Unmasking Greatness
Join Fitness/LifeStyle Expert & Mentor Chris Kakouras talk about maximizing your health, business, mindset, and overall life! Let's get better together as I bring on amazing guest to interview and learn from!
Unmasking Greatness
Mindset Over Results & The Journey To Fulfillment
This episode delves into the essential principle that success relies more on the inputs we control rather than solely on the outcomes we desire. Chris Kakouras shares personal stories from his journey in fitness and skateboarding to emphasize the importance of resilience, patience, and actionable steps toward achieving goals.
• Exploring the balance between motivation and foundational habits
• The significance of focusing on inputs as opposed to outcomes
• Personal anecdotes illustrating lessons from skateboarding and fitness
• Encouraging listeners to detach from immediate results
• Providing actionable steps for sustainable growth and learning
• Emphasizing the power of celebrating small daily victories
• Highlighting the need for continuous self-development and adjustment
• Reminding listeners that success is a process, not a destination
• Developing resilience through consistent and actionable efforts
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Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your sign to take back control of your health, mindset and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share, as we can all get better together. Let's go. What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, and I hope you guys are having a blessed Monday. I'm super excited to have you guys on today because today I have a really cool topic I'm going to talk about when it comes to setting your goals and how things are affected by your confidence. But before I do, I kind of want to give you guys the background of how this conversation came up, or how this topic came up.
Speaker 1:So about a week ago I was at the gym. Yeah, crazy, right, chris is at the gym. I was at the gym and I ran into a old time friend. He's also a client and now currently a successful business owner as well. We got to talking Because I knew him back in the day. One of the things that we knew back in the day from each other was we were skateboarders Young kids just kicking and pushing a piece of wood around, and uh, we were. We were starting to kind of reminisce about it because, uh, you know, there's a lot of attributes and things that translated from back then to where we are now.
Speaker 1:And you know, a lot of times now when people come to me and they ask me, chris, like, how are you so motivated, how do you stay so disciplined and all that. And you know, to be honest with you, like I tell them I do not rely on motivation at all. It's not something that I keep in my back pocket. It is fuel to the fire, but it is not something you can rely on to strategically reach your goals, and so you have to rely on building good foundational habits. You have to have things put in place. Tactics, strategies, I mean all of these are going to help keep you focused. And once you start seeing some results, then you know that's where that fuel comes in. That motivation kind of just kicks things up to the next level, because now you're like, oh my gosh, things are working.
Speaker 1:And so I never tell people to rely on motivation, but you know, back to going back to the skateboarding if you've ever skateboarded or had any kind of sport like that, it is one of the weirdest sports you could possibly imagine, because I would say you know, failing at doing tricks is the percentage is so much higher. Okay, you know, if you don't know what an ollie is, an ollie is literally just jumping, being able to jump with the skateboard, and that is the fundamental trick that you have to learn before you can start learning all the other library of tricks that you can do. And I kid you not, it took me one full year to learn that. One year. And I'm not talking about oh, I went out every once in a while, I'm talking about every day.
Speaker 1:I was a very, I was an introvert, I just kind of. I just moved to a new town, I had no friends, so this was a good outlet for me to just kind of do my thing. I wasn't big into video games and stuff like that, and social media wasn't a thing. So, um, well, I take that back. I think there's like AOL messenger maybe, so if you guys know what that is, um, but anyways, I was outside every single day for hours, hours, getting so frustrated and I couldn't tell you to this day I don't know why I didn't quit and just give it all up. I even bought like VHS tapes of this is telling my age VHS tapes of like Tony Hawk's tricks and tips. He would like teach you how to do these. You know ollies and kickflips and six ball gap, but if you didn't learn the basic fundamentals, you couldn't do any of that. And so I'd be out there for hours every day and eventually, a year later, I got it and it was crazy how much faster everything came after that.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, learning the different tricks that we we did, and then I got really good over time, Umvitably, I mean, I became an amateur skateboarder, got sponsored, like the whole deal, which was, you know, awesome. Back then, I mean, I thought I was going pro. That was, my only mission was to go pro. But again, like how many of you guys would just resiliently just go out there, failing time after time, spending hours a day, never knowing if you'll ever get it. You start getting a little bit closer but like there's no real guarantee, right? And so I think a lot of that resilience, patience, consistency has definitely translated into my lifestyle and how I pursue life. And so, you know, prior to me starting my business and you know, I kind of left that conversation, went home and started reflecting more.
Speaker 1:I feel like I did that many times in my life, over and over again, where it took me very long time to figure things out or get to where I'm at. You know everything from competing. It took me, you know, probably two, three years training and then another three years of competing and losing before I turned pro. I mean you're talking again. You know half a decade or more and then moving forward, you know you want to talk about my career right now, where I'm at. I get it. People may look at me and think that I just had some like overnight success. I started business and things start cranking out.
Speaker 1:Lo and behold, that is not how it happened. Back in 2009 is when I officially graduated from tech with a personal training degree, got know, 2012, 2011, 12, I went to college, got my bachelor's in exercise science with a minor in psychology in 2015. Again, still part-time, but I went to college thinking with the goal that I was going to land a steady job, steady income benefits, you know, as a strength and conditioning coach somewhere, that I mean that was kind of the objective. That's what they sold me going in there. That was wrong. That did not pan out. But again, you're talking about to certify 2009, 2015, graduated. And then you know well, I was doing personal training on the side because I loved it and I was helping people because obviously I could, but I just it wasn't going anywhere. And then 2020 is when I officially started my business and that's when things really started clicking because I started investing a lot into myself and business mentors.
Speaker 1:But you could see, the timeline is massive. Like how many times am I going to get shot down thinking something's going to work and it just doesn't? And so I'm painting this picture for you guys before I really dig into this topic, because you know how you reach success in reaching your goals. You got to be very specific with what you qualify as success. You know setting your goals. Depending on what that goal is, it can definitely affect your confidence. You know, because if you are setting goals on outcomes, this is like when people say I just want to be happy, that's great, I get that, but how do you get happy A result? Something has to happen for you to be happy versus joy. Joy is different. Joy is internal. Joy is something you can have even when you're mourning, right, because someone could pass away, but you're joyful that they're at peace. Understand, so I say that to say when you guys are starting to set your goals.
Speaker 1:This is the topic that I'm going to dig into, because I want you to put some emphasis on some things other than just the outcome. Okay, and again, I don't want to confuse you guys. You guys do need to have goals and I think big goals are good, but this is what I want you to focus on. I want you to focus on the inputs versus just the outcome. Okay, and let me clarify what that means. You know what are inputs. You know inputs are your actions, your behaviors, the tactical steps, the processes that contribute towards your goal or outcome. Okay, so you know, if we're talking about health and fitness, this is when you're exercising regularly, you're getting those steps in, you're eating healthy meals. You're managing your time. You know all of these things are in your control. It's very important to understand your inputs are in your control, okay, which means you have the power over it. Now, what are outcomes? Okay, you do. I did say outcomes are your goals. These are the results or consequences, based off your inputs, but also can be determined by some circumstances outside of your control.
Speaker 1:So I go back to you know me skateboarding. The reason I did not continue to pursue skateboarding were from multiple injuries. I got a lot of injuries, specifically ankle injuries, that really put a lot of setback and inevitably got to a point where I just I couldn't do it as much as I wanted to. And I, you know, again, I wanted to go pro and I got really good. I got really good, but I had a shift in my life at that point in time. So you know that was one of the things that just it was just out of my control. You know I ran into some injuries.
Speaker 1:Same thing with school. You know, going to school, getting my certifications, all that kind of stuff Did I accomplish? Getting certified Did I accomplish, you know, getting my degrees? Yeah, but again, the big goal was so that I could have some sort of financial stability and get a job. That didn't happen and that was just, you know, that was the reality. Going out there looking for a job, there was nothing out there for me that would even pay remotely decent, which is also why I ended up in the restaurant. You know, it's crazy that I could make more money in a restaurant than getting a bachelor's degree, you know, and have a special specialized certification that you could only get with a bachelor's degree. It's just, you know, but again, out of my control, that's just how the economy was and so I say that as well.
Speaker 1:You know, going into, you know, some of your health and fitness goals, you know you do not want to just focus on how much weight did you lose, right, because again, your weight is not linear for one and two. You can't control if your weight's going to go up or down a pound a day. Right, there's water, there's, you know, sodium there's, you know, maybe you're, you're bloated, your digestive system, you haven't gone to the bathroom in two days. I mean, there's a lot of variables that can go into that Same thing. You know, with strength you can't get as you can't. There's only so strong you can get especially naturally right. So you know those sort of things. You also are a little bit out of your control, okay when it comes to the outcome. Your control okay when it comes to the outcome. And so I frame it this way, because you want to be really careful of the goals you set and how big you set them, because if you don't hit them or you don't reach the level that you expected, you know.
Speaker 1:The question is, how do you react to that? Do you feel defeated? Do you feel like your confidence is dwelling? Do you feel like you're just not good at anything? This can be. You can be your worst enemy, Just completely self-sabotage yourself because of an outcome. So my point is, instead of worrying about all the outcomes that you have, whether it's the scale or your strength or how you look, how can you refine your inputs, right? How can we refine your calories, your macros, the consistency, the steps? How can we make those better to get better results? And so if we can shift our idea of success from outcome to controlling inputs, your happiness and drive to continue will be significantly higher. Right, because now you're going to be seeing incremental micro doses of results, which is like okay, this is working, I'm moving, I'm going in the right direction and now you're going to be a lot happier, you're going to be a lot more motivated and you're going to keep pushing forward and inevitably quote unquote enjoy the journey. Right, that's what people mean when they say enjoy the journey. You see these micro doses of wins.
Speaker 1:And so another example would be you know, growing a garden. Think about growing a garden. Do you just throw seeds on the ground and just plop a chair and just watch? No, you can hope and pray all you want that those seeds are going to sprout, but what do you really have to do? You need to water them, you need to make sure that they're getting sunlight, you need to fertilize them. You know you have to do those inputs, those steps, to get that garden to grow. So I want you to think of that. You know, in your everyday life, what are the things you're doing every single day that gets you closer to that outcome? And focus on that, right?
Speaker 1:There's a saying that if somebody wants to lose weight, there's two types of people. There's one that focuses on dropping weight, and you know that's the only thing they look at. Or the other one is they don't focus on the weight dropping. They just focus on getting 10,000 steps a day, and who do you think is going to lose the weight? The one that focuses on those inputs and a lot of the stuff that we've been emphasizing here recently.
Speaker 1:I've been digging a lot into, you know, educating people with their hormones, especially with, you know, a lot of the clientele that we work in and everyday people. To be honest, I mean, like I made a comment on my Instagram the other day of like, hey, I was going. Mean, like I made a comment on my Instagram the other day of like, hey, I was going to kind of call out a certain type of person. But you know what this is going to be for everybody, because if I ask, hey, are you stressed, are you anxious? You know, do you have a little bit of anxiety? I think all of us can raise our hand to some extent, but what comes along with that is cortisol. So, since we were talking about cortisol levels recently, I just wanted to emphasize that fact even more, because if we can start to control those inputs, we can definitely mitigate the stress from things that are out of our control, which is also going to help regulate cortisol levels and which is also going to help regulate cortisol levels. So remember, cortisol is your stress hormone. It's released by the adrenals. If you didn't listen to our last podcast, I think that'd be a really good one if you want to dig a little bit more into specifically how to regulate cortisol and you know some symptoms and things like that.
Speaker 1:But we stress about a lot of things that we just have no control over, and that's the thing I tell everyone is like control what you can control and cope with what you can't. It sounds so simple. It sounds so simple. But this is also the reason why I always tell you guys, like I don't consume anything negative or toxic first thing in the morning, you know specifically the news, I don't, I don't want to. I mean even with TikTok, like I don't, I don't want to. I mean even with tiktok, like I don't turn that thing on because, honestly, like it's filled with political news and just crazy stuff I get is meant to like entertain and keep you scrolling, but I just I don't do that because One it sets the pace for my day, which is pretty toxic, and then, more than likely, I am going to have that on my mind and whoever I talk to, I'm going to end up saying, hey, mind. And whoever I talk to, I'm going to end up saying, hey, did you hear about this? And now I'm going to infect them. I don't want to do that. I want to promote positivity, I want to promote focus. This is why I have this podcast. So I'm not going to be talking about the news. There's tons of other podcasts I can talk about the news.
Speaker 1:I'm here to help you develop your mind, expand and ultimately, unmask your greatness. So, again, control what you can control, cope with what you cannot. Now I want to give you four steps that how you can start to apply this whole concept to your life right now. Okay, so the first one you have to create actionable steps to move you towards your goal. Ok, again, whatever your goal is, you got to have actionable, tangible steps. Ok, since we're on this health and fitness talk, let's keep it there with with some examples, for that would be, again, going back to you know, keeping track of your steps, tracking your calories, avoiding fried foods, keeping a water bottle with you all the time. I mean, these are actionable steps. That's going to get you closer to your goal if you are consistent at doing them Okay. The second, which is a second layer of the first, is that you got to track. You got to track your progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I talked to so many people about you know, well, I eat healthy, I watch what I eat. You know, okay, that's fine, I watch a lot of things every single day. But how do you know, like, how do you know how much you're consuming? How do you know? You know your portion size, not your neighbors or your best friends, like how do you know how much you need for your body? You don't, unless you track.
Speaker 1:And I was actually talking to a restaurant owner about this same kind of concept and I was like you know, I know you feel like it's a headache to track and you don't want to. You know, see how you know watch the macro numbers and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, listen, you don't have to do it forever, right, but in the beginning you need to. But I was like, think about your business. I was like do you just order food, track food trucks with, like no, no budget. You just kind of like order what you want and then you slap it on a menu and you don't pay attention to how much you're charging. You don't pay attention to how much your payroll is. You know taxes you got to pay, do you not? Do you just like completely, you know, black that out. It doesn't make a difference? Of course not. Your business would shut down real quick if you didn't budget your, your finances. And I was like so this is why you're successful there and you have a great business and you're making money because you're tracking those sort of metrics. So you can imagine, if you want that same kind of success with your physical well-being, you need to track what you're doing with your body, right? I mean, it's a logical explanation. Right, you can't just wing it. So you got to track progress.
Speaker 1:The third, and this is hard for this time okay, you got to detach from immediate results. Right, we are the society that we want instant gratification, we want things now. It is funny and not funny that society and life has made things so easy and convenient for us and unfortunately, a lot of that easy and convenient comes with a lot of unhealthy attributes. Right, fast food, doordash, uber Eats right, god forbid, you have to leave your house to get some food now, you know. Or get in the kitchen and cook something. That is a foreign task, apparently. So, again, if we can just reel back a little bit and detach from immediate results, okay, you know when you think about, when you hear the term investment, right, the first thing people when they think investment is typically like I have, you know, 401ks, or you know investment properties or whatever that I have to put a little bit into over time to accumulate a good ROI, a return on investment. So you know, if you're putting in, you know, x amount of dollars day after day, you know may not seem like very much in the beginning, but over the months, over the years, it accumulates to something big. That's the input you're inputting daily into your health, your wealth, your mindset. So if we can get away from the immediate results, you're going to again start to enjoy that journey.
Speaker 1:And fourth is audit and adjust. This is why it's so important to focus on the inputs versus the outcomes, because how can you audit and adjust just based off of outcomes if you're not tracking the inputs right? So, for example, you know if somebody's eating 1800 calories and walking 10,000 steps per day but they're not dropping weight, well then, what should they do? Well, there's a lot of things that they could try. They could try to maybe add more cardio. They could change the macro profile. They could. Maybe they're not strength training and they need to right. Those inputs can be adjusted. But if they're not tracking anything and they're like my weight's stuck, it's not moving, okay, well then you're just starting from a baseline again, or not not starting or stopping anything.
Speaker 1:So it's important to audit and adjust. Uh, you know, outside of even just health and fitness, I I do this every day. We encourage our clients to do this every day. At the end of the day, just jot down you know a couple things that went really well you or jot down something that didn't go well, right, because if you can bring awareness to something that's not doing well for you or not providing a result that you want, well, guess what You're in control. It's an input. You can change it. You can get a different result.
Speaker 1:So understand like you are in control of a lot more than you realize, and taking the outcome emotional subsection out is going to be super helpful for you, because we all get caught up in our feelings. You are not your emotions, right. It's okay to be mad, sad, upset, whatever. It doesn't mean you have to act like it right. If you have your tactics, your habits, your strategic processes, you can continue doing that, feeling the way that you feel. I do it every single day. Okay, and many of you do it every day. You just got to show up. Sometimes you got to put on a face, you got to show up. It's half the battle, okay. So you know most people will quit because they are so attached to the outcome, but they never stay in the game with the inputs. Stay in the game, learn the skills right.
Speaker 1:Your inputs equal regular small victories. If you put all that emphasis on the outputs, what comes with that? Stress, anxiety, potentially defeat, especially if you have really big goals. Because we have to understand it's going to take time, it's going to take work, it's going to be hard. We're probably going to fail a couple times along the way, but I don't like to look at it as failure. It's a learning curve again, if you're tracking those inputs and this. This is how you're going to fail a couple times along the way, but I don't like to look at his failure. It's a learning curve Again. If you're tracking those inputs and this, this is how you're going to fall in love with the process. You know, I keep saying that, like, if we can get those small victories, man, we're feeling good every day. We just need a little, a little boost, a little droplet of motivation, and if we can set those inputs up like that, you can be successful for the long run. And if we can set those inputs up like that, you can be successful for the long run. You know, a pro tip for you guys is anything that you're doing, any of these inputs that you're doing for your goals.
Speaker 1:Find a way to make this easy, potentially automated, in your life, right? You know, again, I'm a coach too, but I also have coaches and mentors. You want to make it easy. Find someone that's been there and done that and just tell them to give you the map and you start executing right and they help you audit it along the way. Great way. If you're doing things on your own, I mean, let's just talk, simply. Let's say, your input's tracking calories and macros, right. You use an app like MyFitnessPal. It's free. You can actually start saving meals inside of there that you eat on a regular and just now you don't have to search it, you don't have to like click through different ones, it's just like it's already saved. You just click it and it's in, right, automated. Make things easy. The more easy and convenient we can make things, the easier your life's going to be. We already got tons of things to do on a regular. Easy and convenient we can make things, the easier your life's going to be. We already got tons of things to do on a regular.
Speaker 1:So, but you got to understand, you know, wanting to hit your goals is is not enough. That's why I talk to people on a you know, before they get in the program, like what's your goal? And they tell me um, okay, why? Right, we all. We want to know the why, of course, but just wanting to hit that goal is not enough to actually get you that outcome. You need to learn the skills to reach your goals and learn how to apply them to your current lifestyle and also learn how to pivot when seasons happen in your life. The skills is so crucial, which is why we are so pushed on educating our clients, because at some point they're going to go off on their own and we want to make sure that it's successful long term. So learning those skills will be a game changer for them.
Speaker 1:So I summarize this to say success is not singular. Okay, it is not a singular act, but a process. It's not one thing to get you there, it's a thousand things that add up to what you want. All right, so I hope you guys get some value from this. Again, focus on the small wins. This is going to keep you focused. Don't get caught up in, like the long-term goals. Do you need them? Yes, but with the inputs. This is how you will stay focused. Enjoy the journey and learn to love whatever you're you're shooting for.
Speaker 1:I don't ever, honestly, I tell people I don't want to reach my goal, because then, like, what am I going to be doing? You know what I mean. Is there, is it just? Is it just over? Is this it, um? I I enjoy a little bit of stress, but more so of like the challenge to learn something new and finally figure it out, have that aha moment to tackle whatever was in front of me. It makes that victory so much sweeter. It makes it so much sweeter for me and so, like I like that's kind of like what gets me going every single day, learning something new and applying it, and be like heck, yeah, let's go. You know, and sometimes it takes me way longer, right, I already told you it took me years to do a lot of other stuff, so I can't say it always happens easy.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, I hope this brings you guys some value. Thank you for listening. Keep crushing your goals. If you guys are ever interested in wanting to get some help with your health, your fitness, dropping that extra 20 pounds and doing it the right way, definitely shoot me a DM on Instagram coach. Underscore CAC. That's K-A-C-A and we'll make sure that we're aligned, see if you're a good fit for the program and potentially get you in All right. So I hope you guys have a good rest of the day. I'm out, peace.