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
Six Traps That Keep You Stuck (And How To Escape Them)
Ever wonder why some people seem stuck in a cycle of mediocrity while others continuously level up? The answer might surprise you.
In this illuminating episode, I share a fascinating experiment where I asked ChatGPT to act as someone with zero motivation, discipline, or goals - then coach others to be the same. The six strategies it generated created a perfect blueprint for failure that many of us unconsciously follow.
From the comfort traps engineered into modern society to our tendency to surround ourselves with "assigned" rather than "aligned" relationships, I break down how these subtle patterns keep us from reaching our potential. You'll discover why putting timestamps on your goals dramatically increases your success rate, how screen time silently steals your future, and why most of us focus on what's missing rather than celebrating progress.
Drawing from both personal experience and my work with clients, I share actionable strategies for breaking these patterns, including the powerful T-chart exercise that clarifies your path forward. I explore why expanding beyond your familiar bubble through intentional environments and continuous learning creates exponential growth opportunities that simply aren't possible otherwise.
Whether you're struggling with fitness goals, career advancement, or personal development, this episode provides the perspective shift needed to identify what's really holding you back. By reverse-engineering failure, you'll gain clarity on the exact changes needed to create the life you truly want.
Ready to unmask what's keeping you from greatness? Subscribe, share, and let's elevate together. After all, giving yourself grace during the journey is essential - but so is refusing to settle for less than you're capable of becoming.
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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 today, today, I got something for you guys. I got you some nuggets that's going to get your brain thinking differently. Okay, and I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:You know one of the things if you're on this episode and you're listening to my episodes or other episodes in a podcast, you're already on the right path. You're already putting effort to work on yourself, whether it comes to your personal development, your health. Maybe listen to podcasts that have to do with real estate or whatever trait you want to learn about. There's so much free information out there. It's actually really, really nice, because back in the day there wasn't all of this, I mean, you'd have to go to a library, I'm sure, to learn about whatever you wanted to learn about, and that was a whole process in itself. It's not at your fingertips anymore, but I was having some conversations with a couple individuals this week and I have a lot of people obviously reach out to me about asking me questions about health and fitness. But you know, one of the things I told this one individual was the fact that if you're trying to learn something new, give yourself a little bit of grace. You know it's a new venture. You're going to live, you're going to learn and as long as you are putting the effort, you're going to be fine, and I you know. The thing I told him was if you knew that you weren't good at something and you're just complaining about it and you're not trying to get any better and you're just trying to be a victim of your circumstances, then I don't feel bad for you. I really don't. I mean, you are your own worst enemy at that point in time. So I could tell this person was he's trying, he's putting the effort, he's asking questions, and I said, give yourself some grace, but keep doing that and keep learning and you will figure things out. And it may just take some time. And so you know some of that. I mean really just kind of correlates to everything that you do in your life.
Speaker 1:But I have so many people message me, asking me questions about how to lose weight, what should I eat? What about working out? You know everything that comes along with that and you know, if I were to sit down and tell somebody, you know, make a T chart. On one side, I want you to list all the things that could make you healthier, right, and then on the other side, I want you to write down all the things that would make you unhealthy. You know what are all those things? More than likely, that side of the chart is the list is gonna be bigger, and so I had this interesting little experiment that I wanted to do and I'm gonna share this with you because I think this is a really cool experiment.
Speaker 1:So obviously a lot of you guys have used chat GPT and we use it for certain things as well, it's a really useful tool, but you can get pretty creative with it. Actually, right right now, big hype is people are uploading a picture of themselves and asking chat GPT to roast them and it and it is pretty hilarious, to be honest. But what I did this time was I went into ChatGPT and I told them I want you to act as an individual that is struggling with motivation, has a lack of discipline, you are not goal-oriented by any means. You're just unhealthy and I want you to coach others to be the same as you. So, completely opposite, right, Just go completely backwards versus hey, I'm a fitness and nutrition coach. How do you get people healthy? Let's go and reverse engineer it, and I think you can solve a lot of complex problems when you start to do things in this reverse engineer method. All right, and it spit out six points that I want to share with you guys, because when I read these to you, I want you to just think and reflect. If any of it applies to you, all right, and I'm not, you know, trying to pinpoint or be mean or anything like that, but I want you guys to just reflect and think, okay, and I'm going to give my perspective on some of these. So, again, remember these are things that are going to make you if somebody was going to coach you to be lazy, to have no motivation, to make you unhealthy and not have any goals. This is what they're going to coach you on, okay?
Speaker 1:So, number one focus on comfort. Encourage others to prioritize comfort and immediate gratification over long-term goals. Emphasize the pleasures of indulging in cravings and avoid discomfort. 2. Avoid accountability. Teach methods to avoid accountability, such as blaming circumstances on others for setbacks, and encourage a victim mindset rather than taking ownership of actions. 3. Promote inactivity. Suggest sedentary habits and discourage any form of physical activity or exercise. Frame it as unnecessary or too challenging to incorporate into daily routine, undermine goal setting, discourage setting goals or planning for the future. Instead, advocate for living in the moment without thinking about long-term consequences or personal growth.
Speaker 1:Number five limit self-improvement. Discourage self-improvement efforts and learning new skills. Encourage staying with familiar comfort zones and avoiding challenges that could lead to personal growth. And number six negative reinforcement. Use negative reinforcement to reinforce unhealthy behaviors. So, for example, criticize efforts to change or improve and highlight perceived failures or difficulties. And ChatGPT ends this with. By promoting these behaviors and attitudes, I'd likely perpetuate a cycle of stagnation and discourage positive change. It is an interesting perspective to consider how these approaches can influence others negatively.
Speaker 1:So that is that's what it spit out for me and I was like, wow, that's pretty good. And then I started thinking I was like, wow, society, I see a lot of this in society and it is sad. And if we can bring some awareness to this, I think there could be a little bit of encouragement to potentially make a change, if they are aware that there is a problem. If there's no awareness, then you know, of course, there's no problem and they're fine. But if they wanted more, if they wanted to be better and, you know, show up as a better parent, leader, business owner, whatever.
Speaker 1:These are things that are probably circulating in your mind, and so I kind of made some points on each of these that I want to just kind of touch on, because number one says, you know, focus on comfort, you know, and what are the things that are in our life and, honestly, it's not our fault. Society has made things for us to be comfortable and easy and quick and fast. I mean, this is where you know, ai is starting to come in, but things that a lot of us utilize are things like Uber Eats. I mean, god forbid you have to leave your house anymore, you know. And imagine having to go actually hunt for your food that's off the table. I know people are going to be dying, you know. You know comfort as far as scrolling on social media all day long doom scrolling. You know.
Speaker 1:I know so many people that will work all day long and they just want to escape that life and they'll go home and they'll just, they'll hop on their phone and just scroll or even just get on TV and watch you know, netflix and watch a movie, and there's nothing wrong with that every once in a while. But if you do this every single day and you don't like your life and you don't like your you know nine to five job, then what are you doing? Why aren't you trying to do something else with that extra time to get yourself out of a position like that? You know working out, going to the gym. You know people don't want to work anymore, so they will avoid that. They'll avoid wanting to go to the gym. They'll avoid wanting to go to the gym. They'll avoid wanting to go for a walk. These are just extra things that they need to tack onto their lifestyle. But doing the extra is when it's going to get you to separate yourself from those that are willing to do the work and willing to not do the work, and the outcome is very different for both of those. So I would encourage you guys, you know it's okay, I'm not saying don't use these, these different apps and technology, but if you are using on a regular, I would really bring some awareness to your life and see, like you know, what can I change? Just pick one. Just pick one to start with. Okay. Number two was the avoid accountability. I've done a lot of episodes on this specifically.
Speaker 1:But if you are not happy with where you're at, you must change your environment. You can change your environment. I don't care what kind of circumstances you are in, I don't care how hard it is. It is a direct decision that you are choosing to stay where you are at, unless you are in prison, that you are choosing to stay where you are at, unless you are in prison. You can make a choice to change and a lot of that just starts with choosing the people you start to surround yourself with. This is why my life started to really make a shift when I started going to the gym and I know some of you may be listening and you're like I work out at home because of time, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:But then you need to find a little more time somewhere else to start surrounding yourself with people that are goal oriented, those that have a growth mindset and trying to do something better in their life to help motivate and encourage you. You need to find that kind of community, and there's. They're everywhere, right, they're everywhere. You don't have to go to a bar to hang out with people. Go to a coffee shop, go to a co-working space, go to a workshop, a seminar. Those are amazing places to meet people.
Speaker 1:And again, if you are someone like myself, that was very introverted, I'll tell you what a mentor told me one time, because one of the goals when you go to one of these big seminars is to network and to talk. And he said I get it, there's a lot of people here. I know it can be very intimidating, especially if you are an introvert, but I promise you when you come to these events, these events are designed, they are made and encouraged to network. Everybody here wants the same thing they want to chat, they want to talk, they want to learn. So don't feel uncomfortable, because if somebody else is uncomfortable, you could also break that mold too. So, you know, going to those sort of places, I would say, is even easier to talk to people versus, like, you know, a coffee shop right, I would probably meet somebody there versus just start random conversations.
Speaker 1:And again, that's me personally, because, again, I'm not the best at just going up to people and, you know, talking about their life. You know so, again, and choose your friends wisely. You know your friends for the most part of your life, they are assigned. They are not aligned with your missions, meaning that when you were in school, your school friends were your friends because you went to school together, that your parents put you in. You know your work friends are friends because you guys work at the same corporation or company. It is not, and I would question if you guys did not go to school together, if you guys didn't work together, would you still be friends? If the answer is yes, that's amazing. If not, then it's questionable. I would start to be looking for other avenues to get with people, and friends come in seasons, okay. So again, think of that. You know three.
Speaker 1:Number three on his list was promote inactivity. I mean I don't feel like I got to talk much about this, but I mean most people just they're exhausted. Time is limited. You know they prioritize, you know doing things for their kids or for their spouse and leave no time for themselves. But I would ask you to look at your screen time and ask you how much time are you spending on your phone? That would be a first place to look. The second thing I would say is are you really managing your time? Are you time blocking? Do you wake up the same time? Do you go to bed the same time? Do you block off time for you? You got to do that and if it's not exercise, it's got to be something. It doesn't always have to be, you know, fitness related, but you need to give yourself time for you to refill your cup.
Speaker 1:Okay, four was undermine goal setting. This is massive. If you don't have a goal, if you don't know what you're shooting for, you're drifting. You're just drifting in life and life is going to throw you wherever it feels like and it's probably not where you want to be. You need to set some goals for yourself, everything from your personal to your financial, to your health. All of those need to be aligned.
Speaker 1:And, again, setting goals and not just set goals. I actually had a conversation with a guy at a gym. I was like you cannot just set a goal without putting a timestamp on it, because then there's no urgency, right? If you have three goals that you want to accomplish and there's no? This got it. Number one, number two, number three are in order. They have to get done in order. What many people will do is they'll jump back and forth, they'll go from goal one to goal two, to goal three, to goal two to goal three, and eventually what happens is there's a lot of work getting done, but the goal is never hit right. It's just a lot of busy work but we're not actually completing anything. So we need to get very dialed in and focused on what is the first objective we need to do execute, finish, move to the next one, and so when you put time to a goal, this is how you're able to achieve things at a much, much faster rate, and this is a lot of times when people come into our program that I mean this is the first thing we got to talk about is the goals and setting a realistic expectation and many times, extending that time duration to reach that goal will help ease the stress off of you, right? Just because in our program we can and it's, you know, I would say our average to drop 20, 30 pounds is in a four month time span, you know, and I feel like that's very safe and healthy and in a decent amount of time. I may not tell them that because then it really just gets them hyper-focused on just the scale versus really watching the growth that's coming along with the progress, which kind of goes into number five, which is limit self-improvement.
Speaker 1:You know you have to do some sort of personal development in the world, especially if you come from a smaller town like I do. You know the people that are here are amazing and they're great, but they only know what they know. And if these people have and I've worked, I promise you, I used to work in the restaurant and I have a waitress that was there she was, oh man, almost 70. You know she was in her sixties and she told me she never left Spartanburg her whole life. Okay, and? And then when she said Spartanburg, I was like what do you mean Spartanburg? And she was like I don't even know what Greenville looks like. Greenville is like 30, 40 minutes away from us, so that gives you some context of like this individual spent her whole life in like a 20 mile radius, which is insane when you think about the whole world. So I say this to say that she was an amazing person, super nice, very you know Southern lady, but her experience, her knowledge was very limited and she was kind of probably very set in the way that she thought so how can you expand from somebody like that? And so this is why I tell people you know you got to think outside of the box.
Speaker 1:If you're already listening to this podcast, you already are on that mission. If you're listening to other podcasts and you're reading and you're looking on YouTube and you're traveling and you're going to these workshops and seminars, you are on the right path. I encourage you guys to do that. I have met amazing people in different programs that I have been in that I still connect with to this day and it's awesome, it's a good feeling to see them winning and they can kind of keep up with me and see what I'm doing. So it's really cool. It's really cool to see stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And the last one I'll just kind of touch on, was that negative reinforcement? This is. This is us as humans. We love to focus on what's not going right. Right, we, we love to talk about everything that's going on in other people's lives. That's, you know, and my wife and her family. They call this chisme. It's a gossip called chisme and like gossip. They want to gossip about everything and I just, you know I get pulled into it sometimes but honestly, I really try to avoid that as much as possible. I want to focus on what am I doing next? What's the goal? What's going right? You know it's very easy to focus on the things that's going wrong.
Speaker 1:Many people that come into our program, you know they may just be hyper-focused on the scale, and this is pretty common. People get hyper-focused on the scale and they're like I'm not dropping weight as fast as I'd like to, or I didn't drop weight one week, and you know we got to give them the science on that too. But then, because of the way that we track all the metrics of their lifestyle, we can actually, instead of looking about how far we need to go, let's take a moment, let's sit down and look how far you've come. You know you came from not, you know, not waking up, hitting the snooze button all the time to not going to bed till like two in the morning. We've got you waking up at the same time immediately prepared for the gym. We've got you getting good quality sleep every single night. You are not drinking any more sugary drinks. We got you working out three days a week. And all this you were not doing prior to being with us.
Speaker 1:And so I say that to say you are making more progress than you realize. And when you start to talk to somebody about that, they're like oh, you're right, and it's just because this is the way that our brains are wired. It's just wired to focus on things that are holding us back, and this is where a lot of that anxiousness and depression start to drive from. We start creating all these scenarios in our head versus like hey, just let's just get back in the moment, reflect and okay, what's the next objective we got to do? And just focus on that. So I hope this was helpful. I wanted to share that because it was kind of just interesting for myself as I was kind of playing around in the office.
Speaker 1:But reflect on some of the things that I said. Okay, reflect on the things that I said. Maybe even do yourself a little T-chart and think of all the things that would stop you from reaching your fitness and financial goals, or relationship goals. Make separate T-charts for those. I think if you start writing the things that would hold you back, then you can get like, okay, how do I fix that, how can I shift that? And just start with one at a time. Again, don't over, don't over complicate things for yourself. All right, so I love you guys. I will see you on the next one. I actually have a really special guest on the next one, so keep a lookout for that. You'll get tons of value from this individual as well, and have a good week, peace.