What Happens When the Dog Finally Catches That Car?
You’ve seen it before - the dog chasing the car down the street. There’s few things that, as a driver, scare me more than when a dog on the loose comes after my car - they’re small, and fast, and my car is big and heavy. The odds are not in that dog’s favor. Of course, the dog never catches my car, never takes a bite out of my tire, never actually comes close…But what if it did?
I’ve relied on this metaphor often when I’m coaching clients, because this one comes up a lot when we’re working on goals and pushing towards big achievements. It’s rare that I run across a client who decided yesterday to pursue a big goal or make a big life pivot. Most of the time, a person has had a goal, a vision, a change in mind for a long time, and has often even tried to go after it more than once by the time they get around to hiring a coach to help. And while I love to help people reach their goals, the coaching I love even more is what comes AFTER that part….when the proverbial dog has finally caught the car, when the size whatever jeans finally fit or the bank account finally holds X dollars or the mortgage statement is finally at $0.00 or the new business is finally profitable…whatever it is, once the goal is reached, most clients feel a rush of excitement, the high of achievement, and then…the “Now what?” sets in.
I’ve experienced this myself as a runner. In the beginning, I’m someone who is training for a marathon for months. When I actually accomplish the marathon, I’m someone who has finished a marathon. There is a high at the finish line of course, and it lingers after for a while. But, eventually, the high wears off. And despite having spent 4 months to get to that goal, once I get to it, I’m not quite sure what to do next. I’ve got the medal. I finished the training. I have, as the saying goes, finally caught the car. Now what?
And weirdly, this is the part that can actually be harder to handle for any goal-setter. Once you achieve the goal, you have to now sit with the new feelings and the new self-identity that comes with being that person. You’re no longer feeling hopeful, or anxious, or unsure when it comes to yourself and your goal - you’re feeling proud, or confident, or excited. You’re no longer identifying as someone who wants to achieve the thing - you’re the person who has done it. You’re not “trying to” be a marathoner or an author or a parent or a homeowner or an entrepreneur - you ARE a marathoner, an author, a parent, a homeowner, or an entrepreneur.
And as we know, we (as humans) don’t like change. So changing our feelings, changing our identity, changing anything about how we see ourselves is really uncomfortable for us. So much so that many of us, the moment we reach the top of our mountain, the moment we catch that car, we just…freeze. Or panic. And then we start to revert back to what is familiar, because our brain feels like that’s more safe for us, and safety is all that matters to that primitive brain of ours.
This is why someone who hits the lottery will often blow through their winnings in just a few years, or why many of us (it’s me, hi) will pay off our credit cards just to run them back up again, or why keeping off weight or sticking to a new running routine is so hard. Even if we want so badly to be this new version of ourselves, even if we work so hard to get there, if we don’t do the thought work alongside all the actions we take to make a change, it’s going to really really hard for us to sustain a change. We catch the car and don’t know what to do next - so we often let the car go.
The thought work I’m talking about here isn’t overly complicated - but it has to be a part of your pivot plan if you want that pivot to stick. The thought work that has helped my clients as they go from being people in the process of making a big change, or reaching a big goal, and finally getting there, includes, most importantly, changing their self-identity by starting to think, feel and act like the person who has what they want right now, before they get there. Meaning, if you are someone who makes $100K per year, and you want to make $500K per year, you need to start thinking, feeling, and acting like someone who makes $500K.
You start this by envisioning yourself as someone who makes $500K per year - see her in your mind. What does she look like? What does she wear every day? What does she eat for lunch? Who does she spend time with? What does she read? What IG accounts does she follow? What’s a typical weekend look like for her?
You then start living out the answers to those questions right now, before you have the $500K salary. No, maybe you don’t spend your money right now like you envision you will when you’ve met your goal, but what would you do that you can put into place now? Maybe the $500K version of you hires cleaning people so she can spend more time on passion projects, maybe she gets a manicure every week, maybe she upgrades the types of towels in her home, maybe she stops spending so much time talking to friends who don’t think her goals are possible and leans into people who think they are….the more you think, “What would she do?” and start taking action from there, the more you will be living into the version of yourself you want to be, and normalizing that new self-identity for your brain
In addition to the thinking and taking action, we also have to focus on how it feels to be this new version of you. This is the part we often skip but is actually essential to address - since how we act is entirely determined by how we feel. So, how would the $500K per year version of you feel when she wakes up every day? How does she feel when she looks around her living room? How does she feel when she shows up to work, or when she’s making dinner for her kids? Identifying and practicing how she feels during the day (confident, calm, relaxed, energized….whatever it is for you) will be key to helping you become that person.
This practice actually starts to rewire your brain so that the change in identity isn’t sudden and scary (remember, your brain will fight against change). Instead, this thought work will start to rewire your brain so that thinking of yourself as this different version of you becomes normal for your brain. And your brain isn’t scared of what’s normal for it….So by the time you make that $500K, by the time you reach your goal, your brain doesn’t panic. Instead, it just keeps operating as this new normal. This is just who you are now.
Catching the car just becomes the fun part.