How to start (and finish) big goals

Have you ever had a big goal you really wanted to work that also seemed kind of daunting or maybe even downright scary? 

Maybe you aren’t sure how to break it down into steps you can actually do, or maybe you’re afraid of making some kind of mistake, or maybe you’re just scared to find out that you actually can’t do the thing after all, but one thing is for sure - you’re experiencing some kind of blocker to going after that big goal. 

I get it. I’ve been there. That’s part of why it took me so long to finally quit my corporate job and launch my business. Yes, I could argue that it was a wise financial move to wait, but I can also see that I was gathering my courage as much as I was gathering my cash reserves.

When we want to do something that scares us, especially if we want to do it really well, we can find ourselves procrastinating. A lot. And it confuses us. We ask ourselves, if I want to do this so bad, why am I not doing it? If this is my dream, why do I keep putting it off? We know that we have to take action to hit the goal, and yet, many of us will work on literally anything else most of the time.

As a coach, I now have a much better understanding of what’s going on when we have this experience. I walk my clients through this kind of stuff all the time, and I help them understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, including why they’re avoiding the very thing they want to accomplish most. 

Let’s break it down. We have a goal. We care a lot about the goal. We want to do a good job at the goal. These things seem like they would motivate us to, you know, take some action. But they don’t, and instead, it often seems like they motivate us to pretty much run in the opposite direction. 

Here’s what’s missing from that equation: permission to try, permission to mess up, and yes, even permission to flat out fail along the way.

When we have big goals and high standards, we create a lot of internal pressure to do really well from the get go. But doing really well from the get go actually isn’t required and it can even outright block you from making an attempt at your goal at all. 

Does this make your brain hurt a little? It used to make my brain hurt a lot, but it actually makes complete sense. Without permission to try, make mistakes, and yes, even fail, a big goal and super high expectations are a recipe for anxiety and procrastination. 

When we feel anxiety about a goal, the brain thinks the goal is creating the anxiety, and then it wants to get away from the goal. This is where the procrastination comes in. Maybe your brain turns to numbing and avoiding behaviors like drinking, scrolling social media, going out for a coffee, etc. Some of us will even use other work to avoid this feeling. (This happens to my clients especially, who love to be productive. Productively working on goal B is the best distraction from their anxiety and trepidation about goal A.)

If your goal is something that you’ll have to present to other people or turn in to a supervisor, when the deadline gets closer, you’ll shift from being anxious about the work to being anxious about the deadline, and then you’ll rush to get the work done. This is why people think that they work better under deadlines. It’s not because they do. It’s because their fear of missing the deadline overpowers their fear of doing the work badly. Of course they don’t do their best work this way because they were in such a rush. But they’re probably so relieved that it’s done and they met the deadline that they feel great, thus reinforcing the behavior pattern. 

Here’s the thing, though, when the work is a personal goal or a creative project without an external deadline, it’s a lot easier to never come back and do the thing. So, we’ll get a work thing done because we don’t want to have to tell our boss or a project lead that we didn't do it. But when it’s our side hustle or our novel or our yoga practice, we can just stay in the avoidance stage of the procrastination loop. FOR YEARS OR EVEN DECADES. 

And the longer we stay in avoidance, the more we judge and shame ourselves, which turns our goal or dream into a symbol of our failure by association. Now it makes sense why you never work on your book or get out that yoga mat or work on your side hustle. You have accidentally conditioned your brain to feel terrible when it even thinks about it, so of course you don’t want to think about it, let alone do it. 

But what if you gave yourself permission to try, to make mistakes, to fail and keep going? What if it were ok that you haven’t taken a crack at the novel since 2018? What if you just open that document up now and get back to it? What if you roll your yoga mat out and do just one pose? What if you could come right back to that side hustle, no matter how long it’s been collecting dust?

If you want to do anything you can’t already do, being willing to try - and even being willing to suck - is the way to get there. 

You really don’t need to get it right on the first try. Or the 50th. And if you’re willing to try and try again, you’ll get somewhere amazing. Maybe you’ll hit your goal. Maybe you’ll just be willing to get started again and see what happens. Maybe you’ll zip past your goal and blow your own mind with what you create. Whatever happens, it’s much more fun than staying stuck and judging yourself for it. (Because, yep, procrastination nearly always arrives with a sidecar of self judgment.)

Ready to crush your big, scary goals and ditch procrastination FOREVER? This is my favorite thing. I’m currently accepting 1:1 clients for my coaching practice, which is virtual and serves clients the world over. I’ve also got a few spots open for corporate speaking engagements. Learn more here.