The Big Wins Cookbook

1. Set a goal

2. Identify next steps

3. Create challenges that encourage you to stretch

4. Practice consistently

5.Learn every day

6. Change up the routine

For most of our lives, we have been told that step #1 — *set a goal* — is THE necessary ingredient in any “get moving” recipe.

Want to step up on to the Olympic podium with two fists in the air?

Share your life backstory at your first book launch?

Feel the adaptability and energy of losing some unwanted weight?

Delight an audience from the stage with your guitar?

The common belief about how to get unstuck, or create change, or win big is to focus on a finish line. Before you start.

This is the go-to recipe that shapes most New Year’s resolutions. The mere act of goal-setting feels like the must-have purchase item — it tricks us into thinking that we have successfully moved ourselves into action.

T-minus 21 days to New Year’s Day…

A very interesting development comes about when you reverse the order of the ingredients to look like this:

1. Change up the routine: A simple self-awareness that one small step forward IS change — right here, right now.

2. Learn every day: When we choose learning as the ultimate source of fuel, we find the clearest and most direct route to the intersection of aliveness and opportunity.

3. Practice consistently: This is what our desire to learn begs us to do. Not with will power but through love for the basics. And if consistency is an issue, it means your steps are too big. Make them smaller.

4. Create challenges that encourage you to stretch: Don’t overthink this. A fraction of 1%-more practiced every day yields life’s most significant gains.

5. Identify next steps: Serve something bigger with the improvement you make.

Which brings us to ingredient #6: Setting a goal.

Here you have a choice. Accept the price-gouged off-the-shelf item of goal setting on January 1st or…

Let that stay on the shelf and consider adding another dash of *change up your routine.*

#1–5 are forever free and in stock every day.

With gratitude,

-Joe