Visualization Without Skill Doesn't Work | Ep 234
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- Visualization without skill doesn't work, but closing the intention-intervention gap does. And by the end of this video, you will know what that is and you will have the exact tools you need to completely reinvent yourself with it. So the intention-intervention gap refers to the disconnect between knowing what you need to do, intention, and then actually taking action to do it, intervention. The strategies I'm gonna talk about in a little bit, they're gonna help you align your desires with your skills,

to get your goals. The first time I realized that this was a thing, it was early in my business and I took over my sales team from a manager who was underperforming. Deadlines were being missed, morale was low. Nothing I tried seemed to work. And my instinct was that I needed to control every detail of everything that was happening. But what happened was I actually made things worse. Suddenly, revenue was stagnating and it was even starting to drop.

And so I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. My ability to pay my entire employee base relies on the company making sales and continuing to get customers. And so that's the first time that I applied the intention intervention equation. What I realized is that I had actually not clearly communicated what success looked like or why it mattered. So my intention was that the team performed better, but

I hadn't set clear expectations or aligned them with the bigger mission. And so the first thing I did is I started by clarifying my intention. I wanted better performance, stronger collaboration, a culture of ownership. Then I identified what specific actions I needed to make that

happen. Weekly check-ins to align on goals and priorities. Role clarity sessions so everybody knew their responsibilities. Regular recognition so that they're actually engaged. Within weeks, the entire energy of the team shifted. The team knew what was actually expected from them and they felt connected to the mission and to my intention. We started hitting and then we exceeded our sales targets. So we went from a 30% close rate to a 55% close rate. And it was that experience that taught me the

power of aligning clear intentions with focused interventions because it is not about working harder. It's about working smarter on the right stuff. The more skills you have to bridge the gap, the more likely you are to hit the goal.

Here's an example. It's the new year. You want to improve your health. And so you decide that you're gonna work out every morning for 30 minutes before work. Now, where's the intervention gap? Despite having a very clear intention, when your alarm goes off in the morning, you hit snooze, you tell yourself you'll work out later, and then you start skipping the workout entirely. So how do we bridge the gap? One, clarify the intention.

Instead of a vague plan, like I'm gonna work out in the morning, specify the time, specify the type of workout, specify the exercise. You have to get specific. Intention is not good enough. Vague directions don't work. We've gotta get specific with our intention. Then we want to create environmental triggers. How do we create a trigger that makes it easy for us to remember our intention?

Going with that example, we would lay out our workout clothes and our shoes next to the bed the night before. Something I've done for the last 12 years is I lay out my outfits the night before. It's not that I'm smarter or have more willpower. In fact, I don't use any willpower.

I just see it and then I go do it. I don't have to think at all. Then we would set a visible calendar reminder on our phone so that we remember what our intention is. So here's a pro tip. For me, the easiest way that I can create environmental triggers is I put it on my calendar. I use my calendar for everything. I even put like do my laundry, lay out my clothes, pack my bag.

all things on my calendar because it reminds me and then also removes friction of remembering it ahead of time. So I have certain things programmed on my calendar that I know I'm gonna do every week. So not only do I have things sitting out physically, I also have reminders on my calendar that I check every day. Which brings me to the next point, which is minimizing friction. Going with that example of working out, what would I do to minimize friction so that

I've clarified my intention. I have put triggers in place. And now I'm going to minimize as much friction as possible to get that workout in. I would prepare my workout space the night before. So there's no need to set it up in the morning. If I know I'm going to be doing deadlifts, I'm going to set up the deadlift workout. If I know I'm going to be squatting heavy, I'm going to preload the bar. Another thing you would do is you might use an app that's

comes with a pre-planned routine so that you don't have to think about what you're doing when you go in the gym. I have two apps that I use on my phone and they tell me exactly what I'm gonna do, what machines, what exercises, how many reps, how intensely, and when I'm done. If one of your goals is doing less of something, maybe eating less junk food, then you would want to increase friction. Then I would say, okay, let me get all the junk food out of the house so if I need to eat junk food, I have

to literally buy it there. And then you could go even further. You could delete DoorDash from your phone or Uber Eats. I have actually hidden both of those. So I do not have the apps on my screen because my goal is to eat less ordered food. And so if I don't have easy access to the apps, I have to redownload the app to get it. And that's a huge pain in the butt. So I've really got to want that food. So now that we have clarified the intention, created our environmental triggers and minimize as much friction as possible or maximized it,

Now we're gonna set if-then plans. Nothing ever goes as planned. There's always gonna be things you don't expect and it's never the right time. We're gonna talk about what to do when all those things happen. So like, if you feel too tired to do a full workout, then what? What are we gonna do to maintain consistency? For me, for example, if I feel too tired to lift heavy, then I will go for a long walk or do the Stairmaster.

If I don't have access to healthy meals when I go out, then I will eat a protein bar or beef jerky. Ask yourself, where have I failed in the past? And then we wanna write those things down and decide ahead of time what we're gonna do when those things happen. Another example is when I was competing in a bikini competition, I would go out to dinner and I would go to parties and they had all this food. So what I realized is that

if I was going to go to a party that had a lot of food that was tempting, I would eat ahead of time. And so I would always eat a meal before I went to the party or before I went to dinner and I would order tea or a Diet Coke and I knew that that would help me stay on plan. And the last piece is we want to track

and celebrate. So we wanna mark our calendar with each day we complete a workout. We wanna reward ourselves at the end of the week if we stay consistent. We want to think, how can I look forward to the discomfort of the process because I'm really excited for something I get at the end. Whenever I have to do something really hard to achieve a goal, I ask myself, what's something I really look forward to or something I really want

that I would put at the end of this. So every time I wanna quit, every time I think it's really hard, every time it feels really inconvenient, I think about that thing I want. And I think what's even better is you can get other people to help with this. The next pro tip is social commitment. When we commit to doing something with somebody else or for somebody else, you're so much more likely to actually do it. In fact, I think it's like four times more likely to follow through.

So if you're trying to work out every day and you're having a hard time showing up at 6 a.m., get a friend to do the same thing. If you feel like you're accountable to somebody else, you are so much more likely to do it than if it's just you. For example, I have certain goals that I say, if I achieve this goal, then I can get this thing, and I let my husband know.

And so then I say, "Great, if I achieve this goal, will you get me this thing? Will you take me on this trip? Will you buy me this thing I want?" And he says, "Yes, if you achieve those goals, then I will get you that thing." And that is even more incentivizing because I can't BS somebody else. We can BS ourselves. It's really hard to BS somebody else. Use what you can to reward yourself at the end of these things. We don't want all of our motivators to be the things that we lose if we don't achieve it. We wanna also have what we can gain if we do achieve it, if we do stick with the process.

So for example, something that I used to do for myself when I was competing in the bikini competition and I would want to do something nice for myself. At the end of the week, if I had hit all of my goals every day, I would go to the store that had puppies.

and I would go there so I could pet all the little puppies and play with them. And I would stay there for like an hour, sometimes 90 minutes. And I would just go and play with all the puppies and all the pens. It was just something I always looked forward to. How I had set that in my mind was like, hey, if I'm consistent every day this week, then I'm gonna take myself Saturday, I'm gonna grab a coffee and I'm gonna go pet the puppies for an hour. It sounds silly, but I looked forward to that so much that it made the week worth it, no matter how hard it was.