Accomplish ANY Goal!

Alright so, today I’m going to discuss how to accomplish almost ANY goal imaginable…with the power of regression.

My name is Gil Alcocer

I’ve been training Jiu Jitsu for over 16 years

I’ve owned my own academy, The Jiu Jitsu Institute for over 6 years

And I received my black belt from the Mendes brothers in 2019.

This is an extremely valuable lesson I’ve learned in my life, it can be applied to virtually everything you could ever want to have a skill set in, or any goal you want to accomplish.

I say almost any goal because if it’s a competitive endeavor, time is a factor and the amount of work someone else is willing to put in is out of your control.  There’s no way around it when it comes to competition.

As I started to write this out, I went into a personal example where I have conquered a goal with regression, but that one single topic is easily a whole other blog on its own.

So in future blog, I will break down some examples, in depth, where I have used regression to conquer that goal, but this will be a shortened breakdown of the concept.

The actual definition of regression is “a return to a former or less developed state”. What does that mean? How do you apply this? Very simple…anything new you want to start, or have already started, you're inevitably going to run into hard times, plateaus, or low points.

A lot of times, this leads to people quitting whatever that activity or pursuit is. That’s when regression comes into play. Take it back to a point that was EASIER.  That’s it.  Make the pursuit more enjoyable, or less painful, mentally or physically.

Some pursuits are all about the joy, or dopamine that you get from the activity.  So if you’re pushing yourself too far, and/or too fast, it can lose its joy. Basically becomes a job.  Take a step back, to when it was more enjoyable. 

A perfect example of this is Jiu Jitsu. On average, it’s about 1 - 1 ½ years of training to earn a blue belt. The white belt time is an extremely steep learning curve. You’re constantly learning so much, and because you’re starting from the bottom, every single thing is only up from there.

This is when training is super enjoyable. And a lot of people think they’re the next world champ.

Typically, right around the time someone gets a blue belt, the “newbie gains” experience is over…and the first lull begins. People will start thinking they suck, or they’re getting worse.  Someone below them might tap them…not realizing that this is all a part of the journey, and they have now been training long enough to get some of these experiences for the first time. Unfortunately, a lot of people quit at this point and become the old blue belt statistic. This is when regression comes into play! When people have these thoughts, it’s because their goal is basically just to win.  Keep beating everyone below them, and continue to keep getting a new submission win over someone they have never tapped before. Very lofty goals.  Change the goals…when rolling with a high belt, goal of not getting tapped. When rolling with a lower belt, goal of hitting some specific that you’re not particularly good at. These smaller goals will make it fun again.

And now we have the other type of goals, goals that don’t themselves give you the dopamine, but lead to results that give you the dopamine. The act of Jiu Jitsu itself is very fun and rewarding, but for example, the pursuit of eating healthy is not done because it’s fun.  It’s done for the reward down the road, the nice body, or healthy body etc. A healthy diet has been by far the toughest goal of my own life.  I was raised on fast food and soda.  Eating clean is still a constant battle for me, with lots of failures along the way. 

I, like most people, started with the extremely lofty goal of going from 0 straight to 100 overnight. Not feasible for most people. Of course I failed, usually 4 days in, was the timeline. It was too extreme.  Over time I found ways to regress it and slowly build the habit of a healthy diet. At one point I was eating fast food every day, and I couldn’t imagine how someone could go a whole day without it. Now it’s so rare that I’ll eat fast food.  This will definitely be its own blog in the future with a full breakdown of how I’ve gotten to where I am, but in short I just kept setting small goals to accomplish. Any time I failed, I would just start back up where I left off. Regression, that simple. Skip breakfast, one less bad meal this day, or one less dessert, don’t finish 100% of that bad meal, when I get satisfied with some sort of junk food, throw what’s left away so I’m not snaking again in an hour.

This is ONE example, but they’re literally endless. Jiu Jitsu, lifting, mobility, instruments, learning a language, coding.  THIS CHANNEL itself is my current goal.  That’s why I have the thumbnail.  That’s the end goal, but not my current goal. I know it takes a lot of time and work to get to a million.  I broke 50 subscribers, next goal is 100.  Then 500 and so on. I think you get the point though, anything you want to accomplish, when you get to a low or a quitting point, just regress and continue on. Very similar to getting your reps in, but the main reason someone wouldn’t get their reps in, is that the task is TOO hard.

Just regress it! Make it so easy you’ll actually do it. After a couple weeks, try harder.  If it was so hard you don’t want to do it again, DON’T.  Go back to when it was easier. It’s that simple.

Like I mentioned earlier, THIS CHANNEL ITSELF will be another example of how I accomplished my goal with regression. When I originally started planning out a channel, I started off like every other project in my life.  Thinking about all the “things” I needed to buy to have a good channel.

Camera, lighting, microphone, editing software blah blah blah. Then I started planning…and planning and planning.  Basically paralysis by analysis. I was WAAAAY over complicating it, thinking my first blog ever had to be the highest most perfect quality blog worthy of millions of views.

Then I said screw it, and I made a blog.  I regressed it a million percent…and making the first blog was extremely enjoyable and satisfying for me. Now I’m hooked, and making little changes in EVERY single blog. I will remake this blog in the future where I’m talking about everything I DID to get millions of subscribers, instead of what I’m doing now to reach this goal.

I can go on and on, and give a million examples, but I’ll end here.

This will definitely be a concept I constantly talk about on this channel.

See ya next time,

Gil

Jiu Jitsu Wilmington, NC