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Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited that you are here. If you are just tuning in, I've been doing a series the last two episodes plus this one, the last three episodes on goal setting 'cause we are coming up to the end of the year in 2024. And you are gonna be inundated on all the New Year's resolutions, new year, new you type Bs. And I'm a huge fan of goal setting, just not in the way that it's mostly marketed.
And I think that what we've learned about goal setting, most of it is wrong and it leads to a lot of shame and a lot of like half-assing things, starting things, stopping things, and then feeling terrible about ourselves. And so I want you to approach goal setting differently because I want it to work for you. 'cause I do think that you can have so much more fulfillment and joy and growth in your life if you approach it in a different way. So if you have set goals and given up on them, stopped them, you know, a month into it, um, there's nothing wrong with you. You honestly have just been taught different like in a way that isn't supportive with how human brains work. And so I wanna help you rethink it. And so if you're, like I said new to this, you can check out the last two episodes that really dive deeper into what we get wrong about goal setting and why you should only pick one goal.
And then today I wanna talk about really the real reason why you should go after big goals. Why you should go after the goals that you want in your life. If this is helpful to you, I'm also doing a full day workshop that will help you set your goals. We'll workshop it together. You will learn how to dream big and go after these really big goals for your next five years. You will learn how to break that down into one year goals and then even further into 90 day goals so that you actually have actionable items. You will learn how to kind of move past the self-sabotage and the procrastination. You'll learn so much all in one day. So you dedicate one day and then you think about goals to the rest of your life differently and you plan out the rest of your year.
It is worth slowing down in order to not keep repeating the same here over and over again where you have no direction and you have no change and it all feels like the same. So if that sounds like something you want, go to quitter club.com/goals and check out the workshop. I would love to have you there. Okay, here's the thing that I really want people to understand about goal setting and why I actually love setting goals and I think that people, uh, I don't know, we are not even taught this so we get it wrong. The way that we're taught to set goals or the reason I think that we think we wanna set goals is to succeed at them, to check them off, right? It seems kind of obvious. Like I want the result, I wanna cross that finish line. Okay? So of course I think about the result I'm gonna get, whether it's gonna be a success or a failure, right?
If I set a health goal and I wanna lose 20 pounds is because I wanna get to the place where I've lost 20 pounds. If I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars, I wanna get to a place where I have a hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. Like that's what we think, right? We think like I am going to endure a ton of crap, a really hard stuff, I'm gonna have to do a lot of things I don't wanna do and it's gonna be painful in order to cross that finish line and then have this result that I want. And so we look at it as like a binary of like success or failure. I either reach my goal or I don't. I either get the results I wanted or I didn't. And then we determine how we feel about ourselves based on which one of those things we do.
And I just think that is the wrong way to approach goals. 'cause what you're doing there is you are setting a destination goal as I like to call them, instead of a journey goal, right? And that comes from obviously the saying like it's not the destination, it's the journey. I think we all know this, that like there is no there, there's no place where you're gonna get, where you get to kick up your feet and all of a sudden you're gonna feel great about yourself and you're gonna have really high self-confidence and you're never gonna feel sad and you're gonna, you know, be happy all the time. That doesn't exist. Even if you reach your goal, even if you succeed, even if you get the thing that you want, you're just move the goalpost, you'll move to the next goal, right? Like let's say you do lose the 20 pounds, then you're gonna be like, well but I wanna be more toned or I wanna eat healthier or I wanna now actually lose more weight.
Or I lost the weight, now I wanna make more money or I wanna have the partner or whatnot. You're just gonna find something else because that's the way that human brain works And that's okay. It's not like just you, it's not. I think a lot of people think like why can't I just be content? The way that the human brain works is that it wants growth. It's gonna constantly look for the next thing. And so that is okay, but you have to know that like if I'm waiting to get there in order to be happy, I'm gonna keep waiting. There is no one destination. And so if I'm setting goals, thinking I'm gonna be miserable the whole time until I get there. And then once I get there, then I can be happy. You are setting yourself up for disappointment 'cause you're gonna get there and you're still not gonna be happy.
You're gonna have the same brain, the same life, the same other problems, the same stress. You're just gonna be in a slightly smaller body or you're gonna have a little bit more money or you're gonna have a partner or whatnot. And so if you're setting it for the destination, you're setting a wrong type of goal. You really do wanna set a goal that looks at like who am I going to become in the process in that journey? What does that journey look like for me? Regardless of whether I actually cross that finish line or not, how can it be worth going on this journey? That is the type of goal you wanna set. And that is the point of setting goals. Okay? So it's not simply a binary of do I cross this finish line or do I not? It's who do I become in the process of going after that goal?
That's what I'm after by the way. That is what I wanna be is this person that can achieve that goal is this person that has these skills that can do these hard things, right? It's not about can I just achieve the goal? It's who do I become when I achieve that goal? And so I want us to think about really the ripple effects that happen when we go after goal. I'm gonna give you some examples, but I want you to think about like the fact that the point of it is the self-concept. The point of it is the person that you become not the actual goal and how much that would change how you set your goals. Okay? So I'm gonna give you an example. I use this example a lot. So you've probably heard it if you listen to the podcast or if you're in my community.
But let's just think of like a lot of people like to pick the goal to run a marathon. We see this all the time where people who've never been athletic before decide they wanna run a marathon. Okay? Have you ever wondered why people want that? It's such a random goal to want, it's such a random number, right? 26.2 miles. Why do people just all of a sudden think about running 26.2 miles? And you have to really think about maybe they're not even thinking about this consciously, like what they're gonna gain by doing this for most people, you're not gonna like make a bunch of money, you're not gonna change your status. You're not going to like, you're not getting something tangible after you cross that finish line. What you are getting are a ton of skills and habits that you form in the process of learning how to run a marathon, right?
The reason that you do it, yes you will get in shape. Yes you will maybe become more athletic, you'll become a faster runner or whatever it might be. Maybe you'll meet like other people, which is part of the ripple effects. But when you pick a goal like this knowing it's gonna be difficult, like if you've never run before and you pick a marathon, you know that running for two to three hours is not something that's gonna be fun. It's not something that's gonna be like super enjoyable, but you're, that's not why you're doing it. The reason you're doing it is becoming a person that can run a marathon. You're becoming a person that has discipline, a person that can do hard things, a person that can use their mind over their body, right? When your body is screaming in discomfort, you can stick to it.
You have the mental strength to be able to do something that maybe you didn't think you could do. You are the type of person that can forego instant gratification of like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix or scrolling your phone or eating that ice cream and instead get up every day and go train. That's what you want. So whether you actually cross the finish line of 26.2 miles doesn't actually matter. Like let's say that was your goal and you train for five months and the week before the marathon you get injured. Very disappointing. I'm sure it happens a lot. It sucks. It doesn't mean that it was a waste of time, right? Because the five months of training is what created the person that you are that can run a marathon. Even if you can't physically at that moment. That's not why you chose to run a marathon.
You chose to run a marathon to become that person and you got the benefits of that whether you ran the marathon or not. And this is the thing with any goal that you pick, I want you to think about it in that way, right? I want you to think about if my goal is to create a business that makes a hundred thousand dollars, why do I want that? Like yes, obviously we also want, the result is great. I want a hundred thousand dollars fine. I also want to be a person that knows how to make a hundred thousand dollars. I wanna be a person that learns how to take up space and you know, sell without feeling embarrassed or cringey. Like I wanna be able to deal with other people's judgments and not let it stop me. I wanna try things and fail without making it mean something about me.
I want to learn the skills of marketing and sales. I want to prove to myself that I can do this really hard thing. I wanna learn a set of skills that I can transfer to other businesses later, right? It's not simply like if I go the first year, which by the way I, and now that I'm saying this, I think I did, I think my goal when I had my business, my first year of business was to make a hundred thousand dollars and I think I made something like 92,000. Now I didn't technically hit my goal, but I did. I did because I became the person who wasn't scared to sell online. You know, who dealt with my imposter syndrome, who gained the confidence to show up online and talk about my offer and talk about my coaching product, right? I became a different person in that year, which fundamentally helped me continue in my business and growing my business and doing new offerings.
That was the point of the goal. The goal wasn't like can I just make a hundred thousand dollars? It's can I become a business owner? Can I become someone that can create enough value in this world that I can make six figures? That's what I wanted to become. And the ripple effect of that was far greater than the a hundred thousand dollars that I was gonna make. It's the same thing. The ripple effect. Ripple is even greater than crossing a finish line. And then if you keep going out with these ripple effects, the side effects of it is so much more like I was just saying like with a marathon, you likely will meet a bunch of people that are also running the marathon, right? If you're training with them, the relationships that you form, the way that maybe your relationship with your spouse changes as you're training for this event and as you see their support of your goal, it'll change your relationship with your kids as you model to them what it means to do something really hard.
To put your own dreams first, to go out and train when you don't want to, to do hard things that you don't wanna do, right? There's a ripple effect from that too. Like part of doing the goal is that, is to create this ripple effect within your own community. Whether you realize you're doing it or not, we all are. And I want you to just think about it consciously. I want you to ask yourself this question, how can going after this goal be the best thing I do for myself? And I want you to keep digging. Like how can it be the best thing I do for my marriage or my partnerships? How is it the best thing I could do for my family? How's the best thing I can do for my kids? How's it the best thing I can do for my career?
How's it the best thing I can do for my health? 'cause there's answers under each one of those. I want you to really think about it. Like when you think about a goal as arbitrary as like, I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars in my business. When I started doing that goal and I really did this work and I thought about beyond the fact that yes, if I crossed the finish line, then I have made, you know, a legitimate business and I got the results that I wanted. I've already talked about like how I thought it would be the best thing for me as a business owner and all of the the skills that I would learn. But I really thought about like I am setting an example for my children of going after their dreams. I'm setting an example of trying something. Even if I might fail and not letting fear stop me.
I'm setting an example for people in my life that it's worth trying something unconventional and it's worth taking up space. And it's okay if people judge you and it's okay if people don't get what you're gonna do that might give someone else permission in my life to do the same thing, to go after their dream. Maybe me doing this is a way of showing, you know, like strengthening the bond between me and my husband and seeing his support of my dream and me showing him what it's like to go after something that might be unconventional, maybe that gives him permission. Like there's just so many things, I think so many ripple effects that we don't notice in the moment. I've learned this throughout the years as I've gone for more goals because like now it's easier for me to see. But what's fascinating, for instance, when I had the goal of like starting the podcast and doing the podcast for a year and then it turned into this business, I was so terrified of like everyone judging me.
I was so terrified of my community. Especially like at the time I had been a lawyer and I knew like all of my lawyer friends were gonna see it and I knew all of my, you know, friends and family were gonna see it. And I was worried about what everyone was gonna think. And one of the ripple effects I really convinced myself was, well, I wanna deal with not worrying so much what everyone thinks about me. And so this is the perfect goal, right? Is that I have to put myself out there and I have to let people think what they're gonna think and this will help me work on my thoughts and work on my aversion to that. And so that was one of it. But over the years I have seen so many more ripple effects that I didn't even know were possible.
Like I've talked about like the community I've built, the people I've met, the friendships I have like really close friendships with people in this industry that I never even considered, that I never thought was possible. I have created a business that was beyond my dreams, that has allowed me the time and the energy to be with my children that has allowed me to be present and to take time off. But one of of the biggest things that I noticed later years later is that like I was so worried about everybody judging me. And I can't tell you how many of my former law school friends, law school classmates, regular friends signed up for my programs, came to me because they wanted help, told me that my podcast is what's helped them kind of quit their jobs. I can't tell you how happy I get where people still text me when they quit their jobs even though I haven't had contact with them in years and be like, I just feel like I needed to tell you that I finally did it.
And it fills me with so much joy because I never thought that I would have that sort of ripple effect onto other people. And I really think about like what would've happened if I never started this. Like even if I didn't actually hit whatever goal it was that I had, like a money goal, a monetary goal, the effect that it has had on my life and on the people's lives around me is beyond something I can measure. And it is beyond something that I could have dreamed of and it was worth so much more than just quote unquote building a business. And so I think for a lot of us, I think we limit ourselves in why we think we want something. And I think oftentimes that's what limits our motivation for it. If my only goal was 'cause I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars or I wanted to, I don't know, whatever, there's definitely times where it becomes too hard where you're like, it's not worth it.
This isn't worth, this is way harder than I thought it was gonna be. But when you start realizing like, but there's so much more on the line than just that a hundred thousand dollars, there's so much more like I am becoming this person that I wanna be. I'm growing into the person that can do this difficult thing, that can deal with people's judgments, that can deal with trolls online, that can stand in my own power and my own thoughts about myself and not let other people scare me into silence. Like all of those things created the person I wanted to be. That's who I wanted to go towards. And it became so much easier to stick with something when you knew that was on the line as opposed to simply like, well I wanna make some extra cash. And I think that when you know this, when you realize this, a lot of the hard parts of it become less hard.
What I mean by that is that I think we get surprised that our goals are really difficult or that they're gonna cause a lot of negative emotion and we think like something has gone wrong or it shouldn't be this hard or it's too hard and I gotta give up. We wish away our problems. Like we just like wanna get there, we wanna get to the goal, we want it to be easy. And that's not the way it is because then you wouldn't get all the ripple effects, right? If running a marathon was easy for you, you wouldn't get all the benefits of learning that discipline and learning to do hard things and learning to push your body and learning to use your mind to overcome your physical body. All of the stuff that comes comes on the other side of heart. If it was easy, you wouldn't have pride in it, right?
You wouldn't get the elation that you're gonna get when you cross that 26.2 miles because you did really hard things. And I feel like when I look at this like of course not everyone's gonna do it because it's hard and that's precisely why you should do it because that's where all the ripple effects come from, right? That's where all the side effects come from. That's where you learn. Like for me, let's say I couldn't learn how to like stop caring so much what other people think if it wasn't so physically painful to deal with embarrassment. Like I had to deal with that cringiness and embarrassment and what people are gonna say and the judgment. And that was really difficult. But it was on the back of that. It was going through that where I learned how to let go of other people's opinions of me.
And I learned how to live my life even if other people don't understand what I'm doing or if other people are gonna judge it. That only comes on the back of hard things. I think for a lot of you. Like when we are wishing away the hard or when we are wishing that it would be easier, I want you to really think about like, what am I gaining though from going through this hard thing? What is it going to give me on the other side of this? What reps am I getting in? How am I building this muscle? How is that gonna be the best thing for me? And when you start seeing it, when you start seeing like, oh, this is what's creating the growth that I want, this is what's creating the person that I wanna be. Whether you actually get to the destination or not does not matter.
It truly doesn't. Whether I made a a hundred thousand dollars business or I made $50,000 that year, or I made $10,000, whether I became the quote unquote success isn't as important as what did I gain along the way on that journey? What did I learn? Who did I become? How did it affect everybody else? How did it affect me? How did it affect other areas of my life? That is where the goal is. That is why you should set goals. That is the purpose of goal setting. And I think that when you think of it in that way, it becomes a lot less. Like I think for a lot of us, we, we try to pick the quote unquote right goal, or we try to pick the best goal because we wanna like get to that finish line. And I, I see so many people get stuck on like what to work on or what, what's the right next move.
And I think when you realize like, I'm gonna gain a ton regardless of what happens, there is no right one, I just have to pick one and work on it. I just have to pick one thing. And in that I'm going to create this ripple effect where I'm going to fortify the person that I wanna be in the future. And the more I work on that, and the more I think about that, the less it actually matters whether I cross that finish line, it simply matters. Am I working every day towards becoming the person that I wanna be? And am I working through these hard things in order to get there? And am I gonna have these skills to take with me to the next goal and the next goal and the next goal? If you start doing that, you start seeing what really the point of this growth is.
What the point of these goals are. It's not to just collect a bunch of wins or check boxes or have all these accolades. It's really like, who is my future self gonna be? Who do I wanna be in a year, two years, five years, 10 years? Who is that person? Is it a person that takes risks? Is it a person that stops carrying what everyone thinks? Is it a person that allows themselves to explore and fail? Is it a person who is compassionate and kind to other people? Is it a person who models their dreams for their friends and families? What would I have to do in order to become that person? What is a goal that takes me towards that? That's what I need to work towards. Not can I check this off so I can brag to people that I built a business or that I wrote this book or that I, you know, ran that marathon?
None of that matters. And I feel like when you think about the ripple effects more than you think about the actual finish line, it becomes so much more motivating to stick to the goal because you realize what you are creating in the process of doing it. It becomes so much easier to do the work week in and week out. 'cause you know the point isn't what happens at the end. It is in those weeks in and weeks out. And so you create so much more motivation for yourself to stick with it. So I want you to focus on that. I want you to think about who am I gonna become on the journey to this goal? Is that the person I wanna be? Is that the goal for me this year? Because this is how it's going to change me. And I want you to ask yourself that question.
I said, how is this the best thing for me, for my family, for my kids, for my career, for my health? Come up with a lot of reasons, really dig into it. Don't like let yourself off the hook with like one answer. Keep asking what else, what else, what else? So that you can come up with all of these rich, beautiful things that are gonna come out of this goal and why it makes it worth going after that goal. Goal setting becomes so much easier when you focus on the right types of goals. And if you want help focusing on the right types of goals and figuring out what kind of goal to set for yourself, I want you to join me in that workshop. It's called Goals That Stick. And you can go to quitterclub.com/goals to find out more about it and sign up before the workshop, which is on December 8th. I hope to see you there. And if not, I'll see you 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 wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.