Goals and happy endings

I've always been a big fan of having (and accomplishing goals). For many years I had goals to prove my worth or to get external validation. I certainly didn't realize that was my motivation at the time.

It motivated me to do more, to go bigger, to produce more. It became exhausting, and it never really worked. I never felt validated because that's an inside job (as cliche as that might sound.)

I'm still a big old goal geek, but my motivation is much "cleaner" now. I have goals because accomplishing them is so freaking fun.

I set impossible goals because it's super fun to blow your own damn mind.

I certainly don't beat myself up if I don't reach it as I would back in the day.

I evaluate, adjust, and try again.

We have creative minds, and if we don't use our imagination to create the results we want in our life, we will unknowingly often use our imagination to catastrophize or drop into fear-based thinking.

Back in the day, if I didn't have a goal, my brain would go off the freaking rails.

I would either be knee-deep in imagining the worst-case scenario for whatever I was going through. Or I would be locked into this place of regret (of my past) or dread (of my future.). It was a fun little game.

I'm quite creative, so once I started down that worst-case scenario path, my brain would say oh-this-game-hold-my-beer-please-and-buckle-up-for-this-adventure.

Seriously, OFF THE FREAKING RAILS.

I still have a human brain, so I have fear-based thoughts, but I don't indulge in them anymore. It's almost comical to me now when it happens. I just let that dog hunt so-to-speak.

You can retrain this part of your brain and it will transform your life.

One of my new clients did not want to set a goal.

She is currently unemployed.

She can't really leave her house.

She doesn't have any money.

She thought it would be hard to work towards a goal.

Everything is too crazy.

She just needs to survive this phase.

She wasn't focused on creating anything specific, so naturally, her brain did what brains do.

It played a little game of worst-case scenario.

She read the news.

The scary news.

She spun out.

She started worrying about her future.

She beat herself up for not being more prepared.

She watched Netflix for hours at a time, beat herself up over watching too much Netflix, then would eat snacks to distract herself from that, and then beat herself up for gaining weight.

This scenario is significantly harder than working toward a goal.

The beat-yourself-up-and-try-to-numb-out-and-then-beat-yourself-up-for-numbing-out-game feels awful. If both options are going to feel "hard," we might as well go with the one that has a happy ending.

Together we came up with a goal that would improve the quality of her life, instead of creating more of the opposite.

Her goal isn't earth-shattering, she's going redecorate her bedroom in six weeks.

She's enjoying it, and it's giving her something positive to focus on and something tangible to create.

Instead of focusing on all of the reasons it was hard for her to set a goal, we switched to:

What goals CAN I set even with my current limitations?

So she’s doing it without spending any money, she can only use what she already owns. So fun.

She still watches Netflix, but now she's watching because she enjoys it, not because she's trying to numb out.

Our goals don’t have to be life-altering, to have a huge impact on our lives.

Get creative and set a goal if you don’t already have one, and have a little fun with it. What goal CAN you set even with any limitations?

If this really resonated with you, reach out to me. I can totally help you see your situation from an entirely new perspective that is impossible to see on your own. You can book your free call by clicking here.

Machele Galloway is a Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and specializes in helping her clients manage their time and their minds. She firmly believes that you can't manage one without managing the other. She virtually coaches women nationwide. If she isn't coaching clients, she is studying concepts and techniques. And if she isn't doing that, she's probably playing with a dog somewhere. - “Life is short. Play a little.”