You know the drill. Pick a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal. Determine your plan and then follow through until you get it. No pain, no gain. Go big or go home. It's all about self-discipline and willpower. Everybody knows this... and that's why today I'm going to share a few things that nobody tells you about getting your goal.
Hello, friend. Today's episode is intended to be a little bit softer than most of the conversations that you might hear about goal getting. I've been thinking a lot recently about, well, everything, literally everything. I mean, can you relate? I too, am an overthinking ambitious woman who gets kind of caught up in my own brain, but specifically, specifically, here's why I started that sentence.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how I used to get goals. [00:01:00] Hence the intro about how I used to really like rely on willpower, and I used to think that being super focused and super determined and basically being like firm. In fact, I have, I have a post-it note on my computer that I love. My younger son wrote it for me a couple of years ago now it's super faded, super faded.
But he wrote this phrase, rigorous and uncompromising on a post-it note because we were having this conversation and that was kind of not related to getting a goal, specifically. It was related to being the kind of leader and the kind of CEO and president that I wanna be in my business. We were having a conversation about
asking for what I want. At the time I had, uh, I, I had a contractor working for me who basically argued with me about almost [00:02:00] everything. That when I wanted things done a certain way, she would say, well, I mean, nobody really cares about it like that. What if we do it this way and here are the SOPs and here's how I've done it with other clients.
And, and it was a constant, I'm gonna say battle, even though that is a pretty big word there. It was a constant back and forth. And so my son was who's by the way, has a degree in business. He's a firefighter now, but he has a degree in business, which is why I was even having this conversation with him.
Like I had this, I had this contractor who was my, uh, official business manager, and then I had my son who was my unofficial, but really had my back on a lot of things. My unofficial business manager, and he was like, mom, when you want something, you need to be rigorous and uncompromising about it. This is your business.
You can have what you want. And it's so interesting 'cause I'm saying this out loud. This has literally, not literally nothing to do with what we're talking about today, but it's so, so fascinating to me because that [00:03:00] post-it note, he wrote that years ago and I am still kind of untangling that specific, that relationship with that contractor and the sentence that my son told me all those years ago that what I want in my own business matters.
That is something that I am still stepping into, which is somewhat related. I'm just gonna make it related to what we're talking about today, with today being a little bit softer goal getting advice than I think most people will tell you. The truth of it is, I have gotten some incredibly big goals in my life, and many of them I have gotten through willpower and self-discipline and thinking about things, you know, in a rigorous and uncompromising way.
And, and I have come to [00:04:00] understand that there is a time and a place to see yourself as determined, to see yourself as a person who can do, and will do, and can get what she wants. And sometimes it doesn't look the way you thought it was going to. It doesn't feel in real life the way a lot of goal getting advice sounds.
The truth of it is that when people offer you, you know, smart goals, which by the way was the acronym that I had in the intro, the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound, which, yes, I did have to google that one. I've heard about smart goals since forever, but I still have to Google it every time.
But even when people are talking to you about very... I am gonna call it masculine goal getting techniques, and I, I don't know if I'm really here for the whole [00:05:00] masculine and feminine conversation today that feels like a bigger can of worms than I was trying to open, but I am offering you that even when you hear advice like that, that you as a person
who is listening to a podcast like this, who wants to deeply understand yourself and explore and find your way to your goal, you can take the pieces of that kind of advice. You can take the uncompromising and rigorous advice and still make it work for you. And that's where we're gonna step into the
goal getting advice that I have for you today. These are actually, I'm gonna call them secrets that I have learned on my way to getting some very big goals that have helped me [00:06:00] shape the way I think about getting future goals that I wanted to offer to you as not even an antidote to smart goals and you know, follow one course until successful kind of advice.
But as part and parcel of getting your goal. There will be times when you can be rigorous and uncompromising, and there will be times when you can be soft and gentle and open. Both have their place, and that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you today, so that you can take what you hear out in the world and what you hear on the podcast here and make it work for you.
So one of the first things that I've learned is that you have depths of untapped resilience waiting for you when you get curious about [00:07:00] failures, mistakes, messes and mishaps. One of the, one of the pieces of advice that I hear all the time given to people who want to get their goals is that you are going to fail and you need to learn how to deal with it.
And I think that for most people what we hear that as meaning is some version of just get back up and keep going. Or maybe like learn your lessons and move forward. But the lesson most of us take away from it is, well, that didn't work. And what I really wanna offer you here is that yes, you are going to mess up, you are going to fail, you are going to make mistakes.
You are going to have things not go the way you thought they were going to go. That that part of the advice is absolutely 100% true. And rather than gritting your teeth and dusting yourself off and just moving forward or learning the lesson of, [00:08:00] that's not how things are gonna go for me, what I really wanna offer you is that getting
curious and not just curious about like what went wrong, but curious about what was I thinking and what was I feeling that created that kind of a result. Here's why this is gently different from most advice. When you get curious about why something turned out the way it did, without looking to judge yourself or blame the circumstances or yourself, or look for some kind of like external reason.
When you understand your thoughts and your feelings, you will always understand your actions. And [00:09:00] those actions, one way or another, is what brought you the result that you had. And again, without any version of like judgment or blame, getting curious about your thoughts... Perhaps in your journal, which is what I have some expertise in, which is what most of these podcasts are about. Asking yourself gently curious questions about yourself can help you see why things turn out the way they do.
That curiosity, when you can tap into it, will have you coming back from any failure, any mistake, any mishap, any failed launch in a business, any rejection from an agent or a publisher, any [00:10:00] DNF at a race which is did not finish in case you are not a runner. Any kind of failure or setback can be information
for you to learn about yourself. The path to your goal is understanding yourself. Dusting yourself off and pushing forward can teach you some fair bit of resilience. Absolutely. Having the determination to keep going even when something has not turned out like you thought it was going to. Absolutely. I totally agree.
Yes, this is good goal getting advice and also right next to that advice, let's look curiously at what you were thinking and what you were feeling that led to the thing that felt like a mistake or a mess, or a failure, or a setback. [00:11:00] Something else that I've learned, and in this vein, these are all very related,
frankly. You can understand your fears instead of pushing through them. I have a bit of a rant, but today being a softer podcast episode, I'm gonna keep my tone down. I'm gonna keep my hands down so that I don't hit the microphone. I'm going to gently offer you the people who give you the advice of feel the fear and do it anyway, are telling you part of the truth, are telling you one way to look at
your current situation. Here's what I've learned for myself about pushing through fear. I, well, here's what I didn't learn actually, that, and that really is the crux of what I'm gonna offer you about this. When you simply push through [00:12:00] fear, when you try to regulate your emotions by, you know, taking deep breaths or like, like trying to calm yourself down, what you don't learn about yourself
can be the thing that eventually over time builds up into burnout. And I'm gonna give you a really specific example of the 10 months that I didn't record any podcasts. Over the course of, I've been podcasting now for a little bit over eight years, in fact, oh, in fact, just over eight years. It is late October when I'm recording this.
And probably when you listen to it, if you listen to it right away. I started recording the original version of this podcast, the Let's Run podcast, august, no, not August, October. Can I remember the exact date? I wanna say the 17th, but I think that wasn't quite right. I started recording the podcast in October of [00:13:00] 2017, so I have been podcasting on and off for eight years at this point.
And there was a time when podcasting felt super fun and just like a natural extension of everything else that I was doing. Basically, I turned on the microphone and just started talking and didn't really think about like where it was gonna go or what kind of advice I was giving or why I was doing it. And then being me,
I started overthinking it. I know you're un surprised to hear this. I started overthinking it and I started trying to figure out like what should I be doing with a podcast and where should I go with this and what kinds of topics are interesting for my audience? Which it turned out at the time, a lot of them actually weren't interested.
That was the whole conversation to the side. But I was trying to talk about running, but I was also trying to talk about mindset and it fit with my brand, but I wasn't sure where it fit with my brand. And I had, I had a lot of mindset blocks, [00:14:00] frankly, about talking about running and being an expert in that and trying to give advice with that.
And I, I had a lot, I had a lot going on. And one of the things that kept coming up for me over and over and over every time I turned on the mic or was about to turn on the microphone was some version of, I don't know if this is gonna work. I don't know if this is a good idea. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Nobody wants to hear this. I don't think this is a good idea. I'm not really sure about the podcast in general. And then I would turn off the microphone afterwards and be like, well, that sucked. For years. Every single episode, even the good ones, even the ones you love, even the ones you have gone back to and listened to again and again and again.
Even the ones that you email me and you're like, Pahla, that was the best. I love that podcast episode. It's been so helpful. I've listened to it so many [00:15:00] times. Or even just the podcast, you know, the overarching all, I mean, at this point... 250 plus episodes. Almost all of them until these recent ones was some version of me pushing through my fears and my worries and my misgivings and my self-doubts, and all of those compiled over time and got me in a bit of a tangle, as you might say, towards the end of last year where I finally just went
silent for months. I struggled so hard to find the voice that felt like me, because I kept pushing through instead of listening to what I was saying to myself. Like on some level, I absolutely heard it. Like I remember every single time I turned off the microphone, I said, well, that wasn't my best. And I [00:16:00] told myself that as though it were true, as though that were some sort of fact rather than something I could hear and observe
and feel through so that it never had to stop me again. That was the work that I did while I was silent for all those months, was recognizing that simply pushing through and trying to make this podcast happen no matter what. Because you know, it's good marketing and it's good for the business. And frankly, there were parts of it that I loved.
I mean, if you've met me, I do love to talk. So there were things about it that I found enjoyable, and also there were parts that simply pushing through, ended up not serving me in the long run. Yes, you can acknowledge and recognize that you have [00:17:00] worries and fears and self doubts, and there are a certain amount of meeting yourself there and asking yourself to do a thing while feeling that feeling.
And here's the softer side of that advice. Take the time to listen to what you are saying that is creating those uncomfortable feelings, rather than just ignoring or pushing them away or trying to regulate your way through them. Really come to understand them, come to see them and feel through those feelings so that you make room for
more helpful thoughts and feelings, less fear, less self-doubt, fewer worries. Over time, when you work through those things, you will find [00:18:00] yourself sitting in front of a podcast microphone, chatting amiably, and finishing up with an episode and thinking, gosh, I can't wait until everybody hears that. It feels so, so different
than just pushing through. One of the other things that I have come to understand is that there is nothing in your past or your present that actually defines or confines your future. Now, to be fair, I do actually think that a lot of people talk about this when I offered you this, nobody's talking about how to get your goal,
I do think that a lot of people who talk about this rather than being the, like the bro goal getters with the smart goals and the use your willpower and self-discipline, I do think that a lot of people that talk about this particular thing tend to be [00:19:00] on the side of like law of attraction or the secret or manifestation. And I'm saying that in a little bit of a sarcastic tone.
In full transparency, I actually listen to a lot of podcasts from people who talk about manifestation. I have a beautifully soft spot in my heart for people who talk about law of attraction and, and I really understand that law of attraction is actually science. Like law of attraction and manifestation is not as airy fairy and tarot cards and crystals as a lot of people would make it out to be.
There is legitimate brain science behind it, and if you'd like to know, the Daily 3 journaling formula that I offer you is a science-backed, organized version that [00:20:00] explains how this all works of the Law of Attraction. The law of attraction is your brain and the Daily 3 journaling formula is your brain working the way brains are supposed to work.
It is the way to ask your brain to do what it can do but doesn't do naturally. Your brain will naturally look at your past to determine your future. That's the way it is wired to work, but it can imagine something different, AKA future self journaling. If you have not watched or listened to the Daily 3 masterclass, I've got a, a really concise 23 minute masterclass that explains Daily 3 journaling in a way that
works for your goals. There are ways to rewire your brain to help you get a goal. One of them is future self journaling. The other one is metacognitive journaling, and the third one is [00:21:00] success journaling. What I'm offering you in the Daily 3 journaling framework is these scientific principles that help you see your past and your present and your future in a way that your brain doesn't ordinarily and very efficiently do.
And rather than thinking about it as like manifestation or law of attraction, unless that's your thing, if you like manifestation and law of attraction, my friend, go for it. And also understand that there's science behind it and, and hey, if you do like law of attraction and manifestation and stuff like that, that's probably why you like this podcast too.
They are the same thing, and the way that I explain it is my version. The, in this case, the more rigorous and uncompromising version, the more science, the more [00:22:00] hard line version, rather than that, that soft and maybe a little bit too fluffy version for you. Really, at this point in the podcast, what I'm trying to offer you is not just the softer side of things, and not even necessarily the harder side of things, but maybe the Goldilocks way for you.
The way that you can hear a thing about rewiring your brain and getting your goal and understanding yourself and finding that place where, yes, you wanna be focused and yes, you wanna have some, some self discipline and some self-determination, and you do want to be rigorous about it. And also, you can feel the self-doubts and the worries, and you can acknowledge them and understand them.
I offer you that there is a way, and it's not necessarily the exact way that I'm explaining things, there is a way for you to take in all kinds [00:23:00] of goal getting advice and make it work for you. And the final thing that I really wanna offer you here is that you have time. I think that this is probably one of the biggest things for most of us to untangle.
There are many, many goal getting gurus in the world who want to talk to you about speed or pace or time, especially running coaches. Like me even, but also I, I listen to a lot of goal getting advice that talks about the faster you move the, you know, the faster you'll have your breakthroughs and the faster you'll get there.
And that speed is one of the determining factors and you [00:24:00] have to not slow yourself down anymore. Like we have all this language about what it means to be fast or slow, and I offer you that whichever one you are holding yourself over the barrel of either telling yourself that this is taking too long and you should be faster, or telling yourself that it's going too fast and you need to slow down just a minute and learn some more.
That no matter, no matter which way you're coming at this, you have time. This is one of my favorite sentences, and I offer it to you lovingly. In fact, I offer it to my my Get your Goal members all the time. One of the, one of the things that I hear quite a bit when somebody is coaching with me and they're, they're kind of right at the edge of[00:25:00]
right at the edge of their, their challenge right at the edge of their resistance. They're hearing that, that what they're currently thinking is a thought. They can see and observe how that thought is like currently blocking them. They can see the path to moving through that thought. And one of the things that so frequently comes out of their mouth right when they're on the edge of that breakthrough is, well, I don't wanna take any more time.
I don't wanna, I don't wanna take up anymore of, of the time here in the group than, than, you know, belongs to me. Or I don't wanna, I don't wanna take too long with this coaching, there's a, a time factor that is kind of tied into taking up space, being worthy of your goal, being worthy of coaching, being worthy of attention.
There's a thing, a value, that we place [00:26:00] on time that I gently and lovingly offer you, you have. You have the time that you need to get your goal. You have time to explore. You have time to slow down, to pay attention, to observe, to understand. You have time.
It's such a different way of thinking about time when you recognize it as your resource. Instead of being out there in the world that you are taking time or using time, or wasting time or spending time, the time is yours to have. [00:27:00] I know that got real deep and that's actually why I'm gonna gently lay it there for you to turn around in your own mind in a way that makes sense to you, in a way
that works for you. The truth of it is that everybody who has ever told you anything about getting a goal was offering you something usable. Today, in this podcast, I've offered you a, a slight nuance so that you can take it in in a way that works for you. My friend. I love talking to you here on the podcast.
This was my best today. Thank you so much for being here. [00:28:00] I'll talk to you again soon.
