May 11, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, Rodney Olsen speaks with Justin Grifford, pastor, author and advocate for embracing imperfect beginnings. Justin shares how a devastating combination of COVID, flu, and injuries derailed his carefully planned goals for the year, leading him to a profound realization that became the foundation for his book "Start Poorly." Through personal experience and biblical insight, he challenges the perfectionism that often paralyses progress in our instant-gratification culture.
Justin unpacks the five phases every goal passes through—dream, plan, start, grind, and finish—offering practical wisdom for navigating each stage. With refreshing honesty about his own stumbles and setbacks, he explains how small, achievable steps and grace-driven effort can transform our approach to spiritual growth, habit formation, and goal achievement. His message resonates across all areas of life: excellent doesn't require a perfect start.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome.
I'm so glad you've joined me for another story of hope on Bleeding Daylight.
Dozens more episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:29):
Will you help spread hope and healing by sharing these stories through social media or word of mouth?
The old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again
but in today's instant society, we don't often give ourselves permission to fail.
Are we prepared to start falling in order to master a skill or even a lifestyle?
(00:52):
Today's guest has some ideas that might help.
Justin Grifford is a pastor, author and advocate for embracing imperfect beginnings.
His book, Start Poorly, challenges the perfectionism that often paralyzes progress.
(01:15):
Drawing from his personal experiences as a father of three, church leader and goal setter, after feeling derailed by illness and injury, Justin discovered a powerful truth.
Excellent doesn't require a perfect start.
Through his work, he encourages others to take those first stumbling steps toward their dreams, arguing that the permission to begin badly might be exactly what we need to achieve our goals.
(01:41):
I'm so pleased that he is my guest today.
Justin, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Let's stomp out some darkness.
What do you say?
Indeed.
I know that you've tended to be a goal setter who sets your aim and then moves towards your target.
But take me back to the events that brought all of that unstuck last year.
(02:03):
Okay.
For the last 10 to 12 years, I would say I've been someone who has been really shaped by goals just in my growth as a husband, as a father, as a believer, as a pastor.
Setting goals has always been a big deal to me.
And if you're this way, if any of your audience is this way, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a really big deal.
(02:23):
You get to evaluate how well did I do with my goals in this past year?
What goals am I going to launch into?
And how do I grade myself?
And even if you have a really bad grade, you can always start fresh in the new year.
And so I had those things set for me.
2024, the miles I was going to run, the books I was going to read.
I had a new preaching series that I was going to start on prayer in January.
(02:47):
All of that was derailed by the COVID flu combination that I received around January the 1st.
And so any workout that I had consisted of really me just walking to the bathroom and back, that was a workout in and of itself.
I wasn't able to really read anything just because I was so dizzy.
(03:08):
Later the year, I pulled my hamstring.
I also had an infection that I kind of wrestled with throughout the rest of the year.
And so the year began very just awful for me.
And I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, watching my children play outside, saying to myself, I am starting this year off very poorly.
That phrase just began to kind of ruminate in my mind.
(03:30):
And I began to realize that there's so many things that we do that we start poorly, whether it's flossing for the first time, learning to potty train, potty training our own toddlers, algebra, swinging a golf club.
There's so many things that we do in life that we start poorly.
But when it comes to the goals we want to achieve, the dreams that we have, the habits that we want to form, for whatever reason, we feel like we have to do those perfectly.
(03:57):
Start Poorly became sort of a soundtrack in my own life.
And for me, it became a message of God's grace that if anything that I really want to set out to do, anything I want to achieve, it's OK to start poorly.
How often do you think we miss out on something that could be really amazing?
Because we initially try it maybe once or twice and think, oh, well, I'm no good at that.
(04:22):
We live in a culture of you can take a pill and you'll start to lose weight.
I can use a microwave or I can order food and food can get to me very quickly.
My kids could turn on a video game and excel at whatever that character can do.
They can be a professional basketball player and be amazing in a video game.
And so I think our culture is surrounded by instant achievement.
(04:45):
And so when it comes to the things that we truly want to do and we encounter adversity, it's really easy for us to just throw in the towel and give up.
So I think there's a tremendous amount of things that we miss out on because we're so conditioned to be great at it at the onset.
I know that the book is aimed at quite a wide variety of people.
(05:09):
Goal setters like yourself write through to people that have never had that discipline to actually start something and see it through.
Have you ever considered what it was in you that planted that desire to set goals and achieve goals?
What was it that gave you that idea of being so driven?
(05:29):
For me, it started whenever I became a father.
I realized that the time that I had to myself completely changed once my wife and I had children.
I didn't have that much time anymore.
I genuinely had to begin making goals and setting goals if I was going to really grow as a person.
(05:50):
And so that was part of it.
And I would also say that in my growth as a Christian, especially as a young man, you would go to events and conferences, and you would get very excited about what the Lord is doing in your life, what Jesus is doing in your life.
And you have this emotional high, and you want to respond to that.
But as far as the ins and outs of what that's going to look like from day to day, you truly need goals if you're going to walk that out.
(06:17):
And so that became something in me where I dedicated time.
I'm setting a timer, and for 20 minutes, I'm spending it in the Word.
For 20 minutes, I'm spending that in prayer.
For 20 minutes, I'm reading this book or that book.
And so for me, it became very essential if I was actually going to grow in my faith.
And that gives many of us great hope because we sometimes think, oh, there's someone who's able to set a goal, who's able to plan it out, walk through those steps, and achieve that.
(06:48):
And yet what you're saying is that that wasn't always you, that you came to a point where you decided, I need to do this.
I'm wondering if you can tell us about those first steps towards becoming a goal setter because I'm sure that, just as everything else, it didn't start perfectly for you.
What were the early stumbles for you in setting goals and achieving them?
(07:10):
Some of the early stumbles for me were I had this long list of things that I wanted to do and the person I wanted to be.
And I created what I thought would be this perfect plan where I was spending exorbitant amounts of time working out, working out every day of the week, getting into the Word, listening to so much teaching, immersing myself in all of these different things.
(07:33):
And it was so unrealistic.
I found that after doing these things for maybe a week, maybe two weeks, it wouldn't last.
It was just too much.
I tried to completely overdo it.
And so I think the ways that I've grown since then is taking just these very small steps, these very small chunks, and whatever that goal might be, maybe it's cutting it in half.
(07:58):
Maybe if you're wanting to spend an hour doing this, maybe you cut it to 30 minutes.
If you're wanting to spend two hours doing this, maybe you do it for an hour.
I spoke at a youth conference just about a month ago, just kind of talking about people, especially kids coming to Christ, students coming to Christ, and running off this emotional high.
Which is rightly placed because when the Lord is doing something in your life and you have this salvation experience, you should have that real raw emotion because there's nothing like that.
(08:27):
But when it comes to, okay, what do I do?
How do I actually begin to live this out?
Their emotions tell them that they want to spend every waking moment with Jesus.
When the habits that they truly need to form, if they're going to continue to walk in daylight and not get sucked back into the darkness, they need a plan to, here's how I'm going to cultivate faith.
Here's how I'm going to supplement my faith.
(08:50):
2 Peter 1 says that we are to, with effort, that we should supplement our faith with virtue and with knowledge.
So the ways that I began to do that was just with small attainable steps, small achievable steps, spending five minutes here, and when the timer's done, you're done.
Spending five minutes there, when the timer's done, it's done.
(09:11):
And that's something that is really important to look at, is when someone first comes to Christ and there is that enthusiasm, there would be some Christians who would say, oh, look, calm down, you know, that doesn't last.
And we shouldn't be doing that because we want to encourage that enthusiasm that's there.
But also, we don't want to say, hey, this is life forever, because it's not.
(09:35):
We want to encourage those small steps.
How do we encourage those small steps without dampening that initial enthusiasm?
It's always a tricky thing, isn't it?
Because the Lord definitely uses that initial enthusiasm.
I think a lot of good churches and pastors have tried to walk alongside those believers and get them involved in some kind of program or in some kind of group.
(10:00):
One of the best ways that you can do that, and it's something that I'll probably do if I'm in the position again to speak at these conferences and at these events, is how can I make the most simple plan moving forward?
How can I make what would be considered a laughably simple plan to say, are you doing this?
Are you doing this?
Take this step.
(10:21):
What are some of the baby steps that we can give them and create this plan moving forward and helping people do that?
So it comes down to your basic spiritual disciplines, doesn't it?
I mean, there are certain things that we need to do, not out of a sense of it being a ritual or just a pattern to follow.
But there are certain spiritual disciplines that are going to see us through those highs and those lows that we need to take on board as Christians.
(10:49):
A hundred percent.
Romans 12 talks about just renewing your mind.
That's how that transformation takes place, is that renewal of the mind.
And the way that we do that is through habits and developing those habits and letting those things be who we are.
There's a quote, we make our habits and our habits make us.
And the way that we can rewire and retrain our brains is developing those habits and allowing those things to be at the core of who we are and dedicating time and dedicating space to do those things.
(11:18):
Jumping back into 2024 and the time when you realized that my plans are not going well, having built up a habit over 12 years of being able to set goals, go for them, achieve them and move on to the next year.
And for that to have become pretty much part of your DNA, it must have been something that was a real disappointment for you when you realized, I'm not going to reach those goals this year.
(11:47):
I'm not going to reach those goals of reading or the fitness goals or all those other things that you had planned out.
What was that initial feeling for you?
It was definitely disappointment because once whenever I was sick, I thought, OK, we'll get started a week late on this.
I'll just kind of have to move double time in order to make up for lost time and get to where I want to go.
(12:10):
But once I began to miss sermons in the sermon series that I was working on, there's just so many things that I couldn't go back and do.
I really felt like that's when the Lord began to make the Start Poorly message a soundtrack for my life.
That I began to kind of see everything I did through those lenses and began to really write about this because one of the goals that I had was I wanted to try to start dedicating more time to writing and writing out my thoughts and helping, whether that's with books, whether that's with sermon prep and that sort of thing.
(12:42):
And so as I began to bring out this idea, all the thoughts that I've had about goals over the last 12 years, it sort of came to a head with this experience.
In some ways, this experience led me to capturing this moment and writing about this moment.
And as you mentioned, it is a really broad idea that reaches across so many different professions.
(13:05):
I've been able to talk to people from all areas of life, whether they're in the military, whether they are in the world of athletics, different coaches.
I spoke just the other day to a student who's doing architecture.
Just this whole idea of starting poorly runs everywhere and applies to so many different things, and especially when it comes to your faith.
(13:27):
And it's not a case of saying, let's do a half effort here.
It's saying we can put every effort in, but we're not going to be there right away.
I've heard it described whenever you get a new job or are promoted to a different position within your job, that there is a time of temporary incompetence that we can't be expected to perform at the level we need to perform at.
(13:51):
And that might be for three or four months.
If it goes on for six months, then we start to ask questions.
But initially, there must be a time of temporary incompetence.
How important is it that we give ourselves permission to be incompetent for a while?
It's huge.
This is where grace comes in, right?
When we're walking kind of in that space, Jesus is calling us to himself.
(14:15):
He is pursuing a relationship with us.
And from that, he wants to change us.
He wants to transform us.
D.A. Carson has a great quote where he says that no one stumbles into holiness, that no one accidentally arrives there.
But it's with grace-driven effort.
It's through dedication to prayer, dedication to the Scriptures that these things happen.
(14:35):
There is this effort that takes place that is driven by grace, and it's sloppy and it's messy.
And anyone who has been in the church and experienced it and pastored and done any of those things have seen people take three steps forward and two steps back.
It is the grace of God that carries you through that.
Whenever you can begin to forgive yourself and forgive you the way that Christ can forgive you, you can grow in your faith.
(15:01):
And if you can do that with the habits that you have as well and the goals that you have, give yourself a little bit of grace, then you continue to move forward.
And that's a big step that we need to take to be able to say, I'm not going to be perfect at this straight up.
I am going to miss the timeline on this at times, and I need to reassess and move on.
But the other side of the coin is, how much grace should we be showing other people who are not getting it right?
(15:27):
You mentioned that in the church we will see people that take a few steps forward and a couple of steps back.
Should it be a signal for us to be showing grace to other people who aren't hitting their goals?
Absolutely.
I think sometimes we can get a little too caught up in what we're doing.
Our start poorly may have happened years ago where theirs has just begun.
(15:48):
Grace is something that we all need, and weakness is something that is always revealed in different seasons of our lives, whether it has to do with our health, whether it has to do with our finances, whether it has to do with how we interact with people.
I think that the grace message is something that we need to be willing to extend to ourselves, and we need to extend to others.
(16:09):
How far into that year of missed deadlines and that realization that you weren't going to be able to just go twice as hard and still achieve those goals, how far into that was it that you realized, ah, I think God might be teaching me something here?
It was probably February.
(16:29):
I think January I was thinking that, okay, I can still do this, I can still do this.
But by February, when nothing was really turning around, my body wasn't healing as fast as it could, the theme for that year began to change dramatically.
As I began working on what would become Start Poorly, I thought that this would be a specifically faith-based message, that this is something that God is revealing to me, that God is showing to me.
(16:55):
But as I prayed about it, I thought that in some ways it would cheapen the Christian book genre, and it would cheapen the goal-setting genre.
And so I thought, maybe I could write this at another time, whereas this one, I feel like this is the book that I wanted to write.
We've got to realize that there are some people who, through ill health or whatever it may be, realize that they're not going to meet the goals that they have set.
(17:20):
And for yourself, there was a time when you were well again, and you were able to get back on the track.
But I'm sure that there are people listening who have had health issues that have persisted, and they haven't been able to achieve the things that they had hoped to.
There is this sense of lost hope, which can be very debilitating.
(17:42):
What would you say to those people as they try and achieve at least some goals, and yet there is still something holding them back?
Yeah, that's a hard place to be in.
Something that holds us up many times is creating the perfect plan, that we have this perfect plan that we have got to stick to.
And if we can't stick to that perfect plan, we completely bail on it.
(18:04):
We have to be willing to write out our plan in pencil and not in pen, that we have to be willing to pivot whenever it's unachievable.
It doesn't make sense.
It's not sustainable.
When it comes to starting that goal, starting poorly with that goal, it shouldn't be something that changes our life.
Now, that goes against every mantra you've ever heard or every t-shirt that's ever been printed, right?
(18:27):
But starting a goal out small shouldn't change your life.
It should be something that you can take steps.
And so, to the person who has encountered a major setback, there definitely is a time and a season to pause your goal.
If the goal is affecting your health, if the goal is affecting your well-being, if the goal is stealing time from your spouse and from your kids, there's a time to pause it.
(18:49):
There's a time to pivot and to adjust it in the season that you're in.
And it might be that your goal needs to change completely and turn into something else.
Getting down to the practicalities, I know that you mention in the book that you see there being five phases in the setting of a goal or a habit.
Can you take us through that?
(19:10):
Sure.
So, I broke down every goal, every habit, every dream finds itself in five different phases.
The first is the dream phase.
And in each chapter, I talk about the pros and cons of each phase.
What are some tips in those phases where you can best operate?
And some of what I call the box jumps, some of the obstacles that are in the way of getting from one phase to the next.
(19:32):
And so, in the dream phase is where everyone starts because, you know, whenever you're a kid, I want to be an astronaut.
I want to be a professional baseball player.
Like, we dream big.
We imagine what is it like to do that thing.
And you can see yourself doing that thing.
The pros of that stage are it's fun.
It's exciting.
You can spend as long as you want to in the dream phase.
The con is there is that some people live in the dream phase their entire life.
(19:56):
They never get out of it.
They never do anything to move beyond it.
So, that's the dream phase.
The next phase is the plan phase.
In the plan phase, they've decided, okay, I do want to do something about this.
I do want to kind of jot down some notes.
The pro there is you're actually taking the first step.
The con is you can try to create the perfect plan and you could get stuck in the plan phase because your plan isn't perfect.
(20:21):
You got to do something.
You got to tweak something.
The third phase is the start phase.
That's exciting because you're finally starting.
That's the pro.
The con is you might actually have to put some work into this.
And you're about to see what it takes if you have what it takes.
The next phase is the grind phase.
And the grind is the most difficult because you're putting yourself through the work.
It's difficult.
(20:42):
It's hard.
And you're about to see, again, if you have what it takes.
And the final phase is the finish phase.
Pros of the finish phase is that you're almost done.
You see the end in sight.
There's light at the end of the tunnel.
The con there is a lot of people have trouble finishing.
A lot of people have trouble hitting send, hitting submit, what Seth Godin calls shipping their work.
(21:03):
A lot of people want it to be just so right that they are petrified from finally finishing.
And so each of those phases has what I call box jumps and steps on how to move from one phase to the next.
And what you've touched on there, that idea of wanting something to be so perfect, so right, before we say, yes, we're done.
(21:24):
That can be one of those things that holds us back quite a lot, can't it?
In various areas of life, we're more focused on it being perfect and absolutely just right than we are of saying, here's something that I've accomplished.
And we miss out on so much, don't we?
We do.
There's a great quote.
I think this is a Seth Godin quote as well.
(21:45):
He says that your work will never be good enough for everyone, but it's already good enough for someone.
The effort and the intensity that you're putting into something is already meant for someone.
Anything that you do, anything you finish, and granted, there's certain hobbies and certain habits that you'll develop.
There will never be a true finish for that.
If you wanted to develop the habit of running, sure, you've been able to do that.
(22:08):
But there are certain goals and certain dreams that have that finishing line on it.
And so for me, publishing this book was a finished moment where it was very difficult for me to have it ready by the end of the day where there wasn't one more thing I wanted to change.
There's one more thing I wanted to check.
There's one more filter that I wanted to run it through.
If we're not willing to finally hit send on that dream, on that goal, then we do miss out on a lot.
(22:32):
We can give ourselves that permission to start poorly, to start not being an expert in an area.
And that's part of taking us there.
I imagine that there are people listening at the moment who have always said, well, I'm not really a goal setting person.
That's never worked for me before.
What would your advice be to them?
(22:53):
Is it just perhaps that they haven't given themselves permission to start poorly?
It could be.
I would say that, especially for every follower of Christ, there should be something in you that wants to grow in your faith.
There should be something in you that wants to do more and to achieve more.
And to the person that doesn't have that, I would ask them, when you go places, when you do things, when you listen to people talk, when you watch movies, whatever you do, what you do in your life.
(23:22):
Do you ever ask yourself or say to yourself, I would do that differently?
I would change this about what I do.
That could be an area of your life that you actually have some interest in exploring.
That might be a goal.
That might be a hidden goal that you have that you never knew that you had.
And to the person that I would say that this hasn't been their jam.
(23:42):
They don't even know where to begin.
They don't even know what to do.
The first step that you can do is create a foothold.
Identify about 15 or 20 minutes.
Identify about 15 minutes that you can set aside in the next 24 hours.
And whatever that thing is, begin just writing down ideas.
If you're wanting to learn how to play the guitar, write down what color guitar would you want to have?
(24:04):
What kind of guitar would you want to have?
What songs would you want to learn?
How would you get lessons?
Would you take lessons?
Would you get them off YouTube?
Begin just writing everything down in those 15 minutes.
If you even sort of have like an inkling of a goal that you want to achieve.
And so I would say that developing that foothold is a great starting point.
What has been the response from people who have read the book so far?
(24:26):
One of the most interesting parts for me is hearing people's stories and what it's driven them to do.
Because I have people in my church in all ages coming at it from different directions.
That I read this and I've started this particular diet.
I read this and I'm going to do a blog.
I read this, it's going to change the way that I coach my team.
(24:47):
And so it's been really refreshing for me to see all of the ways that it has been implemented.
Not just in areas of faith, but just kind of in so many different realms.
You said you wanted to spend more time in writing.
Obviously this book is a great start for that.
Have you got ideas for further books now?
Have you been bitten by the bug and you want to keep going into more books?
(25:10):
I think eventually I will.
I'm launching what I call my Starter Fluid newsletter.
Basically that will be ideas just to kind of get people going.
Just sort of get people to start poorly if you will.
Just some ideas whenever there's brain fog and they're needing a little bit of motivation.
Some of my writing would kind of take that form.
(25:30):
With the newsletter and to sign up for that you can go to my website justingrifford.com As far as what's next, I'm not exactly sure what will come next.
But only time will tell.
So I guess the main thing you want people to take from your book is that you can start poorly.
It doesn't mean that you're going to end poorly.
It's the start of a journey that we so often don't give ourselves permission to take.
(25:52):
100%.
100%.
That's it.
If people are wanting to get hold of you, you did mention that they can go to your website and I'll definitely be putting links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
Also a link to the book, Start Poorly, so that people can find that easily.
Justin, it's been a delight to talk through some of these issues with you.
(26:14):
I want to thank you for your time and thank you for being part of Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney, so much for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome.
I'm so glad you've joined me for another story of hope on Bleeding Daylight.
Dozens more episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:29):
Will you help spread hope and healing by sharing these stories through social media or word of mouth?
The old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again
but in today's instant society, we don't often give ourselves permission to fail.
Are we prepared to start falling in order to master a skill or even a lifestyle?
(00:52):
Today's guest has some ideas that might help.
Justin Grifford is a pastor, author and advocate for embracing imperfect beginnings.
His book, Start Poorly, challenges the perfectionism that often paralyzes progress.
(01:15):
Drawing from his personal experiences as a father of three, church leader and goal setter, after feeling derailed by illness and injury, Justin discovered a powerful truth.
Excellent doesn't require a perfect start.
Through his work, he encourages others to take those first stumbling steps toward their dreams, arguing that the permission to begin badly might be exactly what we need to achieve our goals.
(01:41):
I'm so pleased that he is my guest today.
Justin, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Let's stomp out some darkness.
What do you say?
Indeed.
I know that you've tended to be a goal setter who sets your aim and then moves towards your target.
But take me back to the events that brought all of that unstuck last year.
(02:03):
Okay.
For the last 10 to 12 years, I would say I've been someone who has been really shaped by goals just in my growth as a husband, as a father, as a believer, as a pastor.
Setting goals has always been a big deal to me.
And if you're this way, if any of your audience is this way, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a really big deal.
(02:23):
You get to evaluate how well did I do with my goals in this past year?
What goals am I going to launch into?
And how do I grade myself?
And even if you have a really bad grade, you can always start fresh in the new year.
And so I had those things set for me.
2024, the miles I was going to run, the books I was going to read.
I had a new preaching series that I was going to start on prayer in January.
(02:47):
All of that was derailed by the COVID flu combination that I received around January the 1st.
And so any workout that I had consisted of really me just walking to the bathroom and back, that was a workout in and of itself.
I wasn't able to really read anything just because I was so dizzy.
(03:08):
Later the year, I pulled my hamstring.
I also had an infection that I kind of wrestled with throughout the rest of the year.
And so the year began very just awful for me.
And I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, watching my children play outside, saying to myself, I am starting this year off very poorly.
That phrase just began to kind of ruminate in my mind.
(03:30):
And I began to realize that there's so many things that we do that we start poorly, whether it's flossing for the first time, learning to potty train, potty training our own toddlers, algebra, swinging a golf club.
There's so many things that we do in life that we start poorly.
But when it comes to the goals we want to achieve, the dreams that we have, the habits that we want to form, for whatever reason, we feel like we have to do those perfectly.
(03:57):
Start Poorly became sort of a soundtrack in my own life.
And for me, it became a message of God's grace that if anything that I really want to set out to do, anything I want to achieve, it's OK to start poorly.
How often do you think we miss out on something that could be really amazing?
Because we initially try it maybe once or twice and think, oh, well, I'm no good at that.
(04:22):
We live in a culture of you can take a pill and you'll start to lose weight.
I can use a microwave or I can order food and food can get to me very quickly.
My kids could turn on a video game and excel at whatever that character can do.
They can be a professional basketball player and be amazing in a video game.
And so I think our culture is surrounded by instant achievement.
(04:45):
And so when it comes to the things that we truly want to do and we encounter adversity, it's really easy for us to just throw in the towel and give up.
So I think there's a tremendous amount of things that we miss out on because we're so conditioned to be great at it at the onset.
I know that the book is aimed at quite a wide variety of people.
(05:09):
Goal setters like yourself write through to people that have never had that discipline to actually start something and see it through.
Have you ever considered what it was in you that planted that desire to set goals and achieve goals?
What was it that gave you that idea of being so driven?
(05:29):
For me, it started whenever I became a father.
I realized that the time that I had to myself completely changed once my wife and I had children.
I didn't have that much time anymore.
I genuinely had to begin making goals and setting goals if I was going to really grow as a person.
(05:50):
And so that was part of it.
And I would also say that in my growth as a Christian, especially as a young man, you would go to events and conferences, and you would get very excited about what the Lord is doing in your life, what Jesus is doing in your life.
And you have this emotional high, and you want to respond to that.
But as far as the ins and outs of what that's going to look like from day to day, you truly need goals if you're going to walk that out.
(06:17):
And so that became something in me where I dedicated time.
I'm setting a timer, and for 20 minutes, I'm spending it in the Word.
For 20 minutes, I'm spending that in prayer.
For 20 minutes, I'm reading this book or that book.
And so for me, it became very essential if I was actually going to grow in my faith.
And that gives many of us great hope because we sometimes think, oh, there's someone who's able to set a goal, who's able to plan it out, walk through those steps, and achieve that.
(06:48):
And yet what you're saying is that that wasn't always you, that you came to a point where you decided, I need to do this.
I'm wondering if you can tell us about those first steps towards becoming a goal setter because I'm sure that, just as everything else, it didn't start perfectly for you.
What were the early stumbles for you in setting goals and achieving them?
(07:10):
Some of the early stumbles for me were I had this long list of things that I wanted to do and the person I wanted to be.
And I created what I thought would be this perfect plan where I was spending exorbitant amounts of time working out, working out every day of the week, getting into the Word, listening to so much teaching, immersing myself in all of these different things.
(07:33):
And it was so unrealistic.
I found that after doing these things for maybe a week, maybe two weeks, it wouldn't last.
It was just too much.
I tried to completely overdo it.
And so I think the ways that I've grown since then is taking just these very small steps, these very small chunks, and whatever that goal might be, maybe it's cutting it in half.
(07:58):
Maybe if you're wanting to spend an hour doing this, maybe you cut it to 30 minutes.
If you're wanting to spend two hours doing this, maybe you do it for an hour.
I spoke at a youth conference just about a month ago, just kind of talking about people, especially kids coming to Christ, students coming to Christ, and running off this emotional high.
Which is rightly placed because when the Lord is doing something in your life and you have this salvation experience, you should have that real raw emotion because there's nothing like that.
(08:27):
But when it comes to, okay, what do I do?
How do I actually begin to live this out?
Their emotions tell them that they want to spend every waking moment with Jesus.
When the habits that they truly need to form, if they're going to continue to walk in daylight and not get sucked back into the darkness, they need a plan to, here's how I'm going to cultivate faith.
Here's how I'm going to supplement my faith.
(08:50):
2 Peter 1 says that we are to, with effort, that we should supplement our faith with virtue and with knowledge.
So the ways that I began to do that was just with small attainable steps, small achievable steps, spending five minutes here, and when the timer's done, you're done.
Spending five minutes there, when the timer's done, it's done.
(09:11):
And that's something that is really important to look at, is when someone first comes to Christ and there is that enthusiasm, there would be some Christians who would say, oh, look, calm down, you know, that doesn't last.
And we shouldn't be doing that because we want to encourage that enthusiasm that's there.
But also, we don't want to say, hey, this is life forever, because it's not.
(09:35):
We want to encourage those small steps.
How do we encourage those small steps without dampening that initial enthusiasm?
It's always a tricky thing, isn't it?
Because the Lord definitely uses that initial enthusiasm.
I think a lot of good churches and pastors have tried to walk alongside those believers and get them involved in some kind of program or in some kind of group.
(10:00):
One of the best ways that you can do that, and it's something that I'll probably do if I'm in the position again to speak at these conferences and at these events, is how can I make the most simple plan moving forward?
How can I make what would be considered a laughably simple plan to say, are you doing this?
Are you doing this?
Take this step.
(10:21):
What are some of the baby steps that we can give them and create this plan moving forward and helping people do that?
So it comes down to your basic spiritual disciplines, doesn't it?
I mean, there are certain things that we need to do, not out of a sense of it being a ritual or just a pattern to follow.
But there are certain spiritual disciplines that are going to see us through those highs and those lows that we need to take on board as Christians.
(10:49):
A hundred percent.
Romans 12 talks about just renewing your mind.
That's how that transformation takes place, is that renewal of the mind.
And the way that we do that is through habits and developing those habits and letting those things be who we are.
There's a quote, we make our habits and our habits make us.
And the way that we can rewire and retrain our brains is developing those habits and allowing those things to be at the core of who we are and dedicating time and dedicating space to do those things.
(11:18):
Jumping back into 2024 and the time when you realized that my plans are not going well, having built up a habit over 12 years of being able to set goals, go for them, achieve them and move on to the next year.
And for that to have become pretty much part of your DNA, it must have been something that was a real disappointment for you when you realized, I'm not going to reach those goals this year.
(11:47):
I'm not going to reach those goals of reading or the fitness goals or all those other things that you had planned out.
What was that initial feeling for you?
It was definitely disappointment because once whenever I was sick, I thought, OK, we'll get started a week late on this.
I'll just kind of have to move double time in order to make up for lost time and get to where I want to go.
(12:10):
But once I began to miss sermons in the sermon series that I was working on, there's just so many things that I couldn't go back and do.
I really felt like that's when the Lord began to make the Start Poorly message a soundtrack for my life.
That I began to kind of see everything I did through those lenses and began to really write about this because one of the goals that I had was I wanted to try to start dedicating more time to writing and writing out my thoughts and helping, whether that's with books, whether that's with sermon prep and that sort of thing.
(12:42):
And so as I began to bring out this idea, all the thoughts that I've had about goals over the last 12 years, it sort of came to a head with this experience.
In some ways, this experience led me to capturing this moment and writing about this moment.
And as you mentioned, it is a really broad idea that reaches across so many different professions.
(13:05):
I've been able to talk to people from all areas of life, whether they're in the military, whether they are in the world of athletics, different coaches.
I spoke just the other day to a student who's doing architecture.
Just this whole idea of starting poorly runs everywhere and applies to so many different things, and especially when it comes to your faith.
(13:27):
And it's not a case of saying, let's do a half effort here.
It's saying we can put every effort in, but we're not going to be there right away.
I've heard it described whenever you get a new job or are promoted to a different position within your job, that there is a time of temporary incompetence that we can't be expected to perform at the level we need to perform at.
(13:51):
And that might be for three or four months.
If it goes on for six months, then we start to ask questions.
But initially, there must be a time of temporary incompetence.
How important is it that we give ourselves permission to be incompetent for a while?
It's huge.
This is where grace comes in, right?
When we're walking kind of in that space, Jesus is calling us to himself.
(14:15):
He is pursuing a relationship with us.
And from that, he wants to change us.
He wants to transform us.
D.A. Carson has a great quote where he says that no one stumbles into holiness, that no one accidentally arrives there.
But it's with grace-driven effort.
It's through dedication to prayer, dedication to the Scriptures that these things happen.
(14:35):
There is this effort that takes place that is driven by grace, and it's sloppy and it's messy.
And anyone who has been in the church and experienced it and pastored and done any of those things have seen people take three steps forward and two steps back.
It is the grace of God that carries you through that.
Whenever you can begin to forgive yourself and forgive you the way that Christ can forgive you, you can grow in your faith.
(15:01):
And if you can do that with the habits that you have as well and the goals that you have, give yourself a little bit of grace, then you continue to move forward.
And that's a big step that we need to take to be able to say, I'm not going to be perfect at this straight up.
I am going to miss the timeline on this at times, and I need to reassess and move on.
But the other side of the coin is, how much grace should we be showing other people who are not getting it right?
(15:27):
You mentioned that in the church we will see people that take a few steps forward and a couple of steps back.
Should it be a signal for us to be showing grace to other people who aren't hitting their goals?
Absolutely.
I think sometimes we can get a little too caught up in what we're doing.
Our start poorly may have happened years ago where theirs has just begun.
(15:48):
Grace is something that we all need, and weakness is something that is always revealed in different seasons of our lives, whether it has to do with our health, whether it has to do with our finances, whether it has to do with how we interact with people.
I think that the grace message is something that we need to be willing to extend to ourselves, and we need to extend to others.
(16:09):
How far into that year of missed deadlines and that realization that you weren't going to be able to just go twice as hard and still achieve those goals, how far into that was it that you realized, ah, I think God might be teaching me something here?
It was probably February.
(16:29):
I think January I was thinking that, okay, I can still do this, I can still do this.
But by February, when nothing was really turning around, my body wasn't healing as fast as it could, the theme for that year began to change dramatically.
As I began working on what would become Start Poorly, I thought that this would be a specifically faith-based message, that this is something that God is revealing to me, that God is showing to me.
(16:55):
But as I prayed about it, I thought that in some ways it would cheapen the Christian book genre, and it would cheapen the goal-setting genre.
And so I thought, maybe I could write this at another time, whereas this one, I feel like this is the book that I wanted to write.
We've got to realize that there are some people who, through ill health or whatever it may be, realize that they're not going to meet the goals that they have set.
(17:20):
And for yourself, there was a time when you were well again, and you were able to get back on the track.
But I'm sure that there are people listening who have had health issues that have persisted, and they haven't been able to achieve the things that they had hoped to.
There is this sense of lost hope, which can be very debilitating.
(17:42):
What would you say to those people as they try and achieve at least some goals, and yet there is still something holding them back?
Yeah, that's a hard place to be in.
Something that holds us up many times is creating the perfect plan, that we have this perfect plan that we have got to stick to.
And if we can't stick to that perfect plan, we completely bail on it.
(18:04):
We have to be willing to write out our plan in pencil and not in pen, that we have to be willing to pivot whenever it's unachievable.
It doesn't make sense.
It's not sustainable.
When it comes to starting that goal, starting poorly with that goal, it shouldn't be something that changes our life.
Now, that goes against every mantra you've ever heard or every t-shirt that's ever been printed, right?
(18:27):
But starting a goal out small shouldn't change your life.
It should be something that you can take steps.
And so, to the person who has encountered a major setback, there definitely is a time and a season to pause your goal.
If the goal is affecting your health, if the goal is affecting your well-being, if the goal is stealing time from your spouse and from your kids, there's a time to pause it.
(18:49):
There's a time to pivot and to adjust it in the season that you're in.
And it might be that your goal needs to change completely and turn into something else.
Getting down to the practicalities, I know that you mention in the book that you see there being five phases in the setting of a goal or a habit.
Can you take us through that?
(19:10):
Sure.
So, I broke down every goal, every habit, every dream finds itself in five different phases.
The first is the dream phase.
And in each chapter, I talk about the pros and cons of each phase.
What are some tips in those phases where you can best operate?
And some of what I call the box jumps, some of the obstacles that are in the way of getting from one phase to the next.
(19:32):
And so, in the dream phase is where everyone starts because, you know, whenever you're a kid, I want to be an astronaut.
I want to be a professional baseball player.
Like, we dream big.
We imagine what is it like to do that thing.
And you can see yourself doing that thing.
The pros of that stage are it's fun.
It's exciting.
You can spend as long as you want to in the dream phase.
The con is there is that some people live in the dream phase their entire life.
(19:56):
They never get out of it.
They never do anything to move beyond it.
So, that's the dream phase.
The next phase is the plan phase.
In the plan phase, they've decided, okay, I do want to do something about this.
I do want to kind of jot down some notes.
The pro there is you're actually taking the first step.
The con is you can try to create the perfect plan and you could get stuck in the plan phase because your plan isn't perfect.
(20:21):
You got to do something.
You got to tweak something.
The third phase is the start phase.
That's exciting because you're finally starting.
That's the pro.
The con is you might actually have to put some work into this.
And you're about to see what it takes if you have what it takes.
The next phase is the grind phase.
And the grind is the most difficult because you're putting yourself through the work.
It's difficult.
(20:42):
It's hard.
And you're about to see, again, if you have what it takes.
And the final phase is the finish phase.
Pros of the finish phase is that you're almost done.
You see the end in sight.
There's light at the end of the tunnel.
The con there is a lot of people have trouble finishing.
A lot of people have trouble hitting send, hitting submit, what Seth Godin calls shipping their work.
(21:03):
A lot of people want it to be just so right that they are petrified from finally finishing.
And so each of those phases has what I call box jumps and steps on how to move from one phase to the next.
And what you've touched on there, that idea of wanting something to be so perfect, so right, before we say, yes, we're done.
(21:24):
That can be one of those things that holds us back quite a lot, can't it?
In various areas of life, we're more focused on it being perfect and absolutely just right than we are of saying, here's something that I've accomplished.
And we miss out on so much, don't we?
We do.
There's a great quote.
I think this is a Seth Godin quote as well.
(21:45):
He says that your work will never be good enough for everyone, but it's already good enough for someone.
The effort and the intensity that you're putting into something is already meant for someone.
Anything that you do, anything you finish, and granted, there's certain hobbies and certain habits that you'll develop.
There will never be a true finish for that.
If you wanted to develop the habit of running, sure, you've been able to do that.
(22:08):
But there are certain goals and certain dreams that have that finishing line on it.
And so for me, publishing this book was a finished moment where it was very difficult for me to have it ready by the end of the day where there wasn't one more thing I wanted to change.
There's one more thing I wanted to check.
There's one more filter that I wanted to run it through.
If we're not willing to finally hit send on that dream, on that goal, then we do miss out on a lot.
(22:32):
We can give ourselves that permission to start poorly, to start not being an expert in an area.
And that's part of taking us there.
I imagine that there are people listening at the moment who have always said, well, I'm not really a goal setting person.
That's never worked for me before.
What would your advice be to them?
(22:53):
Is it just perhaps that they haven't given themselves permission to start poorly?
It could be.
I would say that, especially for every follower of Christ, there should be something in you that wants to grow in your faith.
There should be something in you that wants to do more and to achieve more.
And to the person that doesn't have that, I would ask them, when you go places, when you do things, when you listen to people talk, when you watch movies, whatever you do, what you do in your life.
(23:22):
Do you ever ask yourself or say to yourself, I would do that differently?
I would change this about what I do.
That could be an area of your life that you actually have some interest in exploring.
That might be a goal.
That might be a hidden goal that you have that you never knew that you had.
And to the person that I would say that this hasn't been their jam.
(23:42):
They don't even know where to begin.
They don't even know what to do.
The first step that you can do is create a foothold.
Identify about 15 or 20 minutes.
Identify about 15 minutes that you can set aside in the next 24 hours.
And whatever that thing is, begin just writing down ideas.
If you're wanting to learn how to play the guitar, write down what color guitar would you want to have?
(24:04):
What kind of guitar would you want to have?
What songs would you want to learn?
How would you get lessons?
Would you take lessons?
Would you get them off YouTube?
Begin just writing everything down in those 15 minutes.
If you even sort of have like an inkling of a goal that you want to achieve.
And so I would say that developing that foothold is a great starting point.
What has been the response from people who have read the book so far?
(24:26):
One of the most interesting parts for me is hearing people's stories and what it's driven them to do.
Because I have people in my church in all ages coming at it from different directions.
That I read this and I've started this particular diet.
I read this and I'm going to do a blog.
I read this, it's going to change the way that I coach my team.
(24:47):
And so it's been really refreshing for me to see all of the ways that it has been implemented.
Not just in areas of faith, but just kind of in so many different realms.
You said you wanted to spend more time in writing.
Obviously this book is a great start for that.
Have you got ideas for further books now?
Have you been bitten by the bug and you want to keep going into more books?
(25:10):
I think eventually I will.
I'm launching what I call my Starter Fluid newsletter.
Basically that will be ideas just to kind of get people going.
Just sort of get people to start poorly if you will.
Just some ideas whenever there's brain fog and they're needing a little bit of motivation.
Some of my writing would kind of take that form.
(25:30):
With the newsletter and to sign up for that you can go to my website justingrifford.com As far as what's next, I'm not exactly sure what will come next.
But only time will tell.
So I guess the main thing you want people to take from your book is that you can start poorly.
It doesn't mean that you're going to end poorly.
It's the start of a journey that we so often don't give ourselves permission to take.
(25:52):
100%.
100%.
That's it.
If people are wanting to get hold of you, you did mention that they can go to your website and I'll definitely be putting links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
Also a link to the book, Start Poorly, so that people can find that easily.
Justin, it's been a delight to talk through some of these issues with you.
(26:14):
I want to thank you for your time and thank you for being part of Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney, so much for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
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