you your dreams are unrealistic you aren’t dreaming big enough” – Andy Frisella

I believe we are undergoing a dream killing pandemic right now. Social media is a place where people can choose to only show the highlights in their life and remove any trace of their downsides which causes a lot of harm because many people see these “perfect lives” which are just highlight reels and make them feel like less of a human. A time where people are seeing teenagers flex fake movie money on Instagram in front of a car they rented for 30 minutes but you miss out on fact that they work at McDonalds and dropped 1.5 paychecks on renting that car, their old friend showing how they got a huge raise at their job but not showing how they are miserable doing a job that drains any spirit out of them, or seeing online personalities always doing “cool” things like partying in a mansion, driving nice cars, and throwing money around but fail to show all the failures they had getting there as well as never giving advice on how they started and how anybody can accomplish what they accomplished.

“You need to make your dreams bigger, if you have a goal one day to run a half marathon I want you to erase that and make it a full marathon, the half is just a stepping stone to you greater goal” – Ben Newman

Please, if you are unhappy with your life, your job, or the direction you are going, please stop and put down your phone and start figuring out what you truly want in life and the steps to get there. I don’t care if you’re in your 40s-50s, would you rather be working a job you hate until retirement and then live off the small retirement funds you saved, or would you rather you drop Netflix, and YouTube and start using that time to be busting your ass for the next 10 years and make the next 20 year 10X bigger and better than the last 40? There is no such thing as too old or too late, that only a self limiting belief and excuse you are placing on yourself as a defense mechanism so you can tell yourself “you’re just not cut out for that” and continue with your life draining daily habits instead of putting in the work its just a form of laziness and excuses. Just look a Colonel Sanders the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, he was 64 years old when he opened his first store with just a dream to make food for a living. But he put in the work, at his age he began travelling and living in his car across the United States to find the most efficient place for him to open his store. At the age of 74 Sanders sold his franchise for 2 million dollars (equivalent of 16.5 million today) and continued to stay a brand ambassador/face of the brand leaving him and his family financially free for a long time to come.

If you really don’t think you have the time to work on goals, I ask you, do you not have time, or are your priorities just out of line with what will truly make you happy? Like I mentioned with my friend, they said they had no time to work on these goals, but when I look at there time spent on social media and their PlayStation they suddenly have 6 hours everyday to work on their goals. Maybe it isn’t TV, social media, or videos games that are taking up your time, maybe you’re going out to party too frequently, or your spending 4 hours everyday after work playing golf. Look at yourself nakedly and really dig deep to find what’s truly worthwhile to you and what’s a waste, no need to lie to try and make yourself look cool, this is a conversation with yourself about making your life better.

So what are you going to do? Are you going to do the same things you did yesterday, which is likely the same things you did 5 years ago, and be doing the same things 5 years from now? Or are you going 10X the size of your goals and take 10X action required? The government isn’t coming to give you riches, your boss isn’t going to come out on the work floor and randomly make you COO, if you want these large goals whether they be personal goals or something like financial freedom then you are going to have to dream bigger than you ever have before and start changing your life one day at a time.

“If your goal is to make 1 million a year you should upgrade that to 100 million. You may never hit 100 million a year but If you put in the work to make 100 I bet you make at least 20 million and how much better will you be then compared to the 1 million you first set yourself” – Andy Frisella

Again, please, if you are unhappy with your life, future, or surrounding then drop the distractions you use in your free time, no cat video, video game, or episode of the office will be worth it. Start doing something that will make you happy, and year from now you will thank yourself and chances are your new goals and actions will uplift the people around you causing others to better their life in your image.

Now join me today in crushing the actions needed to get us to our greater goal, and let’s end this global pandemic of self limiting beliefs by erasing our own self beliefs and never doubting the goals and dreams of someone else.

BETTERING YOUR LIFE IN NEVER SOMETHING TO BE ASHAMED OF. THE SAME PEOPLE WHO WILL JUDGE YOU FOR LIVING YOUR DREAMS WILL BE ASKING YOU FOR MONEY AND A JOB IN 10 YEARS. LIVE YOUR LIFE AND DO YOU!!!

Thank you so much for reading today! I hope this article was able to give you value and get you 1% better than yesterday! If you enjoyed please consider following my Instagram @MichaelFladungFitness!