Show notes:

148. Why You Quit on Your Goals and How to Recommit (so that you achieve your goals and your truest desires)

Vanessa 00:00
Welcome to the Empowered brain, the only podcast using science, psychology and coaching to help you rewire your brain and create a life you love with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Harvard grad physician, master coach, and mother of two.

Vanessa 00:20
Hello, sweet friends. Welcome back to the podcast. So if you are new to the podcast if this is one of the first episodes you've been listening to, or maybe you've been here for a while, I want to take a second to welcome you re welcome you if you've been here for a while and just share with you what this podcast is about. So here on this podcast, you get to have all of the help the support the teachings that you need to really create the life and the business of your dreams. So if you scroll back on all the other prior episodes, you'll see that we talk about all things on this podcast, we talk about self-compassion, about boundaries, about leadership, how to achieve goals, how to have self-discipline, and so much more. And we do it in a way where I introduce you to the science behind all of these things. I teach you how this stuff works, and then give you actionable tools to start using it.

So this is sort of like your one-stop shop for motivation and actionable tips to create a life that you can be proud of. And if you are ready to take this work even deeper and start applying these concepts to your everyday life, and start to transform your life, then I invite you to join me in my online school and coaching program. It's called the journey. Vanessa Calderon, md.com, backslash join, where you get to work directly with me to figure out all of the areas where you've been stuck, get you unstuck and create a plan, keep you accountable and move you forward. Plus, you get to join an incredible community of so many amazing smart women and people of color just like you. Alright, so today, what are we talking about? today? We're talking about how to recommit to our goals? And how can we make sure that we are overcoming any obstacles that are in our way.

So the reason why we're talking about this is because oftentimes, we set goals in our life. And when it gets hard, or when it gets uncomfortable, we slowly start to quit, and we kind of do it under the radar. So today is March. So we're in the month of March already. Which means you know, we start the year off, we're usually super gung ho super excited about the new year's resolutions and the goals we set at the beginning of the year. And a few weeks into the year, usually about 21 days or so we start to slowly start to quit. And definitely by March, all of us have either given up completely, or we're just barely pulling along. So what I hope to do with this podcast episode is reignite the fire that supported you in setting the goal from the beginning. So what we're going to talk about today is why we quit on our goals, and then how we need to recommit to our goal. So why it's important to recommit and then how to recommit.

Alright, so let's get started. So I'm going to just go through the various reasons why I see myself quitting on my goals and why I've seen my students quit on their goals. So we'll discuss each one. Okay, so the first one I see is lack of clarity. So what I mean by that is, when you set a goal, but you're not entirely clear on the goal itself, it's kind of a nebulous goal. For example, I want to lose weight, or I want to make money, but you didn't say how much weight you wanted to lose or how much money you wanted to make. And so you're not super clear as to what the outcome looks like. So what is success look like? So that's kind of a basic one. But anytime you're setting a goal, you want to make sure you're super clear on what success looks like. And you want to make sure you're clear on your why, why am I setting this goal to begin with?

That one thing right there that y is going to be incredibly motivate you when things get hard because you can always lean back on your Y. Alright, so number one lack of clarity, number two distractions. So when you set a goal, one of the reasons I see people quit as they start getting distracted, or they have competing priorities, and they get sidetracked. Now this is especially true when your goal starts to get hard, especially when your goal requires you to cultivate a new skill. For example, let's say that your goal requires you to learn how to play a new sport, or learn how to start writing or learn how to be an entrepreneur when you've been an incredibly successful business person already in a career where you've been an employee. And that's an entirely new skill. And so what I see is that people start to quit when things get really hard, and they start to get distracted by other competing priorities. And it's easy to get distracted by competing priorities because you can use a as an excuse, you can say, but I don't have time for this right now. Because XYZ, when really all you're doing is setting up an excuse, because it was getting too hard anyway. Now this one leads to my next one, which is lack of motivation.

Often what I hear from my students is I'm just not motivated anymore, or I just, I'm not really passionate about this, I shouldn't have set this goal to begin with. Now, again, when I hear that happen, oftentimes, if the goal was clear to begin with, if it was coming from an authentic place, when they start saying they're losing motivation, it's usually because the goal is getting hard. That's usually because the work becomes uncomfortable. Now, in my experience, personal experience, and also from seeing my students, what I have seen is that we have a distorted view of how long or how hard something is supposed to be. So we're okay for something new, for a goal to be hard in the very beginning, or for a goal to be hard for a little bit of time. But if we've decided that it's taking too long, or that it's getting too hard, then we decide that we're going to quit. And the way we quit is we tell ourselves, I'm just not motivated, or I have too many other things to do, or this isn't really that important.

Now, the problem with that, if you can see is that how hard or how long is 100% subjective. how long something takes could be a few days for one person, but for another person, it could be a few weeks or a few months, and you start to quit because you think it's taking too long. Now, if I were to guarantee you 100%, if I were to say, your success is inevitable, if you keep going, if you keep going, I guarantee you 100%, you will be successful, all of a sudden, it doesn't matter how long it's taking, you keep going and you're not giving up. Because what ends up happening is when we think it's taking too long, because we have that distorted view, we tell ourselves, and this is the next one here, that it's not happening fast enough. So one of the reasons why I see my students quit on their goals. And me too, by the way, I was totally guilty of this is that I believed my success wasn't happening fast enough.

Again, we have this perception that the goal we create whatever the goal is, it should have already happened or it should happen at a certain timeframe, we see all these other people out there, and we assume that it must have been super easy for them, it must have happened for them in six months or a year. So that's how long it needs to take for me. And if it takes any longer than that, we start beating ourselves up, telling ourselves that the reason it's not happening fast enough is because I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not skilled enough, or whatever it is. But really, it's because it takes what it takes, it takes as much time as it takes. And so we need to let go of the concept, this thought error that it's not happening fast enough. And the last one, and I think actually this is the number one reason why I see people quit on their goals is their they are incredibly afraid of failing. Again, me too.

I'm raising my hand over here, because this was also me. When you are afraid of failure when you have a worry and anxiety that you're not going to achieve your desired outcome. We don't always call it slate failure will say other things like I'm not passionate about this, or it doesn't really matter. But when we are afraid of failing, then we slowly start to quit. Or when we start to do the work, we start to experience anxiety or overwhelm or we procrastinate because it feels so uncomfortable. Because we're so afraid that whatever product we're doing is not going to be good enough. Alright, let me give you an example of this.

So I have this really smart, brilliant student that I'm working with inside my coaching program that journey. She has an incredible career, she's really successful making great money, but she wanted freedom. That was her why she wanted freedom and decided to start a new side gig. But that side gig requires her to learn a new skill. And so she's busting her butt and learning that new skill. So she's a health care provider. And now she's learning how to be a successful author or writer. And it turns out, she's pretty good at it. But she feels like the success isn't coming fast enough, or Am I really that passionate about this? Or should I really be doing this? And when she asks herself all those questions or when she doubts herself or wish she doesn't see that she's already been successful, slowly but surely. Then she gets this horrible anxiety and fear and all of these other things and she starts to lose her motivation.

She starts to think it's not happening fast enough. she lets herself gets distracted by other priorities. And she slowly starts to quit on her goals. And so when I coached her, here's what we coached on we coached on the importance of recommitting to our goals and that's what again we're talking to out today. So I'm going to first talk about why it's important to recommit to our goals. And then I'm going to talk about how we can do it. Alright, so there's a few reasons why it's really important to recommit to our goals. Number one, every time you choose to recommit to a goal, what you're essentially doing is you're creating a new sense of purpose and clarity. And this is exactly what I did with her. The very first question I asked her when she said, should I even be doing this is alright, so why did you decide to do this from the beginning, because when you lean back on your y, it serves as a reminder as to why you set the goal in the first place. And oftentimes when you start focusing on your WHY it reignites this beautiful passion, and the motivation that you need to pursue to pursue the goal, everything that was there from the beginning. And so again, when you recommit to your goals, it lets you reconnect your sense of purpose to your why. And it's very simple. Just ask yourself, why did I choose to do this from the beginning?

Again, recommitting to your goal allows you to re align with your actions with your aspirations. And it also helps eliminate the distractions that were getting in the way. It really supports you and having a renewed sense of focus. Alright, the second one here, and why it's important to recommit to your goals is it helps you overcome obstacles. Now, there's this really fun kind of graphic that floats around social media once in a while. And the graphic looks like this. It's kind of like a graph like an XY access graph. And on the graph is time and effort or time and success graphed on the graph. And what it what it shows is what most people think, and most people think that when you put in effort or time that you will automatically be successful, there's this like upward line trajectory directly pointing up, that you will automatically be successful if you put time and effort. That's it. But in fact, what success actually looks like has nothing to do with that direct line pointing up.

In fact, what it actually looks like is a bunch of squiggly lines going all over the place. You put in time you put an effort, sometimes your success goes up, sometimes it goes down, sometimes you get setbacks, but you keep going. Because what's beautiful about that, and I've actually never seen this graphic, so I will create it and post it on social media someday. But what actually ends up happening is that if you were to zoom out of that squiggly line kind of messy graph, which is what effort actually looks like when you're trying to achieve a goal. If you were to zoom out, what you would see is that over time, yes, it's messy. Yes. It's squiggly. Yes, obstacles come up. But over time, if you keep going and you keep putting in effort, there's an upward trajectory over time so it squiggly but it is going up. So yes, it's messy, but you are actually creating success along the way you are achieving your goals along the way. So I share that with you because here's the truth. The truth is that setbacks and obstacles are inevitable, they will be present, they will be there on the journey towards any goal that you are setting.

You are going to have setbacks, you are going to have obstacles. And thinking that that's not the case is a fantasy is a fantasy that will create suffering, because when it does come up, then you make it mean that it's your fault, that there's something unique about you that you are the reason why there are setbacks and obstacles that other people must not have that. But that is just not the case. Anyone out there trying to achieve a meaningful goal has incredible obstacles that are put in their way and setbacks. That's just what happens in my life isn't perfect. Again, thinking that you're not going to have setbacks, that you're not going to have an obstacle that it's not going to get hard. That's a fantasy that is going to create suffering in your life. So letting go of that illusion will make it so much more peaceful for you. So again, know that setbacks and obstacles are going to happen. And when it does, my invitation to you is choose to recommit every time because every time you choose to recommit, you become more resilient, you become more determined. You start learning how to problem solve, and you shift your mindset from man This sucks to Okay, so what did I learn about this? What did I learn about this? How can I keep going? How can I keep going?

For me what I have learned is every time things get hard every time I perceive a failure, recommitting to my goals has just allowed me to learn how to fail, how to fail faster and how to take that l i did a podcast episode a few weeks back on how to take the L how to take a loss in business and in life. Because that l can either mean loss or it can mean a lesson. How do you take the lesson that life is trying to do keeps you in that moment, how do you get back up again and keep going. And the last reason and it's not really the last but the last that I'm going to share with you in why it's important to recommit to your goals, because honestly, I can do an entire podcast or an entire week's course or a thesis on the importance of recommitting to goals. But the last one I will share with you today is, is this, which is when you recommit to your goals, what also happens is you have an incredible opportunity for personal growth and personal development. In my experience, every time my students every time I choose to recommit to my goals are my students recommit to their goals, what I see happen every time is that a new lesson in life opens up for them that they choose to lean into.

They choose to lean into that lesson and grow significantly. And it's not just a lesson in business or a lesson in their personal life or in relationships. Oftentimes, it's a beautiful, larger, purposeful spiritual lesson. And it helps them grow. And for me, I think one of the reasons why I've enjoyed this entrepreneurial journey so much, once I let go of thinking what you know, success is supposed to look like this, or failure means I'm a failure. Once I was able to overcome all of that. What I've learned is, every time I keep going, every time I keep recommitting, every time I learn a lesson, and I keep going, I grow spiritually. And for me, that is just the most beautiful growth available to us. Because we're all here on this earth spiritual beings and these like human bodies, here on purpose, to elevate to learn to grow to grow universal consciousness. And the way we do that is by learning, and getting better learning and getting better and learning and giving and learning and serving. And so for me, every time I recommit, it helps me grow into a better version of myself. And that is what's possible for all of you for everyone. When you recommit, you can also become a better version of yourself. So ultimately, recommitting to a goal is not just about achieving your goal. In fact, that's probably like, it is important to achieve your goal.

But it's not the number one most important thing. The most important thing is who you become along the way, is what happens when you recommit the muscles that you build the resilience, the strength, the determination, the personal growth, the spiritual growth, who you become along the way, is why recommitting to your goals is so powerful and so important. Alright, so let's spend the last few minutes on the podcast talking about how to recommit to your goals. So I'm gonna give you a few strategies. Number one, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, is Reflect on your why, again, the very first question I asked myself, and I asked my students, whenever they want to quit, is why did you set this goal to begin with? Why do you want to do this to begin with? Now if it's helpful for you, and I asked my students to do this all the time is to get super clear and visualize what their success looks like. Because they chose for a reason, maybe it's freedom. Maybe it's financial security, whatever it is, for me, for example, I put my exact why's my vision on my vision board. So I see it every day. And I'm super clear as to why I'm doing the work every day. I had a super successful career before I decided to launch a business, I didn't have to do this. But I'm doing this because I want to because for me, it serves a higher purpose of being in service and helping more and more people every day. That's why I chose to do this.

So on my vision board, it's super clear why I'm doing this. Because I know for me that when I'm out here every day doing this work, I get to help all of you transform your lives, transform your businesses, transform your personal relationships, transform your relationship with yourself. And that is how we change the world. We change the world when we commit to choose to change the relationship with ourselves. And that's the work that I'm doing out here. So number one, we commit to your why reflect on your y recommit to your y get super clear, envision it, put it on a vision board if it's helpful for you. Number two, this is kind of pretty basic, but I'm gonna say just in case someone needs to hear this, which is break it down, break down your goal. If you've set a goal and it feels like overwhelming for you break it down into smaller tasks. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. Rome was not built in a day as people say, How do you eat an elephant as people say one bite at a time so break down your goals, make them more manageable.

Vanessa 19:44
Another one that's important here is you have to be adaptable. You have to adjust, be adaptable and be flexible. So what do I mean by this? If you are noticing that what you are doing is not working. Then pause and reflect. Don't keep pushing against a wall that is not moving Been pause instead and ask yourself what's working? What hasn't worked? What will I do differently? Because oftentimes when you take a step back and you ask yourself, that clarity shows up for you, and you will start to notice, oh, look, I can just walk around this wall, I don't have to push against it. So ask yourself, and I ask myself these questions all the time. All right, so what's working? What's not working? What will I do differently? And with my students, this is the work that we do together, when they're coming to me and telling me they want to quit, and they tell me all the things that they've done that aren't working, then I'm like, okay, so what else can we do? What haven't you tried? What's new? What's different? How can we think about this differently? And that is what I will offer you how can you think about the problem differently? And evaluate the problem? Those three questions, what, what's worked, what hasn't worked? What will I do differently?

Now, if you are trying to work on your goal, and you're surrounded by a bunch of people that don't believe in you, or don't believe in what you're trying to create, then you get to gently remove yourself from that situation. So here's another one, which is find support. So this is what I mean by this. Find support find a community that believes in you, because the majority of people out there are stuck in their own limiting beliefs. They're stuck in their own ideas, they're stuck in their own fears. And when someone shows up with something that's challenging their worldview, they're going to hate on it. They're going to hate on your goals, they're going to hit on your vision, they're going to hate on your desires. And that is not a reflection of you. That is not a reflection of your goals. That's just a reflection of them of their own fears and their own insecurities. And so for me, I remember when I decided to start a business, I didn't share that beautiful gift with anybody that was a gift that I had a desire I had, I only shared it with people that I knew were going to support me. Because there's plenty of people out there that are happy to tell you why you will fail. But I did not need to hear that. Because that isn't that is not true.

That's their truth. That's not your truth. That's their truth. So when you are just starting out, if you stick around people that are negative, it's going to weigh you down, and it will turn off your flame. So again, I want you to envision your goals, your desire, your vision, and vision that like this beautiful, beautiful dream that you have like a little candle, and you need to guard that candle. Because that candle can either turn into a big glowing flame that will light up the world. It will light up the world. When you have people around you that blow on it, they give you support that and lift you up. Or that beautiful dream that desire that little candle. It can be blown out if you let people dampen your flame, but their hate with their fears with their limiting beliefs. And so you get to find a community, find a mentor, find people that believe in you, if you don't have them, come join our community. I think that's one of the things that I love about our community so much. People join our community, they join the journey my coaching program, and they get so much support support that they didn't even know was possible by people that look like them by believe that they believe in them incredibly successful women that are out there cheering them on, cheering you on, because we believe in you. And you get a mentor, you get coaches, you get accountability buddies. That's why our students are having so much success, because now they're in a container.

Now they're in a container of people that believe in them. And that's what's possible for you. And then the last one, I will say is when you recommit to your goals, and you're looking to like how can I do this better? How can I make sure I don't fail or I don't quit again, is celebrate your progress. You want to make sure that you're celebrating every little bit of success along the way. Now the brain has evolved to stay alive, right? And to do that as efficiently as possible. So if you would look at evolutionary biology, what you would see is that we are motivated by either a carrot, am I chasing a carrot or a stick, am I going to be hit by a stick? So most of us like back in the day, if you think about it, if we didn't get a carrot, no big deal. I'll look tomorrow. But if we got a stick, if there was a saber toothed Tiger chasing after us, we would not do that again.

So most of us are much more motivated by the sticks, you know. And so we tend to be really hard on ourselves. And we don't see those carrots we don't see those milestones that success. We don't see that as this as a space to celebrate. We never think it's good enough. So what I want to offer you is that you get to rewire your brain and it does take work it takes you intentionally pausing, letting in the good celebrating your progress along the way. So I have made intentional practices of doing this because I was really really not practiced at this. I was really not good at this when I first Started my entrepreneurial journey will ever in life, but it became so evident when I decided to start a business. Because man, when I failed woof, I was so hard on myself. And when I succeeded, it was like, whatever, no big deal. Let me keep going. Not good enough. And what I started doing and here's an invitation to all of you take this practice or create one of your own is intentionally at the end of every day, I stopped, and I look at everything I've achieved. I don't look at the stuff I haven't achieved. I intentionally pause, reflect on everything I've created. And I and I put my hand over my heart. And I tell myself, great job today. You did so great today, Vanessa, good job. I'm so proud of you. And that is how I end my workday before I shift from work to family time I pause and I celebrate myself.

Again, right hand over the heart with that does when you put your hand over your heart that secretes oxytocin, it's a feel-good hormone that loves your entire body makes you feel so good. And I do that and I just say to myself, really good job today. Really great job. Yeah, maybe we didn't finish that. But look at what else you got done. There. Tomorrow is another day. And I am just so proud of you. And I really give myself the love that I need. I celebrate myself, I give myself that acknowledgement. And that is also available to you. Alright, sweet friends. So let's quickly summarize everything we discussed today. Today, we talked about why it's important to recommit to your goals. We started with talking about why we quit on our goals and I gave you that list. Number one lack of clarity, number two distractions and competing priorities which get in the way, especially when things get hard. Next lack of motivation or losing enthusiasm or passion Next, we think it's not happening fast enough. And lastly, we're afraid that we're going to fail so we quit ahead of time. And then we talked about why it's important to recommit to your goals. Essentially recommitting to your goals is incredibly important because the journey of achieving your goal is never about actually just the goal that's important. But that's that's a byproduct what actually matters is who you become along the way every time you recommit.

Every time you recommit you become more resilient, you become more determined you grow personally and spiritually. It is a beautiful journey when you recommit to your goals. And lastly, we talked about strategies for recommitting to your goals. We talked about reflecting on your y breaking it down so your goals are not overwhelming, being flexible and adaptable when things are not working. Surrounding yourself with a community that supports you and celebrating your success. Alright, sweet friends. Remember that when you are ready to take this work on a much deeper level and do this for yourself. Come join us inside the journey. Vanessa Calderon md.com backslash join. All right, sweet friends. Have you powerful week. I will see you all next week.

Vanessa 28:00
Hey, sweet friends, if you love what you're learning, then you've got to join us in the journey. It's my all inclusive program and the best community out there giving you the education you never knew you needed to help you create a life you love. Join us at Vanessa Calderon md.com forward slash join. I'll see you there.