Mark: Less than 10 percent. That's the success rate for New Year's resolutions. It's a system so broken that gyms literally bank on you failing. But what if the problem isn't your willpower, but the faulty system everyone uses for setting goals? Michelle: That's wild. So we're basically set up to fail from January 1st. It feels like we’re all running a race with our shoelaces tied together, and then we blame ourselves for tripping. Mark: Exactly. And that's the core premise behind the book we're diving into today: Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt. What's fascinating is that Hyatt isn't just a theorist; he was the CEO of a massive, $250 million publishing house, managing hundreds of employees. This system was born from real-world pressure. Michelle: Okay, that adds some serious weight. This isn't just someone in a quiet room thinking about motivation. This is from the trenches of corporate leadership. The book is widely praised for being practical, but I’ve seen some readers express skepticism, wondering if it's all just about mindset. Mark: A fair point, and one we'll definitely tackle. Because Hyatt argues the failure starts long before you even write the goal down. It starts with the stories you tell yourself. It starts with the inner game.

Michelle: The inner game. I like that. It sounds less like just 'thinking positive' and more like strategy. Where does Hyatt begin? Mark: He starts with a fantastic story about his dog, an English setter named Nelson. Nelson was a bolter. The second the front door opened, he was gone, running into the street. So, Hyatt installed one of those invisible fences. Michelle: Right, the electronic collar that gives a little shock if the dog crosses a wire buried in the yard. Mark: Precisely. They trained Nelson, and it worked perfectly. He learned to stay a few feet away from the boundary line. The problem was solved. But here's where it gets interesting. A few years later, the battery in Nelson’s collar died. Then the transmitter box failed. The invisible fence was completely off. Michelle: And Nelson was free! Did he bolt? Mark: He never once crossed the line. He’d run up to that invisible boundary, the one that no longer existed, and just stop. He'd pace back and forth, but he would not cross. The barrier had moved from an external device into an internal belief. It was a self-imposed prison. Michelle: Wow. That is a powerful metaphor. A dog is one thing, but how does this 'invisible fence' show up for actual people in their careers or lives? Mark: It's everywhere. It's the person who believes, "I'm too old to switch careers," so they don't even look at job postings. It's the person who, after a few bad breakups, decides, "I'm just not good at relationships," and stops being vulnerable. Hyatt tells a great story about his friend, author Don Miller, who held this exact belief. His friends had to actively intervene and show him evidence to the contrary before he could see it himself and eventually meet his wife. Michelle: Okay, but Mark, 'upgrading your beliefs' can sound a bit... fluffy. It risks sounding like 'The Secret'—just wish for it and it will happen. What makes Hyatt's approach more concrete and less like magical thinking? Mark: That’s the crucial distinction. He’s not talking about just wishing. He presents a tactical process. It’s about recognizing the faulty thought, like "I cannot win." Then, you reframe it. A pitching coach in the book tells a player, "There is a difference between, ‘I have not won’ and ‘I cannot win.’" One is a fact about the past; the other is a limiting story about the future. Michelle: That’s a sharp distinction. It’s about language. Mark: It’s about language and evidence. And sometimes, it's about sheer grit in the face of what seems like certain failure. There's this incredible story about a runner named Heather Kampf at the 2008 Big Ten Indoor Track Championship. She's in the 600-meter final, poised to take the lead on the final lap. Michelle: I feel like I know where this is going. Mark: She gets clipped. She goes down, hard, skidding across the track. The other runners surge past her. For anyone else, the race is over. The limiting belief—"I fell, I've lost"—would be deafening. Michelle: Absolutely. I would have just sat there and cried. Mark: But Kampf gets up. She's dazed, she's in last place by a huge margin, but she just starts running. The announcers are basically writing her off, talking about the runners in the lead. But then, you see this figure in the background just… closing the distance. She passes one runner, then another. On the final turn, she overtakes her own teammate who was in first place and wins the race. Michelle: No way. That's impossible. Mark: It happened. It’s a visceral, physical example of rejecting a limiting belief in real-time. The reality of the fall said "you're done." Her refusal to accept that reality created a different outcome. That's the 'inner game' Hyatt is talking about. It’s not just a nice idea; it's a force that can win a race you've already lost.

Michelle: Okay, that Heather Kampf story is genuinely inspiring. So you've rewired your brain. You've jumped the invisible fence. You believe it's possible. But you still need a plan, right? Otherwise, you're just a very optimistic person with no direction, wandering around the front yard. Mark: Exactly. And this is where most goal-setting advice fails. It either focuses only on mindset or only on a plan, but Hyatt argues you need both. And the plan has to be incredibly well-designed. A bad plan is almost worse than no plan at all. Michelle: What does a bad plan look like? Mark: It looks like General Motors in 2002. The executives became obsessed with one single goal: reclaim a 29 percent market share in the US. They even had little "29" lapel pins made. Michelle: That sounds focused, at least. Mark: It was disastrously focused. To hit that number, they started offering insane incentives, like zero-interest loans for six years. They were essentially losing money on every car sold just to move units and hit the magic number. They were so fixated on the what—29 percent—that they ignored the why and the how. It led to reckless decisions that contributed to their eventual bankruptcy and need for a federal bailout. Michelle: So the goal itself was toxic. It wasn't inspiring; it was just a number that drove them off a cliff. What’s the antidote? Mark: The antidote is what Hyatt calls SMARTER goals. Most of us have heard of SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-keyed. Hyatt adds two crucial, game-changing letters: E and R. Exciting and Risky. Michelle: Hold on, Risky? Isn't setting a risky goal just setting yourself up for disappointment? We're told to set 'realistic' goals. Mark: That's the trap! 'Realistic' often means 'comfortable.' And comfort is where ambition goes to die. Hyatt talks about three zones. The Comfort Zone, where you're bored. The Delusional Zone, where the goal is truly impossible and you're just fooling yourself. And the sweet spot in the middle: the Discomfort Zone. Michelle: The Discomfort Zone. I feel like I live there. Mark: It's where growth happens! It's a goal that scares you a little. It makes you nervous. You're not 100% sure you can do it. And the research backs this up. A massive analysis by goal theorists Locke and Latham found that people with the highest, most difficult goals performed over 250% better than those with the easiest goals. Michelle: Two hundred and fifty percent. That's not a small number. Mark: It's huge. The risk is the engine. And the 'E' for 'Exciting' is the fuel. The goal has to matter to you on a gut level. The GM goal wasn't exciting; it was a corporate metric. But let's take an example from the book: a father wants to restore a classic Volkswagen Beetle for his daughter's 16th birthday. Michelle: Oh, I love that. Mark: Let's run it through SMARTER. Is it Specific? Yes, restore a VW Beetle. Measurable? Yes, it's either done or it's not. Actionable? Yes, he can break it down into steps: buy the car, strip the paint, rebuild the engine. Time-keyed? Absolutely, her birthday is a hard deadline. Michelle: And it's definitely Exciting. It's a gift of love for his daughter. That's a powerful 'why'. Mark: And is it Risky? You bet. He's on a deadline, on a budget, and car restorations are notoriously difficult. It's squarely in the Discomfort Zone. That's a powerful goal. It's not just a to-do list item; it's a story he's trying to write. Compare that to "achieve 29 percent market share." One has a soul, the other is just a number on a spreadsheet.

Michelle: It’s all coming together now. It's a two-part system. You can't just have the SMARTER goals, the perfect external plan, if you're secretly like Nelson the dog, refusing to cross a line that isn't there. Mark: And you can't just believe in yourself without a concrete plan. An optimist without a SMARTER goal is just a daydreamer. The two systems need each other. Michelle: So, Hyatt's big idea is that the reason so many of us feel stuck, the reason the resolution failure rate is so high, is because we're only ever trying to fix one half of the equation. We either buy a new planner or we try to 'think positive,' but we rarely do both in a coordinated, systematic way. Mark: Exactly. Hyatt's core insight is that achievement isn't just about hustle. It's about alignment. Aligning your internal beliefs with an external, well-designed system. The failure we see everywhere isn't a failure of individual willpower; it's a failure of design. We're using a faulty blueprint and then wondering why the house keeps falling down. Michelle: That’s a fantastic way to put it. It takes the shame out of it and replaces it with a sense of empowerment. It’s not that you're broken; it's that your method is. Mark: And you can change your method. So the one concrete thing to take away from all this is to ask yourself: What's one 'invisible fence' you've been honoring without realizing it? A rule you follow, a limit you accept, a story you tell yourself about what you can or can't do. Just identifying it is the first step. Michelle: I love that. It’s a simple but profound question. And we'd love to hear what you discover. Find us on our socials and share one invisible fence you're ready to question. It’s powerful to see you’re not alone in this. So many of us are standing in our own yards, convinced we can't leave. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.