You're listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, business life coach, Andrea Liebross. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly, gain confidence, make your time productive, turn every obstacle into an opportunity, and finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's Time to Level Up. Let's do this.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I hope you are having a great week. I am recording this pretty early in the morning at the very end of June. The day I'm recording this actually is my son's 21st birthday. Wow. What does that mean? I think it means that he has reached another milestone, and perhaps, I have too. So, happy birthday, Brett, if you're listening. But I don't think my kids have ever listened to one podcast of mine, and actually, that is totally fine. I hope my husband has never even listened to one. Fine too.
In fact, to be really honest with you all, I don't like listening back to them because I realized, “Oh, I should have said that or I should have said this,” so I have just chosen to not listen back to them. My goal is not to listen to them, my goal is to put out great content for you and have them produced. I think I am fulfilling that goal, achieving that goal by creating a habit of recording an episode at least once a week.
That segues into our topic today which is about the anti-goal crowd. You know who I mean. You know if you're one of them. I like to think of this as remember in high school, at least in my high school back in Winchester, Massachusetts in the late 80s, there were the jocks, the nerds, and the theater geeks, and we had some of the, we used to call them the courtyard people who would smoke and do whatever else out there in the courtyard. I'm entering a new category into the categories of high school people and even adults. These are the anti-goalers.
Now, they are not picketing on the sidewalk with posters that say “We hate goals”, but they are saying things like “I don't love goals. I avoid setting goals. I don't see a reason to set goals. I don't set goals. Goal setting is too hard. It's a waste of time. I avoid it at all costs.” and I get these types of comments a lot on consult calls because I might ask, “What are your goals, or do you have any?”
I'm not judgey about this because I realize this is a huge segment of the population. It is more just a curiosity factor on my part to see where my prospective client is. Now I have got good news, those that do start to work with me, they all learn to love goals. They figure out that having goals is really the key to happiness in a sense. They become confident, not just in setting goals but in achieving them, and figuring out how to achieve them and not getting stuck necessarily in the how, trusting and believing that they will happen. That's the good news.
I want you to ask yourself, do you have a bit of the anti-goal in you? We're going to talk about why that is. I started to think about this because I am getting ready to fine-tune and create the content for a four-part masterclass series that's taking place over four weeks starting August 11th, and it is about the Full Focus Planner. Part of that planner, it's about mastering the planner, and part of that planner does tackle goal setting. It also tackles day to day, what you're doing on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and a quarterly basis.
If you're someone who really wants to start your fall off right with focus and a plan, not a to-do list a mile along, I am going to teach you inside that Full Focus Planner masterclass series how to master your mindset and your new number one best productivity tool, the Full Focus Planner, so that you don't wish or want that things are checked off or goals are being worked on because once you master this, they will, that will happen, that you'll have a way to get the things done that you want to get done, work towards your goals, and still have a life by actually using the planner and your digital calendar in your phone, not just watching the planner sit on your desk.
If you want in on that, I recommend you scurry on over to www.andrealiebross.com/fullfocus and register. Forbes named that Full Focus Planner the number one daily planner in 2021. There's something to it. That's why I started to think about this anti-goal kind of people because sometimes they're the ones that crave it the most but just can't quite make it happen.
Let's talk about the two different types of clients that I work with in terms of where they are in their “goal thinking” and I want you to ask yourself which category you fall into. The first category of women who don't have goals or who are anti-goalers, or maybe who have them in their heads but they're not writing them down, if this is you, what's really happening is that you haven't committed to your goals.
I work with these kinds of women inside Committed to Growth. Notice what I have named this coaching platform, Committed to Growth, because they are wanting to commit to goals but they just haven't done it yet. Inside there, we figure out why you aren't formulating goals and then writing them down. Because I know if you're in there, you're interested in having goals, you're interested in reducing your stress, you're interested in being more productive or finding more time in your day, but you just haven't taken the step to get the support you need to commit to it.
This is the step by engaging in Committed to Growth, becoming part of this amazing community of driven women. This is the step that you are looking for or what you're craving is the support to make it happen. Because at this point, you're at that interested craving place in terms of goal setting but you haven't committed. If this is you, then I want to see you inside Committed to Growth. We have so much fun. So much fun.
I just actually posted a Reel of my client, Emily, who I have to admit, I have not been working with for an entire year, but in the past six months, she has already reached her 2022 goal of creating six figures in her business with three little teeny children. Go check out her Reel which I reposted on Instagram and you'll see what I mean. She's gotten to a place where she's not just interested in this goal, she's actually committed to it.
Second category of women, they're the ones that have their goals written down, they're used to setting goals, but often, they don't set the goals that will really and truly move the needle in their business. If you're choosing on focusing on other things, other goals, rather than the ones that might really move the needle, this is you. You're choosing to focus on the fires, the pressing issues, or what seems like an emergency.
You've got goals but the goals might be really revolving around the emergencies, the fires, the pressing issues. You're not setting goals that will change something or allow for your business to do something different or differently. Perhaps you really need a new structure, or you need a new way of hiring, or you're needing to re-look at how you're going to reach your financial goal.
These women who are inside my Runway to Freedom program, they're goal setters but they are craving bigger more impactful goals, and because their ultimate goal is to have some more freedom in their business. If you want freedom in your business, and remember, this freedom can look like a lot of things, if you want freedom in your business to do what you want to do, work on what matters most to you, spend time with your family, figure out a long-term vision, but you just can't figure out how to do that and you're avoiding really setting goals on digging deeper into that, you belong in Runway to Freedom.
Because you're familiar with goals, you write them down, but maybe they're just not the right ones that are going to move the needle the farthest. I posted a quick little Reel about my client, Morgan, the other day and she falls into this category. She's got goals but she really wanted to work on herself and her business in a different way. That is how we are creating a runway to freedom for her in her business.
Which of these two types of people are you? As we begin this discussion of why women avoid setting goals, I want you to consider what your goals are now, if any, and I want to add that with a coach, you actually do the work of figuring out why you're avoiding setting goals and learn how to set them goals that align with you and get you what you want.
With listening to a podcast, I know you're listening and I know you're absorbing, but are you really doing the work for real? What I mean is you can listen to me talk about goals but I want you to ask yourself, “Am I really doing the work that it takes to create better, more effective goals?”
Now, I love podcasts but even me, I find myself when I'm listening to podcasts saying, “That is a great idea or I should really do that,” but then I don't always do it. With a coach, when I'm working with my coach, I always do it. As I go through these 10, I'm going to share with you 10 reasons why women don't set goals, if you find yourself saying, “Yes, that's me. I so need to address this or I wish I could be better at goals,” come join us inside Committed to Growth or Runway to Freedom. Come do that.
Explore that option of getting yourself the support you need to stop being an anti-goaler. Do it. Make that a goal, a quick daily goal to go find out more about both of these programs. You can do that on my website on the Work With Me page. You can also find out more about the Full Focus Planner masterclass on that page as well at the bottom where it says Masterclass where we're going to be doing a lot of this work in this masterclass.
Let's get to our 10 reasons why women don't necessarily set goals or set the right goals that are going to move the needle. Number one, they're scared. If you're scared, you might be asking yourself, “What if I do reach these goals? Would that upset the Apple cart at work or at home? What would it mean if I set the goals and reach them?” What it would mean is that I might have to keep going and I'd have to have different goals, but what if I don't reach the goals? Would that be a fail? That would not feel good to state that I failed.
Now, remember, I've got other podcasts that there is no such thing as fail, it's just winning or learning. But in this example, a reason number one why people don't set goals is being scared comes in all sorts of forms, being scared of reaching the goal, of not reaching the goal, of failing. That was number one. Is that you? Are you a little bit scared?
Reason number two that people don't set goals. You might say to yourself, “Well, I'm waiting for the right time.” What this really means is that you're waiting for life to happen to you versus you taking control of your life. I end this podcast by always saying, “Now is the time. There never is a better time for you to consider leveling up.” There is no right time. If you're waiting for the right time, then that means you're waiting for life to happen to you versus you taking control of your life.
You're the main character in your life. You're on stage and you get to move your story along. We are not waiting for others, other events, or things outside of us to move our lives along, you get to move it along. There is no such thing, my friends, as the right time.
Reason number three for the anti-goalers. Anti-goalers don't really realize that they can leverage their own agency. Now, what do I mean by this? I have mentioned this word before on some podcasts. This might be a word that you're really not familiar with with this definition. The tools that we can use to leverage our own agency, which means directing our own brains, if we use our own agency, we are directing our own brains. That means that we are managing our thoughts.
A lot of what we do in coaching is learn how to manage our mind. I call this thought work, which is some work which is I'm going to guess, a lot of you have never done thought work. Thought work is what we need to combat our belief that we cannot leverage our own agency or that we cannot direct our own brains. We have power over ourselves. We get to control what we want to think.
Something that falls into this not leveraging our own agency is recognizing that even though, for example, we've got three kids, we still can work on our goals. Maybe if the goal is to get on the Peloton every day, you might realize that that's just not happening between 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, that is a constraint that you have, but you can work within your own constraints. You can get on the Peloton really early in the morning or late at night. That's leveraging your own agency or directing your own brain.
That falls into the fourth reason that people are anti-golers. They tell you that their schedule is too full and they feel like they can't take on anything else. That's not true, my friends. Or they tell you that they don't have money in the bank to tackle that goal and they can't take on anything else.
Remember, time and money are two of your most valuable resources, but brain power is the most valuable. That goes back to having agency over your own schedule or over your own bank account. If your schedule is too full or if your bank account is too low, then what that really tells you is that your goals are not the goals that you want them to be, they're different, because you're spending your time and money on other things if your bank account is too low or your schedule is too full.
Maybe what is in the full schedule is what you should be focusing on but maybe it isn't. This is a perfect opportunity for you to reassess. Do I like how I'm spending my time? Do I like how I'm spending my money? Do I want to reevaluate and create a goal around it?
Here's the fifth reason you might be an anti-goaler. You're getting stuck on the how even before you write the goal. You have no idea of how that might happen. Now, how do we get over this? You have to realize that if you get curious and you start to source solutions, you can figure out the how. If you knew how already, you would have already done it, my friends. You probably would have already done it. Yes, you may not know the how but that is not a reason to not write the goal because you can become curious and figure it out.
Here's the sixth thing. You believe that you won't love your goal. You don't love it. I don't love this goal. Therefore, I'm not going to write it down. I'm not going to commit to it. I'm not going to work toward it. But here's my question to you, do you have to love them? Who says you have to love them? The only thing these goals need to be are smarter, there's a framework called writing SMARTER goals, which we're going to talk about inside that Full Focus Planner masterclass.
I think the most important part of writing SMARTER goals are the E and the R at the end. They need to be exciting and risky, which means that you may not have a love affair with them because they are uncomfortable. Goals, in and of themselves I think, I would add to the definition of goals if I were looking it up, need to be a bit uncomfortable. You don't have to love them. You just have to commit to it.
Here's reason number seven. Women are anti-goalers. They worry about what other people think. What would my husband think about this goal? Just having it as a goal, reaching it or not reaching it? What would my colleagues think about this goal? Would they have thoughts about it? How would those thoughts impact me? Well, guess what, they wouldn't impact you because they're not your thoughts, they're theirs. We can't control what other people think. So many podcasts on that if you want to go back.
But we can't control what other people think, so that in and of itself, my friends, is a very poor excuse for not writing a goal and being an anti-goaler. I think some of us think it might be braggadocious to tell people that you've reached the goal. But you know what, I think that's inspiring. You get to choose what you want to think about other people telling you if they've reached their goal or not.
Which brings me to number eight. Anti-goalers feel like they need to share their goals. You don't need to share your goals. You don't need to share your goals when you write them or if you reach them or if you don't reach them. You only really should be sharing your goals with people who will help you get there.
So many of the women I coach don't even talk about the coaching they're getting with others. They don't talk about the goals that they've set with others. They only talk about it within our coaching community, which makes our coaching community so amazing because we are all there to support each other, to cheer each other on, to feed each other with ideas about how to reach the goals or how to think about the goals.
Most of the women inside my group are not talking about the coaching that they are getting or the goals they're setting with their spouse, with others, with their colleagues, with their mother, or with their sisters, they're just not because there's no reason to. Only share these goals with people who are going to be completely on board, and not just saying they're on board, completely on board with you, and that is what we find inside both Committed to Growth and Runway to Freedom.
Because we're a bunch of driven and ambitious women in there who don't want to apologize so we don't put ourselves in situations where we're tempted to apologize. We only surround ourselves with women who lift us up. Does that sound like you? Come inside with us. It would be so fun.
All right, brings me to number nine. If you're not coming inside with us or if you're being an anti-goaler, it's probably because you're letting buffering have power over you. Buffering is when you decide you are going to direct your energy towards something else that does not align with the direction you want to move in or does not help you move forward. This might be emptying the dishwasher, cleaning out your inbox, Netflix.
Kids can even be a buffer because we can say to ourselves, “Oh, there's no way I'm going to be able to tackle that.” The kids are home. Or this might be other projects like all of a sudden you decide, let's remodel the kitchen instead of going all in on my business. It might be the season. You might use summer as a buffer in and of itself. What does that mean? That just means that you're creating an excuse for yourself to remain just interested in your goal, not committed.
Inside that Full Focus Planner, one of the great parts about it is it helps you address this on a daily basis, it helps you figure out what your daily big three should be the three things that must happen which helps you avoid the buffering and allows you to become committed.
Tenth reason, last one, is that you are not willing to say to yourself “I don't know everything and that's okay.” Sometimes when we set a goal, we think we need to know all the parts of it, we need to know exactly what's going to happen if we achieve it, we need to be able to think about all the roadblocks along the way. I like thinking about all the roadblocks along the way but there's no way we're going to know all of them.
We can say to ourselves, “Oh, I'm not ready yet. I don't have all the pieces in place.” But what I want you to embrace is saying, “I don't know everything and that's okay.” “And that's okay” is going to be your favorite new phrase. We do a lot of that inside coaching, saying “and that's okay”. Because if we don't, we put ourselves into a place where we're feeling miserable and that certainly is not helping us get out of the anti-goal stage.
Lastly, if there could be a number 11, I had a client share this with me yesterday, she said to me, “What if it's not the right goal?” She's in a place where she's trying to get out of being an anti-goaler. She's definitely interested, she's trying to get to the committed place but she's asking herself, “What if it's not the right goal?” Like the number six “I'm not sure I love my goal”, my question to you is do you have to know it is the right goal? Is there such a thing as the right goal? I would argue no. There's just goals.
My friends, if any of these 10 or 11 reasons resonated with you and you see yourself saying, feeling, or experiencing one of these 10, 11 reasons why you're not setting goals or you're not setting goals that will help you move forward and help you align with your vision, making your vision actually a reality, instead of just listening to my podcast, I encourage you to do the work around it.
That is getting coached, having someone actually help you see what's going on inside your brain for real, and then creating change. That's getting coached, that's not listening to a podcast. I encourage you to get the support you need in some form, either inside Committed to Growth or Runway to Freedom, or inside the Full Focus Planner masterclass, some way, make that a goal to get what you need so that you can become the best version of yourself, so that you can create a life and not just a to-do list.
If you want more information on coaching, you can go to the Work With Me page, but really what's going to happen is you and I set up a quick little phone call to figure out what's best for you. Head over to the website and at the very bottom, there is a link that says Book a Call. Book a call, they're free. I bet the call in and of itself is worth $1,000. Even if you decide not to move forward, the information you're going to glean from having me ask you some hard questions is super valuable, worth millions and millions of dollars.
While you're there, register for the Full Focus Planner masterclass series in August because what if you could start off your fall being focused and having a plan but also being able to execute, knowing how to execute on the plan and get stuff done? Get yourself off the endless treadmill and start to actually get some traction.
What if you were able to set goals that are exciting and risky, not the goals that you just think you should have? Let's get clear on what matters to you most and how to focus your attention on those things, not just focusing your attention on the easy things, to cross off easy to cross off things, let's get focused on the things that will give you power.
All right, my friends, now is the time to level up. Don't let life continue to happen to you. You get to create the life that you want. You've got that ability. You're capable. Dogs aren't capable but you are. All right, have a great week. See you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast with me, your host, Andrea Liebross. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay. Now, what about you? You've listened to the podcast, and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call. Right there on that call, we'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business, and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.