How to Wake Up Excited About Your Goals - Chris Bailey - #1077

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Given all of the work that you've done, why is it that some goals feel effortless and others feel like a chore?

**Chris Bailey** (0:08)
It's such an interesting question, and that was what I wanted to figure out with this book, because I find with my own life, I'm productive on a daily basis, I'm focused on a daily, as you would hope, given I study this stuff for a living, looking at the research for this stuff for a living. But there were still goals that kind of fell by the wayside for me. You know, the exercise equipment that was in the basement that I hadn't really followed through with, you know, things that didn't really fire me up inside that I found that I wasn't really accomplishing. And so that was what set me on this journey to write this book, is seeing that we all have a sort of graveyard of forgotten goals. Every single person on the planet does. And so what is it that actually separates the goals that we're able to achieve and follow through with from the ones that we're not? And when you dig into the research on this topic, so I dug into the academic literature on this topic, I actually spoke with a lot of Buddhist monks who know more about intentionality than almost any demographic, I would argue. Even the scientists that study intentionality and goal attainment, all in an effort to untangle that web of essentially goal attainment, right? Why is it that we attain some goals and others, they feel meaningless, we procrastinate on them, that we kick them down the street for another day, or they're just not something that fires us up inside. And so you discover a web of factors, you discover procrastination is one angle, right? We procrastinate on some things when we follow through on others. Values are another angle actually, where values, my eyes have always glazed over when I've heard the... What are you drinking there by the way? It looks good. It's a pretty looking can.

**Chris Williamson** (1:59)
This is one of the rare times that I'm drinking something that I'm not sponsored by.
This is a bloom pop. Hold on, by the way, everyone's like, I want to know what it is after procrastination. He was talking about values. So this is bloom pop. So my friend Greg Lavecchia, he owns this company called Bloom. They do green strings. This is like a poppy or an ollie pop, if you're familiar with that.

**Chris Bailey** (2:25)
No. Is that a UK thing? No.

**Chris Williamson** (2:27)
I mean, Texas, dude. Okay.

**Chris Bailey** (2:29)
I'm Canadian though.

**Chris Williamson** (2:31)
Okay. Maybe it hasn't got there. You guys have just received the wheel.

**Chris Bailey** (2:34)
Let's go get Michael Jackson up.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
This bloom pop stuff fucking rips, dude. It's so tasty. I'm a massive fan of a chilled beverage. I'm a big chilled beverage guy.
I highly recommend. This is the Raspberry Lemonade. I'm not sponsored, but Greg was at my house for the Super Bowl, and he brought around cases and cases of it.

**Chris Bailey** (2:55)
I'm currently fueled by that. Well, shame on him for not sponsoring you, first of all. But yes, there's this web of things that affect how many of our goals we attain, from procrastinating the answer, procrastination to values, to desire. There's a lot of science behind desire as well and social contagion. And so you discover just how many little nodes there are, but a lot of the little things that either lead us to do something or not, they seem to orbit around both aversion, which leads to procrastination, as well as values, which sounds like an incredibly fluffy topic, but I promise it isn't. There's real science behind that too.

**Chris Williamson** (3:40)
Okay. Talk to me about the science behind values.

**Chris Bailey** (3:43)
Okay. Yes. So whenever I hear the word values, my eyes have glazed over, because I think some corporate consultant will come in and they'll give you a sheet of paper and there's a hundred values on it. And this is exactly what comes to my mind when I've heard it. And there will be a hundred words on the page and they'll circle the things that you value most on this page. And there will be words like humor and grace and love and health and fitness. You know, all the things that we all care about. And part of me will want to circle the whole page, because I think how can I be against any of this stuff. But all you have to do to figure out values is go to Google Scholar and type in values. The research does come right up. There is incredible research, in my opinion, that was started by Shalom Schwartz. He's probably the world's foremost expert on values in the world. Where essentially there are 12 different fundamental motivations that we all have on a deep and fundamental level. So these vary from, you know, looking at you, your self-direction, right, would be one aspect. Accomplishment is another strong value for a lot of people. But they vary, right? Pleasure is a fundamental human value as well, which is one of my highest. Self-direction and pleasure are my highest. So I love going my own way, doing my own thing, thinking my own thoughts, but I love a gigantic plate of butter chicken at the end of the day, for example. So we all have a different combination of these 12 values. From self-direction to conformity is actually a fundamental value. To tradition, humility is a fundamental value as well. To benevolence, so kindness, universalism, which is protecting the welfare of people and of nature.