#32 - How Northstar Goals are Changing Facilitating
Andrew talks about how with the use of his “North Star Goal” approach there has been a greater level of success in overcoming porn addiction through clarifying one’s purpose, goals and how we want to show up in life.
Why this is the best show ever
Take 10!
Where is Sammy?
What is the “North Star Goal”?
Where did the idea come from?
Take this challenge if you want results
How has the High Noon accountability program improved with “North Star Goals”?
What analogy does Andrew give about goal setting?
North Star Goals in relation to sexual integrity
An example of becoming more present in life
What happens if you just use generalities?
What does self mastery lead to?
Why do you want to sign up for High Noon’s programs?
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love: Welcome back, everybody, Andrew Love here. That's my radio voice. Welcome back to WKCHIGHNON, the place for your space. I don't know what any of that means, but Sammy is not here so expect a lot of that in this episode. I wanted to just say that this is take number 10 of the same episode, okay? Things keep on happening technologically or otherwise that are preventing me from just getting this idea out into the world. But I'm going to, this is a renter sewed. And I pre-recorded it or I recorded it before with Sammy. Then when I downloaded the episode from our software, my voice was, and I quote, "okay, oh". And so I had to throw it out. And it was a disappointment because I was like, I was possessed that time I was just like on fire with this idea.
So I'm going to not only try to recapture that magic but add fire to the magic. But because of the fact that we already recorded it, and the fact that Sammy is presently, he's waiting for his child to enter this world. His wife is like five days overdue with their kid. And Sammy is just like the life coach for this kid knocking on the door being like, "Hey, kid, do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want to come into this world or not?" He's just yelling. No, Sammy would never do that. He's but, he's definitely actively waiting for this baby.
It's, I know that feeling. It's just like, the greatest. It's like Christmas morning times a trillion. Okay, so Sammy is there. So I'm going to do this by myself. So let's do this together. I'm going to do this by myself, together with you. And today's episode is all about the Northstar goal concept. Okay? And this is something that I've been hot on, it's like crazy. I'm slightly obsessed with it and I talked about it a lot. So I just wanted to formally put it into digital format so I can let it be. So in terms of the nomenclature, the terminology of Northstar, I don't know where it came from. I think it just came to me but it could have been somewhere deep in my subconscious but I just started calling it, the Northstar goal. Today somebody asked me whether if he googled this concept, if he could just do research on his own, I was like, I don't know. I have no idea. That's a real bird sound, if you can hear it. Sounds like the fakest bird sound ever. I'm sorry. I'm distracted. Sammy, where are you?
So I don't think anybody else is saying this term. I'm not claiming it as my own, but I don't know. It's not like coined by anybody. But the Northstar goal is a paradigm shift from where I used to facilitate groups and from how I used to help people recover from pornography. So this is a really important episode if you are helping somebody recover from pornography or any bad habit, or compulsion or addiction. Or if you, yourself are struggling with a bad habit, compulsion or addiction. This is really, really important concept and it's based off of our experience.
Okay, so Sammy and Uncle David and myself, we had all been facilitating groups for a while and then we took a step back for quite some time because we were traveling. We traveled the world in 2019. I was in almost 30 countries, a lot of it, I mean, all of it. I did High Noon stuff but we do presentations. And so it's really hard to manage facilitating a group and I didn't want to disappoint anybody. So we all took a step back, which was awesome because it gave other people a chance to step up. But then recently, we've been asked by other people, there's just like this demand of people asking us, and so we've all, you know, stepped up, Sammy has a group. Uncle David has two or three, I have two now. And in that space, I got a lot of perspective, because I've still been helping people, you know, here and there. But I gained a lot of wisdom myself by trying stuff on myself. New ways of conducting my life and setting goals and reaching them.
And I have now applied them to my group, and I found them to be really powerful in many different ways. I feel like having a Northstar goal changes how people communicate with themselves and their goals. How they communicate with each other within the group and how they communicate with their futures and the potential and you know, life itself. So I hope I've sold you on the idea. I hope you're a buyer, because I got this hot thing in the market coming out in the marketplace. So please test it out, okay. I'm going to give you a framework here. What we do is 90 days, okay? It's a three-month trial. So I want you to try this for three months, if you want to see really good results, okay. And 90 days is a really magical number because it's hard to really, I mean, if somebody's been watching porn, and they're in their 20s, they've been watching porn for 10 years plus.
So to expect to resolve everything in one week is crazy. I mean, it's not very realistic or healthy, because we always have a lot of blind spots that we don't know about. It takes time to unveil those. And so, you know, 90 days is a good time to make a lot of progress. But then you can also stop at the end of these 90 days and look back. Figure out what it is that you learned and how you would like to reorient yourself for the next 90 days. So you can stop, assess and say, "Okay, this worked. This didn't work." And then you can say, "Okay, moving forward, I've learned this", and all of a sudden, you're growing and you're growing and you're growing and you're an unstoppable growth machine.
Okay, so 90 days is really special. And with the inclusion of this Northstar goal, those 90 days all of a sudden become connected to each other. So this is one of the limitations of the past because in our high noon groups, we were having people come in to the calls and check in about how their week was. Most people would say things like, "Oh, I slipped", you know, "I watch porn a couple times". And these were the circumstances and or, "I masturbated", you know, blah, blah, blah. And then, that was the end of that week. Now, I'm going to try this this week. But the weeks themselves weren't necessarily connected. And the only true metric for growth was how many times you slipped according to your own, you know, assessment of what a slip is. And that was good.
It definitely helped a bunch of people. I'm not gonna poopoo that. I am not gonna poopoo it. But, now this Northstar goal, It's like every week is very much connected. And here's what I'm talking about, okay? The Northstar goal is a macro goal, based off of something that you really want to be, do or have. I want to be this type of person or I want to have this type of attribute. Or I want to do these kind of things during the day, right? So you're embodying something. And that's for what you want at the end of the three months. So if you could imagine, an example is like, what would a perfect day be like, in three months from now? If you, not only were not messing up in the area of sexual integrity, let's just say what would a perfect day look like? You're focused. You're connected to people. You're confident, you're, I don't know, whatever it is. You have to paint that picture. But the point is that, before I even start a group these days, we have an orientation session, where we go into finding an emotional connection to your Northstar goal.
So that it's really coming from you, not out of some sense of obligation, or anything, but that's something that you really, really want. That's important because that becomes your ultimate guide for the next three months. I hope that makes sense. Because I don't have Sammy to be like "Andrew, what are you talking about?" So I'm just kind of going by myself here. And then week to week, what you're doing is you're setting these mini goals of testing out habits. Adopting new habits, new mental frameworks, different things that you can do in order to get to that Northstar goal. And it's like you're experimenting. You have this hypothesis, this thesis and then these week-to-week experiments are getting you closer to the ultimate end.
Now, I've been seeing really good results with this because people are asked deeper questions of themselves. They ask themselves deeper questions when they do this. Instead of saying, "I slipped. Why did I slip?". It's more like, "Hey, I have this deep desire to be this. And yet, I'm lazy and yet I'm forgetful. And yet I'm careless, and yet I hurt the people around me." And then you have to start asking deeper questions, why? Why, if I want this thing right in front of me, my vision, this thing that I've set for myself this Northstar goal. I want this and yet I keep on redirecting myself. Right? You set this straight course. And yet you veer to the left, you veer to the right, you zig and zag. So it's really, really important to have a Northstar goal as your way of, when you get discombobulated you look up and and you say, "Well, where am I supposed to be right now?". I want to give you an analogy. That will help contextualize this very, very clearly.
So with fitness, okay. With physical fitness, it's very easy to relativize where you are at in terms of your fitness. It's super easy to be like, "Am I fit enough?". Well fit enough compared to what? And are you really doing the things that your body wants you to do? Most of us aren't. We're not eating the right foods. We're not getting enough of the right exercises that our body wants. We're not sleeping enough. We're having too much caffeine. You know, there's a lot of issues that we adopt just because we don't have a really clear Northstar for our physical body. And so that extra slice of pizza, what's the difference? A dessert, why not? Right? It's like anything goes because you don't really have necessarily a standard. You don't really have a standard because you don't have a real clear goal. But here's the magic of a goal. Imagine this, imagine you felt compelled to run a marathon. Let's say you were running a marathon for really good cause. There's just somebody you know, that was maybe struggling with cancer and you wanted to join one of those marathons and you want to do it with all your heart. Well, guess what? If you start training for that marathon, the second you get out of your house and start running, you're going to notice how out of shape you are.
All of a sudden, you're "I'm healthy enough" goes to "Wow, I'm incredibly out of shape." And it's like true for everybody, I know people who do fitness for a living and they also lose their level of fitness sometimes. Right? So it's one we're not, we don't have clear goals. Our standards are very much lowered, okay? So all of a sudden when you are neat, you have this clear goal of running a marathon, then you realize how much your food impacts your ability to run well. How much you sleep impacts the lethargy in your body in your mind. How much caffeine dries you out, you know. There's all every aspect of your life is suddenly impacted by this one goal of running a marathon. It's crazy. It's really crazy. You're sleeping every aspect of you. So that's just your physical body. Now let's go into your sexual integrity.
When you have a clear Northstar goal, it really is starts to bring a lot of your bad habits up to the surface. And you can address them one by one with the momentum that you're moving towards your Northstar goal. And just to make sure that you're still with me, I want to give you some examples here, right? There's one guy that I am working with and he realized that his sleeping patterns, things pertaining to sleep, before sleep and after sleep, those are his dangerous times. That's when he makes the biggest sexual regrets, like the biggest mistakes. That's when he's zoned out on his phone and can binge watch porn for hours. You know, before bed, when he should be sleeping and also when he gets up when he should be getting up and doing stuff with his life. So what he decided is I want to own, his Northstar goals, I want to create sustainable nighttime like bedtime routines. Winding down routines and also morning routines that get me fired up for the day, that get me connected to myself, that give me power. And that gives me purpose so that I'm walking with, you know, clarity and power and purpose. And so he every week now, is setting these goals of trying different things to do before bed.
So then again, it puts into question well, is he drinking caffeine too late into the day? Is he drinking too many liquids? Is he waking up at night? Is he doing enough push ups? Is he being physically you know, exerting his physical vitality enough or does he have pent up stored up energy?
Meditation is coming into play now. Prayer is coming into play, God's word is coming into play. So what you can see is based on wanting to have better nighttime routines, this is impacting his spiritual life very clearly. Because now he sees the meditation that he does as a means, not as an end. I should meditate. A lot of us feel, I should pray more. Why? I don't know, because I feel like I should. Right? Well, no. Prayer serves a very good purpose. Why not pray to feel really connected to the source, to heavenly parent, to God so that you can feel more connected to the humanity around you and to the world around you. There's so many reasons to do things if you have a clear goal. That was a very generalized statement. There's so many reasons to adopt healthy habits when you have a clear goal to strive for.
Another guy really wants to have more presence. He wants to be fully present. His mind, his heart, his spirit, his body wants to be totally present with his wife and with his kids. When he's around them. He feels like he's too distracted. And so week-to-week, he's learning. Oh, okay, I need to put away money my phone at a certain time so that I can go to bed and talk to my wife at night instead of being separated from her and being on my phone in my own world, right? It means waking up earlier than his kids. It means, helping his kids go to bed earlier so that they can be in a better mood and also that he can spend time winding down with them. So his family's all being impact and his life, his own spiritual life, his own need for meditation to be more present. All these things come into play in service of him, reaching his Northstar goal. And again, he's spent time to figure out what it means to be more connected to his wife and kids, you know, as defined by him. Okay, so let's talk about you now. What is a Northstar goal that you could strive for?
Now remember, it's not helpful if the Northstar goal is too far fetched. Like to be the king of the cosmos or to be a multi billionaire like in 90 days, you know. But rather something that you really deeply want.
A goal not from society, not from some sort of peer pressure that you got but something that you truly want to be, do or have. Okay? And then who can you be accountable to on a weekly basis? To set goals in respect to that Northstar goal and to reassess every week. Did this habit work or did this habit not work? Should I continue doing it with some tweaks or should I just throw it all away and try something new? That's the beauty of the Northstar goal because that never changes.
But how you get there may change. I know some people that have adopted. I want to do all these push ups and I want to do all this stuff. And then within a week, I just say, well, did it help you, in respect to your Northstar goal? They say, "No, not at all." And I was just doing it because I felt like I need to do something.
So that's really good to look at. What goals from week-to-week will help you reach the ultimate goal of your Northstar goal. So think about that, please, this is not Child's Play, because I really fundamentally believe that when you think and speak and operate in generalities, you will never get those things that are buried deep in your heart. Because you can't even express what it is that you want clearly. So how could you possibly get it? If you go into a store and you say, "Hi, I would like a thing." They'd be like, "Okay, what kind of thing you're like?" I don't know the thing that makes me happy. And then they're like, "Do a can opener, a cat, what do you want?" You're like, "I don't know, I just want to be happy." So the same is true of your relationship with yourself and your relationship with God, your relationship with other people. The clearer you are about the type of man or woman that you want to be and start really describing that in clear terms.
A person who has confidence, generous, loving person, forgiving person, well, then how can you embody these things more from week-to-week basis? Okay? I hope this really helps because I've seen really good results so far. And that doesn't mean that everybody all of a sudden is transforming at an expedited rapid rate. But what I do see happening is that this Northstar goal concept is causing people to see themselves more clearly.
The good stuff and the difficult stuff to look at. And they're asking themselves much deeper questions about their destructive habits. And about why they settle for them, and what they would like instead. Because if you can't say what you would like to do with your sexual energy, then you're going to always end up wasting and squandering it, if that's your habit. And if you just teach yourself to not squander, don't watch porn. Don't masturbate. You can only hold your breath for so long. You can only, you know, sit and wait for so long. You got to do something with your body. You got to do something with your mind and your heart and your spirit, something that occupies your senses with productive means that gives results to your future and to this world. When we're truly surrounded with purpose and meaning then we have a lot of momentum.
So I hope this helps. Again, please, if you have any questions, let us know this Northstar goal is really really important. I have adopted it. It's really helped me already just to stay clear on what type of person I want to be. Because I, myself, haven't struggled with porn in many, many, many years. Not to brag, I just, I have other problems. Trust me. Sometimes I'm a cranky old man, and I'm still in my 30s. So I've got other stuff to deal with.
And so I'm working on that stuff. So regardless of where you are at in your journey, we should all be setting very clear Northstar goals for our life, and especially in they've sexual integrity. That doesn't, also sexual integrity, last thing, doesn't just mean, are you watching porn or not? It also means well, how is your sexual intimacy? If you're single, that means, am I talking with my parents? Am I talking with my friends in a healthy way about God centered sexuality? Because not talking about sex is also not great. We should talk about it.
It's important topic, but in the right way, in the right context with the right people. And if you are married, then yeah, building sexual integrity means sexual intimacy. It means loving connections. It means, you know, becoming a heavenly channel, good couple, that's what I mean. So wherever you're at, please try this out. Test it out before you poopoo it or fifi it or whatever. Throw it aside, like a moldy rag. Please test it out, be scientific, and you will be pleasantly surprised with how much you can grow in three months and how specifically you can call your shots.
Okay, in terms of life and in terms of what High Noon is trying to do. We're trying to help you get self-reflection down so you can figure out where your bad habits came from, and how you can change them, and turn the self reflection into self awareness.
So you can see yourself in real time. And then that leads to self mastery, which is predicting the future because if you know what kind of person you're going to be, because you're committed to being that kind of person, then whatever circumstance pops up, you'll be that kind of person. So it doesn't matter. You know, who you meet next week on the street.
If you're committed to being a happy person that is loving to the people that you meet, then it doesn't matter. You can predict, I'm going to meet somebody next week, and I'm going to be happy and loving to them, because that's who you are. So self-mastery is really where we're going here and it starts with you, right? And if you can master yourself then you can master the universe. He-Man, and She-Ra, sorry, I know this is a female show to She-Ra. She was pretty cool.
So I hope this helped. I said that 17 times, and I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.