Sticking to Your Goals - Even When Life Gets in the Way

00:00 January blues or blast off in this episode of the Johnny Jensen show. The importance of making a plan and what to do when the plan goes to crap. Roll theme. Welcome to the Johnny Jensen show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships and results they deserve. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community at highvalumanproject.com. Let's go. Welcome, men. Good to have you back. We find ourselves kicking off January 2025. What's been going on? I'll tell you what's been going on. I have been kicked in the knackers by this insane cough.

00:43 I don't really do ill. My dad pretty much put the fear of God into us when we were kids. He had no patience for it at all. And so, so, yeah, literally being ill was a terrifying ordeal. I remember we were up a mountain, Geneve, Les Arc. We were Les Arc going home from Les Arc in France to Geneva. And back then, before the motorway was built, it was like a four-hour drive. And I had this insane sore throat. And I was complaining and complaining. By the time we got to Geneva, my dad had the right ass. He dragged me into a chemist, demanded something as strong as possible, ripped the packet open, stuck this tablet in my hand and like just shoved this up your ass.

01:29 And I was like, what, what? And so my stepmom said, oh, yes, it goes up your bottom. So the next thing I am, I'm in the toilets working this out. Well, not the kind of thing I thought about at Eleven. Suffice to say, it did teach me a lesson, which was try not to complain too much. Take matters into your own hand. And suppositories, by the way, aren't particularly when you're 11, aren't a lot of fun. So yeah, I don't really do ill. I find it a bit whiny. But nonetheless, the plans that I had for the last week, which is pretty much the theme for today's pod, was kicked into touch by getting this insane cough that people have been getting in the UK. I don't know about the rest of the world, but yeah, a few years ago, they'd have called it COVID, right?

02:14 Some version of. Now it's just a cough again, right? And yeah, man, like it's not about things going wrong, right? It really isn't. It's about having a plan that's big enough and long enough so that when there's ups and downs, you can get back on track. And whilst it's not ideal, it's not the end of end of the end of the world. You know, whether it's a sporting analogy and your team's full of injuries and you've just got to get through this period of time or any other kind of project management and things being delivered late or opportunities for things to go wrong, people turning up, people not turning up, people turning up late, people turning, you know, being sick.

02:58 You know, things go wrong. It's about your ability to handle it and move forward. And ultimately, that's how you set things up. It's how you execute the project and it's about how you think in your mind to get through it. If you've not been here before, welcome. And if you're a regular, then absolutely brilliant to have you back. My name is Johnny Jensen. I am the founder and head coach at the High Value Man Project. We are a community of modern, motivated dads creating the life that we desire instead of being stuck in one we don't want. It's about leveling up across your life so you have success at home and work so that you're thriving in all you do, being the best version of yourself so you can be more for others.

03:40 It doesn't work the other way around. You can't put everyone first and then expect to have enough to thrive and be the man that you want to see in the mirror. Shit happens. You start to eat wrong, stop exercising, drink too much, relationship struggles, you're not as effective at work, you don't see your friends. These are like the tenants of a low value life and it just drags you down. The complete opposite is the case when you are in control, when you've got a structure and a rhythm to your life where each area of it, yourself, your work, your relationships, the amount of fun and events you're having, when they're in balance, when you're in control, driving

04:26 driving the boat. That's not very exciting, is it? When you're driving the shit forward, right? Then who you are is the leader. You're the captain, right? And then other people around you can thrive. And that's what the High Value Man Project is all about. If you're interested in becoming part of the community, leveling up inside of the High Value Man Project work, then get yourself over to the highvalue manproject.com forward slash group. We are moving off of Facebook into our own dedicated community. And when you go to highvaluman.com forward slash group right now, it will put you into this pre-launch room, let's call it, with the new community happening next week.

05:12 I want to get you all in there on the same at the same time. We've got launch bonuses coming up. We've got founder member rates for the paid programs. It really is going to be a whole different level. I'm not sure what's happening with Facebook, but ultimately, we need more control. We want to have more sense of our own destiny. And I think a lot of people are increasingly happier to be in a non-Facebook place. So let's get back to the back to the story. I'm sure if you're listening to a podcast, then you probably listen to other podcasts. So right now, this period of time, last week, this week, the world is full of unique goals.

05:54 Let's talk about a planning session. Let's flip in review last year, 2024, like all these things. It almost, if you're not the kind of person that does it, then it's annoying because you think, like, can I find any other content this week? If you're the kind of person that's done it, well, then guess what? It's like, okay, done that. Tell me something new. The reality is, though, that too many of us don't actually make a plan. The speed and pace of life has it be that we're constantly needing to just keep up. The day-to-day routines or the rat race, it will, it's like a, it is like the current in a river, right?

06:38 It grabs you and drags you along. And between our family, between our work, between our marriage or relationship, if that's where you're at, like there's not a lot of space to take a breath, to put a plan in place, to execute and match, sorry, track results. But that is exactly what needs to happen. Because if you don't put that kind of structure in place, then the likelihood is that all you're really going to do is repeat the performance of last year. And actually, it's probably a bit more sinister than that. If you've arrived at this point with the baggage of the past, the bad habits and the frustrations of the past, then no matter how successful you are,

07:26 they're probably not going to achieve more than what you've achieved to this point. That's because you've always got to be leveling up. That's because you've got to put yourself around some better people to take on board some better information. And the point of this is, if you don't have a structure, if you don't know where you're headed towards, if you haven't got not just goals, but targets inside of those goals and actions inside of those targets to hit them, the kind of people you need to involve, the kind of timings that need to be put in place, then it just doesn't happen. You know, for me in particular, I know that the second half of the year gets really quick.

08:07 There's that sense, especially as you get older, right, of time moving really fast. And for me, the second half of the year is always has that sense to it, right? And it does actually feel quite stressful when we have the summer holidays. There's always that time when you go, kids go back to school. My kids' birthdays are one week apart, you know, Christmas shags. So they go back to school, they have a few weeks, then boom, it's Jaygo's birthday. And then boom, it's Rosie's birthday the week after. And then 10 days after that, it's half term. So then they're like on school holiday. And in their infinite wisdom, the schools over here now seem to think it's brilliant to have two weeks off in October. It's not. It's six years, right? What can you do in October? What you want is two weeks off in May, right?

08:51 Clearly. So you're going to have this period of time where, like I say, back to school birthdays, two weeks off school. And then literally you're getting into the middle of October and it starts to suddenly get that sense of December's coming. That period of time is rapid. Time just, you know, like water running through my fingers. And it's the level of stress, like the intensity of the period that has time speed up. You know, people that are, Jen, this is a massive generalization, but it is necessarily true.

09:30 People who are experiencing success and are experiencing a greater degree of control in their life, aka less stress, find that time doesn't seem to fly quite so quickly. They're able to find a more enjoyable pace of life simply because they're not stressed out. So what's it going to take to put that in place? Right. You know, there's a million and one analogy. analogies that you could give, but it's about creating that environment for success, like training a racehorse versus just letting a horse run around a field or growing beautiful plants rather than just chucking the seeds in the ground and hoping for the best.

10:08 This is the structure that you need to put in place for yourself. If it's about your own personal performance, then you need to reflect on what worked and didn't work in the period before. What were the wins of 2024? What were the things that you learned? What went well and what didn't go so well? Because that's where you get to identify the best version of yourself. In terms of your fitness and your weight, your lifestyle choices. Is it optimum for the results that you want? Did it work last year? Invariably, you're going to probably find it didn't. For me, as someone who's incredibly fit, or certainly fit for your average 50-year-old,

10:54 I still, you know, my back still goes. And I know that the main reason for that is that I don't do enough stretching. Stretching is bloody boring. But what I do know is, and I have to take responsibility for this, is that when I do more stretching, I am in a better physical shape and I can then get better results. So ultimately, if you want to get the results you deserve, you've got to have a look at every element of it. That sort of reflection on the one hand and also the tracking of performance and results on the other hand. If you don't know where you're going, if you don't know what the metrics are, then how can you possibly know that you're like, you know, that you're going to hit the target, that you're going to land on the moon, right?

11:39 So if you've done a reflection on 2024, if you've looked at those key areas of your life, you know, inside of the high value man project, we operate from two frameworks. One is the 3XC Formula for Living, and then inside that's clarity, courage, and commitment. And inside of commitment, we utilize the FIRE CODE. So that is the four key areas of your life inside the FHIR code of focus, that's yourself, impact, that's your business and money and community, relationships, the R in fire, and the amount of energy, the fun and adventure and peace you're having. If you look back at last year and, you know, how did it go in each of those areas?

12:22 That's the kind of audit that you need to do. That will then set the scene ready for 2025. If you haven't already done this, then on Monday night coming, we'll be doing the Q1 planning session inside of the High Value Man Inner Circle. There is a opportunity for everybody who's listening to this to get on board. Not actually much time. It'd be the first couple of days you've listened to this. If you miss it, then the recording will be inside the new community, which is launching next week. So if you jump on to highvalue manproject.com forward slash event, that'll tee you up with that event.

13:05 You know, really anytime you're listening to this, that will tee you up with our next event. And if you want to get involved in the group so you can catch the recording, then go to highvaluman.com forward slash group. That planning session is where we then start to dig into what we call the 3XC Formula for Living. Clarity being the first part, who you are and what you want. It's a real important, essential foundation of everything we do as men in terms of our own fulfillment, as I often say, is defined as having a clear vision of where you're headed and knowing that you're actively pursuing it.

13:48 Men who are clear about that can endure so much because their ultimate target and goal is locked in. And when you've got a clear target and goal like that, then you can enroll other people around you. And when you can enroll other people around you into believing in the mission that you're involved with, then you're going to get their support. You're not going to feel isolated. You're going to excite and inspire people, starting with yourself, right? If what do they say? If you stand for, if you stand, clearly they don't say it very often, right? If you stand for nothing, you fall for everything. And that literally is the truth, right? So clarity.

14:32 Too many men, as well. I'm just putting a talk together actually around all this subject, but too many men, when I ask them what they want, they'll tell me what they don't want. Literally pulling towards the more of what they don't want rather than creating the actual thing, the actual goal, the actual vision that they do want. for themselves in their life then next up courage you know courage is having not um um being fearless necessarily right courage in its true definition is feeling the fear and moving forward anyway right or susan jeffers famous book you know feel the fear and do it anyway that that is literally the definition of courage it's not the absence of fear it's feeling the fear and doing it anyway and when you can have the courage and i this is often defined in high value man as

15:24 taking on responsibility when you can have the courage to step back and look at what was my role in all that where was i winning where was i losing what was what was i up to that was working and not working that's the courage the kind of honesty that you need to have to be honest to bring forward your true self and there's other aspects of that about relationships and blame and frustration as well but but ultimately inside of courage it's being able to show up as your true self to be the to be the difference that creates the the results that you desire and then with that in place and talking about our goals and mission for 2025

16:05 it then comes down to the execution and and being ill this week despite the fact that i say i never get ill is is that inevitability where something's going to go wrong also this week i had uh appointments with my ex-wife and my boy uh about you know about um medical stuff um that wiped out half a day let alone the sort of a degree of anxiety about about that you know there's a reason why my ex and i as well as we are managed to co-parent and get along you're like we're gonna we're gonna we're not gonna see eye to eye on on many things and and inevitably it was the case um

16:47 and so so you know time just whittles away through through through your fingers so you have to have uh an awareness of what you what you're going to do when things don't quite go to plan how you're going to get back on track and you can't do that if there was no vision or plan there inside of high value man project we generally work on 90 day frames um because that's a period of time where you can get clear about what you're doing where you can get clear about what needs to happen and ideally you can get to the end of it and celebrate the results and tee up the next 90 days so what does that look like for you have you sat down and done this

17:29 um a key aspect uh of inside of the community obviously is the connections and community that we make with other people and that aspect of not trying to do everything on your own is also really absolutely vital the number of men you know just this week even um you know i spend a lot of time inside of different groups and communities answering questions supporting people the number of men who bring up the subject of of loneliness and confidence and whilst you know it's a it's a modern day plague really loneliness or this lack of confidence but in a in a slightly harsher way of looking at it it boils down to not taking responsibility

18:20 for yourself not taking responsibility for the amount of time you're spending around other people the uh the the ability to have something to talk about or you know if you if you've ever some people don't like dancing very much i i actually love going out for a for a for a for a night out and you know just get get crazy on the dance floor but one thing i do know is that if you haven't been dancing for a while if you haven't been out then that first bit that first like getting out on the on the dance floor or there's a concert or whatever you're at it feels a bit uncomfortable and that's simply because you haven't done it for a while getting up on you know putting a pair of skis on for the first time in a year it's a little bit uncomfortable

19:06 loneliness and confidence is exactly the same thing if you're not out and about putting yourself amongst other people talking to people being interested in what other people are up to and what they've got to say and what they could contribute then you just feel like your your your world your the world in front of you is so much narrower smaller and confidence drains my my you know i've had this conversation about four or five times in the last 10 days inside of groups about giving people uh pointers and and frameworks for for building up their friendships and their confidence and it is literally get out amongst cool people people don't be the smartest guy in the room be interested in what other people are up to that

19:51 in terms of what you need to do to execute on your plan to be able to get back on track when things aren't going well it's about the people around you it's about the support that you've got on hand and have available if you don't have that then you've got to do something about it whether it's for me um of course let's just say whether it's uh joining the high value man project which i'd love you to come and do um but also for me i'm in terms of my plans for 2025 and i'll share this as a way of kind of wrapping up today's podcast it's i'm putting in place

20:29 opportunities for me to be face to face i've joined a couple of different networking groups i've spent the last five years growing uh the coaching work that i do first through team super dad and now as the high value man project it's all been online and as great as that's been in terms of southeast england where i live my profile is not where i want it to be let alone my confidence about standing on front of a stage i'll happily do a podcast for anybody at the drop of a hat but i'm aware that when someone says oh come and do an event i've actually got to be i've actually got to grab my bollocks a little bit and go oh what's that going to be like what am i going to talk about and so tackling that and realizing that i know i need to put myself around more people so that's what i'm doing

21:15 um the moving of the group onto its own dedicated community that's another part of it the weekenders the lodge weekenders part of the original vision for this project and this work with men um will be happening this year we've got plans to do the snowden climb uh at the end of the summer we've got the challenge in we're either going to do nuclear uh in may or we're going to do the dirty rotten scramble in june i've never done nuclear before uh it's like an ocr you know like an obstacle course race my girlfriend's done it many times and it is bloody brilliant the only challenge is we've got to get what's it called tickets and and

21:57 they sell pretty quick so we'll be doing both those things and we'll be wrapping them around a whole weekend together with with uh with coaching with probably fire walking and with other awesome men from the high value man project these are the plans that i'm putting in place and i've got to have that plan in order to go out and attract the people oh the podcast of course getting guest experts into the community i've got to have that plan in order to be able to talk to others and inspire them how inspired are you about your plans who are you putting yourself around that can support you in that that would have contacts that would have expertise that you don't have what does it look like when things don't go to plan but you can get back on track and execute this is how you're going to get to the end of 2025

22:46 i know it seems like a long way away now but reflect back on the last three weeks how did you feel at the end of 2024 were you buzzing because you smashed your targets or were you secretly a little bit frustrated and pissed off that actually another year has gone by be honest what are you going to do so that this time next year you are absolutely buzzing about the results you had and you're absolutely ripping into 2026 this is what it's all about and this is why this subject isn't actually boring and cliched and everyone's talking about it it doesn't really mean much it doesn't really mean much if you make a plan and then give it up in february

23:24 it's about committing to it having structure accountability tracking results being around good people and that's it that really is the mission um if you've never operated like that then it's time to step up if you're operating like that but you're doing it on your own it's time to be around other people and if you're truly winning and you want to be you want to celebrate that with others other men living the life that they desire in thriving relationships having a brilliant time with their kids uh looking great and and feeling like at whatever stage of your life 40 50 you're absolutely thriving and winning

24:06 whilst people around us constantly are moaning bitching things aren't working out she's like this i never get that works bollocks i can't bear it and neither should you as men we need to raise the bar hold each other more to account and set this world on fire in a positive way not like unfortunately our friends and family uh over in america love and best wishes to you all on that awkward note i will love you and leave you if you've enjoyed this then please share it with other men in your in your world. We need to spread the word and get more people tuned in, whether it's this podcast, other podcasts of a similar vein.

24:48 If you have heard other podcasts and you think there'd be great guests for the Johnny Jensen show and the high value man mission, then by all means, please drop that in the comments or introduce people to me. I'd absolutely love that. In the meantime, yes, we'll be back next week and get yourself over into that pre-launch group at Johnny at highvalue manproject.com forward slash group. I'll see you on the next show. Ciao. Thanks for tuning in to the Johnny Jensen Show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with fellow dads.

25:24 Creating the life you deserve starts with you. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community of motivated modern dads at highvalumanproject.com. Let's go.