Ep. 15: Overcoming "There's No Way I'll Reach My Goal So Why Bother?" Thinking

It’s easy to keep chasing your goal when it seems reachable - but what happens when your goal is so big that it feels impossible to reach? Do you change your approach? Make your goal smaller? Quit altogether? In this episode Coach Stephanie is talking about the tools to use to keep yourself going when that big goal seems just too far away, and she answers the question: "How do I know when I should quit?"

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. I'm your coach and host, Stephanie Finigan, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the problem of trying to reach a big goal, or really trying to reach any goal, and then when things don't go as planned, we end up thinking something along the lines of, I'll never reach this goal, so what's the point? Does that sound familiar? If you're someone who sets big goals, you very likely run into this mindset challenge.

I know I've run into this challenge again and again myself, as I've set a ton of goals, and most of them have been way too big and unreasonable. And for a lot of them, the first time I hit a roadblock, the first time something was hard, or even if I was somewhat down the road on it, but I wasn't seeing results as quickly as I would want, I definitely have run into that, “What's the point?” thinking. The goal is too far away. Why should I even try? I've had this happen with my business. I've had this happen with running goals, fitness goals. I've had it happen with weight loss goals. I've had it happen as we've been in the process of building a family, lots of goals around my professional life. Anytime that I've tried to go after something big, inevitably I hit a moment of, what's the point? It's too far away. I'm never going to get there.

So I'm going to give some examples today from my own life in this episode, but I really like this topic because I think it's so familiar and I think it's going to be useful for anybody who is going after something that you might be struggling with a bit and your brain might be serving you up this like very normal but also really unhelpful thought of what's the point why should I keep going after this it's too far away for me.

The question of how to set the goal is never really the issue you just pick one way and go. Where we run into trouble is when we aren't making progress on that goal as fast as we'd like to or when things don't seem to be changing or improving in the way that we want it to. And that's when we start to doubt ourselves and we doubt our ability to meet the goal all together.

Let's look at a real specific example just for the sake of this episode. Weight loss is a very common goal that people go after. And so I'm going to tackle that as an example for today. This is just a very common way to set goals. I have something going on, I have something I want to change, something I want to achieve. Often times we tie it to a date or an event or some other point of significance and so we're thinking I have this much time to make it happen. So in this case if I say I want to lose 15 pounds by July 4th, then I might decide okay in order to do that I'm going to have to eat less calories or eat less of this type of food or drink more water, work out more, sleep more, whatever the actions are that I want to take. And let's just say a few weeks go by and I step on the scale and I see I've only lost a pound or two and I've been working so hard at this and I only lost a pound or two and I start to think, shit, this is not working. I'm not gonna meet my goal of losing 15 pounds by July 4th. It's just not gonna happen. What's the point of even trying?

And this is where mindset work can come in big time and be hugely helpful. Because your brain is going to give you these unhelpful thoughts of what's the point of even trying. That sentence pops up and we just assume that's kind of it. Like what's the point of trying? It's a question but we serve it up in our brains as a sentence. And this is where mindset work can come in big time because your brain is going to keep giving you this unhelpful thought of what's the point of even trying or some version of it, whatever it is for you. Your brain is going to start to serve it up as a defense mechanism. And often we just assume that thought or those thoughts, we assume them to be the truth and it's just the end of our journey right there. And so oftentimes what happens is as soon as we hit a roadblock, as soon as the scale doesn't budge, as soon as, you know, the stock market takes a dip and our investments go down, as soon as whatever it is that we're trying to get to it seems to not be happening, particularly not be happening in the pace that we want it to, we often decide to stop or just quit altogether.

So when your brain is serving up an unhelpful thought like that, and particularly when it's doing it in the form of a question like what's the point of trying, the best way to push back against that negativity is to actually answer the question. My brain will be like, what's the point of trying? We're so far away. I will come back and answer the question.

So the point of trying is because I still might achieve this goal. It's possible. It's totally possible that I can still get to this goal. So of course, there's a point in trying.

Or I might think the point of trying is that I want this goal more than I want to quit. I want this goal more than I want to stop trying for it.

Or maybe it's that I want to be someone who keeps going after my goal even when shit gets hard. And I love that one. I think of that one all the time. Whenever I hit a wall with my goals, because my brain will automatically start serving up those thoughts, like, what's the point of trying, you might as well quit, it's never gonna happen for you. And I like to say back to my brain, yeah, but I want to be someone who keeps going after my goal, even when shit gets hard. That's the example I want to be for other people. That's the example I want to be for my kid, for my family, for my clients. Like that's who I want to be in the world. I want to be somebody who doesn't give up just because something got hard.

And when I do this, when I start thinking that thought or those thoughts, I can literally feel a shift in my body happen. I go from sort of feeling like urgent or panicky or disappointed to motivated or to feeling really powerful. It's not just about thinking better thoughts of course but we so underestimate the importance of this step. We tend to think if we're not reaching a goal that if we just beat the shit out of ourselves mentally then we'll get there or we just think, see I knew it was too hard for me and we stop altogether. So neither of those options are all that useful and they're definitely not gonna help us as we move into the future.

There will always be a part of your brain that's trying to hold you back and keep you safe because that's what your brain is designed to do. So it's really important to know that because otherwise it's very easy to slip into the thinking of just like, see, it's not meant for me. There's no point in trying. You can question that, you can push back on that, you have the power to do that. And if you change that thinking, then that's where you start to change your actions in a way that's actually gonna help you and finally going to actually give you the results you've been seeking. So that's the first thing, focusing on your thoughts and answering the question directly.

The second tool I like to use when I'm looking down the barrel of a super daunting goal is to focus on my future self and start taking action from there. And what I mean is I envision my future self as the version of me who has what I want, whether that's a weight loss goal, a money goal, a running goal, a family goal, whatever it is. I ask myself, how would she, the version of me that has what I want in the future, how would she make decisions right now? If I'm working on a weight loss goal or a running goal, I think of the future me who weighs what I want to weigh or is running as fast as I want to run and I think, okay, what would that version of me who has the results I want, what would she tell me to do right now in this moment where the results seem so far away? Look to future you for advice on where you are now. What's fun about this is that future you who has what you want is always going to be looking out for you. So their advice is going to be most helpful. What that version is going to tell you is something along the lines of keep fucking going because it's working, because it all works out, because you get there. And you know that because that future version of you is there. So then you can ask the question, okay, but it doesn't seem like it's working, so what can I do differently? Get advice from your future self who's already there. Tap into that version of you and see what they have to say.

Sidebar here, but if you need help with that, this is also a great place to come and get some coaching because this is a very specific coaching topic. I love coaching on future self.

Okay, and then that leads me to another tool that I use when I'm trying to tackle a big goal that just isn't happening like I want and I'm trying to figure out if it's even worth it. Should I even keep trying? And I'm dealing with all of those thoughts in my head. This tool is called gray thinking. This really comes from me being aware of my black and white thinking habit, which I know a lot of you out there probably have as well. It sounds something like, I'm either gonna meet this goal or I'm a failure. This will work or it will never work for me. It's very black and white, right? We all know what black and white thinking is. I like to lean instead into gray thinking.

There's a lot of different definitions of what gray thinking is depending on who's talking to you about it and what their perspective is. For me and the way that I've shaped it for my coaching and my clients is that gray thinking is a term for all the other options that are somewhere between your black and white options. They're between the yes and the no, the success and the failure. It's not either or, it's and. That's what gray thinking really is. In this case, gray thinking might look something like, yeah, the scale isn't moving the way that I want it to, so I could change my actions and, you know, eat less and work out more or whatever. I could take a whole litany of new actions or I could just quit altogether. I could just decide this isn't working for me. Gray thinking is to say, what's another option? And what comes back is one of the most obvious options that my brain loves to skip over, which is, I could just stay the course and believe that this is going to work. I could choose to believe this is going to work and just keep doing what I'm doing.

Notice how our brains are really not a big fan of that option. Our brains really don't like gray thinking in any way. They like black and white. They like things to be organized. Gray thinking implies some uncertainty or additional options, and our brains don't like what it senses as disorganization of that. But the reality is gray thinking is actually a really great way when you utilize it this way to tap into other options that are out there for you because there's always more options. There's always a million ways to solve a problem. In this case, I could stay the course and believe this will work. Our brains don't like it because it's going to require us to go to work building the belief that we're right when we don't see evidence that that's true.

When we have evidence, it's very easy for us to believe that things will work out. When there's no evidence, that's where we have to work on building the belief that things will work out, and that our brains don't like. So this becomes a muscle that you need to start building. In order to meet your goal, you have to believe that it's possible. Your belief is key, no matter what else you choose to do. You can certainly take other action. You can do plenty of things to change your approach to hitting your goal, but if you're struggling to believe that it's possible for you, you're going to have a much harder time getting there. So if you've got thoughts like, “I've never lost this much weight before, I'm too old”, that's a flag for you to just start working on believing that it's possible. Just changing that thinking can have a huge impact on your results.

You start this by just being really simple. If you don't believe that it's possible for you or you can't get yourself to believe that, just start with has someone somewhere ever in human history done this? Is it possible? And I said this to a client the other day, but I'm like, you're not trying to walk to the moon, right? You're trying to lose 10 pounds. That's what we're trying to do here. So has anybody ever, at the age you're at, lost this weight? If we can say yes to that, we know it is humanly possible. So now, you've got that evidence, so now the next step is to start working on the part where you don't think it's possible for you. And that's where most people of course get tripped up. So they're like, yeah, yeah, it's possible, but it's not for me. I have all this evidence in my brain that it's not possible for me.

So this is where, again, you start pushing back on your brain by just getting curious and asking questions. Ask yourself, what's the story that you're telling yourself here? What is the story you have about your weight loss, your fitness goal, your money goal, whatever it is, what's the story that you're telling yourself that is telling you that you can't hit this goal? Why do you think it's possible for other people and not just you?

I had a friend say to me once, she's like, do you think the universe is like picking on you? I was in a brand new relationship and I was like, there's just no way it's going to work out. This just feels too easy. This just isn't going to work. And she said to me, are you crazy? And she named a bunch of people that we worked with who were sort of a-holes. And she's like, all of those people are in great relationships. Do you think the universe is just picking on you? Do you think for some reason they all get good relationships and you don't? It's always stuck with me because it was the ass-kicking I needed at the moment.

Who told you that it was impossible? Whose voice is that? Is that a person you want to believe? So if you have somebody telling you there's no way you can meet this goal, are they somebody that's met that goal before? Are they somebody that's even tried? Is that somebody who you really want to listen to because they have experience that you're seeking? Just notice who you're getting advice from. Notice whose voice is in your head.

So while you're working on your belief, you can then decide, okay, now I'm working on my belief. I might not be totally there yet, but at least now I'm aware that I've got some blockage and some stuff to work around when it comes to belief in myself and this working for me. As I'm working on that, you can start to ask yourself, okay, do I want to take different actions? Do I want to change my approach to reaching my goal? Do I want to keep doing what I'm doing? You can make any choice you want. You can change actions. You could tweak things. You could change things dramatically. You could leave things exactly as they are and just keep going, but just like your reason for making the change. So if you're in this headspace of I'm learning to build my belief and you choose to take different actions from a place of like, oh, I'm really curious to see if I can do it. I wonder what would happen if I just stopped eating dessert at night. I wonder if that would make a big difference in my weight loss goal. I wonder what would happen if I ran a few more miles? You know, for me, I wonder what would happen if I incorporated one more day of hill work into my running training. Would that make a big difference?

If you're coming from a place of curiosity, it's gonna be much more helpful for you than this isn't working and I have to make this change right now. I'm not seeing anything improve, and so I have to make this change. That desperate, panicky place is not where you want to be making decisions from. Get curious, ask yourself questions, start to build your belief in you that you can do this. And then from there, from a place of working on that belief, then you can start making decisions about whether or not you want to change your approach or whether you want to stay the course.

And finally, on the idea of changing your goal altogether, sure, you can do that. People say like, you know what, never mind, I just want to throw this goal out. Maybe it's not worth it. Maybe I should just, instead of losing 30 pounds, I'm just going to try and lose 15 or whatever. You can definitely do that, but why would you? And I just want you to question this. What's so wrong with creating a goal, a weight loss goal or a money goal, whatever it is, what's so wrong with creating the goal and not meeting it? Nothing. Okay, there's nothing wrong with creating a goal and not meeting it. The only reason that that's a problem is that you might make it mean something about yourself that's not cool.

Whether you meet your goal or not isn't really the issue. The issue is what do you make it mean about yourself if you don't? And that, the meaning behind not hitting your goal, that's 100% a choice for you.

You can choose to make it mean that this will never work for you. See, I didn't hit that weight loss goal, so I'm never going to make it.

Or you can choose to make it mean that it will work, maybe just not in the time frame that you want. And that's okay. You can just decide, you know what, I didn't meet the goal by the time I wanted, but I've made some progress and I'm just going to keep going and that's okay. I'll get there at some point. It'll all work out.

You can choose to make it mean that you can't achieve anything. I failed at this, I'm going to fail at everything else I try.

Or you can choose to look at the progress you have made and see that as evidence that you can achieve whatever you want.

You can choose to make it mean your goal is totally unrealistic, or you could choose to think that unrealistic is just an idea, and that there's actually no such thing as unrealistic, and that your goal is totally realistic, and that maybe you just need to change your approach to get there, and you want to just keep trying. It's all up to you.

You get to make that choice. The key here is this, there's no reason in the world to not set a goal and go for it because you get to decide what it means if you don't hit the goal. And you can make it mean anything you want about you.

And finally, just remember that you always succeed at whatever goal you set as long as you choose to never quit until you get there. I love this thought. I think this all the time. If you like your goal and if you want it, if you want to achieve it, don't change it. Don't quit. Don't let the voice in your head get to you.

Keep going because if you don't quit, you will eventually hit it. Try, pivot, iterate, do what you need to do. But if you don't quit, you will get there. And finally, just remember the thought, I'm just not there yet, but I will be. I love that thought. I think that thought all the time.

Every time my brain serves me a thought that isn't useful when I've got a goal that's big and far away from me and I'm not seeing progress as quickly as I want, I just tell myself, I'm just not there yet, but I will be. That gives me so much confidence and so much motivation to keep going.

All right, you guys, I don't want you to quit on your goals. So if you need help with anything, you can always, always sign up for a free consult over at makeyourpivot.co. I do free 60-minute consults. So sign up there. We can talk. And then if you would like to get formal coaching, we can talk about building a package that works for you. I've started doing custom packages for clients as well as my standard packages that I offer. So all the information's on the website, but I would love to see you guys on a consult. Let's talk. Let's see if coaching is a fit for you. And mostly just let me know how things are going with your goal. I love getting and sharing stories of people who are going after big goals. And I would love to cheer you on while you go after yours.