#1 Performance Coach: Do THIS Daily To CRUSH Your Goals
Rich Roll interviews performance coach Brad Stolberg about how to achieve excellence and crush goals in 2026. Rather than focusing on motivation and big audacious targets, Stolberg emphasizes process-oriented thinking, values alignment, and breaking goals into tiny daily wins—arguing that genuine excellence requires consistency, self-compassion, and accepting that 99.9% of the journey happens in the unglamorous climb, not at the peak.
Key takeaways
- • The biggest trap with New Year's goals is all-or-nothing thinking; when life inevitably disrupts your plan, focus instead on the smallest possible steps and evaluate whether your goal aligns with your core values.
- • Goals should be guided by your values, not social expectations—identify 3-5 core values (mastery, community, health, etc.), define what they mean to you, then ensure your pursuits support them rather than just chasing external outcomes.
- • Break large goals into manageable daily wins using a process mindset: set the big goal, identify component parts, then largely forget the goal and focus on small daily victories—as Olympic bobsledder Kali Humphreys said, "I just try to win more workouts than I lose."
- • Excellence requires holding opposing forces simultaneously: you need both self-discipline and self-compassion, intensity and joy, striving and surrender—the people who sustain high performance are "humble badasses" who combine toughness with kindness.
- • Curiosity is the antidote to fear; when facing challenges, shift from a threat mindset to genuine curiosity ("brave new world") because the brain's curiosity and fear pathways are mutually exclusive—this applies whether you're deadlifting or having a child.
- • Build a multi-room identity house rather than staking everything on one pursuit; having diverse identities (parent, artist, athlete, community member) protects you from total identity collapse when one area fails and gives you places of refuge during setbacks.
- • Completion rituals matter: pause to savor, celebrate, and reflect on finished projects before moving to the next one, as this provides psychological gravity and prevents the burnout of constantly chasing the next thing.
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Brad Stolberg · ▶ 1:13:48
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