 So look, I've tried to set and achieve a lot of goals in my life. I've tried to build this YouTube channel. I've tried to build a business. I've tried to write books. I tried to do a doctorate. I've tried to travel all over the world and all of those things I've managed to accomplish. And at the beginning of this kind of goal-setting journey, this self-growth journey, I was really obsessed with goal-setting advice, thinking that if I just had the right goal-setting framework, I would be able to reach my goals. But since then, I've realized that goal-setting by itself really doesn't work. And instead, the only thing that does work is habit-setting instead. So let's talk about that today. What's up, you guys? Alex Hein here, author of the health book, Master the Day. Now, before we go down below, there's a link for a free goal-setting worksheet to plan out how to have the best year ever of your life and help you figure out what daily rituals are most likely to help you make that happen. So check it out right below this video. When we're talking about goals, let's take a really big, very non-tangible goal, like a goal of finding love. Right? You want to find a relationship. You want to do just find something serious with another person or a really big goal of becoming a successful entrepreneur. These two goals are really, really complicated. There are moving parts. There's luck. There are things you can do and there are things that you can't control. You can't control the feelings of the other person, for example. But what I've learned since is that no matter what it is you want to achieve, forgetting goal-setting and doing something I call habit-setting instead works a lot better. And I thought in this video, I would give you three stories and three examples. So the first story and the first example is, let's say you want to graduate college, right? Your goal on your goal board is graduate college. But looking at the goal that says get my doctorate or get whatever, get through medical school, just get through undergrad, get through high school. How does that make it easier? Right? There's looking at a piece of paper that says graduate high school really make it more likely for you to graduate high school. I'm not so sure. But for me, when I was going through my doctoral program, I had to figure out, OK, graduating from a doctoral program is challenging. But how do I make that easier? How do I make it tangible and something I can control today? So what I did was I wrote down graduate doctoral program over here and on the right, all the possible habits that could help me do that on a daily basis. And ultimately, I came up with one habit, which was study three hours a day every single day, seven days a week. So graduate doctoral program or graduate college, study three hours per day. Now, it's pretty clear which one of those is more tangible and which one of those is kind of obvious what you should be doing on a daily basis, right? Because I mean, finding love. What the hell should I be doing right now? Should I be reading relationship books? Should I be working out? Should I be earning more money? Should I be going to speed dating or on hinge? Difficult, but turning the actual goal into a habit. That's why I called my book Master of the Day. It's about setting daily rituals. That is the way I found to reach your goals. Now, how about another goal, becoming a good athlete? Let's say that's your thing and whether the athletic sport is something in school or it's a martial art or something else altogether. How do you become a good athlete? Well, the goal, let's say, is become a good athlete. But what does that mean on a daily basis? Let's meet granular. It's Monday. It's 6 p.m. You have two hours before dinner. What do you do to become a good athlete? Having that on your goal board doesn't do anything for you. But if you change, become a good athlete to train two hours per day. Let's say your goal is become a best tennis player. And then it's even more granular than train two hours a day, not just play tennis two hours a day. 30 minutes for my overhand, 30 minutes for my serve, 30 minutes for my backhand, 30 minutes learning how to place balls better on the net or speed or power. So this idea of become a great tennis player, great athlete to every day. I need to train for two hours. And within that two hours, 30 minutes is going to be for my forehand, 30 for the backhand, 30 for my serve and 30. I'm going to practice placing balls with really clear focus and direction. That is tangible, something you can control and look at every day. Now, what about the third goal? Like find love or find a relationship? This is a great example because how exactly do you plan to control that? You see so many stories of people who did all the apps and didn't find anyone. And then they were like, screw it. I'm just going to pick up a book and sit in a cafe, do whatever makes me happy. And then they met someone. I mean, I myself was on dating apps for a year and then decided I'm just going to do whatever hobbies would be fun that will kind of light me up, make me feel happy alone and then met a girl through a bachata class. So that's a perfect example of how you often search for something, but you get it in another way or your goals are often best achieved indirectly. So again, what will be a daily ritual for finding love? Maybe the daily ritual is picking up a new hobby twice a week. Like for me, bachata or salsa. Maybe the daily ritual is I'm going to go to two meetups a week. Maybe you're in a city in this Facebook groups. Maybe there are events on Eventbrite and Facebook that you can look up and you can go to. How do you turn finding a relationship into a ritual? Not so easy, right? On a daily basis, maybe it means changing up your schedule and going somewhere after work, or maybe what it means is, like I said, every other day, you're going to pick a new event to go to where you're just in a new place, meaning new people and the chances are unlimited. So this idea of goal setting doesn't work, but habit setting does has been a profound thing that has transformed my life. And I think if you just turn any big goal, big, vague thing into a specific ritual, it's only a matter of time if you're doing that every day before it ends up happening. All right, guys, before you go, let me know right below this video. What goals or what habits are you working on? And let me know what rituals you think are most likely to make those happen. And I will catch you in the next video here.