Welcome to the Get Your Goal podcast, the place where ambitious, deep-thinking women chart their own course, exploring the mindset, emotions, and daily practices that help you get your goal your way by being unapologetically you. I'm your host, Pahla B, master certified life and goal coach and creator of the Daily Three journaling framework.
On this podcast, you'll learn to navigate your unique path to success by using the most powerful tool in your kit, your own internal compass. Ready for the adventure? Let's go. Hello, friend. We are talking today about how you are unintentionally blocking yourself from getting your goals, and I really wanna take a quick moment here and pause on that word unintentionally.
I am, uh, through my own self-discovery and my own business goals and thinking about business and my own entrepreneurship journey, as we like to say these days, I am really thinking a lot about the kind of language that I [00:01:00] use and the kind of tone and voice that I use when I am talking to you. And I am taking a stand, like a hard stand, and I've been thinking about this for a while, but I am really, truly going to stand up, even though I'm sitting down and say to you that I am against the kind of marketing and selling and podcasting and, like, speaking to your audience in a way that implies that you have a problem, that you are making a mistake, that this is the thing that's wrong with you in a way that brings up that really gross, yucky shame feeling.
There is nothing wrong with you. You do not have a problem. You, you definitely feel like you have a problem. I'm not gonna argue with you on that. Like, things feel problematic- And in fact, what we're talking about today probably feels problematic, but it's not intentional. And I really wanna clarify for you that 99.9% of, like, [00:02:00] everything I'm talking about is almost always some version of, hey, there's some subconscious programming that you've gotten from being a human in the world, being raised by parents, and living in a society that tells us these things, that that's just unexplored.
Thinking about your, your problems, your mistakes, the things you're missing, like, all of those words that people use, really looking at them all through this lens of, like, I'm intentionally making choices that are based on subconscious thoughts and feelings that I haven't noticed, and all of this is just unexplored territory that I can dig into and understand myself better.
That is really what I wanna offer you. It's, in fact, a big part of what I'm gonna offer you today when I'm telling you, "Hey, there's this way that you are unintentionally blocking yourself." Yeah, it's because of socialization. Like, let's really, let's really walk into it like that. And also, let me give you a little bit more [00:03:00] context, a little bit more, like, real world, "Hey, this is what you're telling yourself.
This is what you've probably noticed, and here's the solution. Here's how to understand yourself better." There is a question... Actually, no, there's a statement that I hear all the time that is sometimes, like, couched with a question, but the thing that I hear all the time and have since literally forever, like, since the very first time I ever went into any kind of service-based business at all, there is a, a statement that you are very likely making that I, too, have made to my coach which is this.
I'm laughing at myself. I'm not laughing at either one of us in a mean way. I'm laughing at myself because this is something that I understand on a fundamental level, and yet I've heard these words come out of my mouth when I'm talking about myself, and this is exploration that I have done. Here's the sentence you're saying, "I'm doing everything right, but I'm not [00:04:00] getting the results that I want."
This is so common. In fact, this is so common that I actually have quite a few episodes about this. And in fact, let me tell you that I have a very recent episode that was talking about, like, if you're not getting results, here are the six places to troubleshoot your results. That is, like, the back half of the sentence.
Let me, let me say the sentence again so that you can hear the two halves. "I'm doing everything right"- And then there's a big long pause, a comma. "But I'm not getting results." That other podcast is about the results part. It's about troubleshooting. It's about taking a, an honest, loving, non-judgmental look at, like, where you are, what you want, what's going on, and the places to look at in your journey.
What we're actually talking about today is the first half of that sentence. I'm doing everything right. Because here's the thing, you're following the plan that you've got. You're mostly consistent, and you feel [00:05:00] really flummoxed about why the results aren't coming from the plan like you've been told. I mean, the person who gave you the plan, even if it was you, because I'm about to tell you a story about how I did this to myself with my own plan, and it cracks me up because we are all, we're all subject to this idea That, that there's a right way to do things, that you're doing things the right way.
And so what you do when you have this in your head, like, "Oh my gosh, I know that I'm doing the right thing, but I'm not getting the results that I want," you and I both, we double down. We stay the course. We judge ourselves constantly, and we tell ourselves that if we just stick with it, if we just keep doing exactly what we've been doing, that things magically will eventually change somehow, even though we're not really sure how.
We really truly think... I mean, goodness gracious, how often have you heard the consistency [00:06:00] is the key? So we, like, triple down on this idea of consistently. We start measuring even more carefully. We start, like, making ourselves stick to a schedule even more than we were already sticking to it. Like, we get caught up in the tiny details and get really, I'm gonna say obsessed.
Don't hear that word wrong. I mean that in a, I mean that in a good way, if there is such a thing. But we get really caught up in the minutiae of trying to follow the plan and make it right so that we can get the results that we want. Now, some of you are thinking, "Hmm, that's not exactly what I've been doing," because there is actually a, a flip side of this coin.
There's also, and I've done this, too, oh my gosh, so many times, this thing where if I'm telling myself, "Okay, I'm doing everything right, but I'm not getting the results that I want, I must need a new plan. I'm gonna go change my, my strategies. I'm gonna go find something else. There must be something [00:07:00] else out there that's gonna work for me."
The constantly mixing it up, the constantly looking for a new plan, a new strategy, is essentially this same actual issue. So here's what's really going on. Here is the problem behind the problem. The, the reframe that you can start to really hear yourself and listen to how you're currently thinking about it is that you're simply convinced that there's a right way To get your goals.
And it's either, you know, what you're currently doing, or it's something you haven't found yet. Because let me tell you something, love, you have been socialized from the minute of your birth to believe that there is a right way, and it's the way other people are telling you to do it. Your parents told you what to do.
Your teachers told you what to do. Adults told you what to do. Elders told you what to do. Your boss told you what to do. And if you are a woman, [00:08:00] men told you what to do. You've been socialized from the minute of your birth to believe that other people have the answer. And I wanna tell you that that's not entirely true.
The thing is, you are blocking yourself from getting your goals by overriding your own... And I'm gonna use a phrase that I don't even like, but hear me out, your own internal wisdom. I don't love that word. I don't love it. I don't love that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna massage it a couple of different times. I've talked about it here on the podcast as being like your hell yes or your hell no, or your, your intuition or your gut.
One of those might land better for you than another. I personally like hell yes. I've learned exactly what my hell yes feels like, and I've learned that I don't have a hell no nearly so much as I have a eh, which is [00:09:00] not gonna translate into the transcription. It was a weird little, it was a weird little I don't know noise.
In fact, that is what I hear when I have, when I have a no, what I hear is, "I don't know." I hear a lot of, like, self-doubt. I hear a lot of questions. I hear a lot of, like, internal debate about, "Well, maybe." My, my no sounds like maybe, and I've learned that maybe for me actually means no. You will, and this is what I'm gonna offer you here in this podcast, is a path to the place where you can hear your yes and your no, because it will be very clear to you, like what it feels like, what it sounds like in your head, and what it feels like in your body.
I have a very clear and distinct hell yes. I have learned that anything that isn't a hell yes is some version of a maybe. It needs some version of untangling, of listening, of [00:10:00] hearing myself. And I will tell you that for me personally, both my hell yes and my I don't know are both literally in my gut.
They're in my stomach. So, so when I tell you, you know, "Listen to your gut, listen to your stomach," like, there's a reason people say that, and I really wanna offer you, apropos of our topic today, that if, like, your internal wisdom or your hell yes and hell no or your intuition or your gut, if none of those sentences or phrases land with you, like if, if you're still just kinda scratching your head, like, "Yeah, I don't like that.
I don't, I don't like the way this, this feels, I don't like the way this sounds to me," there's another phrase that will land with you. I promise you. There is a version of... What I'm getting at here is self-trust. Trusting your own judgment, discernment, your own answer. There is a phrase that you can [00:11:00] use that's going to feel amazing.
I've offered you these different versions of it here so that you can understand what I'm talking about. You get to use your own words. So let me tell you a story, actually, about listening to my gut that I just had yesterday. I had, um, I did my long run yesterday. I'm... If you're listening to this in real time, I'm almost certainly going to post this at some point in time on Saturday.
I do my long runs on Friday. I am currently, my current goal is I am both qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon. I have qualified for Boston before, but I had such a squeaker of a time that I did not actually get to run the Boston Marathon. You actually have to qualify. They have qualifying times, but then you actually have to qualify by, generally speaking, several minutes more than that in order to actually get in.
There's such a big field of people who, A, want to run, and B, run fast enough to be able to run it, that their qualifying times, uh, change with [00:12:00] some frequency. I think it's every, like, five years or so based on the field. And, and you have to qualify by a little bit more than their actual qualifying times.
So I am currently working on running marathons at all because I didn't for many years. I had, uh, I, I took a, I took a, I call it my retirement. I retired from road running and I did a lot of trail running and trail racing for many years. And then I actually, I never, I never fully stopped running, but I really changed my focus.
When I was in the real thick of all the changes that menopause was, was going on with me, I, I really struggled to continue to run the way I wanted to run while also recovering the way that my body was telling me it needed. So I kind of, I kind of let go of running for a couple of years before I really, ironically, not ironically, no, [00:13:00] just a turn of phrase that's funny.
I found my footing again. And I found within me this desire to finish this thing that felt like unfinished business. Like I was really proud of qualifying for Boston. It was the thing that I had been working towards for years. I mean, it was seven, yeah, it was seven years of trying to qualify for Boston.
I ran 13, it was my 13th marathon that I finally did qualify. So to not be able to actually go has felt all these many long years like unfinished business. This is a big part of why I'm going for this goal right now. There's this thing that I have wanted for a very long time that I've come very close to that I'd really like to complete for myself.
So all that to say, I've had a lot of, a lot of like deconditioning. Like I didn't run marathons for years. I didn't really do any road running. And for me, road running and trail [00:14:00] running are very different. Trail running feels very relaxed to me. There's a lot of walking. There's a lot of eating. There's a lot of enjoying the scenery.
Like I enjoy trail racing in a very different way. When I am focused on road running, I am thinking about speed. Quick note here for those of you who care. You don't work on speed until after you've worked on endurance. So because I took so many years off of like really doing endurance type running, the first adaptation that I am working on is endurance.
And I worked on that a good fair bit last year and have been working on it this year. And I am right at the point in my training where I'm not specifically focusing on speed nearly as much as I'm starting to see some differences in my speed because of the endurance work. I feel like I could talk about that for a really long time, and it's not the point of what I'm saying [00:15:00] today.
Uh, what I am saying today though is that last year when I was training for my first marathon in eight years, that I was really focused on endurance. And one of the things that I personally do when I'm focused on endurance is I was doing a run walk, uh, program, uh, of my own making, where I was planning for walking breaks to really, like, keep my heart rate down, like...
Okay, I am gonna talk about this. I, I am nothing if not a teacher and a personal trainer. Let me explain to you exactly what endurance is and how it works, and why that system is so important. Endurance is the first system that you work on because it is all about taking in oxygen and your capacity to take in oxygen, your capacity to have an elevated heart rate, because, I mean, some of it is actually a mental capacity too.
An elevated heart rate can feel like panic, especially for those of us who are [00:16:00] very familiar with anxiety and panic. Doing any kind of exercise can feel almost immediately like anxiety or panic just because of the elevated heart rate. So mentally and emotionally being able to sustain an elevated heart rate without going into the thought loops that I...
If you are familiar with it, I know you know what I'm talking about, that that is, like, thing number one. The thing that your body needs to do though is really focus on taking in oxygen and turning it into energy. That system fuels everything else. You literally cannot focus on speed until you have oxygen uptake that can turn into fuel quickly and efficiently.
Because what will happen, if you have, if you have ever started an exercise program from, like, being completely deconditioned, like if you, um, like me when I was in my 30s, had basically not exercised for years and years and years, the very [00:17:00] first time I did anything, I was completely and utterly out of breath, wheezing.
I mean, practically cyanotic, meaning, like, you go into anaerobic, where your body cannot turn that oxygen into fuel for your muscles. But your muscles, your muscles wanna keep going 'cause your brain tells them to keep going, so they keep trying to go, but they don't have the oxygen to do so. Anyway, endurance is all about oxygen, and then speed and power is all about turning that oxygen into speed and power m- with fuel.
Anyway, anyway, all that to say that, yes, you can actually see a good fair bit of, like, speed gains even while you're working on endurance, and that is at the point where I am right now in my training. Like, I've gotten a lot of my endurance adaptations. I can feel ... My, my heart rate feels lower while I am doing the work.
I can feel myself breathing more easily. I'm [00:18:00] slightly more capable of talking while I'm running. Like, I'm feeling myself making these adaptations, and while I am making these endurance adaptations, I am very naturally picking up a little bit of speed along my way. Now, at some point I will... In fact, uh, the point is n- next year or the year after, after I have really fully made all of my endurance gains, that's when I'm gonna start focusing on speed.
Speed work for the purpose of moving past your current capacity is a whole nother beast. In any event, while I'm working on endurance, because that is the point of my story, I have a run walk program that I am following for myself that has been essentially taking a short walking break about every half of a mile.
This has worked beautifully. It's how I ran last year's marathon. While I was training for a half-marathon that I did earlier this year about two months ago, I was kind of stretching [00:19:00] out those walking breaks. I was like, "Hey, you know what? This has been feeling really good. Let me see if I can go to a walk every mile instead of every half mile."
And it felt amazing. It actually... I felt really good. I had a fantastic training cycle. I hit the goal that I was aiming for. Felt really, really good about that. And then moving into this, my current marathon training cycle, because I have another marathon coming up in August, I was like, "Hey, I wonder if that whole, uh, walking every mile thing would work for me here too."
And it did for a long while. In fact, I've, I've gotten up into some very high numbers with walking every mile and felt absolutely amazing. But going into yesterday's long run, I had a little, I had a little nervousness. Like the couple of days moving before it, I was like, "Okay, I can feel a little bit of self-doubt, a little bit of worry, a little bit of [00:20:00] wondering."
I have a very specific time goal for myself for this particular marathon that's coming up, and I had been running, up until this point, my long runs, had been running at a faster pace than that. So on the one hand, I was like, "Yay, I'm getting faster. That's awesome." But on the other hand, there was definitely a nagging self-doubt in the back of my mind, like I don't know if I can sustain that.
I don't know if I can keep that up with the way that I've been running. And so it turned into, like, nervousness. Like, I'm... It turned into a sentence rather than a question of I don't know if I can keep that up. It turned into I can't. I can't keep that up. And I kind of heard that. Like, I've been, I've been doing my journaling.
I've been listening to myself. I've, I've paid attention to what I was saying, and I th- I very intentionally asked myself yesterday to just stay open. Like, really hear what I was thinking, really hear what was going on with me, you know, before my run and during my run. And so I had asked myself at the [00:21:00] beginning of my run, "Hey, let's intentionally start this a little bit slower so that I can keep it up."
You know, that was, that was my whole thing. And I mean, apropos of I'm working on endurance right now, endurance is the act of keeping it up over a longer and longer and longer period of time. That is the adaptation of endurance. So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and use my half-mile walking breaks so that I start at a pace that feels very relaxed and that can help me create the endurance adaptation that I want to create."
And I had told myself, "Okay, I'm gonna do that for the first five miles." My long run yesterday, by the way, was 20 miles, so I'm like, "I'm gonna do that for the first five miles, and then I'm gonna see where I stand, and then I will, I will pay attention to what's going on." Well, my gut the first five miles was absolutely telling me that I was not happy.
I was, I was very... I was churning. I [00:22:00] could feel myself just absolutely... Not, not exactly feeling sick. It's slightly different from feeling sick, but there's definitely just that, that internal guts and stomach thing going on. So I'm running. I'm doing my walking breaks every half mile, and I'm like, "I hear you.
I know what this means. It means that I still have doubts. It means that I am still thinking something that I'm hearing as a maybe- And that maybe means no." This is my relationship with myself. When I hear the maybe, it means no. So I started asking myself some questions. What is it that I actually want to do here?
What is my stated goal is simply to finish this run? Like, I do not have a time goal for this run. This is about endurance. What is the maybe? What is the actual no that I'm hearing as a maybe right now? And so I started asking myself some [00:23:00] questions. What would you like? What sounds good? And it was so clear once I asked myself the correct question that I really just wanted to do the walking breaks every half mile.
Walking breaks every half mile, by the way, for me, feels amazing. Feels amazing. It is the most relaxed running I could possibly do. Now, really quickly, if you are a runner, do you feel yourself kind of leaning forward like, oh my gosh, I should maybe try walking breaks every half mile? I want to gently point out to you that the entire point of this episode is the opposite of that.
That leaning forward, that urgency, that little bit of squeeze like, oh my gosh, maybe I should, is your socialization telling you that I, as an expert, as a running expert, have information that is more important than your internal wisdom if you like it, your hell yes if you [00:24:00] like that one, your gut, your intuition, your instincts, your whatever, whatever phrase you use.
Notice how easy it is to listen to somebody else's strategy and think that they know something that you don't know. My friend, what I know is me. As soon as I told myself, oh yeah, obviously I'll do walking breaks every half mile and this is going to feel amazing. Hey, you know what happened? I did walking breaks every half mile and it felt amazing.
That was my own internal wisdom, my own intuition, my own strategy, my own, and this is really even why I'm telling you this story. I really thought I should follow the strategy that I had been following, which was mine. I really, really want to impart to you lovingly today that it's not even always about following somebody else's strategy.
It's not always about telling yourself that [00:25:00] somebody else knows the quote unquote right thing to be doing. That sometimes it's even just you. The answer here That you just heard me tell you in my story. The answer here really is listening to yourself, paying attention to yourself, knowing yourself. That is the hill I will stand on.
That is the hill my entire business is built on. When you get your goal, the best way, the right way to do it is your way. It's right here in the title of the podcast, Get Your Goal Your Way by Being More You. What I mean by more you is actually hearing yourself, really hearing your urgency to let somebody else's strategy be the thing you hang your hat on versus your inside brain-body connection, your thoughts creating [00:26:00] your feelings inside of you.
Your body is telling you no sometimes, and you're overriding it. Your body is telling you yes sometimes... Let me clarify that. Hang on. It's not just your body all by itself. It is your brain-body connection. You are thinking a thought, and that thought is usually subconscious, that is creating a feeling in your body because that is always how this works.
You do not just get feelings. Your intuition is not a mystery. Your intuition is your brain-body connection. It's just that sometimes you feel it in your body before you hear it in your brain. Sometimes you hear it in your brain before or without feeling it in your body. Either way, either way, what I'm telling you is brain-body connection.
You think a thought, you feel a thing in your body, and sometimes that thought and that feeling are amazing. That's what I call mindset superhighways. Sometimes that thought creates a feeling that is lousy, some version of [00:27:00] gut-churningly awful, and you have been taught to override both of those. You actually can, you might not currently, which is why I'm not gonna tell you you do know your yes and your no.
You might not. You might not, and that's totally okay. I didn't for, uh, most of my life. I had a couple of instances that I heard a big yes. I think I've told this story before about how w- like, the very first time when my husband and I were buying a house, I walked in, and it was so loud. It was so loud in my head and in my body, yes, this is it, that it was undeniable, and it was maybe the first time in my life that I had actually, like, listened to and then did follow through on that.
Th- it was a revelation. You might not currently know what your yes or your no sound like, but I will offer you- That you can. [00:28:00] It's what I do. It's the foundation of the Daily Three journaling framework that I offer you. There's a link in every single podcast. Some podcasts, I spend more time talking about what it actually is.
Essentially, it is a series of questions that you ask yourself, and then you listen to your brain and your body for what you're thinking and how you feel. It's what I offer inside my membership. I don't tell you what to do. I have zero strategies for you. I will tell you, I will tell you sometimes, depending on what kind of a question you ask much like today, "Hey, work on your endurance before you work on your speed."
Yes, I can tell you, like, how biology works. I can tell you some best practices like, "Hey, have a routine," or don't. Like, I can tell you some strategies, but mostly, like 99.999% of what I do is just ask you questions so you have the opportunity in a really safe place, a quiet space where I am not gonna tell you [00:29:00] what to do, and I'm gonna help you unlearn all of the socialization...
I mean, not all. I'm gonna help you unlearn a lot of the socialization that has been handed to you throughout your life so that you can just hear yourself. That is the thing that I offer you lovingly, gently, and powerfully, the ability to hear yourself. You might not currently feel like you have internal wisdom.
You might not current- currently feel like you have intuition. You might not currently feel like you have a hell yes or a hell no or any other phrase that you wanna use, but you can. My friend, here's what, here's what'll happen when you actually, like, take this on. I love to be very clear. I love to sell things the hard way.
Because here's the thing, when you actually take this on, it's going to feel [00:30:00] lousy at first. Everything does. Everything does. Everything worth having feels like crap when you start on the journey towards it. It always feels scary, and that's what I'm gonna tell you right now. At first, when you start listening to yourself, you will feel like you are on shaky ground.
You've been told your whole life that somebody else has the answer, and when you start looking inside yourself, it's just gonna be like this big, empty blank slate of, "I don't know." And that is completely normal. It is completely okay, and you can move through it. It will feel scary, and it will feel lonely out here on your own, making your own decisions and listening to yourself until it doesn't. That's actually a big part of what I offer inside the membership also, is just a place to see that other people are doing this same work, that other people are following this same path, and it's completely normal and okay if it feels scary [00:31:00] while you're doing it.
Just because it feels new and different and unusual and like you don't know what's going on doesn't mean that it's always going to feel that way. And surrounding yourself with people who are there talking about it and doing the same thing can really help you move through that part where you judge yourself for y- that thing that we all say, "I'm the only one that thinks that this feels hard.
I'm the only one who doesn't have any kind of connection to my intuition. I'm the only one who doesn't know how to make decisions. I'm the only one." No, you're not. Not at all. Not even a little tiny bit. Not at all. And when you start down this path and you work on this skill, because that's all it is.
That's all it is. It is the skill of hearing your thoughts and noticing, interoception is the fancy word for it, what's [00:32:00] going on inside your body while you think that thought. It is the creation, the, the skill that you are learning, the creation of your brain-body connection. While you learn this skill, first, it's gonna feel clunky.
It's gonna feel awkward. It's gonna feel scary. It's gonna feel unfamiliar. And then, and then you will actually start hearing your own voice. You will start hearing yourself saying, not necessarily out loud at first, but saying yes or saying no. You will start understanding yourself. You will start feeling like you are on solid ground when you are making decisions.
You will start feeling your own, I'm gonna say it again, internal wisdom, and it will sound like wisdom, 'cause that's probably why you have a, like a, [00:33:00] a reaction against that word right now 'cause you're like, "I don't have any. I'm not wise." You actually are. You have experiences. You have likes. You have dislikes.
And you have social socialization that has overridden that in the past. When you really do this work, build this skill, and lean in, what you will create for yourself is a beautiful home inside yourself. You will find ways, and not in a way where you're like searching in the darkness and nobody has an answer for you and it's all scary and awful, but you will literally gently move into answers for yourself like I did with the, okay, I'm going to walk every half mile.
I didn't tell you the back half of that. I ended [00:34:00] up running that long run with walking breaks that I had been telling myself, oh, I should, you know, eliminate these walking breaks in order for me to get faster. I ended up running faster at that 20 miles than I did just six months ago. I am creating the adaptations that I want for myself in a way that feel gentle and loving and kind and exactly like my hell yes.
There is a way to get your goal, no matter what your goal is, that feels like you. And it might be some things that you are currently doing, and it might be some things that are very different from what you are currently doing because you are telling yourself that you should, that you have to, that you must, that it's the right way, that you're doing the right things, but not getting the results.
My love, the [00:35:00] results will come when you do things your way. That's what I'm here to help you do. To listen to yourself, to hear yourself, to create your brain-body connection so that you can get your goal. My friend, thank you so, so much for listening today. I'll talk to you again soon. No matter where you are on your goal-getting journey, I'm here to help.
Get started by watching the free Daily 3 Masterclass to learn the simple journaling framework that rewires your brain for success. Move forward with confidence at your pace with one of my goal-specific guided journaling experiences. And when you're ready for immersive exploration with fellow travelers just like you, you belong in the Get Your Goal membership.
Find it all and join the adventure at [00:36:00] getyourgoal.com.
