In this episode, I’m sharing a pragmatic approach to goal-setting and decision-making that I practice in my own business and coach on inside the Quitter Club. The societal pressure to meticulously plan out our success can be tough to shake and leave us spinning, going nowhere. Listen to learn how to let go of the need to know every step, accept change, and embrace uncertainty by focusing on short-term, achievable objectives in just 90 days. This approach helps prevent overwhelm, decision fatigue, and procrastination. By setting 90-day goals, evaluating your progress, and adjusting course as needed, you will be able to move towards your goals far faster than if you simply went hard for 2 weeks while operating solely on motivation. 90 days is the perfect length to build consistency and discipline for staying committed to your goals while still giving you the flexibility to redirect and change course, if needed.
The Power of 90 Day Goals
Ep. 267
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Hey! Welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. Last week I, it's funny, I did the messy middle and we had some hiccups and the podcast didn't go out on Tuesday morning, so I apologize for that because that's the first time in 266 episodes that it didn't go out. And it was fascinating that it was that episode. Because if you listened the entire point is that you never get to a place where things are perfect and you do things perfectly. And the more you embrace being in the messy middle, the easier it becomes. And it was just funny because I realized with that episode, like the morning when I woke up and I realized it hadn't gone out initially, my brain still wants to jump to “this is a huge problem.” Like freak out mode, right? Like this was supposed to go out and what's happening and, and it's fascinating to watch the level of panic where you truly feel like this like pit in your stomach, like dread, and it takes like all of two seconds for me to calm down now to be like, okay, but what's really the problem, right? Obviously I want the podcast to go out on time, that's why I've done it a certain way for 265 episodes. But there was a mistake made, human error happens. Balls were dropped and it didn't go out. And like, is it really the end of the world? And I say this, I know as a listener maybe you might be thinking, yeah, like who cares? It'll come out in a couple of hours, right? But this is what I coach so many, many people on, on these fake emergencies, on things that aren't really that big of a deal in our lives. But we think, oh my God, this is the worst thing that could happen. And I'm telling you as a podcaster and a business owner where I have certain systems that like my podcast comes out consistently, it did feel instantly like right in the moment when I realized like this is a huge deal.
Luckily I know how to manage my mind and I feel like very quickly I now can redirect. Like, but it's really not. I just have to figure out what happened and try to prevent it from happening again and we can all move on, right? And it was just a good reminder that it's still the messy middle that I'm in all the time, that I'm still constantly going to mess things up and get things wrong and have mistakes to fix. And I was realizing that because I was coaching other people that day on the same issue, on like, well if I'm not doing this the right way, then how can I help other people? Or it, this is what I'm paid for. So if I mess up, then why should I have this job? And all this imposter syndrome that we have. And it just goes back to the same concept of that whole episode that like, yes, we can try our best, we can try to do well, we can learn from our mistakes and there will still be mistakes and it will still be messy. So that was my lesson from the Messy Middle that came out last week. I apologize if you had to wait for that podcast episode. It came out later that day. But it is, the timing of it and the name of the podcast was pretty coincidental. Is that the word I'm looking for? Anyways, you get what I'm saying. How are you all ?
That was my long-winded intro into today's episode. And before I do that, I did want to say I thought I would have more news, but we have to wait probably till next week. I do want to clue you in though that something exciting is happening in September. We are going to open doors, we're going to do another launch for the club, the Quitter Club, which is my membership, where we do this work in depth where you get the help you need, you get the coaching you need, you get so many resources, so many tools, so many ways to get coached. You get a supportive community, you get it all. It's pretty freaking amazing.
And in September we're going to do a special launch that we haven't done any other time this year and we won't do for the rest of 2023. So if you've been waiting and you've wanted to join, trust me, this is the time you're going to want to join. So if you're not on the waitlist, get on it so that you know exactly when that launch happens and you are clued in and you get to see all the details and all the specialness. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on that waitlist. Okay?
Now onto today's episode I want to talk about the power of 90 day goals. And if you have been following me for, you know, the last little bit, we did 90 day decisions in the club starting in May. We were talking about it, we opened the doors in June, we've done these 90 day, you can call it goals, you can call it decisions, it doesn't really matter. It's the same thing
And this is something that I've used a lot in my own life, in my own business. And the more I use it, the more I see the power of it. And the more I help other people use it, the more I see the power of it. And so I really wanted to share it with you guys because I really think that it is such a game changer for so many of us that spin in overwhelm and in confusion and in not knowing what the next step is. And so we never take a step and we don't know what to do and we're always so stuck. Like I really think this is the answer. And so I wanted to share that with you today.
So here's the thing, here's how we normally approach goal setting. And when I say goal setting, I don't mean it in the sense of like, you know, new year's resolution's goals. When I say I mean it with any decision, right? Like we can label it whatever we want, but you looking for another job is a goal, right? If I want to change my career, if I want to get a promotion, they're all goals, they're all decisions. So you can take this however you want, but like if you are thinking about making a decision in your life, making a change reaching a goal, right? What happens for most of us, because we've been raised in a society that tells us that you have to be a success. And in order to be a success you have to know all of the steps and you have to know exactly what you're going to do. And for a lot of us, we've had instances where we've done that where like you go to school and then they tell you, oh, you want to be a doctor. These are the steps you have to take. You want to be a lawyer, this is the steps. You have to take this test and you have to apply to this school and you have to get this degree.
And so we had a goal and we had it mapped out for us and we thought like, okay, if I just follow these rules then I'll get there, right? We have it with other things too. Like if you want to, let's say get in shape, somebody will tell you like, okay, if you want to put on muscle, this is the regimen that you need to use and this is what you need to eat and this is how much you need to work out. And so you feel this sense of like a little bit of certainty, even though we all know it's fake because you can try the workout regimen and it might not work for you the way it works for somebody else. Your body might be different. Or you might follow that plan to become a lawyer or doctor and then realize I didn't even want to do this. So yes, you can get a bunch of steps, you can Google 'em and find 'em, but the reality is, is that for each one of us, we don't know exactly what it is that we want to do.
We want to get clued in to like evaluating, seeing like as we're going along, is this working for me? Is this not, how am I, you know, feeling here? Do I want to try something else? And so that requires for us to not need to know all of the steps to know that I might veer off course, that I might pivot, that I might try keto for a while and realize that doesn't mesh with my body. So now I have to try something else. Like we have to be okay with that change.
And for so many of us, that's where it's really difficult because we think I need to know all of the steps and I need to know exactly what I'm going to do and I have to stick to it a hundred percent or otherwise I'm not going to be successful. And the reality is, is that in most instances, there just isn't a plan laid out. Like yes in college and maybe in certain things in our society they've laid it out. But for the most part, anything you want to try, there's a million ways to do it. There's a million different things to try, like we just said, like even working out, right? A bunch of people can try different diets, different exercises, different regimens, and they can all work. And so that's actually what becomes overwhelming because we're like, just gimme the one, just we we're all looking for that one answer, this one it thing that will tell me exactly what to do. And the sooner we understand that, that doesn't really exist. And that's a good thing because you can do it your way. Because you can decide what works for you. Because it your brain and your body and your nervous system and you know your traumas and your schedule is different than other people's.
And so when we can let go of like, I need to know every single step till the end and we realize like, I can't know, I can't know what I need to pivot. I can't know what's going to lie ahead. I can't know what obstacles I'm going to face. I can't know what this road looks like and I don't need to. It becomes easier to just get started so that we can then evaluate and pivot. You can never evaluate and pivot and make changes and figure out what's not working and try to like put this puzzle together if you don't get started.
And that's what happens when we're trying to figure out all the steps when we sit and we think, okay, I want to do this goal and I need to know exactly all the a hundred steps I need to take. We get so overwhelmed, we get so confused that we don't do anything, right? We fail by default because we don't even get started because it's so overwhelming. Just try Googling anything, right? Like if you want to write a book, if you want to learn how to climb mountains, if you want to, you know, whatever, learn how to bake a cake. There's going to be 45 different ways to do it and you're going to find all these different schools of thought that will tell you they're right and that this is the best way. And you're going to have to sift through and then we all get overwhelmed. Like, what if this one's right? But what if this one, maybe I should try it this way, or maybe I should go with this. This person's saying it's the best, right?
And like, and so what do we do when we get so many choices? There's like decision fatigue, right? There's overwhelm, there's confusion, we become lost. And so we don't do anything. And this happens all the time to all of us, which is why so many of us stay stuck for so many years. It's not that there aren't things that we know how to do at this point or that we couldn't get started, it's that we keep telling ourselves like, I don't know what the right thing to do is. I don't know what the, you know, like right path is. I don't know what like is going to for sure guarantee my success. So I'm not going to do anything. And then by default I guarantee my failure. I guarantee that there's no way for me to succeed if I don't actually try.
So the power of 90 day goals is getting past that problem; is understanding and accepting that I, there's no way for me to know what my path is going to look like. There's no way for me to know what these a hundred steps are going to ultimately end up being for me. But I can get started and get more information. I can start learning what works for me and what doesn't. I can start like slowly moving down this path of seeing like, do I even like this? Do I not?
Okay, so just as like one last thing on this, I just did an episode, if you didn't catch it, episode 263. So it was just a couple episodes back that was called You're Not Behind. And it's about the same topic, right? It's that for so many of us, we want to make these changes. We want to get a better career, we want to get in shape, we want to find hobbies, we want to do all of these things, we want to travel the world, we want to do these things. But then we constantly tell ourselves we're behind in doing them. I should have done it by now. I should have figured this out by now. I should have already had my savings saved up. I should have already been whatever, whatever the should is. And so then we spin because we think we're behind and we never take a step forward and then we waste more time, right? This happens every year with goal setting where it's like, how many of you take carry around the shame of like, I should have done X, Y, or Z by now? Fill in the blank.
And then as you keep thinking that thought and as you keep telling yourself you should have done it, you stay stuck and don't do anything for more years. Okay?
So that's all to say that one of the ways like, yes, we should change our thoughts, we should work on believing we're not behind. That's what episode 263 is about. So you should definitely check that out.
But I want you to start even thinking about approaching your, your goals and your decisions in a different way. And that's where 90 day goals come in. Okay?
I've talked a lot on this podcast in the past about the difference between short-term and long-term goals and how important it is for you to understand the difference, right? I think for a lot of us, we pick a long-term goal. We pick something that's like far off where like, let's say I want to write a book, I want to open up a yoga studio, I want to work for myself, I want to become a partner. I want to make $500,000 a year, whatever the goal is. And that might be a couple of years away and I don't know how I'm going to get there. And so all I think about is that one. And then I again don't know the steps, so I don't do anything.
But you have to really understand the difference of like, okay, that could be my north star, that could be some dream I have, which is fantastic and it points me in that direction and I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I can focus on what's the short-term goal.
And for so many of you, this is like the solution to so much of your stress. I talk to so many people who for instance, will tell me I can't quit for the next year. Like I have to stay here for whatever reason. I want to get my bonus. I have to fulfill some obligation at this company. I need the money, I need to save up and pay off my debt. Okay, whatever. We already know that we can't leave for a year.
And then we're constantly spinning about how we should quit and we're constantly planning or like looking up jobs or whatever it is. And I'm always like, baffled is like, why are you torturing yourself if you know that in the short term and short term is relative, right? A short term could be a three month goal, it could be a year goal, it could be like, I know that I can't leave right now, I have to stay here. So what is going to be my short term goal? Maybe my short term goal is that I learn how to love it here. I do my mindset work, I learn how to manage my own thoughts so that I can actually like where I'm at, right? That could be a goal. Maybe it's that like I spend these three months, I'm just networking with other writers because I want to write a book eventually, two years from now, three years from now. And so I'm just going to take this first step, right?
But for so many of us, like the problem is, is that we just hold onto a long-term goal. Or let's say like I, I keep using exercise even though like I don't know much about exercise. It's just that it's it tangible. It's an easier one I think we all know. But let's say your goal is, let's say you've never worked out and you get this, you know, hit of inspiration that you want to run a triathlon, like you want to complete in a triathlon, you want to prove to yourself that you can do it. But you haven't worked out in the last 10 years. Okay, fine. You can actually, that's a great goal to have you. We just want to start figuring out like what is that timeline? When do I want to be able to run a triathlon, right? And we want to work back like what are some of the things I would have to do to do? I don't have to know exactly how I'm going to like train for this triathlon. I don't need to have all of the steps figured out. I do need to know that I have to start by just working out. I have to get back into shape, okay? I have to like even just become good at being disciplined and like working out a certain number of days a week.
And I think for so many of us, like we get this hit of inspiration of like, I want to write a book, I want to run a triathlon, I want to start a business. And we go hard in the beginning. We're like, I'm motivated right now because this sounds really exciting. And so I'm going to go five days a week to the gym for an two hours a day. And we all know what happens, right? It's like the a tale as old as time at this point. It's what happens with every January 1st resolution. Like the reason that people give up, I think it's like some stat was that 80% of people drop their resolution within the first two weeks of January, right? Because we think like, okay, I'm going to get in shape, I'm going to cut out all sugar and I'm going to do that . And then you do it for a week and you're miserable and your body's like, please give us some dopamine, please. And so you go back to eating sweets. And so we're going to try to prevent that with this, right?
We're going to look at like if I want to run a triathlon, what do I have to do for the next 90 days to just get back in a little bit into shape or just get used to the discipline? Maybe it's three days a week, I'm going to go for a walk around my neighborhood, right? When you start looking at it as like, what is the short-term goal that I'm going to work towards to move me towards this long-term goal, it can become so manageable. So I want us to think about this. The way that I think about my goals is like I have some north star that could be very specific. It could even be vague for a lot of my people who don't know what they want yet because they haven't really spent time tapping into like what it is that they actually want in their life and getting really specific about their goals.
That's fine. I don't even care if you have a long-term goal. You don't have to have something specific. I want you to have a general direction. I want you to like really understand that if I want more fun in my life or I want more discipline in my life, or I want to get in shape, or I want to travel the world, or I want to see things, I want to be more adventurous. I don't know, like there's a general direction that I want to go in. I want to think about what is the, a short-term experiment. And I want you to look at it as an experiment that I can do for the next 90 days. Okay? So this is what I teach in my, in the club and what we did with 90 day decisions and what I do in my own business and in my own life. And what's changed everything is picking this goal like a shorter goal for 90 days. Not one month, but giving yourself three months, which is short enough that like I can change my mind afterwards, I can evaluate, I can decide to experiment, I can decide to do something else, but long enough that you give yourself some time to figure out like, is this working or is this not right? Is this something I like? Like doing something for a month doesn't really give you the information that you need. And a lot of times it puts a lot of pressure to try to go hard again because you only have a couple of weeks and sometimes life happens and things fall off. So we want to give ourselves like a little bit more time to breathe and to do it to a point where we can get a lot of data and a lot of information that we can evaluate.
Okay? So the way that I teach this is that you pick whatever your long-term goal is and then you don't, okay? You could do this a couple of ways. You could decide, like let's say if my goal was by the end in, in a year, I want to, I mean, writing a book is too much, but I, I feel like that's the thing that keeps coming into my head. But like, let's just say I, okay, fine, I want to publish like an ebook on Amazon. Okay? I could break that down into four quarters. I could figure out like for my people that love to plan, you could do it like this where it's like, okay, if I work backwards and I really do know the steps or I can just guess some steps, I can let the other three quarters be kind of placeholders. Like this is what I think I'm going to do. Knowing that I might change it, knowing that after I go through the first 90 days I might get a lot of information and realize, oh, the thing I had chosen for my second is actually not going to work and we're going to have to tweak it, totally fine. But I could say like, okay, in the first quarter I'm just going to research the topic and I'm going to brainstorm and I'm going to have an outline and I'm going to look at how, you know, whatever. Maybe in the second quarter I'm going to look at how people publish on Amazon and what it takes and the editing and do I find an editor and how do I get an illustrator and all the that stuff. And then maybe the third quarter is when I actually do all the writing. You know, you, you get the point.
Or, and this is what happens more often than not. And this is what happens with a lot of pe of my clients in the club. And this is what I tend to do is I just pick the next 90 days. I don't even know what I'm going to do next, right? I just know that for the next 90 days, this is what my focus is on, okay? This is the short term goal.
And what that does is it stops all my brain from going to all the other things I quote unquote should be doing. So I'm going to give you an example of how I use this in my own business. Because I use this a lot in my business actually is like, if there is a million things I will always need to work on, I will always need to fix, right? Just off the top of my head right now, like I can get better at my systems, I can clean up my systems in the backend, I can create more content, I can create another freebie.
I can batch podcast episodes. I can try to get better on Instagram, I can market more, I can sell more. I could try to pitch myself on more podcasts. I could try to be guests on, you know, get more guests on my podcast. I can hire a PR agency. I can sell more. I can create another product. I can decide to do something other than a membership. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Always. This doesn't change.
And so one of the ways that I've used this tool is learning to break it down for my business of like, what am I going to focus on for the next 90 days? And let's say, say I choose, like these last 90 days, I wanted to focus on the back end of my business. I was going to hire an online business manager. I was going to have to onboard her. I was going to have to get her to like, get to know all of my systems. We were going to have to have a lot of meetings. I really wanted to onboard her on correctly so that she felt both supported and could help me like in the long run because she knew what was going on. I also wanted to create some more systems. I wanted to do some things in the backend so that as I grow all of these things that are causing problems can go away. I don't have to deal with all those problems. So it would take time for me to slow down and work on those things, right?
So part of my setting a 90 day goal is telling my brain, we're not going to worry about marketing and selling this quarter. That might mean we might take a hit to the bottom line. I may not make as much money, I might not do a launch because I don't have a bandwidth to do all of it. So I might decide that for these 90 days, I'm really, it's not, doesn't mean that I'm not going to sell. Obviously the podcasts keep coming out obviously. Like I do certain things on Instagram or I still market. I, I've created some things that kind of run all the time, but my focus is on the backend of my business. And then after 90 days, I evaluate and I look at, okay, like what worked? What didn't? What, what am I going to work on? What else should I have been doing? You know, what was I missing? And then I create another 90 day goal. And maybe my next 90 day goal is, okay, we're going to go hard on marketing and selling this quarter and we're not going to worry so much about like, yeah, some things are going to fall through the cracks.
Some systems are going to get broken. Some things we're going to have to keep reinventing the wheel every week until we figure out how this becomes a system, right? But that's not my concern. And so when my brain goes back to like, Ugh, but you really should be marketing right now. You really should be launching. I bring myself back to like, well that's not our goal this quarter, this. That's not what we're focusing on. What we're focusing on is the back end. It helps me get over all of the overwhelm of needing to do all of the to-do list all the time, right?
And I will tell you that this, the reason I think this is the secret to life is because when you get outta that overwhelm, you actually take steps. And when I've said this like a million times, but like baby steps over time is the secret to all success. Anything you want to do, it's not a flash in the pan, it's not going hard for two weeks. It's like, what can I do consistently over time in order to create the result I want ultimately?
So when you think about if I go slow, but I do something every week of this year, by the end of the year, I will do a lot more than if I try to go hard for two weeks every six months because I get some flash of inspiration or motivation and then I give up and then I feel shame and then I don't do anything. And so what this really helped me see was like, of course like going back to the messy middle. Of course my business is going to be a mess all the time. And I'm not saying that in like a way of like putting myself down. I just mean that all businesses are anywhere you work, there's all just problems.
There's going to be, something's going to break, break, something's going to come up, something's not working that was working before. Something that you didn't notice, you know, is going to, it's always going to be there. And I can't focus on all of the problems all the time. But what I can do is make progress. Each quarter I can slowly decide like, this is where my focus is going to go and this is what I'm going to do, you know, for the next 90 days. And then I'll reevaluate and see what else I want to do. Now I'm talking about it more in like a decision making kind of with respect to my business. And you can use that for your job. But I want you to also think about it with your goals and with your dreams, right?
So one of the ways that I use this, and I use this with my clients is like, again, when you know you're North star, let's say you want to find a, you want to figure out what you want to do. A lot of people that struggle in my program who know they don't want to do what they're doing, but they don't know what else they want to do. Like that's the, what they struggle with is like, how do I really know, like what the next thing is? What lights me up? Like I really, they've kind of lost touch with that, okay? So when you have that, let's say that's your north star, that can feel really overwhelming because there isn't a concrete thing. It's not like I'm working towards a book. It's not like there's like, I can google this, right? So it requires some experimentation.
And so what we do a lot is like figuring out, okay, what can I focus on for the next 90 days? What can I give myself some parameters around in order to figure this out? That might mean it depends on where you are in the journey, right? So this advice is going to be different for each person. For someone that might mean I just give myself 90 days to experiment, to explore things that I'm curious about. It doesn't even have to do with work. Maybe I just decide, hey, for the next 90 days, I'm just going to see what actually brings me joy. Because I've lost touch with that. So maybe I'll take classes, maybe I will try new hobbies. Maybe I will just do the things that I used to find joy in that I don't do anymore. Maybe I will take time to research what other people do, you know, to get back in touch with themselves. Whatever. You have to come up with like a, some parameters around that so that you're not going down like Google rabbit holes every day. But let's say you decide for 90 days, I'm going to take a class every week, or I'm going to go back to my love of dancing because it's amazing when you are like immersed in something that brings you joy, how much inspiration and creativity and intuition comes out.
So let's say that's what you decide to do. Great. The beauty of this is that as you are going through that, your brain is going to keep telling you like, oh, we're wasting time. We should be like getting serious. You should just pick a career, go find something else. Go talk to a career counselor, whatever. And you just bring yourself back to like, we're spending 90 days just figuring out what brings us joy. That's all we're doing. No ifs, ands, or buts. And this is a really important part of this episode. You cannot change your mind. I know this is so hard because for a lot of us it's like, ah, but what if I do it and I realize I don't want to do this. Part of this is the discipline of realizing your brain is going to try to change, get you to change your mind.
It's going to try to get you to see that like, we're wasting time. This isn't going to work, this isn't worth it, whatever it's going to tell you. And part of this is deciding with your prefrontal cortex, okay? With your rational mind, with the one that can what's the word I'm, I'm looking for like, not deny dopamine, but can put off gratification. That's what I'm trying to say. You've made a decision from that prefrontal cortex. Later on, your primitive brain is going to be like, we want some dopamine. Let's not do this anymore. This is too hard. We're wasting time. Let's go do something else. And you are going to learn that like no matter what cravings you have, no matter what urges you have, no matter what desires you have, your prefrontal cortex can be in charge and can say like, no, we've decided to do this.
This is what we're going to do. And this does a couple of things. Not only does it keep you focused on your goal, but it shows you that you have the power to keep focused on your goal. It shows you that you don't need motivation. You have discipline, you have consistency by just continuously saying like, I'm going to give myself this time. I know my brain's going to freak out. I'm already prepared for that. I know my brain's going to tell me I'm wasting time. I know my brain thinks we should do something else and I'm going to keep bringing it back to like, no we shouldn't. This is what we decided and this is what we're going to do. And then after those 90 days, I can evaluate and I can decide like what worked from this, what didn't, what do I want to do differently in the next 90 days? And I can make a different decision there. And the power in this is that again, I don't have to know what I'm going to do in my next 90 days.
When I go through these 90 days of joy, let's say, of figuring out what lights me up. I learn so much that the next 90 days becomes clear like, okay, I realize these are the things I like, these are the things I don't like. How can I start translating that into work?
Maybe I spend the next 90 days looking at like what kind of careers incorporate these things that light me up, right? Maybe I just spend 90 days networking and meeting people and seeing what they do for their jobs and going to meetups right after six months, let's say those two 90 days, you have learned so much more about yourself than you would have sitting every night going through, down Google rabbit holes trying to predict what you should do for a job.
And so the point of all of this is really so that we can start taking action, get data, learn things, and then make changes. And so that we can learn to not like go with our like squirrel mind that's like, Ooh, what about this? Maybe we should work on this. Maybe we should do this thing. It's like, no, no, no. We've decided. And I think that when you really start implementing it, it starts really combating that same thought that I was talking about about episode 263 on I'm So Behind is when you start showing yourself and you show that you are slowing down and yet you're ma you're making more progress. When you start seeing that progress made, you start rewiring that thought, you start realizing like, I don't have to go at full speed. I don't have to go a hundred miles an hour.
I still make a lot of progress when I slow down. And like that again reinforces how much these 90 day goals work. And so then you do more and more and it's amazing how much you can get done in a year, in two years when you chunk it down and you focus on the short term and you don't try to get to some like far off land and you don't get stuck in confusion and overwhelm and you keep thinking like, okay, what am I going to focus on here?
And so I know that first, I've talked about this before too. Like when I started the podcast, I gave myself a year and I told myself like, there's no way I'm allowed to change my mind. And my brain tried to change my mind every week. Like, this isn't working, no one's listening to you. Nobody cares. This is embarrassing. And I'd made myself that deal. I could come hell or high water, I'm going to do this podcast for a year. And the fact that I forced myself to do that is what changed my life. 'cause I would've quit the podcast very easily in the beginning and I would've never known what it could have been. And so when you create these parameters where you tell yourself like, we're not allowed to do something shiny right now, we're not allowed to tell ourselves like, this is too hard. I'm not going to do it. I told myself, I'm going to do this for 90 days. I'm going to give myself that time and then I can change my mind and then I can pivot and then I can see like, hey, I tried this podcast for 90 days. I actually don't like it. I thought I would love it and I'm doing it and it's really not doing it for me. Okay, great. Now we know, now we don't have to sit and go back and forth forever about whether I'm going to like it or whether I'm not or is it really for me or is it going to bring in leads for my business? I tried it, didn't like it, now I'm moving on to something else. I can check that off. And I learned more about what I didn't like, why I didn't like it, what I thought I would like, right?
I learned so much from that experience and we're on to the next thing, and I don't have to keep spinning about it. There's so much that can, like I feel like there's so much mental energy we, we save by just taking action and gaining that clarity by doing it right. Seeing like what works and what doesn't so that we don't have to keep spinning in the what ifs.
What if this would work? What if I should do this? Should I have another grow program? Should I do something like this? It's like, let's just try for 90 days, see what happens and then we'll evaluate.
So I want you to start thinking about your goals. Like whatever your long-term goal is, I want you to break it down into like, what am I going to work on for the next 90 days, right? Right now I think we're when this comes out, yeah, we're coming up towards like the end of August. So you can start it from like September, October, November. What's going to happen in those three months? What am I going to focus on? What am I not going to focus on, right? Like the more important question is what am I not going to focus on? What am I not going to let my brain take me down and like, tell me I have to be doing now we're going to focus on this one thing, we're going to break this down and I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do in those 90 days and I'm not allowed to change my mind and I I just want you to try it, try it for the next 90 days.
If it doesn't work, then you don't have to use it, that's fine. But I promise you, you'll start seeing like how much it can get you into action when you create something that's tangible, that's in a short term that you know you're allowed to change your mind in a little bit that you know you're doing as an experiment that you know you're going to get a lot of data from. It changes everything.
And if you want help with that, there is an entire course now called 90 Day Decisions in the club that goes through all of this in more detail. There's a process of like, how do you pick your 90 day goal? What are the reasons behind it? How do you stick to it? How do you evaluate? All of it's in there. And this is what I coach people a lot on. It's like, okay, let's get each 90 day goal in place for you. We have action plan calls where you can come and like, let me know exactly what you're working on and I will help you like figure out what the exact next steps are so that you stop staying stuck so that even if we don't know what that end goal is, we know we're working towards it. We know we're learning about ourselves, we know we're getting to the next step. It changes everything.
So if you want to join the club, which of course you all should because this is the support that you need to actually start creating the life that you want, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and join us and let's start making some 90 day goals and start making sure that over the next year you're making progress to the life that you want to live. All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this and I will see you all next week for another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. Last week I, it's funny, I did the messy middle and we had some hiccups and the podcast didn't go out on Tuesday morning, so I apologize for that because that's the first time in 266 episodes that it didn't go out. And it was fascinating that it was that episode. Because if you listened the entire point is that you never get to a place where things are perfect and you do things perfectly. And the more you embrace being in the messy middle, the easier it becomes. And it was just funny because I realized with that episode, like the morning when I woke up and I realized it hadn't gone out initially, my brain still wants to jump to “this is a huge problem.” Like freak out mode, right? Like this was supposed to go out and what's happening and, and it's fascinating to watch the level of panic where you truly feel like this like pit in your stomach, like dread, and it takes like all of two seconds for me to calm down now to be like, okay, but what's really the problem, right? Obviously I want the podcast to go out on time, that's why I've done it a certain way for 265 episodes. But there was a mistake made, human error happens. Balls were dropped and it didn't go out. And like, is it really the end of the world? And I say this, I know as a listener maybe you might be thinking, yeah, like who cares? It'll come out in a couple of hours, right? But this is what I coach so many, many people on, on these fake emergencies, on things that aren't really that big of a deal in our lives. But we think, oh my God, this is the worst thing that could happen. And I'm telling you as a podcaster and a business owner where I have certain systems that like my podcast comes out consistently, it did feel instantly like right in the moment when I realized like this is a huge deal.
Luckily I know how to manage my mind and I feel like very quickly I now can redirect. Like, but it's really not. I just have to figure out what happened and try to prevent it from happening again and we can all move on, right? And it was just a good reminder that it's still the messy middle that I'm in all the time, that I'm still constantly going to mess things up and get things wrong and have mistakes to fix. And I was realizing that because I was coaching other people that day on the same issue, on like, well if I'm not doing this the right way, then how can I help other people? Or it, this is what I'm paid for. So if I mess up, then why should I have this job? And all this imposter syndrome that we have. And it just goes back to the same concept of that whole episode that like, yes, we can try our best, we can try to do well, we can learn from our mistakes and there will still be mistakes and it will still be messy. So that was my lesson from the Messy Middle that came out last week. I apologize if you had to wait for that podcast episode. It came out later that day. But it is, the timing of it and the name of the podcast was pretty coincidental. Is that the word I'm looking for? Anyways, you get what I'm saying. How are you all ?
That was my long-winded intro into today's episode. And before I do that, I did want to say I thought I would have more news, but we have to wait probably till next week. I do want to clue you in though that something exciting is happening in September. We are going to open doors, we're going to do another launch for the club, the Quitter Club, which is my membership, where we do this work in depth where you get the help you need, you get the coaching you need, you get so many resources, so many tools, so many ways to get coached. You get a supportive community, you get it all. It's pretty freaking amazing.
And in September we're going to do a special launch that we haven't done any other time this year and we won't do for the rest of 2023. So if you've been waiting and you've wanted to join, trust me, this is the time you're going to want to join. So if you're not on the waitlist, get on it so that you know exactly when that launch happens and you are clued in and you get to see all the details and all the specialness. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on that waitlist. Okay?
Now onto today's episode I want to talk about the power of 90 day goals. And if you have been following me for, you know, the last little bit, we did 90 day decisions in the club starting in May. We were talking about it, we opened the doors in June, we've done these 90 day, you can call it goals, you can call it decisions, it doesn't really matter. It's the same thing
And this is something that I've used a lot in my own life, in my own business. And the more I use it, the more I see the power of it. And the more I help other people use it, the more I see the power of it. And so I really wanted to share it with you guys because I really think that it is such a game changer for so many of us that spin in overwhelm and in confusion and in not knowing what the next step is. And so we never take a step and we don't know what to do and we're always so stuck. Like I really think this is the answer. And so I wanted to share that with you today.
So here's the thing, here's how we normally approach goal setting. And when I say goal setting, I don't mean it in the sense of like, you know, new year's resolution's goals. When I say I mean it with any decision, right? Like we can label it whatever we want, but you looking for another job is a goal, right? If I want to change my career, if I want to get a promotion, they're all goals, they're all decisions. So you can take this however you want, but like if you are thinking about making a decision in your life, making a change reaching a goal, right? What happens for most of us, because we've been raised in a society that tells us that you have to be a success. And in order to be a success you have to know all of the steps and you have to know exactly what you're going to do. And for a lot of us, we've had instances where we've done that where like you go to school and then they tell you, oh, you want to be a doctor. These are the steps you have to take. You want to be a lawyer, this is the steps. You have to take this test and you have to apply to this school and you have to get this degree.
And so we had a goal and we had it mapped out for us and we thought like, okay, if I just follow these rules then I'll get there, right? We have it with other things too. Like if you want to, let's say get in shape, somebody will tell you like, okay, if you want to put on muscle, this is the regimen that you need to use and this is what you need to eat and this is how much you need to work out. And so you feel this sense of like a little bit of certainty, even though we all know it's fake because you can try the workout regimen and it might not work for you the way it works for somebody else. Your body might be different. Or you might follow that plan to become a lawyer or doctor and then realize I didn't even want to do this. So yes, you can get a bunch of steps, you can Google 'em and find 'em, but the reality is, is that for each one of us, we don't know exactly what it is that we want to do.
We want to get clued in to like evaluating, seeing like as we're going along, is this working for me? Is this not, how am I, you know, feeling here? Do I want to try something else? And so that requires for us to not need to know all of the steps to know that I might veer off course, that I might pivot, that I might try keto for a while and realize that doesn't mesh with my body. So now I have to try something else. Like we have to be okay with that change.
And for so many of us, that's where it's really difficult because we think I need to know all of the steps and I need to know exactly what I'm going to do and I have to stick to it a hundred percent or otherwise I'm not going to be successful. And the reality is, is that in most instances, there just isn't a plan laid out. Like yes in college and maybe in certain things in our society they've laid it out. But for the most part, anything you want to try, there's a million ways to do it. There's a million different things to try, like we just said, like even working out, right? A bunch of people can try different diets, different exercises, different regimens, and they can all work. And so that's actually what becomes overwhelming because we're like, just gimme the one, just we we're all looking for that one answer, this one it thing that will tell me exactly what to do. And the sooner we understand that, that doesn't really exist. And that's a good thing because you can do it your way. Because you can decide what works for you. Because it your brain and your body and your nervous system and you know your traumas and your schedule is different than other people's.
And so when we can let go of like, I need to know every single step till the end and we realize like, I can't know, I can't know what I need to pivot. I can't know what's going to lie ahead. I can't know what obstacles I'm going to face. I can't know what this road looks like and I don't need to. It becomes easier to just get started so that we can then evaluate and pivot. You can never evaluate and pivot and make changes and figure out what's not working and try to like put this puzzle together if you don't get started.
And that's what happens when we're trying to figure out all the steps when we sit and we think, okay, I want to do this goal and I need to know exactly all the a hundred steps I need to take. We get so overwhelmed, we get so confused that we don't do anything, right? We fail by default because we don't even get started because it's so overwhelming. Just try Googling anything, right? Like if you want to write a book, if you want to learn how to climb mountains, if you want to, you know, whatever, learn how to bake a cake. There's going to be 45 different ways to do it and you're going to find all these different schools of thought that will tell you they're right and that this is the best way. And you're going to have to sift through and then we all get overwhelmed. Like, what if this one's right? But what if this one, maybe I should try it this way, or maybe I should go with this. This person's saying it's the best, right?
And like, and so what do we do when we get so many choices? There's like decision fatigue, right? There's overwhelm, there's confusion, we become lost. And so we don't do anything. And this happens all the time to all of us, which is why so many of us stay stuck for so many years. It's not that there aren't things that we know how to do at this point or that we couldn't get started, it's that we keep telling ourselves like, I don't know what the right thing to do is. I don't know what the, you know, like right path is. I don't know what like is going to for sure guarantee my success. So I'm not going to do anything. And then by default I guarantee my failure. I guarantee that there's no way for me to succeed if I don't actually try.
So the power of 90 day goals is getting past that problem; is understanding and accepting that I, there's no way for me to know what my path is going to look like. There's no way for me to know what these a hundred steps are going to ultimately end up being for me. But I can get started and get more information. I can start learning what works for me and what doesn't. I can start like slowly moving down this path of seeing like, do I even like this? Do I not?
Okay, so just as like one last thing on this, I just did an episode, if you didn't catch it, episode 263. So it was just a couple episodes back that was called You're Not Behind. And it's about the same topic, right? It's that for so many of us, we want to make these changes. We want to get a better career, we want to get in shape, we want to find hobbies, we want to do all of these things, we want to travel the world, we want to do these things. But then we constantly tell ourselves we're behind in doing them. I should have done it by now. I should have figured this out by now. I should have already had my savings saved up. I should have already been whatever, whatever the should is. And so then we spin because we think we're behind and we never take a step forward and then we waste more time, right? This happens every year with goal setting where it's like, how many of you take carry around the shame of like, I should have done X, Y, or Z by now? Fill in the blank.
And then as you keep thinking that thought and as you keep telling yourself you should have done it, you stay stuck and don't do anything for more years. Okay?
So that's all to say that one of the ways like, yes, we should change our thoughts, we should work on believing we're not behind. That's what episode 263 is about. So you should definitely check that out.
But I want you to start even thinking about approaching your, your goals and your decisions in a different way. And that's where 90 day goals come in. Okay?
I've talked a lot on this podcast in the past about the difference between short-term and long-term goals and how important it is for you to understand the difference, right? I think for a lot of us, we pick a long-term goal. We pick something that's like far off where like, let's say I want to write a book, I want to open up a yoga studio, I want to work for myself, I want to become a partner. I want to make $500,000 a year, whatever the goal is. And that might be a couple of years away and I don't know how I'm going to get there. And so all I think about is that one. And then I again don't know the steps, so I don't do anything.
But you have to really understand the difference of like, okay, that could be my north star, that could be some dream I have, which is fantastic and it points me in that direction and I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I can focus on what's the short-term goal.
And for so many of you, this is like the solution to so much of your stress. I talk to so many people who for instance, will tell me I can't quit for the next year. Like I have to stay here for whatever reason. I want to get my bonus. I have to fulfill some obligation at this company. I need the money, I need to save up and pay off my debt. Okay, whatever. We already know that we can't leave for a year.
And then we're constantly spinning about how we should quit and we're constantly planning or like looking up jobs or whatever it is. And I'm always like, baffled is like, why are you torturing yourself if you know that in the short term and short term is relative, right? A short term could be a three month goal, it could be a year goal, it could be like, I know that I can't leave right now, I have to stay here. So what is going to be my short term goal? Maybe my short term goal is that I learn how to love it here. I do my mindset work, I learn how to manage my own thoughts so that I can actually like where I'm at, right? That could be a goal. Maybe it's that like I spend these three months, I'm just networking with other writers because I want to write a book eventually, two years from now, three years from now. And so I'm just going to take this first step, right?
But for so many of us, like the problem is, is that we just hold onto a long-term goal. Or let's say like I, I keep using exercise even though like I don't know much about exercise. It's just that it's it tangible. It's an easier one I think we all know. But let's say your goal is, let's say you've never worked out and you get this, you know, hit of inspiration that you want to run a triathlon, like you want to complete in a triathlon, you want to prove to yourself that you can do it. But you haven't worked out in the last 10 years. Okay, fine. You can actually, that's a great goal to have you. We just want to start figuring out like what is that timeline? When do I want to be able to run a triathlon, right? And we want to work back like what are some of the things I would have to do to do? I don't have to know exactly how I'm going to like train for this triathlon. I don't need to have all of the steps figured out. I do need to know that I have to start by just working out. I have to get back into shape, okay? I have to like even just become good at being disciplined and like working out a certain number of days a week.
And I think for so many of us, like we get this hit of inspiration of like, I want to write a book, I want to run a triathlon, I want to start a business. And we go hard in the beginning. We're like, I'm motivated right now because this sounds really exciting. And so I'm going to go five days a week to the gym for an two hours a day. And we all know what happens, right? It's like the a tale as old as time at this point. It's what happens with every January 1st resolution. Like the reason that people give up, I think it's like some stat was that 80% of people drop their resolution within the first two weeks of January, right? Because we think like, okay, I'm going to get in shape, I'm going to cut out all sugar and I'm going to do that . And then you do it for a week and you're miserable and your body's like, please give us some dopamine, please. And so you go back to eating sweets. And so we're going to try to prevent that with this, right?
We're going to look at like if I want to run a triathlon, what do I have to do for the next 90 days to just get back in a little bit into shape or just get used to the discipline? Maybe it's three days a week, I'm going to go for a walk around my neighborhood, right? When you start looking at it as like, what is the short-term goal that I'm going to work towards to move me towards this long-term goal, it can become so manageable. So I want us to think about this. The way that I think about my goals is like I have some north star that could be very specific. It could even be vague for a lot of my people who don't know what they want yet because they haven't really spent time tapping into like what it is that they actually want in their life and getting really specific about their goals.
That's fine. I don't even care if you have a long-term goal. You don't have to have something specific. I want you to have a general direction. I want you to like really understand that if I want more fun in my life or I want more discipline in my life, or I want to get in shape, or I want to travel the world, or I want to see things, I want to be more adventurous. I don't know, like there's a general direction that I want to go in. I want to think about what is the, a short-term experiment. And I want you to look at it as an experiment that I can do for the next 90 days. Okay? So this is what I teach in my, in the club and what we did with 90 day decisions and what I do in my own business and in my own life. And what's changed everything is picking this goal like a shorter goal for 90 days. Not one month, but giving yourself three months, which is short enough that like I can change my mind afterwards, I can evaluate, I can decide to experiment, I can decide to do something else, but long enough that you give yourself some time to figure out like, is this working or is this not right? Is this something I like? Like doing something for a month doesn't really give you the information that you need. And a lot of times it puts a lot of pressure to try to go hard again because you only have a couple of weeks and sometimes life happens and things fall off. So we want to give ourselves like a little bit more time to breathe and to do it to a point where we can get a lot of data and a lot of information that we can evaluate.
Okay? So the way that I teach this is that you pick whatever your long-term goal is and then you don't, okay? You could do this a couple of ways. You could decide, like let's say if my goal was by the end in, in a year, I want to, I mean, writing a book is too much, but I, I feel like that's the thing that keeps coming into my head. But like, let's just say I, okay, fine, I want to publish like an ebook on Amazon. Okay? I could break that down into four quarters. I could figure out like for my people that love to plan, you could do it like this where it's like, okay, if I work backwards and I really do know the steps or I can just guess some steps, I can let the other three quarters be kind of placeholders. Like this is what I think I'm going to do. Knowing that I might change it, knowing that after I go through the first 90 days I might get a lot of information and realize, oh, the thing I had chosen for my second is actually not going to work and we're going to have to tweak it, totally fine. But I could say like, okay, in the first quarter I'm just going to research the topic and I'm going to brainstorm and I'm going to have an outline and I'm going to look at how, you know, whatever. Maybe in the second quarter I'm going to look at how people publish on Amazon and what it takes and the editing and do I find an editor and how do I get an illustrator and all the that stuff. And then maybe the third quarter is when I actually do all the writing. You know, you, you get the point.
Or, and this is what happens more often than not. And this is what happens with a lot of pe of my clients in the club. And this is what I tend to do is I just pick the next 90 days. I don't even know what I'm going to do next, right? I just know that for the next 90 days, this is what my focus is on, okay? This is the short term goal.
And what that does is it stops all my brain from going to all the other things I quote unquote should be doing. So I'm going to give you an example of how I use this in my own business. Because I use this a lot in my business actually is like, if there is a million things I will always need to work on, I will always need to fix, right? Just off the top of my head right now, like I can get better at my systems, I can clean up my systems in the backend, I can create more content, I can create another freebie.
I can batch podcast episodes. I can try to get better on Instagram, I can market more, I can sell more. I could try to pitch myself on more podcasts. I could try to be guests on, you know, get more guests on my podcast. I can hire a PR agency. I can sell more. I can create another product. I can decide to do something other than a membership. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Always. This doesn't change.
And so one of the ways that I've used this tool is learning to break it down for my business of like, what am I going to focus on for the next 90 days? And let's say, say I choose, like these last 90 days, I wanted to focus on the back end of my business. I was going to hire an online business manager. I was going to have to onboard her. I was going to have to get her to like, get to know all of my systems. We were going to have to have a lot of meetings. I really wanted to onboard her on correctly so that she felt both supported and could help me like in the long run because she knew what was going on. I also wanted to create some more systems. I wanted to do some things in the backend so that as I grow all of these things that are causing problems can go away. I don't have to deal with all those problems. So it would take time for me to slow down and work on those things, right?
So part of my setting a 90 day goal is telling my brain, we're not going to worry about marketing and selling this quarter. That might mean we might take a hit to the bottom line. I may not make as much money, I might not do a launch because I don't have a bandwidth to do all of it. So I might decide that for these 90 days, I'm really, it's not, doesn't mean that I'm not going to sell. Obviously the podcasts keep coming out obviously. Like I do certain things on Instagram or I still market. I, I've created some things that kind of run all the time, but my focus is on the backend of my business. And then after 90 days, I evaluate and I look at, okay, like what worked? What didn't? What, what am I going to work on? What else should I have been doing? You know, what was I missing? And then I create another 90 day goal. And maybe my next 90 day goal is, okay, we're going to go hard on marketing and selling this quarter and we're not going to worry so much about like, yeah, some things are going to fall through the cracks.
Some systems are going to get broken. Some things we're going to have to keep reinventing the wheel every week until we figure out how this becomes a system, right? But that's not my concern. And so when my brain goes back to like, Ugh, but you really should be marketing right now. You really should be launching. I bring myself back to like, well that's not our goal this quarter, this. That's not what we're focusing on. What we're focusing on is the back end. It helps me get over all of the overwhelm of needing to do all of the to-do list all the time, right?
And I will tell you that this, the reason I think this is the secret to life is because when you get outta that overwhelm, you actually take steps. And when I've said this like a million times, but like baby steps over time is the secret to all success. Anything you want to do, it's not a flash in the pan, it's not going hard for two weeks. It's like, what can I do consistently over time in order to create the result I want ultimately?
So when you think about if I go slow, but I do something every week of this year, by the end of the year, I will do a lot more than if I try to go hard for two weeks every six months because I get some flash of inspiration or motivation and then I give up and then I feel shame and then I don't do anything. And so what this really helped me see was like, of course like going back to the messy middle. Of course my business is going to be a mess all the time. And I'm not saying that in like a way of like putting myself down. I just mean that all businesses are anywhere you work, there's all just problems.
There's going to be, something's going to break, break, something's going to come up, something's not working that was working before. Something that you didn't notice, you know, is going to, it's always going to be there. And I can't focus on all of the problems all the time. But what I can do is make progress. Each quarter I can slowly decide like, this is where my focus is going to go and this is what I'm going to do, you know, for the next 90 days. And then I'll reevaluate and see what else I want to do. Now I'm talking about it more in like a decision making kind of with respect to my business. And you can use that for your job. But I want you to also think about it with your goals and with your dreams, right?
So one of the ways that I use this, and I use this with my clients is like, again, when you know you're North star, let's say you want to find a, you want to figure out what you want to do. A lot of people that struggle in my program who know they don't want to do what they're doing, but they don't know what else they want to do. Like that's the, what they struggle with is like, how do I really know, like what the next thing is? What lights me up? Like I really, they've kind of lost touch with that, okay? So when you have that, let's say that's your north star, that can feel really overwhelming because there isn't a concrete thing. It's not like I'm working towards a book. It's not like there's like, I can google this, right? So it requires some experimentation.
And so what we do a lot is like figuring out, okay, what can I focus on for the next 90 days? What can I give myself some parameters around in order to figure this out? That might mean it depends on where you are in the journey, right? So this advice is going to be different for each person. For someone that might mean I just give myself 90 days to experiment, to explore things that I'm curious about. It doesn't even have to do with work. Maybe I just decide, hey, for the next 90 days, I'm just going to see what actually brings me joy. Because I've lost touch with that. So maybe I'll take classes, maybe I will try new hobbies. Maybe I will just do the things that I used to find joy in that I don't do anymore. Maybe I will take time to research what other people do, you know, to get back in touch with themselves. Whatever. You have to come up with like a, some parameters around that so that you're not going down like Google rabbit holes every day. But let's say you decide for 90 days, I'm going to take a class every week, or I'm going to go back to my love of dancing because it's amazing when you are like immersed in something that brings you joy, how much inspiration and creativity and intuition comes out.
So let's say that's what you decide to do. Great. The beauty of this is that as you are going through that, your brain is going to keep telling you like, oh, we're wasting time. We should be like getting serious. You should just pick a career, go find something else. Go talk to a career counselor, whatever. And you just bring yourself back to like, we're spending 90 days just figuring out what brings us joy. That's all we're doing. No ifs, ands, or buts. And this is a really important part of this episode. You cannot change your mind. I know this is so hard because for a lot of us it's like, ah, but what if I do it and I realize I don't want to do this. Part of this is the discipline of realizing your brain is going to try to change, get you to change your mind.
It's going to try to get you to see that like, we're wasting time. This isn't going to work, this isn't worth it, whatever it's going to tell you. And part of this is deciding with your prefrontal cortex, okay? With your rational mind, with the one that can what's the word I'm, I'm looking for like, not deny dopamine, but can put off gratification. That's what I'm trying to say. You've made a decision from that prefrontal cortex. Later on, your primitive brain is going to be like, we want some dopamine. Let's not do this anymore. This is too hard. We're wasting time. Let's go do something else. And you are going to learn that like no matter what cravings you have, no matter what urges you have, no matter what desires you have, your prefrontal cortex can be in charge and can say like, no, we've decided to do this.
This is what we're going to do. And this does a couple of things. Not only does it keep you focused on your goal, but it shows you that you have the power to keep focused on your goal. It shows you that you don't need motivation. You have discipline, you have consistency by just continuously saying like, I'm going to give myself this time. I know my brain's going to freak out. I'm already prepared for that. I know my brain's going to tell me I'm wasting time. I know my brain thinks we should do something else and I'm going to keep bringing it back to like, no we shouldn't. This is what we decided and this is what we're going to do. And then after those 90 days, I can evaluate and I can decide like what worked from this, what didn't, what do I want to do differently in the next 90 days? And I can make a different decision there. And the power in this is that again, I don't have to know what I'm going to do in my next 90 days.
When I go through these 90 days of joy, let's say, of figuring out what lights me up. I learn so much that the next 90 days becomes clear like, okay, I realize these are the things I like, these are the things I don't like. How can I start translating that into work?
Maybe I spend the next 90 days looking at like what kind of careers incorporate these things that light me up, right? Maybe I just spend 90 days networking and meeting people and seeing what they do for their jobs and going to meetups right after six months, let's say those two 90 days, you have learned so much more about yourself than you would have sitting every night going through, down Google rabbit holes trying to predict what you should do for a job.
And so the point of all of this is really so that we can start taking action, get data, learn things, and then make changes. And so that we can learn to not like go with our like squirrel mind that's like, Ooh, what about this? Maybe we should work on this. Maybe we should do this thing. It's like, no, no, no. We've decided. And I think that when you really start implementing it, it starts really combating that same thought that I was talking about about episode 263 on I'm So Behind is when you start showing yourself and you show that you are slowing down and yet you're ma you're making more progress. When you start seeing that progress made, you start rewiring that thought, you start realizing like, I don't have to go at full speed. I don't have to go a hundred miles an hour.
I still make a lot of progress when I slow down. And like that again reinforces how much these 90 day goals work. And so then you do more and more and it's amazing how much you can get done in a year, in two years when you chunk it down and you focus on the short term and you don't try to get to some like far off land and you don't get stuck in confusion and overwhelm and you keep thinking like, okay, what am I going to focus on here?
And so I know that first, I've talked about this before too. Like when I started the podcast, I gave myself a year and I told myself like, there's no way I'm allowed to change my mind. And my brain tried to change my mind every week. Like, this isn't working, no one's listening to you. Nobody cares. This is embarrassing. And I'd made myself that deal. I could come hell or high water, I'm going to do this podcast for a year. And the fact that I forced myself to do that is what changed my life. 'cause I would've quit the podcast very easily in the beginning and I would've never known what it could have been. And so when you create these parameters where you tell yourself like, we're not allowed to do something shiny right now, we're not allowed to tell ourselves like, this is too hard. I'm not going to do it. I told myself, I'm going to do this for 90 days. I'm going to give myself that time and then I can change my mind and then I can pivot and then I can see like, hey, I tried this podcast for 90 days. I actually don't like it. I thought I would love it and I'm doing it and it's really not doing it for me. Okay, great. Now we know, now we don't have to sit and go back and forth forever about whether I'm going to like it or whether I'm not or is it really for me or is it going to bring in leads for my business? I tried it, didn't like it, now I'm moving on to something else. I can check that off. And I learned more about what I didn't like, why I didn't like it, what I thought I would like, right?
I learned so much from that experience and we're on to the next thing, and I don't have to keep spinning about it. There's so much that can, like I feel like there's so much mental energy we, we save by just taking action and gaining that clarity by doing it right. Seeing like what works and what doesn't so that we don't have to keep spinning in the what ifs.
What if this would work? What if I should do this? Should I have another grow program? Should I do something like this? It's like, let's just try for 90 days, see what happens and then we'll evaluate.
So I want you to start thinking about your goals. Like whatever your long-term goal is, I want you to break it down into like, what am I going to work on for the next 90 days, right? Right now I think we're when this comes out, yeah, we're coming up towards like the end of August. So you can start it from like September, October, November. What's going to happen in those three months? What am I going to focus on? What am I not going to focus on, right? Like the more important question is what am I not going to focus on? What am I not going to let my brain take me down and like, tell me I have to be doing now we're going to focus on this one thing, we're going to break this down and I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do in those 90 days and I'm not allowed to change my mind and I I just want you to try it, try it for the next 90 days.
If it doesn't work, then you don't have to use it, that's fine. But I promise you, you'll start seeing like how much it can get you into action when you create something that's tangible, that's in a short term that you know you're allowed to change your mind in a little bit that you know you're doing as an experiment that you know you're going to get a lot of data from. It changes everything.
And if you want help with that, there is an entire course now called 90 Day Decisions in the club that goes through all of this in more detail. There's a process of like, how do you pick your 90 day goal? What are the reasons behind it? How do you stick to it? How do you evaluate? All of it's in there. And this is what I coach people a lot on. It's like, okay, let's get each 90 day goal in place for you. We have action plan calls where you can come and like, let me know exactly what you're working on and I will help you like figure out what the exact next steps are so that you stop staying stuck so that even if we don't know what that end goal is, we know we're working towards it. We know we're learning about ourselves, we know we're getting to the next step. It changes everything.
So if you want to join the club, which of course you all should because this is the support that you need to actually start creating the life that you want, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and join us and let's start making some 90 day goals and start making sure that over the next year you're making progress to the life that you want to live. All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this and I will see you all next week for another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
