Episode 50: 4 Signs It’s Time To Quit Your Goal
Have you evaluated your goals lately? Sometimes it's not about whether you meet your goal, it's about knowing when it's time to change course or quit the goal altogether.
This week on the podcast, I'm sharing:
-How to assess your goals progress
-Signs it's time to quit the goal
-Alternatives to quitting the goal
Full Transcript:
Welcome back to the Upgraded Leader Podcast, where we talk about all things managing up, building relationships, leading our team's personal brand, setting goals, setting boundaries, and how quitters are actually winners and succeeding in our careers. On our own terms, I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we're gonna talk about checking in on our goals and seeing if we need to decide if we need to quit or pivot any of them.
So if you're listening to this episode, when it's re, when it's released, it's the end of Q1. And it's time for, it's time for a goals check-in. So how are we doing? How are we feeling? How are you feeling about our progress on our goals this year? Have you set goals yet this year? Maybe that's another question to ask, but last year I did an episode on doing just a mid-year check-in episode 33.
I'll link 'em in, link it in the show notes so you can go back and listen to that and kind of walk through my really simple process just to kind of check in, just to kind of see how things are going. And if you do that and you're like, eh. I don't know. I'm feeling a little discouraged about your goals, about maybe you're not making the progress that you were hoping or making the [00:01:00] progress that you thought you would by now.
You might be wondering, is it time to just quit this goal? I. Is it time to just set it down? And by the way, it's okay to quit a goal. It's totally fine to do that. And there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of feelings about quitting something. You know, there's, you know, messages out there about like, those who succeed are those who stay in the game the longest, or that winners don't quit, which is total bullshit because.
No one wins the prize for continuing to work towards something or on something that no longer makes sense. So like, like go ask Blockbuster how that worked out for them. Right. So how do you decide if it's time to quit a goal? Or is it just like, oh, I'm just tired, or, you know, I'm just being cranky about it right now, or whatever.
When do you, when do you actually decide to actually set a goal down? So let's talk about the four signs that it's time to quit your goal. One, you're just not making progress despite your [00:02:00] best efforts. So this isn't, well, I haven't started on it yet, or whatever. It's, this is, I am actively working on this and I'm giving it my all, but I'm not moving forward in a meaningful way.
Maybe this just isn't the right goal for you, and that's okay. Maybe this just, you know, all the, all the great intentions, right? Maybe this just isn't the right goal for you. So, I mean, I could have a goal. I. To be A-W-N-B-W-N-B-A star, but that's probably not going to happen for me no matter how much training I go through.
So maybe we just need to like give a long hard look at this and just say, is this really the goal for me? Even if I've been trying really, really hard to work through this, it just might not be the one for you. And that's okay. Just gift that off into the universe for someone else to pick up. Give somebody else that opportunity to take on that goal.
Number two next sign that it's time to set [00:03:00] the goal down or to quit the goal. Maybe you just lost passion for it or lost interest in it. And this happens to me a lot where I get really excited about something and then that excitement passes and then I'm just not really feeling it anymore. Um. You know, it just might not be aligned anymore to the larger context of the rest of the goals you've got going on or your life or whatever.
Or maybe you found something that's new, you know, new, new and more exciting and more important that you would rather be working on. And that's okay too. That's okay. Um, I, a lot of times what I'll tell people is just like. Trying stuff out like that, just, that's just data as well for you to be like, oh yeah, I really like this, or, no, this is terrible.
I don't wanna do this anymore. And sometimes you just don't know until you start along that path, right? So that's okay. Number three, things just might have changed. So maybe you have new and different information now, which by the way, anytime you get new and different information about a job, an opportunity, a [00:04:00] person, a recipe like oh, that's new and different information.
You're allowed to change your mind. That's totally okay. And maybe there are market changes. Maybe there's some economic changes that are making you think about, Hmm, maybe this is not the right time. Or, I wanna set this down. Maybe there's been some changes to your personal life that makes this goal kind of impractical or irrelevant right now.
Maybe. Maybe you need to become a caregiver to your mother-in-Law. So a specific goal doesn't make sense for you right now, and that's okay. Or who knows, maybe you've gotten a new opportunity. So I, um, I have a client right now who wanted to become the COO at their company. Like they wanted to get, they wanted to move up to that role at their company.
And through their network, they got an opportunity at a different company to do sales in that industry, which is very different from what they were currently doing, but they have a ton of [00:05:00] industry experience. They're gonna have a lot of credibility with their customers. And they were like, you know what?
Maybe this would be a really great. You know, shift or change in my career goals. And sometimes you just have to allow yourself to be open to things just kind of coming outta left field that you did not plan for. And that's okay. So maybe then you set down some of these other goals because you wanna pursue, pursue this new thing.
That's totally cool too. And actually. You know, that's how the most exciting careers end up getting developed by having a plan, having kind of a, a direction that you're headed in while also allowing yourself to be open to other things, and you get to decide if you want to take on those new things or not.
So the fourth reason you might decide to set something down or you might decide to quit your goal altogether is that you are just completely stressed and burnt out because of this goal, right? That it's [00:06:00] negatively impacting your mental health and your physical health. It might be it impacting your relationships.
You might be just beating yourself up over into, over again, around not making the progress that you're wanting. And honestly, and again, I'm also really guilty of this one, of like setting a goal and then like wanting to white knuckle it and just like beating myself up when things are not progressing in the way that I thought, or as fast as is usually it's not progressing as fast as I thought is usually what happens and I end up beating myself o up over it.
And at this point you just have to decide. Is it worth all of this for the outcome of the goal? Like is it really worth all of this negativity, all of this stress, all of this burnout to get to the outcome of this goal? And only you can decide that. Only you can decide if it's worth it or not. But those are some things that you really need to be thinking through if this is, if this is what's coming up for you.
[00:07:00] So. Maybe you're like, well, Nicole, I, I am not quite ready to like really just, you know, let go completely of this goal. What else can I do? So there are some alternatives to outright just quitting your goal if you're not quite ready to put it down yet. And that's okay. So here are a couple of things you can, you can also think about if.
You know, something needs to change, but maybe, maybe it's not completely thrown in the towel just yet. So one, you can adjust the timeline or pause some goals. Just take longer than one year to achieve. And again, this is really top of mind for me. There's a couple of goals that I've had over the last few years that I'm noticing.
I continue to just shift to the new year every year. It shifts on my vision board every year, and what I. I need to just continue to remind myself is that some goals just take longer than one year to achieve, and that's okay. In that slow progress is still progress and [00:08:00] either you need to adjust your tum light or maybe you do need to just pause on it for a little while.
Maybe you just need to pause on this goal for a few months or even a season. Um, I had this happen actually recently with a, with a client. Her and I had. An initial conversation this time last year. It was great. She was ready to move up in her career and, and move along. And then right after we had that conversation, she found out that she was pregnant and she was like, you know what, let's pause this just for a little bit and we'll come back to it.
And so now we're back and we're working with each other now, now that she is, um, back to work after her maternity leave. So now she's ready to refocus on, um, on her career and that was the right thing for her. So. Again, maybe you just need a pause. Maybe you just need to set it down just for a little bit.
Maybe you're in a particular season in business or in your life that it's like, Hey, let me just set this down for a little while and I'll come back to it. So you're not giving up on it completely. You're just setting it down and that's cool. Number two, you might decide to just. Adjust the action plan to achieve the goal.
So obviously there's lots of [00:09:00] ways to achieve a particular goal. And actually, as part of my goal setting process, one of the activities that you do is you do a brain dump of all of the possibilities. Because if you kind of start walking down. You know the, the path, you know your action path and you're like, actually this action kind of sucks.
I don't wanna do it, or it's not working anymore, or whatever. Then you can go back to that brain dump list and be like, oh, let me pick up a different action to get me to that outcome. Get me to that goal. So again, maybe the issue isn't with the goal itself, it might just be the action plan to get there.
So, you know, for example, you know, you know, of course I have a goal to continue to build a profitable business. And at the beginning I. Of, uh, me going full-time in my business. I had a very specific action plan, particularly around social media, around posting multiple times a day on social media and in order to like get my information out there and potentially I.
Um, bring in people that would wanna work with me. And I had it in my head that I [00:10:00] had to post multiple times a day on social media in order for that to happen, in order to build a profitable business. That's what I needed to do. And I was like, this isn't fun. This really sucks. And I was finding that I was just like posting garbage, like I wasn't posting really quality stuff.
Just so that I could say that I posted multiple times a day. So like, this isn't fun. This is also not authentic for me, and it's not, and I'm definitely not getting the results that I'm looking for. So I adjusted the plan to just post only a few times a week when I'm feeling inspired or I have something really specific to say.
And once I kind of let go of that pressure and just a, you know, adjusted my plan, like things were, I, you know, my business absolutely expanded, you know, I was feeling really good about what I was putting out. So again, it might not be the goal itself, it might just be the action plan to get there that you need to adjust.
Maybe you need to expand your goal or expand your success definition. Again, as part of my goal setting process, one of, one of the things you do before you even set a goal is to, [00:11:00] um, define what success means for you. And so sometimes we can get really tunneled visioned. On what success looks like. Um, that's, again, sometimes we end up closing ourselves off to opportunities.
So, um, so again, like my, my client example before where I said that, you know, she had a very specific plan. She, she was like, I, I have a goal to become the COO of a company. Then this other opportunity came her way and she was like, actually, that feels really good. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go do that instead.
And so maybe we just need to expand the goal to, to be just a little bit bigger or just to allow for other opportunities, um, to come in and you can still get to, um, that desired outcome of having an upgraded career. So also too, I'll have clients that, um. Again, sometimes they are looking for that internal promotion, but then we end up.
Also working in external job search strategy at the same time, or vice versa. Sometimes I, I have, [00:12:00] I have clients, um, that it'll happen as well that they come to me, they're like, Nicole, Nicole, I want you to help me get, you know, a VP position at another company externally. And then something happens internally and an opportunity becomes available that they didn't realize would've been there before.
So we kind of, you know, expand or shift some things around. Maybe you need to simplify the goal. Does that sound familiar? You have, I don't know, like a thousand different steps on your action plan, 30 different notebooks to track progress, complicated rituals, like all of these things that you need to do in order to achieve this goal.
And so again, maybe it's not the goal itself, maybe it's just the action plan needs to be simplified. Maybe we just need to like, you know what? I'm trying to do too many things at once on this goal and I just need to simplify some things, and I know again, I am. Totally guilty of this. This is definitely one of the things that I, that end up happening with me.
So like when I went to start my podcast, which by the way, this is episode 50, so super exciting. Thank you [00:13:00] for, for hanging around with me for 50 episodes now. But in, um, 2022, in the fall of 2022, when I was first starting to build out this podcast, the first. Like kind of grounding thing that I said to myself, because I know myself and I'm like, how can I make this easy?
How can I make this easy? And there were a lot of things that I said. I was like, if I'm gonna do this podcast, I'm gonna do it in such a way that is gonna be easy for me, that I'm gonna edit it myself. I'm gonna do all the production myself, because for me that's easier. They're like outsourcing. That felt like really complicated and really stressful.
So I'm like, I'm gonna do it myself and therefore, how do I make that part even easier? Is that I am going to just talk. I'm just doing these, I'm, I, you know, I have an outline and, you know, a structure of, you know, wanting to make sure I don't forget certain things. But when I record, like you're hearing me right now, I'm just talking and I'm not editing out my flubbed words.
I'm not editing out any made up words that I make sometimes or [00:14:00] whatever, you know, I do very, very little editing to make it easier on myself. So, you know, where can you make things easier? Where can you make things more simple that I guarantee you will actually be able, able to help you move forward in a way that feels better, again, more sustainable, and I bet you'll be able to move faster if you are able to simplify some things.
And then the final thing that maybe that needs to happen. So you just need to get your mind right. Maybe we just need to adjust your mindset, right? Are you putting too much pressure on yourself? Are feelings of self, self doubt and insecurity like pulling you down into a shit spiral? Like is that happening?
Um, most of the time our goals are ones that are going to stretch us, right? Like it doesn't make sense to set a goal. That doesn't have us growing, right? Like what's the point of a goal then? I don't know. Um, but again, our goals most of the time are put into place [00:15:00] to stretch us and to grow us. So you might be doing a lot of things that are new.
You might be doing a lot of things that are kind of pushing you beyond what you thought was possible before. And that is uncomfortable. That feels, that feels hard. That feels really scary. So that's super normal to. Feel moments of self-doubt or imposter syndrome or whatever. But the trick is, is to not allow it to pull you under in that shit spiral.
You want it to kind of push you up through that spiral. So developing a growth mindset is really going to be key to achieving those goals. Also just remember that your goals are not meant to fix you or to punish you because you're not broken. You're not something that needs to be fixed. Your goal should be motivating to you to upgrade what's already good, what's already there.
This is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately with my own therapist and my own coach about. It's already good. Like my life is already good, my business is [00:16:00] already good, things are already great. Now I just want more of it. I just want more of the goodness. So how do I continue to expand and continue to grow in that direction?
But it's already good now, so don't forget that it's already good. Now, your goals are here just to continue to amplify that not meant to fix you. It's not meant to punish you.
So if you thought this was helpful and you still want some extra help on your goals, I have curated all of my goal setting episodes into one webpage with a download that you can, um, where you can download the workbook that goes along with it if you want to check that out and really just spend some time and what's.
Pretty much ended up being a whole masterclass on achie, uh, setting and achieving, um, your upgraded goals. Go on out to the upgraded leader.com/goal setting where you can, um, enter all your information and get set up with all of that for completely for free. Um, so if that's [00:17:00] interesting to you, I will link that in the show notes as well.
And also if like, okay Nicole, I've got the goals and I really want your help to actually implement these and really want that thought partner and really want that extra support in achieving those goals this year. Um, send me a note, send me a note here at nicole@theupgradedleader.com or find me out on LinkedIn and send me a DM and we can talk about what that could look like as well.
So thank you so much for hanging out here with me today. I'll see you back here next time for another amazing episode. But in the meantime, remember, your career deserves an upgrade.
