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00:00 Introduction to goal achievement strategies
00:21 Strategy 1: Build biological momentum (testosterone & endorphin effect)
02:09 Strategy 2: Program your brain (written goals)
04:06 Strategy 3: Make your habits the bridge between goals and action
06:16 Strategy 4: Create an environment to make habits inevitable
08:17 Strategy 5: Train your brain to notice opportunities (reticular activation system)
09:18 Strategy 6: Apply the 80/20 rule (fractal principle)
11:03 Conclusion & further resources
Ash Roy Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy:
By the end of this video, you'll know six, surprisingly easy, actionable, and evidence-based strategies that can dramatically boost your chances of achieving your goals. These are practical, low effort tweaks that don't require superhuman discipline, but deliver outsized results and are often the difference between people who do achieve their goals and don't achieve them.
They're about rewiring the systems inside us so, progress stops being a constant battle and starts becoming a natural result. So, let's get into it.
Strategy number one, Build biological momentum using the testosterone and endorphin effect.
See, we often think that motivation is mental, but in reality it's deeply biological, one of the key hormones that drives persistence, risk taking and ambition is testosterone. It's not just a male hormone. It's a biological signal that tells our brains to pursue, compete, and win.
When testosterone is low, our motivation levels are low, and it feels like we are pushing a boulder uphill. But when testosterone is optimized, effort feels a bit more natural, and momentum builds faster.
Now, this isn't just theory. In a landmark 1998 study, they found that resistance training significantly boosts testosterone production. It also triggers a release of endorphins, our brain's natural mood booster. Now, this combination of testosterone, endorphins, fuels action, and a sense of wellbeing that goes with it.
It makes action taking feel good. For women, the story is pretty similar. While baseline levels of testosterone are lower, the relative increase still matters and endorphins. And growth hormones play an equally vital role in motivation and resilience. Think of it as shifting your internal chemistry to support your goals instead of fighting against it.
It's kind of like your natural reserve of happy pills. So, the action step here for you. Is to get to the gym about two to three times a week, which has proven to work in terms of increasing testosterone, endorphins, and general sense of wellbeing and confidence. If you are willing to commit to going to the gym two to three times a week and throwing a few weights around, leave a comment below.
Strategy number two, Program your brain with written goals.
One of the most powerful ways to shape our behavior is actually one of the most simple ones. Writing your goals down by hand. When we write, we are not just externalizing an idea, we are activating the prefrontal cortex, the brain's planning center, and literally programming our subconscious prioritize these outcomes.
It's called the reticular activation system. You know, when you decide to buy a red car, all of a sudden you're noticing red cars everywhere. That's the reticular activation system at work.
Brian Tracy shared this strategy with me on this YouTube channel, I link to the full conversation in the description below, and he said it perfectly.
A Goal that's not in writing is merely a wish, and I think he's right because research from the Dominican University shows that people who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them.
Here's a simple technique, which I have tried and found great success with every morning. Write your goals down for 30 days in a row.
Don't look at your goals that you wrote down the previous day. Just write it down on a fresh page, and you'll be amazed at how much starts to change. It worked so well for me that I continued writing them down for a whole year, and I do write them down pretty often when I want to refocus on my key goals.
When you write your goals down every day, over time you'll find that your language starts to evolve, your priorities will start to sharpen, and your subconscious will start working on your goals 24/7. It's like setting your brain's GPS, and it works even when you're not thinking about it. If you want to learn more about the power of the inactive mind, check out my conversation with Harvard neuroscientist, Dr.
Srini Pilay, which I will also link to in the description below. If you want to give yourself a quick start, if you don't feel like grabbing a pen and paper and you can't find one, just leave your 10 goals in the comments below, and I promise I'll respond within the first 48 hours of this video going live.
Strategy Number three, Make your habits the bridge between your goals and action.
Goals without systems are fantasies. I interviewed James Clear on this YouTube channel, which I linked to in the description below. James Clear said, “we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems”, and I think the most effective systems are built via habits.
Habits are automatic behaviors that reduce your cognitive load, conserve your willpower, but still help you to get to the outcomes. That you want to achieve. Once you form your habits, execution stops relying on motivation and starts running on autopilot. So, for example, if your goal is to write a book, building a habit of writing 500 words every day, first thing in the morning dramatically increases your chances of having that book published within a year or two.
If our goal is to grow our business. Your habit could be to reach out to people and offer value at least three times a day. When your habits and your goals align, success becomes a byproduct. It becomes inevitable. In fact, a landmark 2010 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Followed participants over 12 weeks and found that it takes an average of 66 days for a new habit to become automatic.
Now, this number has been challenged, but I think that's a good rule of thumb to live by. They concluded that consistency, not intensity. Is what rewires the brain to internalize and normalize that new behavior. This happens because repeated actions strengthen neural pathways in the brain, in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that governs automatic behaviors, meaning that over time the behavior requires less conscious effort.
And once these habits form, you don't need motivation as much. Okay? So your action step, choose one habit directly linked to your most important goal and commit to doing it every day for 66 days. Track your streak and focus on consistency, not perfection.
Leave a comment below to tell us what habit you are going to adopt for the next 66 days and follow through on consistently use the comments as your accountability system.
Strategy number four, Create an environment to make your habits inevitable.
See, we often underestimate the power of our environment when it comes to decision making. In a 2007 review, Publish in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, researchers Wendy Wood and David Neil found that 45% of our daily behaviors are habitual and triggered by environmental cues rather than deliberate choice.
That means our environment is either pulling us toward our goals or pushing us away from them. Now that statistic matters. Because it shows us how much of our day runs on autopilot. If nearly half of our actions are driven by our environment, then that environment becomes our steering wheel. By changing what's around us, we are effectively programming our default behaviors that our brain will run without actively having to make a decision around it.
This goes back to James clear's four stages of habit creation. The first one being Cue or environment and then craving, response, and reward.
I'll link to my full conversation with James in the YouTube description below, and you can check it out there. Okay, so your action step is to audit your environment, your physical and your digital environment.
Identify three changes you can make today to make your desired behavior or habits. Easier.
So, for example, I wanted to start playing my electric guitar more often. So I bought one of these stands and I've got it sitting here right next to me. So I can just put my guitar on there. And my guitar is just literally arms reach away so I can play it whenever I want.
Now I like to have it over there because it's symmetrical, and my OCD requires me to have the two guitars there while I'm recording. But normally my guitar is sitting right here and I can just practice my scales. And I'm practicing every single day now, whereas previously it was sitting there for months untouched.
So what is a similar thing you can do in your environment to make your desirable habits more likely to happen?
Okay, point number five. A brain is constantly filtering information, deciding what a signal and what is noise.
The reticular activation system plays a key role here, and research shows that when we train our brain to notice opportunities related to our goals, we are significantly more likely to follow through on them.
A 2011 study published in Psychological Science by Danner and Colleague. Found that frequent goal review strengthens working memory and keeps motivation and related circuits active, essentially turning our mental radar to what matters and locking it in 10 seconds a day. Reading our goals isn't trivial in neurological priming that happens.
Is a signal to the prefrontal cortex. This tells our brain what matters and primes it to identify opportunities to act on, which consequently lead to achieving our goals. So, your action step here is to add a ten second review of your goals every morning. Keep them on a sticky note on your computer if you have to.
Somewhere where you can see them consistently and preferably not on a screen where there are distractions. I recommend using an analog tool and have them visible all the time. That way. Every time you sit at your computer, you're forced to look at 'em, and that primes the brain.
Okay, strategy number six, apply the 80/20 rule, which is fractal.
Let me explain. You see, not all actions are created equal. The 80 20 principle originally proposed by Economist Villfredo Pareto found that about 80% of our outcomes. Come from about 20% of our efforts. But when I spoke to Perry Marshall on this YouTube channel, I'll link to the full conversation in the description below.
He explained that the 80 20 rule is actually fractal. So what does that mean? It means the first level says that 20% of your effort delivers about 80% of your results. But when you take that one level further, 20% of 20% were just 4% of your effort. Delivers 80% of 80%, which is 64% of your results. So you have 4% of your effort delivering 64% of your results.
You take that one level further still, and you have 0.8% of your effort delivering 51.2% of your results, and on and on it goes. This concept is backed by decades of data and business performance showing that focusing only on the highest leverage activities yields to disproportionate results.
Here's Perry Marshall, but see, 80 20 is recursive. Yes. So not only this, and this is the part that I never understood until it was actually 2003 when I had this epiphany it's fractal
And I think Perry is right. If we focus on our highest leverage activities, our results compound. I explain this in more detail in my premium productivity course, which you can also access.
In the description below, do this, and you won't just set goals, you'll start living them.
Maybe the deeper question here is, what would life look like if we stopped chasing our goals, but instead, arrange systems. So, our goals chase us. Now, if you found this video useful and you want to actually take habit creation one step further.
Definitely check out this video with James Clear, where we talk about how to build habits that help you to achieve your goals and make them an inevitable outcome of your daily life. You can also check out our playlist on goal achievement, which we will link to in the description below ciao for now, and I'll see you in the next one.