The Reality of Reaching Your Goal {Episode 27}

When we make big, audacious goals for ourselves, we like to imagine how wonderful life will be when we get there. The problem is that this fixation can cause us to forget how wonderful life is already and how many benefits there are to where we are right now.

Balancing ambition and goal setting with gratitude and contentment has been a lifelong struggle of mine, so I understand how hard it can seem! But allowing ourselves to tap into joy along the journey will make the entire path so much more fun than saving the positive emotions for after we've met our goals.

Doesn't that sound so much more exciting?

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Have you ever had a massive goal and then reached it? How did it feel? Pretty amazing, right? But have you ever been a little disappointed by reaching that goal? That can happen when we have unrealistic expectations for how reaching that goal will change our lives and make us feel.

I have countless stories I could share about this concept but let's talk about losing weight because it's my fave analogy for everything! I've had 10 babies (9 pregnancies) and have been pretty good about getting back in shape and losing excess weight after each one. Except after baby #7... I hit age 35, I started a new big business project and I was now homeschooling 7 kids ages 10 and under.

So I stopped exercising as much, made poor food decisions and some of the excess weight stayed on. Then 2 years later I had another baby, and then 2 more. After having baby Brynn in 2021, I had a lot of extra weight on me and I felt like garbage. I weighed what I did when 9 months pregnant with baby #1!

I missed exercising regularly and I missed feeling normal in my body. But it had been almost 7 years since I'd been in that old body and after all the pregnancies and being over 40, I wasn's sure it was possible. I worked with a personal trainer for several years and I got my eating back under control (plus started life coaching and learned to control cravings). I've lost all the excess weight and I'm stronger than I've ever been, but guess what? Life still kinda sucks sometimes.

I now have the benefits of a trimmer body: I can wear some of my old fave clothes and I can run without dying (one of my favorite things!). But my house is still a wreck most days, I still have to cook dinner every day AND I have the downsides of making sure I gt to the gym most days and avoid sugar.

Do I regret getting fit? Not at all! But my life is not a Disney dream sequence. Meeting our goals will bring us relief from some of the suffering that we feel now, and it will bring other disadvantages.

So let's talk business for a second. I bet I can guess some of your business goals: meet people and help them, feel fulfilled by sharing your talents, make money, learn new things, etc. But you might not know that with those benefits, come some struggles of a growing business: unhappy customers, being pulled between helping clients and being with family, internet randos telling you what they dislike about you, increased expenses inluding possibly team members relying on you for paychecks.

Don't get me wrong, it's so incredible to build a business! It's all been worth it for me, but I think it's so important that we don't have unrealistic expectations about what life will be like on the other side of your goal. It will still be amazing, and also sometimes boring. It will be fulfilling, and sometimes overwhelming. it will be expansive, and sometimes suffocating.

I don't tell you this to discourage you but rather to ensure you're enjoying the journey and not just the finish line! Because the finish line is so fun, but it's still your same life. And there's one other downside to hitting the finish line that people often don't talk about. Once you reach that goal, you no longer have the finish line to look forward to.

So keep making and striving for those goals! I want you to hit them! But I don't want you to hold off on feeling joy and satisfaction with your life until you get there. Because those emotions don't magically appear after you sell your first product or get your first client or make your first $1000. They're available to you right now. And those emotions of joy and contentment will make the journey to your goal SO much more enjoyable.

So let's go get them!