Impossible Goals

Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life podcast, where it’s all about designing your life on your terms and now your host Natalie Bacon.

Welcome to 2020 my friend. Can you believe it? I love it. I am living my exact life that I want to be living. I am so grateful and in love with my life and it was not easy getting here and that’s what makes it so fun for me. I really, really love the work that I’ve done and I think that last year was my best year ever and I think that this year will be even better and I want to offer to you that that’s totally available to you.

So if you would have told me seven years ago that I would be doing this, that I would be a life and business coach, that I would be living in Chicago, that I would be making so much money working from home. I just wouldn’t have believed you. I wouldn’t have even thought it were possible for me. And that’s seven years ago. That’s not that long. If you think of a timeline of life, if you just put a hundred years down and you mark ticks, right? Like seven is not that long and every year has gotten better and it has just been such a gift that I’ve given myself. And I want you to think about that for you, kind of what path you’re on. And that’s why I want you to set an impossible goal this year.

This is something that I’m teaching Grow You members how to do grow you is the coaching program. It’s like a monthly membership where I help high achieving women set goals, achieve these goals, find their purpose, make more money, really just uplevel your life. And it’s been such an honor and a privilege for me to be able to offer this. So if you want to learn more, you can go to growyoucoaching.com, but today I am going to teach you how to set an impossible goal so that you can take your life to the next level. Because I think that there’s this magic that happens when you grow personally and when you expand your thinking, it’s something to do for fun. It is not something to do to make you more worthy. And I promise you that upon achieving it, your life will be different, but it will not be better or problem free.

So if you would have told me that my life would be what it is seven years ago, I would have thought that somehow I would not have problems and everything would just be easy peasy. Right? And I will say that there are parts of my life that are easier. But with that, you know comes new challenges, right? I have a team now, so I’m learning how to be the CEO. I just have different problems, right? You just kind of up level your problems in a way.

So I don’t want you to think about setting an impossible goal because it will relieve yourself of the negative emotion or the problems that are inevitable in your life. You’re always going to have problems. You are always going to feel negative emotion. But while we’re at it, why not set and achieve impossible goals? So what’s an impossible goal? It’s anything that you literally think is impossible for you to achieve right now. And depending on where you’re at in your life, what circumstances you have and what results you’ve created, it’s going to be different for everyone.

It might be that losing fifty pounds is something that you think is just impossible, right? You’ve always been this way. You’ve tried to lose weight before and you’re just this weight. Or maybe it’s that you want to make six figures or seven figures and it’s just something that you really don’t think it’s possible for you. It’s only possible for people like me or other people who have businesses. Maybe you work full time and you don’t really like your job, but you’d like to double your income and work three days a week.

Whatever it is, I want you to think about something that you really want. It’s like in your heart to have, but you’ve sort of written it off as impossible. Now. Make sure it’s aligned with what you truly want and desire for your life. So let’s not go to the place of, well, I want to jump off a building and be able to fly or something like be in the NBA and you, you know, I’ve never played basketball and you’re middle-aged or something like that. So you want it to be impossible for you, but in the realm of possibilities. So most people will set realistic goals and there’s nothing wrong with that. You just will get realistic results.

So I like to think about something that I did for new year’s resolution. About 10 years ago I decided to start flossing. I don’t know. I used to just floss randomly and whenever I felt like it. So one year I just decided I was going to start flossing every day and that was going to be my new year’s resolution. And I still floss to this day every single day. Now that little change produced, you know, longterm health benefits, but it’s not an impossible goal. When I started to do this, I wasn’t having to do a lot of thought work. I wasn’t having to convince myself, okay, this is really possible for me. It didn’t take an identity change.

So it is worthwhile to improve your habits, change your habits and make daily small changes that move you in the direction that you want to be going. But I want you to also set one really big impossible goal for yourself. I only want you to set one because I think that constraint and focus are extremely underrated. It is so much easier for your brain to achieve something if you’re just focused on one thing.

So pick the one thing, the one area of your life where you want to see different results. Something really, really big that seems impossible for you. And spend some time thinking about what you really want. I think most of us don’t even do this. We just think, okay, yeah, I want to lose five pounds. I want to go to the gym, I want to floss, I want to, you know, whatever the case may be this time of year, maybe I want to get a raise this year or I want to, you know, be in a different job at the end of the year. Those are fine smaller goals to have, but they don’t take an identity shift. They don’t elevate you to a different frequency where you are achieving something where you blow your own mind. I want you to spend some time thinking about what would you want to achieve or create in your life if anything were possible.

Okay, so I gave you some examples. Maybe you want to make $1 million. Maybe you want to pay off your house. Maybe you want to find your dream job working three days per week. Maybe you want to lose the weight. Maybe you want to meet the man of your dreams and get married. Whatever it is for you, spend some time in it and then decide to set that as your one impossible goal.

I like to set it as my yearly goal, my one impossible goal for the year, but unlike kind of the smart method of goal setting, I don’t really put a timeframe on it. Now I know this is sort of sacrilegious, but I, instead of focusing on the time frame, I focus on progress made. So I’ve never been in a rush to achieve my goals and I think that that has been such a gift I’ve given to myself.

Instead, I’m taking massive action, evaluating, making sure I’m getting results and moving forward. Because for me it’s like if it takes me 10 years to build a $1 million business, that’s so worth it because then I have $1 million business and I’m just growing from there, and then it’s $5 million and then it’s $10 million. Right? Versus trying to do something smaller and a certain amount of time. Right? Versus getting a 10% raise at a different job this year and putting that time restriction on it. The reason that I hesitate to tell you specifically don’t put a time cap on it, is because I don’t want you to take that to mean that it’s okay to think it’s always going to be in the future. There’s a difference between having confidence in the future and having confidence right now. So there’s a disconnect between my belief in creating a seven figure business in the future versus right now. Because if I truly believed it 100% I would have that result.

So there’s this cognitive dissonence that’s happening right now in my life because my big goal, my impossible goal is that seven figure business. For me, if it takes me two more years to get there, I am fine with that. How I’m measuring my own goal is based on revenue. So as long as my revenue is increasing, as long as I’m taking massive action and changing my actions to make sure that my results are improving, then I’m okay with that. So you can decide for yourself, is it okay for you to kind of not have this specific timeline or not? I still will tell myself, and I’ll still set the goal for the year. So it’s January right now as I’m recording this and it is going to be my goal for the year to make seven figures in one calendar year in my business.

Now, if I don’t make it, I’m not going to beat myself up. I am going to see and make sure that I am closer to it than I am further away from it. So you know, if last year I made however much I made, as long as I’m making more this year, even if it’s not the seven figures, I’m okay with that. So I’m taking action to get results and I’m evaluating it along the way. And the reason that I love setting impossible goals and the reason that I want you to set an impossible goal is not because I want you to get the results that you want so badly. Although I do want you to get that result it’s really fun, but it’s really because you will become someone completely different on your journey to accomplishing your goal.

I am so proud of myself. I have so much more self confidence in who I am for having set and achieved my goals. And it’s really because of the failures along the way and the thinking and feeling that I’ve had to do in order to become this person. So I’ve had to expand my beliefs. I’ve had to change my beliefs. I’ve had to completely change how I think about money and my relationship with money and my relationship with my business. I’ve had to learn how to process negative emotions and I’m so much stronger as a human being for having done that. And that I just think is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. And I think that setting an impossible goal is one of the best ways to do this.

It’s called the strategic byproduct, right? It’s the byproduct that you will get through doing hard things. You will become someone completely different. That’s why I think it’s really, really important to set one impossible goal versus those smaller kind of smart goals or habit setting. Right? Cause you’re not going to have to stretch yourself to become someone completely different. I also think that when you set an impossible goal, it gives your mind something to focus on. Something to work toward that is just kind of fun. Otherwise your, you know, probably going to be escaping a lot of your life and repeating the past. So it kind of looks like going to your job every day wishing things were kind of different. Looking forward to your vacations, probably overeating, maybe some overdrinking. And it’s, you know, it’s kinda just, you have this like layer of self pity almost because you haven’t given your brain something to focus on.

We’re kind of at this point in modern society where we need to do that because life is relatively easy. So the fear that we’re mostly experiencing, especially if you’re listening to this podcast, is you know, the fear of putting ourselves out there. It’s not the fear of, you know, being attacked. So in today’s day and age, it’s just really useful for you to give your brain something to focus on and then to stretch yourself as a human being. I just, I love it. I’m so grateful that I’ve done it for myself.

So now I want to talk with you about how to do it. I want you to choose something that you really desire as a result that you want to be different that you currently think is just impossible. And then I want you to practice believing in that goal from your future. It will require of you that you give up your old identity, your current identity for a new one.

Let me give you an example. So let’s say that you really want to meet someone. You really want to meet a partner, you want to get married. This is like to you, it’s something like you’ve been single for so long, you just can’t even imagine it. Now, you might not think it’s impossible, but really deep down you just don’t think it’s going to happen for you. That would count as an impossible goal. Like if at the end of the year you were just blowing your own mind that you were in love and met, you know who you think to be is going to be your life partner. You are going to have to give up your identity as someone who is single, as someone who struggles with guys or dating as someone who kind of identifies with other singles as someone who follows single people Instagram meme accounts. And you have to totally shift your identity into thinking thoughts and feeling feelings as someone who is in a committed relationship.

And depending on how long you have struggled with the lack of this in your life, it is going to be very challenging for you to do. I think of my relationship with money because I’ve really like mastered this relationship and I used to be in such scarcity with money and kind of had this lack mindset with money and I was really worried about money and the abundance was in the money and not in me. And I had to give up this identity of someone who struggled with money, of someone who was frugal, of someone who was worried about money, of someone who was like nickel and diming and couponing and you know, thinking that whether I had money or didn’t have money, had something to do with my own self worth. I had to give up the identity of someone who was in student loan debt. I had to give up the identity of someone who was like hustling to make six figures.

And it sounds like it would be easy because of course you want to give up your identity as someone who has debt. You want to be out of debt. Of course you want to give up your identity of someone who’s frugal. You want to be rich, but if you are so attached to your identity, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. You’re very familiar with your identity and your brain loves familiarity and even if it’s not serving you, your brain would rather attach to something that’s not serving you. Then something that it’s unfamiliar with, it’s going to be a lot harder for you. Even if it serves you to come up with this new identity. It’s going to be very odd whether it’s, you know, you have to identify as someone who is fifty pounds lighter and not even thinking about food or someone who’s just a nondrinker or someone who’s, you know, happily married or someone who has a ton of money. Whatever it is that you want to achieve as your impossible goal. You have to identify as someone who has that result.

It’s really challenging, but it is where the real work is and then once you identify in that way, you will make decisions from that mindset and you will create the result. Okay. That’s kind of the higher level work. And there’s so many previous podcasts I’ve done on that, right? I’ve talked about visualizing and future self letters and a being list and goal fuel. All of those are going to help you do this. But for this episode in particular, I just want you to know that in order to achieve that impossible goal, you have to make that identity shift. But you also have to be in the present moment and take the next action, right? So you have to make your goal impossible, but then you have to make your daily actions very possible.

So if your goal is to make $1 million, you can’t have that as the goal today. Like you wouldn’t even know what to do. You’re like, I can’t make $1 million in one day. Like I don’t even know what to do. Instead you say, okay, my, my impossible goal is to make $1 million. What is one step I can take today that moves me toward that goal? So you want to make sure you’re taking massive action every single day and you’re doing your thought work to uplevel your life. So you get those massive results and then you want to track your progress and evaluate.

Because what’s going to happen is you’re going to do all of this thought work and you’re going to visualize and you’re going to set your impossible goal and you’re going to be really amped up and then you are going to go to the gym and eat on your food plan and you’re not going to see any results and you’re going to be like, all right, well that didn’t work under the next thing and I don’t want you to do that, right?

This is what life coaching is about. This is what I help my students and clients do. I make sure that they stay in that belief system until they get the result. You don’t get the result on day one, you don’t get it on day two and you might not get it on day 365, but you will make progress and if you keep your beliefs, eventually you will get the result. So I don’t want you to look for evidence in order to believe in the possibility of the goal. The whole point of it being impossible means that there’s not going to be evidence of it.

So I like to think of a time before I iPhones and IMAX and Apple a long, long before the internet and I like to think of someone explaining to someone else the possibility of a laptop and texting and an iPhone and FaceTiming and the person hearing it thinking, no, that’s impossible. And the person explaining it saying, no, no, it really is possible. It just hasn’t happened yet. And the person’s like, no, look around. Right? There may be, there were rotary phones or something like that or whatever the case may be, depending on the time this was, but there would be so much evidence that it was impossible for an iPhone or a laptop to exist.

So there is going to be a lot of evidence in your life for the impossibility of it. That’s why I call it an impossible goal. It’s like your brain already knows it’s impossible. We don’t have to argue with that. We’re going to try anyway because we’re going to get really close to it and eventually we’re going to achieve it. I want you to think about it in a really, really big way, but then take action daily. That’s just the next action.

So you meet yourself where you are for the next step. For me, right? To get to seven figures, I’m looking at my business, I’m looking at what I’ve done to create, you know, multiple six figures and I’m looking at what I can tweak, what I can do this month and this year to move forward and to increase my revenue, right? I’m not trying to make seven figures this month. I don’t want to freak myself out, but the goal is still impossible. It doesn’t exist yet for you and your impossible goal, I want you to believe in the possibility of it for you in your heart without looking at your current results, for evidence that it’s possible cause you won’t find it, believe in it anyway, and then take action daily that moves you forward.

Just make sure that you’re evaluating along the way. I see this a lot with business owners who really want to increase their revenue, but they don’t have a measurable goal. So they’ll want to just make more money, right? They won’t have a clear goal. So it’s really important that you will be able to know when you have achieved it. So for sure, I know when I hit seven figures, I know what $1 million looks like. Okay? It’s not just that I want to make more money. It’s not just that you want to lose weight, you want to lose fifty pounds. You will know for sure based on the number on the scale, whether you have achieved it. It’s really important that you can measure it.

So this year I want you to have the courage to dream big, to fail forward, and to blow your own mind. When you set an impossible goal, you will be faced with the stories that you’ve been telling of your past that justify all of your results and you have to give all of those up to create a new identity and it’s hard and you will fail, but your willingness to fail is what makes you stronger.

I love the analogy of going into the gym and lifting weights and tearing your muscles, right? It’s like you’re causing yourself to have pain, short term pain, to build those muscles. You will have to fail forward and experience a lot of negative emotion in order to go from where you are now to where you want to go in the future. Another analogy I really like is thinking of remodeling your kitchen. It’s like you have your kitchen and it functions properly and it’s a little bit dated so you want to completely redo it. So what you do is you gut the whole thing and you remodel it. Now while it’s gutted it actually looks worse than if you had done nothing, right? So you can’t use the sink, the, you know, appliances aren’t plugged in. Nothing can be used at all. It’s worse. But on the other side of that remodel is something that is so much better than when you started.

And it’s kind of what I think about when I think about impossible goals. It’s like here is one way of experiencing life with what we’ve already created. But to get over there and achieve this impossible goal, we have to gut our complete lives. We have to gut our identity and start over and it’s very challenging. But on the other side we are stronger and better for it. And in the middle of it, it can be really, really hard, which is why I have a coach and why I coach. It’s what I recommend that you absolutely have. If you’re really going to go about the setting and achieving of impossible goals. It is no small task, but it’s a worth it and you are worth it. You only get this one shot at your life. So have that courage, dream big, fail forward, and let’s blow your own mind this year.

Hey, if you liked this podcast you really should check out Grow You, my life coaching program I coach you on everything I teach on the podcast so that you can uplevel your life. We 10x it so you get the results you want most. Just like a monthly gym membership to get your body in shape, this is a monthly personal development membership to get your mind in shape. It is an investment in your future self will thank you for. Check it out at nataliebacon.com/coaching. That’s nataliebacon.com/coaching. I will see you there.