62. Why You Avoid Setting Big Goals (& How to Stop Playing It Safe)
Setting aggressive revenue goals feels terrifying when you're convinced that falling short means you're a failure. A client recently told me she refuses to set revenue goals because she can't handle the disappointment of missing them. This protective instinct is exactly what keeps us playing small and giving up on ourselves before we even start.
When I was leading a sales team in corporate, those "aggressively achievable" goals would send me into a spiral of anxiety. My brain immediately jumped to how terrible it would feel if my team didn't hit them, so I'd secretly prefer lower targets that felt safer. What I didn't understand then was that setting audacious goals actually helps us grow more, especially when we don't hit them.
Join me today as I break down why our brains prefer to avoid big goals, how this self-protection actually stunts our growth, and exactly how to start setting big, fun goals with zero mental drama.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why you avoid setting big goals.
How our need for certainty conflicts with our need for growth.
The real cost of avoiding big goals.
Why adding "yet" to the end of any sentence changes everything.
A simple process for examining your thoughts and feelings about scary goals.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Today I want to talk about goal setting and more specifically, the goals we don't set because we don't want to fail. I was coaching a client a couple weeks back and this exact thing came up. I asked her about her revenue goal for the year and she said she doesn't set revenue goals. When I asked why, she said, because I don't want to not hit that goal and be disappointed. And this hit home for me because it's exactly how I used to operate.
I remember when I was leading a sales team, I would get so anxious about the goals that the company set for my team, and this was of course back in corporate. They were always what they called aggressively achievable, but aired on the side of aggressive in my opinion. And I always felt so discouraged because my brain immediately went to the discomfort of what it would feel like if my team didn't hit them. My brain always preferred to aim for a lower goal that we were more likely to hit because I thought it would build momentum. But what I didn't know at the time was that setting aggressive or audacious goals actually helps us to grow more, even and especially in the cases where we don't hit them.
Over the years, I've learned just how detrimental it can be for the bigger visions we have for our lives when we avoid setting goals or set goals that don't stretch us out of our comfort zone. When we avoid setting big goals, we're literally stunting our own growth. So today I want to talk about why our beautiful brains would prefer to avoid goals. I'm going to talk about how this holds us back and exactly how you can start setting big, fun goals in your own life with zero mental trauma. Okay?
I want you to set audacious goals and especially be willing to fall short without making it mean anything about you or your capability. By the end of this episode, I want you to be excited to set that next big goal, the one that you've been avoiding. And I want you to feel confident knowing that not hitting a goal will not deter you from your ultimate dreams. Let's dive in.
Let's talk about why we avoid goals. Now, in most cases, and what I've seen with myself and my clients, when we peel back some layers of the onion, the real reason we avoid setting goals is because we are protecting ourselves from feeling bad when we don't hit them. And this can look like complete avoidance of setting goals like my client who avoids revenue goals, or this can look like setting goals that we know are achievable because we've either done it before or have gotten close. And I've definitely been in this camp. I'm actually a big fan of setting goals, but I set goals to avoid failure.
Rather than setting goals that would help me to learn and grow. And I see that in so many of my clients as well. And for me, it was very much because I didn't want to feel disappointed by not hitting the goal that I set. But it's not the goal itself that's the problem. When we boil it down, there are two main detractors that are at play.
The first is our thoughts about the goal. Do we think that we can achieve it or not? When we think we can't achieve it, that feels terrible. And of course, we don't want to move forward with setting that goal. Our thoughts about the goal create feelings and those feelings are what lead us to take action or avoid it all together. And unfortunately, our brains have a negativity bias. They're wired to look for problems and threats and all the reasons why this won't work. So when we think about a big goal, our brain naturally focuses on what could go wrong, rather than what could go right.
And this is just how we're designed. Nothing has gone wrong. But when we're thinking about all the things that could go wrong and our lack of capability and lack of time and questioning ourselves for wanting more, of course, this deters us from officially setting and going for that audacious goal. This doesn't mean you don't still think about the goal or the business and noodle on it. Maybe you talk to some friends over wine about the goal, what it might look like someday to start that business, you dream about it with your partner. We still do all of those things, but we keep that goal at arm's length because we think it will protect us.
We think that it's better to wait until we know and are 100% certain that we can achieve it rather than start figuring it out now. Which leads me to the next reason that we avoid setting goals that I've kind of touched on previously, we want to avoid feeling disappointed if we don't hit the goal. At the end of the day, this is a conversation about being willing to be uncomfortable because if you're willing to feel any emotion, especially the uncomfortable ones that come with going after a big goal, it will make you unstoppable.
If you're willing to feel disappointed and keep going, if you're willing to feel embarrassed and evaluate what happened and what you could do differently, if you're willing to feel sad but not take the results personal, there is nothing you won't try in your pursuit of the goal. And the more things you try that don't work, the closer you get to what will work. But this requires you to be willing to feel some uncomfortable emotions along the way.
Also, if you struggle with perfectionism, this is just more of an aside. I myself am a recovering perfectionist, so I get it. But this is even more important to be aware of because setting safe goals or no goals at all is self-protection from failure. If we can't fail, we don't have to deal with the discomfort that comes with being imperfect. But what I want to offer is that failing isn't actually a problem. And who gets to even decide what it means to fail?
I've got really good news for you. You get to decide. Is it a failure if you set out to sign your first client in 30 days and you don't sign that client? Or are you closer to signing your first client because you were actively trying things and troubleshooting and figuring things out for the past month? If we're always protecting ourselves from failure, the big F word, we're not exposing ourselves to new things. We're staying within what we know we can do. We're staying within what's comfortable. And if we're always only doing things we know how to do, we'll only get the results we have right now.
Which leads me to another thing at play here, which is our need, our human need for certainty. We want to know we can achieve what we set out to do. It feels really scary when we don't know what the outcome will be. So what we do is we tend to underestimate what we can achieve. But just like we need certainty, we also need growth. And unfortunately, growth requires uncertainty. Growth means we are delving into a landscape we aren't familiar with. That's what it's all about.
We don't know what it's like to run a business because we've never owned a business. There's so much uncertainty when we're doing something we've never done before. But when our need for certainty wins, we avoid the bigger goals that would actually help us grow. Setting big goals helps us to grow because it requires us to try new things. And we have to decide what we want more, the comfort of staying exactly where we are, or the discomfort that comes with growing into the person we want to be.
Here's what I really want you to understand about what happens when we avoid setting goals. We are actually giving up on ourselves before we even start. When you don't define that goal of starting the business or signing your first client or making a certain amount of revenue in your business, what you're really saying is I don't believe I'm capable of figuring out how to get there. You're deciding ahead of time that you're not the kind of person who can make it happen. And here's the sad part. What if you actually are the kind of person who can make it happen?
What if you never give yourself the chance to try? When we avoid setting goals, we're trying to protect ourselves, but the thing we're protecting ourselves from is actually the thing we need in order to be successful. We're so busy protecting ourselves from potential disappointment that we're also protecting ourselves from potential success. We're choosing the certainty of staying where we are over the uncertainty of becoming who we could be. And that's the real cost. Okay, not just missing the goal, but missing the chance to discover what you're truly capable of.
So then what happens next? How do we change these patterns? How do we start setting goals without fear? Let's talk about how to start setting goals without hesitation, without fear, and with pure excitement. The first thing I want you to understand that I mentioned before is that failure is just a thought, not a fact. You get to decide what failure means for you. It's subjective. And I hope this is so freeing because what matters more than the actual fact of whether you hit the goal or not is the story you choose to tell yourself about not hitting your goal.
Is it failure? Or is it just attempt one? What are you going to decide to make it mean that you didn't hit the revenue goal or you didn't sign that client? One of my favorite little word play, mindset tool things is to just add the word yet to the end of the sentence. I haven't hit my revenue goal yet. I didn't sign that first client yet. Maybe let's even reframe some of the questions entirely. We're always asking ourselves, what if I don't hit this goal? But what if instead we asked, what if not hitting the goal the first time is part of the process?
I'll never forget when my coach said to me that every missed goal is just an underestimation of timing, not proof of your capability. I'll never forget when she said, you're not behind. Nothing has gone wrong. You just underestimated how long this would take. This goal is going to take a few more months of learning and troubleshooting. That completely shifted my relationship with goals.
One of the most important questions that I want you to consider when you are in goal setting mode is, what if I were willing to feel any feeling? If I were willing to feel disappointed, how would that change my goal setting behavior? Because disappointment is just a feeling. It's not dangerous, it won't kill you, and it's absolutely temporary. And you get to decide what comes after disappointment. This is what mental resilience boils down to, to feel something hard, uncomfortable, and to keep moving forward anyway, to figure out how to keep moving forward.
I guarantee you, you would set the goal knowing that just because you didn't reach a goal in the time frame you set aside for yourself doesn't mean that you aren't capable of achieving it. If you experience that disappointment, you get to decide what to do next. Maybe it would fuel action for the next 30 days. Maybe it'll give you a ton of data and show you what didn't work so that you get closer to what will work. If you don't hit a goal, it just means there's more learning and growing that needs to happen.
And I hope by now you know that I am a big fan of questions, not just the ones that I just shared, but in episode 46, I talk all about the power of questions because I really believe that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions, at least the questions that we ask ourselves. So a few more that I want you to jot down and you can always go to the show notes for the episode. There's the transcript. You can copy and paste them. Go to www.Jenna.Coach/62. But some additional questions that I want you to consider in so many areas, but especially goal setting.
Instead of asking, what if I fail? I want you to start asking, what if I succeed beyond my wildest dreams? Instead of what if I can't do it? I want you to ask yourself, what if I'm more capable than I think? Our brain immediately goes to the worst case scenario when we think about setting a big goal. But ask yourself, what's the best case scenario? What if the process of working toward this goal transforms me into exactly the person who can achieve it?
I promised you a simple process. Here it is. The first step and actually my challenge for you this week is I want you to think about that goal that you've been avoiding, the income goal, the launch goal, the business goal, whichever one feels too big or too scary, the one that you've been avoiding. I want you to write it down. Okay? I always want you to start with writing down your goals, putting it on paper. Even that sometimes feels super scary.
Next, I want you to examine your thoughts about that goal. What story are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself I can't do this? This is too hard. I don't have what it takes. I don't know enough. I don't have time. What if I fail and waste time that I could have spent with my kids? Write down all the thoughts that come up for you when considering that goal for yourself. I call this a brain dump. Dump it all out.
The next step is I want you to consider what feelings are these thoughts creating? Maybe jot down next to each one word that is representative of the feeling. And do these feelings have me wanting to avoid the goal or go after it? Then, super important, I want you to ask yourself, how do I want to feel about this goal? And what do I need to think in order to experience that feeling?
My clients have a lot of trouble with this one and it's because if you were already thinking thoughts that would lead to that feeling, if that was available to you so easily, you would already be thinking them, you would already be feeling excited, you would already be setting that goal. And maybe that is the case. Maybe it is just you considering different feelings and thoughts you've had that are more positive about the goal. Maybe you have easy access to that. So I want you to tap into that.
But let's say you're feeling fear around setting the goal to start your business because you think that maybe your success in corporate won't translate to entrepreneurship. But you want to feel excited. What thoughts could lead to you feeling excited? Maybe it's thoughts around the impact that your business would make in your community. Maybe it's the legacy you would leave behind for your kids. Or maybe it's a thought around your kids seeing you as a role model and the excitement around new conversations at the dinner table about what you're doing and how you're overcoming obstacles.
I want you to do that little exercise whenever you sit down and are creating goals because I want you to really understand why you might be setting lower goals than what you could achieve and what you're capable of, and maybe why you're avoiding goal setting altogether. Also, remember, I want you to ask questions like, what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? What would I do if I was willing to feel any feeling that came up during the process?
I also want you to literally decide right now, how am I going to evaluate and troubleshoot even in moments that I feel disappointed along the way when I'm experiencing many failures and many disappointments when something's not working? Decide ahead of time what will my process be to overcome those feelings of disappointment and to keep taking action.
Let me tell you what happens when you start setting goals, big goals, even when you don't hit them, or don't hit them exactly as you planned. Number one is you're still further along than when you started. If you set the goal of signing your first client in 30 days, but it doesn't happen, I guarantee you that you've taken more action to get your business out there and talked about what you do more than you would without that goal.
Another thing that happens is you build capability through the journey. The process of working towards a goal teaches you skills you can't learn any other way. You learn how to handle uncertainty. You get better at uncertainty and accepting uncertainty and thriving in uncertainty. You learn how to problem solve, how to persist when things get difficult and uncomfortable, and these are skills that compound over time.
You also get super valuable data, not evidence of inadequacy. When you don't hit a goal exactly as planned, you learn what works, what doesn't, and what you need to adjust. This isn't failure. It's market research. Like I've said, the more you figure out what doesn't work, the closer you get to what does. There's that cliché quote about shooting for the moon, right? And even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. And I know it's super cheesy, but it's true, okay? When you set big goals and work towards them, even if you don't hit them perfectly, you end up so much further along than if you had never set them at all.
I want you to think about this from an identity perspective too. When you start setting goals and working toward them, you start seeing yourself differently. You start seeing yourself as someone who goes after what she wants, not someone who plays it safe. You start building evidence that you're capable of more than you thought. And trust me, your little ones are seeing that. I love when my clients share stories about their kids observing them and the impact that mom working on her business has on them. It's so inspiring. You're inspiring next generations to go after their big goals, to set those big goals and then go after them.
The more you practice setting the goals and working towards them, the more comfortable you become with the discomfort of not knowing if you'll hit them. You'll start to see that discomfort as a sign that you're growing, not that something is going wrong. Biggest things I want you to take away from this conversation. We avoid goals because we're protecting ourselves from feeling disappointed when we don't hit them, but that protection is actually keeping us stuck and causing us to give up on ourselves before we even start.
And when we avoid setting goals, we're choosing the certainty of staying where we are over the uncertainty of becoming who we could be. One of my favorites, any missed goal is just an underestimation of timing, not proof that you're not capable. Okay, you get to decide the story you tell yourself about missing a goal. So let's just tell ourselves that we need a little more time and keep going after it. So pick that goal, ask those questions, go through that process, start working toward it, and remember, you don't have to know how you're going to achieve it. You just have to be willing to start and figure it out along the way and be willing to feel any emotion that comes up and to keep going.
Your future self, the one who's built the business and the life she loves is counting on you to be brave enough to set that audacious goal. She's counting on you to be willing to feel uncomfortable while you grow into the person who can achieve it. Keep tuning in and please click that subscribe button if you're finding the podcast valuable. It's so easy to lose track of podcasts over the summer when we're opting for that audio book on vacation and taking a break from work and business. So make sure you subscribe so your app will do the work for you of keeping tabs of all the podcasts, especially this one that you can come back to when you're ready to dive in.
We release an episode every Wednesday and we've been doing that for the last 62 weeks. And every episode is designed to help you build the confidence and take the actions that move you closer to leaving a job that doesn't fit your vision of motherhood and closer to creating the life and career you want through entrepreneurship. Okay? Remember, you don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to start.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Hi, mom friends. Today I want to talk about goal setting and more specifically, the goals we don't set because we don't want to fail. I was coaching a client a couple weeks back and this exact thing came up. I asked her about her revenue goal for the year and she said she doesn't set revenue goals. When I asked why, she said, because I don't want to not hit that goal and be disappointed. And this hit home for me because it's exactly how I used to operate.
I remember when I was leading a sales team, I would get so anxious about the goals that the company set for my team, and this was of course back in corporate. They were always what they called aggressively achievable, but aired on the side of aggressive in my opinion. And I always felt so discouraged because my brain immediately went to the discomfort of what it would feel like if my team didn't hit them. My brain always preferred to aim for a lower goal that we were more likely to hit because I thought it would build momentum. But what I didn't know at the time was that setting aggressive or audacious goals actually helps us to grow more, even and especially in the cases where we don't hit them.
Over the years, I've learned just how detrimental it can be for the bigger visions we have for our lives when we avoid setting goals or set goals that don't stretch us out of our comfort zone. When we avoid setting big goals, we're literally stunting our own growth. So today I want to talk about why our beautiful brains would prefer to avoid goals. I'm going to talk about how this holds us back and exactly how you can start setting big, fun goals in your own life with zero mental trauma. Okay?
I want you to set audacious goals and especially be willing to fall short without making it mean anything about you or your capability. By the end of this episode, I want you to be excited to set that next big goal, the one that you've been avoiding. And I want you to feel confident knowing that not hitting a goal will not deter you from your ultimate dreams. Let's dive in.
Let's talk about why we avoid goals. Now, in most cases, and what I've seen with myself and my clients, when we peel back some layers of the onion, the real reason we avoid setting goals is because we are protecting ourselves from feeling bad when we don't hit them. And this can look like complete avoidance of setting goals like my client who avoids revenue goals, or this can look like setting goals that we know are achievable because we've either done it before or have gotten close. And I've definitely been in this camp. I'm actually a big fan of setting goals, but I set goals to avoid failure.
Rather than setting goals that would help me to learn and grow. And I see that in so many of my clients as well. And for me, it was very much because I didn't want to feel disappointed by not hitting the goal that I set. But it's not the goal itself that's the problem. When we boil it down, there are two main detractors that are at play.
The first is our thoughts about the goal. Do we think that we can achieve it or not? When we think we can't achieve it, that feels terrible. And of course, we don't want to move forward with setting that goal. Our thoughts about the goal create feelings and those feelings are what lead us to take action or avoid it all together. And unfortunately, our brains have a negativity bias. They're wired to look for problems and threats and all the reasons why this won't work. So when we think about a big goal, our brain naturally focuses on what could go wrong, rather than what could go right.
And this is just how we're designed. Nothing has gone wrong. But when we're thinking about all the things that could go wrong and our lack of capability and lack of time and questioning ourselves for wanting more, of course, this deters us from officially setting and going for that audacious goal. This doesn't mean you don't still think about the goal or the business and noodle on it. Maybe you talk to some friends over wine about the goal, what it might look like someday to start that business, you dream about it with your partner. We still do all of those things, but we keep that goal at arm's length because we think it will protect us.
We think that it's better to wait until we know and are 100% certain that we can achieve it rather than start figuring it out now. Which leads me to the next reason that we avoid setting goals that I've kind of touched on previously, we want to avoid feeling disappointed if we don't hit the goal. At the end of the day, this is a conversation about being willing to be uncomfortable because if you're willing to feel any emotion, especially the uncomfortable ones that come with going after a big goal, it will make you unstoppable.
If you're willing to feel disappointed and keep going, if you're willing to feel embarrassed and evaluate what happened and what you could do differently, if you're willing to feel sad but not take the results personal, there is nothing you won't try in your pursuit of the goal. And the more things you try that don't work, the closer you get to what will work. But this requires you to be willing to feel some uncomfortable emotions along the way.
Also, if you struggle with perfectionism, this is just more of an aside. I myself am a recovering perfectionist, so I get it. But this is even more important to be aware of because setting safe goals or no goals at all is self-protection from failure. If we can't fail, we don't have to deal with the discomfort that comes with being imperfect. But what I want to offer is that failing isn't actually a problem. And who gets to even decide what it means to fail?
I've got really good news for you. You get to decide. Is it a failure if you set out to sign your first client in 30 days and you don't sign that client? Or are you closer to signing your first client because you were actively trying things and troubleshooting and figuring things out for the past month? If we're always protecting ourselves from failure, the big F word, we're not exposing ourselves to new things. We're staying within what we know we can do. We're staying within what's comfortable. And if we're always only doing things we know how to do, we'll only get the results we have right now.
Which leads me to another thing at play here, which is our need, our human need for certainty. We want to know we can achieve what we set out to do. It feels really scary when we don't know what the outcome will be. So what we do is we tend to underestimate what we can achieve. But just like we need certainty, we also need growth. And unfortunately, growth requires uncertainty. Growth means we are delving into a landscape we aren't familiar with. That's what it's all about.
We don't know what it's like to run a business because we've never owned a business. There's so much uncertainty when we're doing something we've never done before. But when our need for certainty wins, we avoid the bigger goals that would actually help us grow. Setting big goals helps us to grow because it requires us to try new things. And we have to decide what we want more, the comfort of staying exactly where we are, or the discomfort that comes with growing into the person we want to be.
Here's what I really want you to understand about what happens when we avoid setting goals. We are actually giving up on ourselves before we even start. When you don't define that goal of starting the business or signing your first client or making a certain amount of revenue in your business, what you're really saying is I don't believe I'm capable of figuring out how to get there. You're deciding ahead of time that you're not the kind of person who can make it happen. And here's the sad part. What if you actually are the kind of person who can make it happen?
What if you never give yourself the chance to try? When we avoid setting goals, we're trying to protect ourselves, but the thing we're protecting ourselves from is actually the thing we need in order to be successful. We're so busy protecting ourselves from potential disappointment that we're also protecting ourselves from potential success. We're choosing the certainty of staying where we are over the uncertainty of becoming who we could be. And that's the real cost. Okay, not just missing the goal, but missing the chance to discover what you're truly capable of.
So then what happens next? How do we change these patterns? How do we start setting goals without fear? Let's talk about how to start setting goals without hesitation, without fear, and with pure excitement. The first thing I want you to understand that I mentioned before is that failure is just a thought, not a fact. You get to decide what failure means for you. It's subjective. And I hope this is so freeing because what matters more than the actual fact of whether you hit the goal or not is the story you choose to tell yourself about not hitting your goal.
Is it failure? Or is it just attempt one? What are you going to decide to make it mean that you didn't hit the revenue goal or you didn't sign that client? One of my favorite little word play, mindset tool things is to just add the word yet to the end of the sentence. I haven't hit my revenue goal yet. I didn't sign that first client yet. Maybe let's even reframe some of the questions entirely. We're always asking ourselves, what if I don't hit this goal? But what if instead we asked, what if not hitting the goal the first time is part of the process?
I'll never forget when my coach said to me that every missed goal is just an underestimation of timing, not proof of your capability. I'll never forget when she said, you're not behind. Nothing has gone wrong. You just underestimated how long this would take. This goal is going to take a few more months of learning and troubleshooting. That completely shifted my relationship with goals.
One of the most important questions that I want you to consider when you are in goal setting mode is, what if I were willing to feel any feeling? If I were willing to feel disappointed, how would that change my goal setting behavior? Because disappointment is just a feeling. It's not dangerous, it won't kill you, and it's absolutely temporary. And you get to decide what comes after disappointment. This is what mental resilience boils down to, to feel something hard, uncomfortable, and to keep moving forward anyway, to figure out how to keep moving forward.
I guarantee you, you would set the goal knowing that just because you didn't reach a goal in the time frame you set aside for yourself doesn't mean that you aren't capable of achieving it. If you experience that disappointment, you get to decide what to do next. Maybe it would fuel action for the next 30 days. Maybe it'll give you a ton of data and show you what didn't work so that you get closer to what will work. If you don't hit a goal, it just means there's more learning and growing that needs to happen.
And I hope by now you know that I am a big fan of questions, not just the ones that I just shared, but in episode 46, I talk all about the power of questions because I really believe that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions, at least the questions that we ask ourselves. So a few more that I want you to jot down and you can always go to the show notes for the episode. There's the transcript. You can copy and paste them. Go to www.Jenna.Coach/62. But some additional questions that I want you to consider in so many areas, but especially goal setting.
Instead of asking, what if I fail? I want you to start asking, what if I succeed beyond my wildest dreams? Instead of what if I can't do it? I want you to ask yourself, what if I'm more capable than I think? Our brain immediately goes to the worst case scenario when we think about setting a big goal. But ask yourself, what's the best case scenario? What if the process of working toward this goal transforms me into exactly the person who can achieve it?
I promised you a simple process. Here it is. The first step and actually my challenge for you this week is I want you to think about that goal that you've been avoiding, the income goal, the launch goal, the business goal, whichever one feels too big or too scary, the one that you've been avoiding. I want you to write it down. Okay? I always want you to start with writing down your goals, putting it on paper. Even that sometimes feels super scary.
Next, I want you to examine your thoughts about that goal. What story are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself I can't do this? This is too hard. I don't have what it takes. I don't know enough. I don't have time. What if I fail and waste time that I could have spent with my kids? Write down all the thoughts that come up for you when considering that goal for yourself. I call this a brain dump. Dump it all out.
The next step is I want you to consider what feelings are these thoughts creating? Maybe jot down next to each one word that is representative of the feeling. And do these feelings have me wanting to avoid the goal or go after it? Then, super important, I want you to ask yourself, how do I want to feel about this goal? And what do I need to think in order to experience that feeling?
My clients have a lot of trouble with this one and it's because if you were already thinking thoughts that would lead to that feeling, if that was available to you so easily, you would already be thinking them, you would already be feeling excited, you would already be setting that goal. And maybe that is the case. Maybe it is just you considering different feelings and thoughts you've had that are more positive about the goal. Maybe you have easy access to that. So I want you to tap into that.
But let's say you're feeling fear around setting the goal to start your business because you think that maybe your success in corporate won't translate to entrepreneurship. But you want to feel excited. What thoughts could lead to you feeling excited? Maybe it's thoughts around the impact that your business would make in your community. Maybe it's the legacy you would leave behind for your kids. Or maybe it's a thought around your kids seeing you as a role model and the excitement around new conversations at the dinner table about what you're doing and how you're overcoming obstacles.
I want you to do that little exercise whenever you sit down and are creating goals because I want you to really understand why you might be setting lower goals than what you could achieve and what you're capable of, and maybe why you're avoiding goal setting altogether. Also, remember, I want you to ask questions like, what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? What would I do if I was willing to feel any feeling that came up during the process?
I also want you to literally decide right now, how am I going to evaluate and troubleshoot even in moments that I feel disappointed along the way when I'm experiencing many failures and many disappointments when something's not working? Decide ahead of time what will my process be to overcome those feelings of disappointment and to keep taking action.
Let me tell you what happens when you start setting goals, big goals, even when you don't hit them, or don't hit them exactly as you planned. Number one is you're still further along than when you started. If you set the goal of signing your first client in 30 days, but it doesn't happen, I guarantee you that you've taken more action to get your business out there and talked about what you do more than you would without that goal.
Another thing that happens is you build capability through the journey. The process of working towards a goal teaches you skills you can't learn any other way. You learn how to handle uncertainty. You get better at uncertainty and accepting uncertainty and thriving in uncertainty. You learn how to problem solve, how to persist when things get difficult and uncomfortable, and these are skills that compound over time.
You also get super valuable data, not evidence of inadequacy. When you don't hit a goal exactly as planned, you learn what works, what doesn't, and what you need to adjust. This isn't failure. It's market research. Like I've said, the more you figure out what doesn't work, the closer you get to what does. There's that cliché quote about shooting for the moon, right? And even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. And I know it's super cheesy, but it's true, okay? When you set big goals and work towards them, even if you don't hit them perfectly, you end up so much further along than if you had never set them at all.
I want you to think about this from an identity perspective too. When you start setting goals and working toward them, you start seeing yourself differently. You start seeing yourself as someone who goes after what she wants, not someone who plays it safe. You start building evidence that you're capable of more than you thought. And trust me, your little ones are seeing that. I love when my clients share stories about their kids observing them and the impact that mom working on her business has on them. It's so inspiring. You're inspiring next generations to go after their big goals, to set those big goals and then go after them.
The more you practice setting the goals and working towards them, the more comfortable you become with the discomfort of not knowing if you'll hit them. You'll start to see that discomfort as a sign that you're growing, not that something is going wrong. Biggest things I want you to take away from this conversation. We avoid goals because we're protecting ourselves from feeling disappointed when we don't hit them, but that protection is actually keeping us stuck and causing us to give up on ourselves before we even start.
And when we avoid setting goals, we're choosing the certainty of staying where we are over the uncertainty of becoming who we could be. One of my favorites, any missed goal is just an underestimation of timing, not proof that you're not capable. Okay, you get to decide the story you tell yourself about missing a goal. So let's just tell ourselves that we need a little more time and keep going after it. So pick that goal, ask those questions, go through that process, start working toward it, and remember, you don't have to know how you're going to achieve it. You just have to be willing to start and figure it out along the way and be willing to feel any emotion that comes up and to keep going.
Your future self, the one who's built the business and the life she loves is counting on you to be brave enough to set that audacious goal. She's counting on you to be willing to feel uncomfortable while you grow into the person who can achieve it. Keep tuning in and please click that subscribe button if you're finding the podcast valuable. It's so easy to lose track of podcasts over the summer when we're opting for that audio book on vacation and taking a break from work and business. So make sure you subscribe so your app will do the work for you of keeping tabs of all the podcasts, especially this one that you can come back to when you're ready to dive in.
We release an episode every Wednesday and we've been doing that for the last 62 weeks. And every episode is designed to help you build the confidence and take the actions that move you closer to leaving a job that doesn't fit your vision of motherhood and closer to creating the life and career you want through entrepreneurship. Okay? Remember, you don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to start.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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