 How do you define success? Do you still follow any business experts that are trying to get you to earn six figures or maybe seven figures or whatever it is by the time you watch this or listen to this? I used to actually try to motivate my audience by saying I can help you get to six figures because that's what everyone, all the other business experts around me were saying. So I thought, well, I guess that's what we need to do to motivate people, six-figure income, six-figure this, six-figure that. And now that I look back, I, well, I could say I regret that, but of course I had to go through that stage to understand that maybe the six-figure goal is actually creating some trauma for people because how many of us have aimed for some big, hairy, audacious goal. Sometimes they call it B-hags, big, hairy, audacious goals and gotten disillusioned, discouraged. We had this ideal vision without even knowing, without having the experience of doing, of getting anywhere close. We asked, oh, I'm gonna build this amazing business. It's gonna do this, gonna do that. I'm gonna do it all within a year or within six months or whatever it may be. And we just enjoy wonderful visions, don't we? We enjoy playing with ideal scenarios in our heads. And so it may be inspiring us. And so we go for it and we get quite discouraged along the way because the results are far slower than we anticipated. The question is, how did we form those expectations? Who gave them to us? You weren't born out of the womb saying, I'm gonna earn six figures. Along the way, someone gave you that definition of success. Some of you have seven figures as the definition now. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Someone gave you a definition of success that they marketed to you so much that you maybe unwittingly took it on as your own. So now you feel, well, I'm not successful yet until I get to fill in the blank. And I used to lead people along that way too because I thought that was what I had to do as a business coach, not anymore. I now encourage my clients to focus on the next doable goal. Now, maybe some clients still get inspired by six figures and it's okay to play with that fantasy. If it inspires you, gives you ideas, gives you strategies, it helps you to think bigger, helps you to have an optimism about life and your destiny and whatever big goal might inspire you. I wanna go to the moon, right? That's fine. Except what do you do on a daily basis? Do you then look at where you are and go, oh, I'm not at the moon yet. Oh, I'm not at the moon yet. You know, there are Hollywood movies and fairy tales that try to sell us on that idea that the hardworking girl or boy who every day focuses on going to the moon, every single day, going to the moon. And then one day, she's there, right? I don't think that's how it works for most of us. I think it's much more productive and joyfully productive, in fact, to set a daily definition of what success is for today. Make it doable, maybe a little bit of a stretch compared to yesterday or last week or last month or last year, just a little bit more of a stretch. We achieve that doable goal today, guess what? It empowers you, it makes you feel more confident. This is how brick by brick, you build your foundation of confidence, of internal locus of motivation, instead of always being dragged along by some charismatic business guru telling you, you can do this giant big thing, you can do that giant big thing, and it sounds so inspiring, but on a daily basis, does it get you to take consistent, strategic action from a joyful, productive state? I know that for me, I focus on the daily, this is what I would consider success today. This is what I'm going to work on, knowing that if I achieve this, I'm building my foundation for the next step. So, do you still follow anybody who is urging you on to six figures, seven figures or whatever? You might wanna unsubscribe from their newsletters, unfollow them on social media. It's probably not helpful to you to keep those fantasies going, but it's probably more helpful to you to learn and practice how to achieve the next doable goal with joyful productivity today. Now, you can also set the next doable monthly goal. So let's say you're making, I don't know, let's say you're making $3,000 a month right now. The next doable goal is not six figures, right? That's fantasy. The next doable goal is, okay, I'm making $3,000 a month right now. I'm going to aim to make $3,500 a month or $4,000 a month. That's doable, and what do I need to do to get from $3,000 to $4,000 a month? Now, that's something we can actually plan and do and work on today and this month. If you're making $0 a month, the next doable goal is not six figures. The next doable goal is, I'm making zero right now. How can I make the next 100? How can I make the next 250 per month? That, oh, okay, wow, gosh, 250 a month. Now, I can, if I have one client, maybe that's 250, you know, whatever that might be for you. So give it a try to say, I'm going to get to knowing, now you can have a plan all along the way. Okay, stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, stage five, stage six, whatever from zero or wherever you are right now, to six figures, to seven figures or whatever. Just know that today, if you can work in a focused and joyful way on the very next doable goal, you're much more likely to celebrate more along the way because you're succeeding along the way, which builds your confidence, which builds your capacity to believe that you can achieve the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Instead of what I see so many people doing, like I said, is they consume business content that sets them, makes them feel good about giant goals becoming millionaires or decimillionaires or whatever. And they just consume and consume and consume. And then whenever they get to work, they feel like a failure, they feel discouraged, but they just go back to consuming motivational content that talks about all achieving, you know, going to the moon or whatever it is like that for you. It doesn't, does it, again, the question is the content you are consuming from these business experts or motivational speakers, is it helping you every single day to be consistent in taking action today? For me, that means to focus on the next doable goal. Because then I could, even without affirmations, I could see myself getting to the next doable goal because you define what is doable for you. Oh, that's definitely, it has to be a goal that's like, well, I could definitely do that if I put my, you know, set my focus to it today, tomorrow, in the next week, I can achieve that. What does that mean for you? What goal is doable for you if you set those goals and focus on doing that every day because I can achieve that today, I can achieve that this week, I can achieve that this month, then you get into this habit of consistent confidence building, grounded confidence, not confidence that comes from listening to rah-rah motivational tapes, okay? Obviously not tapes anymore, videos, YouTubes, podcasts, audibles and whatever. It's not confidence that comes from having a peak inspiration or reading a book or whatever. It's confidence that comes from, look what I did yesterday, look what I did last week, look what I did last month. I am genuinely capable of doing these things and so I do them. And by doing them, and so here's one more thing I'll say before I finish up here. Some people might have been trained by a twisted version of the law of attraction that says you have to envision the big, hairy, audacious goals, you have to envision the big things to be able to get there. And I greatly disagree with that because I have seen in my own experience that envisioning those big things only kept me in this loop of consuming motivational content and not really getting to work. Versus if I focus on the next thing, like I said, if you're making 3,000 right now, the next thing that focus on making 3,500 or 4,000 and that's something we can plan for and work on today right now, what does that mean for you? We have to work on right now, right now, okay? And by, but then again, the argument is, well, if I focus on small things, 3,500 a month, then I'm somehow short circuiting my potential. I'm not reaching for what I can possibly achieve and I will call in, I'll be playing a smaller game, I'll be calling in small successes and small wins. Really? Have you actually tried this? Because I've been trying this for the last five years focusing on small goals, doable goals every day. And guess what? Every single year, I am delighted that I surpassed my goals and often much more than surpass my goals. The 2020 year, I'm just doing my taxes now. I'm like, that's been the best year I've made in probably seven or eight years. It's during a pandemic. During when a lot of people were depressed and I felt the energy too and not, every single year since I started doing this in 2015 when I've started setting doable goals, every year my income has gone up consistently in a grounded way that's actually sustainable. So I hope you will give this a try every day, every month, every week set a doable goal for that time period, one that you don't need affirmations to be able to achieve. And if you focus and work, you will be surprised that you probably surpassed those goals on a regular basis. But just keep setting doable goals and just keep the lighting in yourself to say, my God, look at me, I'm so capable. Rather than, oh my God, I'm still not there. Oh, I'm yet another example of me failing, right? Those things aren't helpful. What's helpful is for you to build grounded confidence every single day. I hope this is helpful. I'm George Cao, authentic business coach, love talking about how do we build self-employment with joyful productivity in a very grounded and sustainable way that's really led from the heart, truly from integrity rather than from hype. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this and I look forward to seeing you in the next video and in the next episode. Take care.