In this episode:
I talk about the shame that can be experienced from feeling stuck on goals that we may have set early on in the year, and do a dive into some of the work around goals that I facilitate to make sure that what you’re working on is resonating with you.
Resources:
Upcoming Workshop: Summer Soul Mid-Year Check In: How Are We, Really?
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas (00:01.95)
Hey everyone. So on today’s episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about goal setting and really giving yourself the permission to say, a fit with regard to some of your goals, if they’re really not meant for you and like giving yourself permission to let them go. Now I’m talking about goals because on July 16th, I will be co-facilitating a workshop around kind of like a mid-year check-in, right? It’s called the Summer Soul Mid-Year Check-in.
How are we really? And the reason why it’s called how are we really is because I feel like right now, social media especially is so full of like, you got six months to have six months of progress or six months of being stuck exactly where you are. And I almost feel like the pressure in a lot of social media content right now is that if you’re not working on a goal, I feel like it’s almost like shame as a motivator to affect change. And I’m here to say first of all,
Shame is never an effective way to get things done. Yes, does shame get things done? Sure. Is it longstanding change? Probably not, right? Shame is not really an effective motivator. It’ll get things done, but in terms of that type of change that’s gonna be permanent, that’s gonna feel good to your body, shame is not it. So I welcome you to mute anything that makes you feel guilty if you have fallen off track.
with anything or if you haven’t really been working on anything and if you have purposely not been working on anything and you’ve just been focusing on living and existing, I want you to recognize that as being totally valid too. You don’t have to spend every season of your life working on something. So I want to give you permission for that too, right? Like if you needed someone to say that, I’ll say it again.
You don’t need to always be actively working on something. It is okay to enter seasons of rest and seasons where you pause. So with that being said, yes, going back to what I was originally saying is that I am hosting or co-hosting a workshop on goal setting on July 16th. And if you wanna sign up for that, it is $15. You can spend $15 like at Starbucks in a heartbeat, right? Like buying like…
a drink and a snack. So, you know, if you feel that investment is worth you diving into yourself, please join us at this workshop and you can register at bottomlesssober.com. So first, let’s talk about whatever you may have set out to do in 2023. Why did you select whatever it was as a goal? So I feel like, for example, I’ll use myself. I have in the past,
use weight loss as a goal, right? And so I want you to pause and think about why, if let’s say we’re selecting weight loss, why you’re selecting that as a goal. And I want you to stop, you know, press pause if you need to, but in your journal or in your device, however you’re writing, really dive into why are you trying to accomplish this? And there’s two things I want you to pay attention to when you’re looking at your why.
Like, are any of your reasons related to you being happy if and only if you accomplish this? Or do any of these whys relate to you feeling worthy if and only if you accomplish this? And the reason I want you to think about that, and we’ll be talking about this in the workshop too, is because I want you to understand that when you’re attaching like you’re worthening your joy to outcomes or results from goals,
You’re basically setting yourself up to have a really, really hard time. You’re setting yourself up to really feel a lot of pain if you experience a setback because you’re tying your value to these outcomes. And also you’re kind of denying yourself the joy of being able to appreciate the journey of being able to appreciate your today, the present, because today is really what you have guaranteed. And so if you were no longer on this earth tomorrow,
Would it be that you’re unhappy because you didn’t have these results? Or can you find joy in what you have today? And so, again, if you are setting goals because you think that you’re gonna be happy only when you accomplish something or that you’re gonna feel worthy only when you accomplish something, I really want you to pause and think about that because what is it about your today that you can’t find some appreciation in or that you can’t find some sort of joy in?
And then the other thing too that I want you to do and that we’ll be doing together is I want you to dig into Where did your why come from in the first place? Right. Um, so again, you might want to press pause While you’re listening and journal this But I want you to answer the following questions like when was the first time that you wanted this result for yourself? Was this a norm that was pushed on you either by your family or society?
Or is this something that genuinely came out from yourself for yourself? And I also want you to ask, who stands to benefit the most from you attaining this goal and why? Is it really you who’s benefiting or are you perceiving some outside force to benefit from this? And sorry, there’s some weird background noise in the building that I’m in right now, so please excuse that extra noise. But coming back to this, I really,
want you to examine your why, and I also want you to examine it with self-compassion. Because first of all, if you’ve been struggling with accomplishing a certain goal, for example, for me with weight loss, right? I’ve always been a pretty active person, et cetera, but weight loss is not really a thing that seems to happen for me. And I can fight myself on it, fight the resistance, get really angry, and judge myself harshly on it. But if I look at it from a lens of self-compassion, I can ask myself, where did all of this come from?
And when I look at my history, I wanted to lose weight when I was younger because my mom told me that I needed to lose weight. Where did she get that from? She got that from my grandmother, who got it from probably her mother, right? But nobody ever stopped to really talk about why should we lose weight, right? And
If I then say for health reasons, right? I can dig into that a little bit more because when I weighed the least, I also was the sickest because I had alcoholic liver disease, right? So I really want you to examine the why because sometimes you may discover that you thought you really wanted something, but it was more so that it’s been a message that’s been programmed in you maybe since you were little that you really wanted this.
at your true heart of hearts, maybe you don’t want it. And I want you to give yourself permission to explore that and ask yourself, where is this desire for this goal coming from? And if it is in fact something that you want, that you generated yourself, and if it is something that you are not tying your worth to and that you are not tying your happiness to, then let’s go for it, right?
then let’s make that something for you to focus on for the rest of the year or whenever you wanna focus on it because it is not tied to your value, it’s not tied to your worth, and it’s actually a goal that you can own and that you can claim, right? Like it should be something that feels tough to do, but you would feel like a badass if you accomplished it, but if you didn’t accomplish it, you would be able to be kind to yourself, right?
This is a goal that maybe you can learn something about yourself with regard. It’s a goal that can excite you But again, it’s you’re not attaching your value to it and it’s something that you truly want to do So I just wanted to like kind of have that little brief conversation with myself and record it Because again, I think that right now
the narrative is, oh, it’s July, and if you haven’t been working on something, you’ve been wasting half a year. And again, that language is really shaming, and that language is really, it’s not helpful. And so again, I want you to practice kindness, I want you to practice self-love, and I want you to also practice authenticity with yourself because you absolutely deserve it. And if you wanna do this activity and some more activities in a group,
Please join me on July 16th at the Summer Soul Mid-Year Workshop Where we’ll be doing this in a group and some other activities as well and you can register for that at bottomlesstosober.com Thanks so much. Have a great one.
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