
Setting goals is easy; staying on track, not so much.
What if I told you that follow-through is not about willpower, but the systems you create?
Setting goals? Easy.
Staying consistent? That’s where the wheels come off.
But here’s the thing. They don’t have to.
In this episode of “Success for the Athletic-Minded Man” podcast, I’m breaking down exactly how to follow through with your goals, even when life throws every curveball it’s got at you.
I talk about finding the right path for YOU— not the one your neighbor, coworker, or Instagram feed says you should be on.
Then, we’ll tackle staying consistent with routines, accountability (hint: it’s not just simply about “holding yourself accountable”), and real strategies that work. And when you inevitably fall off the wagon— and you will— don’t worry. I’ll show you how to hit the reset button and get back on track.
I’ll also share stories from athletes, high performers, and my own coaching experience that’ll remind you: setbacks are normal, but staying stuck doesn’t have to be.
By the end of the episode, you’ll have everything you need to stay focused, stay disciplined, and start making real progress.
Success doesn’t wait, neither should you. Let’s take that first step together. Hit play and let’s go!
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire episode or if you hear something that you like but don’t have time to write it down, be sure to grab your free copy of the Action Plan from this episode— as well as get access to action plans from EVERY episode— at JimHarshawJr.com/Action.
Download the Action Plan from This Episode Here
[00:00] Setting goals is easy, staying on track is the hard part. In this episode, I’m going to share with you number one, how to discover the right path for you. Number two, how to stay on the path. And number three, how to get back on the path whenever you fall off the path, which happens to everyone. So all of this is about consistency and discipline and focus so you can achieve your goals and live the life that you want.
[00:26] Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk, unharnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency and focus. life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about the art of follow through, how to stay consistent with your goals. I’ve done what I’m teaching you with hundreds of other guys in my coaching program over the past nearly decade.
[00:51] And by the end of this, you’re going to know exactly what you need to do to determine the right path for you. What are the right goals? How do you stay on the path? And then how do you get back on the path whenever you fall off? Because it’s inevitable. It happens to everybody. And the way I’m going to share this with you and the rest of this episode is by number one, we’re gonna start off by talking just about some perspective.
[01:10] I want you to have some perspective about the challenges that you’re going to run into and that everybody runs into. And even if. It looks like other people are crushing it in locked in and consistent in every area of their life. I’m going to give you some perspective on that. And then number two, uh, I’m going to share with you a few concepts on how to actually follow through right now.
[01:29] If you want to have a conversation about this with other listeners who are listening to this right now, just like you go over to our free community, join the free community, go to JimHarshawJr.com/free. There’s also a seven days to clarity. Course in there. It’s all my best stuff. It is absolutely incredible.
[01:47] I put my best stuff in there. So you’re going to get a lot of value just in that seven day course, but that’s accessible as soon as you join the community. So JimHarshawJr.com/free. There’s also an app. You can download it on your phone, replace the social media that’s on your phone, move Twitter off your home screen, put this on your home screen so you can participate in this community and actually have some valuable reason to open up.
[02:10] Your phone and scroll something with it is actually useful and helpful for you. And of course you can have an opportunity to have a conversation about this with me to talk about coaching. Is it right for you? And how would this even fit into your life? And maybe it’s not even the right fit. And that’s the goal of that call is to figure out if it’s the right fit.
[02:27] And even if it’s not, there’s some really valuable resources I can point you to. I mean, you just go to JimHarshawJr.com/apply. For that. And lastly, before we get into this is I want you to think about how valuable this episode is for you and how valuable these other episodes have been for you. And these are of course free.
[02:46] And so here’s the payment I’m asking you give this a share, tell one friend. Just send a text message to one friend and say, Hey, check out this podcast. I think you might like it. It’s called success for the athletic minded man, or you can tell them to just search Jim Harshaw on their favorite podcast app and they’ll find me.
[03:04] All right, so let’s get into the content for today. The art of following through how to stay consistent with your goals. So like I said, I want to talk about number one perspective and then number two. Three concepts on how to follow through. So a little bit about perspective here, follow through as we know is the crux, right?
[03:21] Like I said, at the beginning, it’s easy to set goals. Really? It’s, it’s relatively easy. And I know some people struggle with that, but that’s really the easy part. You’re going to get thrown off the path as you start working towards following through. As I record this right now, it’s towards the end of the NFL playoffs and I just read something this morning that the Rams, who had, they won at least their first playoff game so far.
[03:45] They actually lost to the Cardinals 41 to 10 earlier this season, 41 to 10, got absolutely dominated by a team that ended up not making the playoffs and having a losing season. They got dominated. And these are professionals. These are some of the people, they’re the best in the world at what they do. And they’re even the best in the, you know, among the best in the league because they made the playoffs and they won their first game.
[04:10] Beat the Vikings, be a good team first round. These are professionals. They go off the path. They struggle. They have losses. They have failures. They have setbacks. They make mistakes and you will too. And this is part of the process. This is part of the plan. Okay. We don’t want that. We want to stay consistent.
[04:28] We want to stay locked in. We want to perform at our best, but what we can control is the process. And that’s what I want to talk about today. And I think back to my wrestling career. And even when I was coaching wrestling at the collegiate level, I would always meet with each of my wrestlers at the beginning of the season, and we would talk about their goals, what are your goals for the year, etc.
[04:46] I would always ask, what are the setbacks that you might incur this year? What could go wrong on the path to achieving this goal? And they would tell me, well, I could get injured, or I could have a big Test that day, the day of a big match illness. I could get sick during the season or my girlfriend could break up with me or I could take a bad loss, whatever it is, there’s all kinds of things that can set you off your throw you off the path physically, but also mentally and emotionally and psychologically.
[05:15] So we have to be aware that these things are going to happen. They’re going to come along. And whenever I would help them identify that during the season, and then if something would come up during the season, I would say, well, wait a second. Didn’t we already identify that this could happen? Like let’s not overreact here.
[05:28] Yes, you’re injured. Hopefully you can heal from this and get back. So let’s focus on the process. Let’s do the rehab show up early in the training room and do all your rehab, et cetera. Let’s not try to come back too early. All of those things. I’m inspired by a friend of mine, Steve Hoback, who I interviewed back in episode 481 back in November.
[05:47] So if you go back to November 2024, you’ll see an episode there. And I hesitate to tell you that he is a friend because like, Oh, this isn’t some world class performer. No, this guy is amazing. In his sixties, discovered running late in his life, late fifties, and he’s now an ultra marathoner, absolutely inspiring guy.
[06:05] He’s run Boston, qualified for Boston twice and run it twice. He’s just an inspiring guy, but I’ve seen him go through multiple injuries. He had a really bad Achilles injury. He had a stress fracture. Actually, during the interview, he was still recovering. From this stress fracture and guess what the guys out there killing it now again in his 60s.
[06:24] He’s recovered. He went off the path. It was outside of his control, but he went off the path and he got back on the path. It was just amazing. And for you, it’s going to be the same thing types of things, you know, when in your life in your career and your personal life professional life, you know. Kids get sick, the economy goes in the tank, your car breaks down, the holidays, go on vacation, and you kind of get thrown off the, out of your routine and out of your rhythms and overeating, over drink.
[06:49] You get in a fight with your wife, like whatever it might be, all kinds of things are going to be there to throw you off the path. So I want to give you, like I said, first perspective on that. So this kind of thing is going to happen. Now what, like, how do we handle it? So I want to spend the rest of the episode talking about these three main topics, these three concepts to help you.
[07:10] Discover the right path for you, stay on the path and then get back on the path whenever you fall off. Alright, so I’ve covered the first thing that I wanted to cover, kind of introducing this idea, but I talked about giving you some perspective on this. So now let’s get into these three concepts I want to share with you here.
[07:25] So number one, knowing your path. First, you have to know your path. Like, what is the path for you anyway? What are the habits and routines? What are the right goals? All of this starts with stepping back, by the way, all this sort of step back is all given to you for free in that seven day course, seven day video course.
[07:45] There’s a worksheet that accompanies this, but it’s to identify your vision and your core values. Like, what are the things that I actually, like, where am I actually going? Why set this goal? So many people figure like they’re, they struggle because they’re setting the right goals. They show up, you know, sign up for these calls with me and they come into our coaching program and they have goals, but they’re wondering if they’re the right goals.
[08:05] And if you find yourself being inconsistent and not resilient and lacking focus, and then you might not have the right goals or there may be something else in, in this framework, in this process, in your systems that is not dialed in. And it all starts with, where am I going? What actually drives me? What do I want?
[08:25] It’s not about setting your goal or your knowing your path, like where you’re going based upon, Hey, what’s parking my neighbor’s driveway or what I see on social media, it’s gotta be inherent to you. What does your DNA tell you that you want? And that takes a little bit of time to figure out. So to know your path, first you start with a vision and values.
[08:45] Then you set your goals. Then you have to identify what are the habits and routines and systems that I need to have in place. And this is actually the theme of my, my retreat that we’re hosting in May. We’re going to be talking about habits and routines and systems for success, but you have to identify what are the right ones for you.
[09:02] That are going to help me stay on the path. What time do I have to get to bed? What time do I have to wake up? Who are the people I should be spending my time with? Who are the people I should be maybe avoiding and reducing the amount of time that I spend with? What are the books I should be reading? All of this should be in alignment.
[09:17] What the vision, the values, and then the goals that you determine from the vision and values, I want you to think of this concept of sort of knowing this first concept here. I’m sharing of knowing your path. I want you to think about this in this way. Imagine you’re on a hike and all of a sudden you don’t know what happened, but you find yourself off the path.
[09:37] There’s no path. You’re out in the woods. You’re Looking around and you’re like, gosh, how did I end up here? And this is what a lot of people do in life. They kind of, they drift off the path. They drift. They’re not intentional. They drift off the path. And they’re like, man, I don’t even know what the path is.
[09:51] I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going. If you know the path, you can get back on it. You go, okay, there it is over there. I can go, I can walk back to it. I can get on the path. But if you don’t know what your path is, you’re just going to aim and roam and wander around wasting time. The clock is ticking on your life and you’re just going to feel like, you know, I’m hustling.
[10:11] I’m working hard here. I’m pushing through the branches and the brush and trailblazing. I’m working hard, but I don’t know if I’m on the path and maybe you find a path here. I don’t even know if this is the right path. I don’t know if this goes where I want it to go. You have to know that path. And like I said, you can use that free course to really hone in on what does that path look like for you.
[10:30] By the way, if you do join the free community, uh, I have a, the goal setting work session, which I hosted lives, which was amazing. You can get access to that for free. If you bring another friend with you into the community, why is it free? If you bring another friend. Because it’s better with a teammate, it’s better accountability, it’s better.
[10:51] You’ll be more likely to follow through and actually do the seven day course and take the goals, do the goal setting session. If you have a friend in there, so join, tell a friend, DM me as soon as you get in there and I’ll give you access to it, right? It’s going to be locked for you into DM me and let me know who you brought with you.
[11:08] All right. So I said three things. Number one, know your path. Number two, how do you stay on the path? Like, how do you actually stay on the path long term? Talked about the LA, you know, the Rams, you know, go going off the path and losing a game like that, that kind of stuff happens where the things you can do to, to do your best at staying on the path.
[11:25] And don’t say I’m going to, I got to hold myself accountable because holding yourself accountable is not a thing. I hear people say, well, Jim, I just got to hold myself accountable. No, no, you don’t. If you could do that, you’d already be doing it. And holding yourself accountable is, is not really a thing.
[11:39] It’s it, you can be disciplined, self discipline, but accountability comes from someone else, comes externally. All right. So that could be an accountability partner, a friend in the coaching program. There, this is sort of built into it. They’re having accountability partner, but you have to have that external.
[11:57] Accountability can be accountability partner. It can be a coach. It can be a mentor. It can be a group. You know, if you think like a team and sports. There’s accountability built in there. If you remember, just to use another NFL analogy or story example here, there was a story several years ago of a guy named Ray Rice played for the Ravens.
[12:17] And there’s this video that came out of him. Physically assaulting his then fiance. And there was this backlash from his team. His, his team, of course, you know, the Ravens released him and there was all kinds of backlash in the media, but his team actually held him to a higher standard. There was backlash within the team.
[12:37] You kinda read these stories of, of the backlash, like there’s a standard, like when you’re in a group, there’s a standard of expectation. There’s accountability there, and if you don’t have it and listen. Men don’t have that in the world by default. We typically don’t have that. It’s just especially in the day and age that we live in now, right?
[12:56] We have so much technology can work from home and there’s so much given to us that allows us to be so independent that We’ve lost so much accountability and because of that execution commitment consistency discipline focus has all suffered. You know, not only do we have technology can help us sort of execute, but also technology that will distract us.
[13:22] And so we need the group. We need the standard, the accountability that comes with being part of group. So I give a TEDx talk titled why I teach my Children to fail. If you just go to YouTube and type Jim Harshaw Ted talk, you’ll find it seven minutes. Got a lot of great feedback on it over the years. I think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a listener of the show here.
[13:40] But how did that come about? Well, it actually came about because of a failure. I did a really bad job of speaking publicly once. And I said, this is a skill I need to learn. So I found some accountability. I found a group, I found a system. This was a framework. To help me upscale and learn in this area. So I found Toastmasters.
[13:59] If you’ve ever heard of Toastmasters, there’s one in your town. I guarantee it probably multiple. And I just signed up for Toastmasters and they met weekly. And my commitment was like, I don’t have time to meet every single week. So I’m going to do it at least once a month. So for once a month, for like six months or nine months.
[14:13] I would go to Toastmasters and you’d have to give a talk and, you know, it’d be very short, but you would get feedback, you know, anonymous feedback. It was a very supportive environment, but I got better. There was accountability there. There was a structure there. There are other people there, other people standing in front of an audience doing the really hard thing also.
[14:30] So there’s accountability. This is what you need in your life. Here’s another sort of the last point in terms of tactics for staying on the path, just like in sport, there’s a scoreboard, there’s a win loss record, you might be tracking your 40 speed or your bench press or whatever, like you have to track this in business, it’s called KPIs, it’s called OKRs, right?
[14:51] KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, whatever you want to call those, you have to track these. You have to have a system and process for tracking. Otherwise, you’re not going to stay on the path. So talking about the first two things we’ve talked about knowing your path. How do you do that?
[15:08] Again, you have all the information you need on that and actionable item there to go to join the free community, get the seven day course. And then number two is the tactics to stay on the path. And lastly, how do you get back in the saddle after you get thrown off? Because you will, right? How do you get back on the path?
[15:27] Well, first of all, you have to take the productive pause, right? You’ve heard me say this before. If you listen to any episodes, short period of focus, reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. So if you’re working with a coach or if you do some journaling, you could answer the question, how do I get back on the path?
[15:45] What are the things that I need to do to get back on the path? And you’re probably going to come up with some great ideas. If you don’t do the pause, you’re not going to, cause you’re just going to drift. You can be busy and be checking your phone, checking emails. Running kids, sporting events and doing life and, and you’ll never get around to it.
[16:01] You might kind of work on it a little bit here and there, but you’ve got to do the productive pods if you really want to lock in and get back on the path. And here’s how I coach people to do the hard reset that is often required to really get on the path. Four things, four ingredients here. Number one.
[16:18] This is for your hard reset. I’m okay, Jim. I’m off the path. It was the holidays, vacation. I just drifted off of whatever it was. I drifted off the path, whatever, no matter what, here’s how you do it. Here’s your hard reset. You’re on your phone. You got the reset button. You know, you restart your phone. IT professionals will tell you first, first thing you got to do is like they, I, you know, you’re telling like my computer’s broke or thumbs not working.
[16:38] They, did you restart? Did you do the reset? Well, this is your reset. All right, here’s your reset button. Four things. Number one. Get a great night’s sleep, get to bed early, get a great night’s sleep, make sure the room’s dark, make sure it’s quiet or white, you know, whatever you got to do, right? Get a great night’s sleep.
[16:56] Number two, wake up and exercise whatever exercise works for you. For me, it’s hard work, like a hard workout, something really not just like kind of a light go for a walk. It’s like. Push myself. Something hard, physically challenging, heart rates through the roof. Whatever works for you, you know, asterisk, consult your physician.
[17:15] But, exercise. That’s number two. Number three is hydrate. After that workout, hydrate well. Alright? So, good night’s sleep, exercise, hydrate, refuel well. And here’s the last piece of this Heart Reset Journal. Journal about what do I got to do to get back on the path or meet with a coach if you have a coach or an accountability partner.
[17:39] Journal about what I got to do to get on the path. Those four things will be the hard reset that you need. Alright, so we talked about some perspective on getting thrown off the path. It’s normal. It’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up. Talked about the three things. Number one, know the path. What is the path that I want to be on?
[17:57] Number two, how do I stay on the path? Number three, how do I get back onto the path? There’s a system, there’s a framework for this. If you want to learn more about it, go to JimHarshawJr.com/free, and we’ll have a conversation about this, um, in the community every day, as well as the other Pathfinder coaches.
[18:13] And you can get amazing feedback and literally it’s zero risk. It’s, it’s totally free. We’ve put a lot of great stuff in there. So looking forward to talking with you in there and looking forward to hearing about how you’re working on knowing your path, staying on the path and getting back on the path.
[18:28] Take action. Good luck.
Note: This text was automatically generated.
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